Chapter 278

Felling a Dragon (V)

It wasn’t long after the first roar that the second came, though it was much weaker and higher-pitched. And after the second so did the third and the fourth and the fifth... all of the Wyverns seemed to be screaming, as though relaying why they were unable to come to the Dragon’s aide.

Standing in front of one such beast, Ethan swallowed a mouthful; though they were just Wyverns, they were terrifying still, nonetheless. Two-tailed creatures were almost twenty feet long, their wings, when wholly open, spanning nearly twice that, their heads long and narrow, eyes slanted at an angle that made them especially menace-looking, and a single horn that stood erect from the top of their heads, curling back like a helix.

They were the domes of the sky still, the terrifying presences that would have easily washed over the mankind before the Towers fell. Standing tall against one such behemoth was already a challenge, let alone dozens of them. And yet... he couldn’t shudder and he couldn’t cower. It was either this or facing a Dragon, a behemoth among the behemoths.

He understood it more and more, with each passing day, why this group sported the strongest individuals-- it wasn’t that they were the luckiest, far from it-- it was that they were the most insane, the most ludicrous, the ones most willing to stare into the engulfing fires and just... walk right into them. The difference between him and them, though, was that he would have died-- many, many times over... but they didn’t. In fact, they only grew stronger and stronger.

“Get ready,” Emma warned from the side, her warhammer already at a ready, glistening in the splendorous crimson. “I can’t have you slacking off this time. Our necks are on the line.”

“... yeah,” Ethan affirmed, gripping the daggers even more tightly.

“Relax,” a calm, seemingly indifferent voice spoke from next to him, startling the boy. Glancing sideways, he saw Daniel, a black-clad lad and the group’s sole other Assassin, a legend among legends at that. He had a look in the eyes of someone who didn’t fear death, as though they weren’t facing Wyverns but just everyday, ordinary birds. “Us Assassins can’t be like the Paladin skullheads who are all about getting amped up and roaring about like madmen.

“Always be calm,” the man added with a faint smile. “She can take a beating and live. Us? We’ll get vaporized. Being restless won’t help. Besides, isn’t it just a big chicken? We’ve been cutting chickens for eons now. Tons of practice and all that makes a man skilled and such.”

Ethan tuned out the last bit of the ‘info’ as it was clearly Daniel just messing around, but he was right-- calmness was Assassin’s best friend. Getting wrapped up in his emotions will only decrease his chances of coming out of this alive. Though he always believed he was tightly walking the rope of death, he’d realized he was more than just careful-- nay, most people were, in fact. Well, at least compared to these guys. Then again, there is hardly a comparison there.

**

Cain shot into the sky, wings of fire curling into infernal behemoths behind him, carrying him neatly nearly a mile up. The Dragon didn’t immediately follow, merely lifting its head up and staring at him; even from far off, Cain could easily peer into the creature’s eyes-- within them, he ceased seeing anger and frustration. Instead, there was curiosity and a hint of playfulness.

Shortly after, the Dragon’s wings unfurled and flapped, bearing with them winds that could cut through an ordinary man with ease. The creature flung itself into the sky, crossing the distance it took Cain nearly ten seconds within one and immediately catching up to him, gaping its maw. Within, Cain saw a great ball of fire forming, causing all hairs to stand up on top, perched like alarming spears. Without a second thought, he immediately executed the omnidirectional ‘Blink’, and the strongest version at that, belting sideways for over a hundred feet.

A blink later, a laser-focused spray of coral fire engulfed the sky and scorched the clouds, causing a brief tint of sunshine to gleam through for a moment before being blocked off again. The Dragon’s head veered sideways once again, meeting Cain’s gaze-- once more, it lacked the anger, and instead appeared even more curious and amused.

Suddenly, the Dragon’s scales all lit up like lanterns, transforming the ebony beast into a magma-like hue. The color pulsated and flickered, violently so, while its eyes turned to glow like two burning suns.

Alarms like bullets began to ring inside Cain’s mind, every instinct of his developed over the course of thirty years of battle screeching at him to run and to run fast and as far away as humanly possible. Overriding every last base instinct he had, Cain gritted his teeth till his gums nearly bled and rooted himself midair. The Dragon clearly waited-- the creature had long since coalesced Mana into an attack. In fact, the Dragon was ready to strike even before it began to glow in the colors of magma. Instead, however, it opted to wait-- almost as though it was taunting him.

Cain felt as though he was being judged and assessed, yet had no room even within his rather enlarged ego to complain. Instead, he complied to being judged and replied in kind.

He ushered bouts of Mana within his body, the number beyond the scope of anyone else on Earth, and began the casting spree. He first turned into the recreated Avatar form-- though it was baseline weaker than the ‘stock’ spell that came with the Class, it was better than nothing-- then further empowered himself through activating passive auras, taking nearly ten seconds to enter his strongest state. In it, he could finally match the peak of his-- items notwithstanding-- battle prowess from before. The major difference, however, that before the Awakening he could withstand such a state for a few minutes, at best. Now? He could maintain his current state for nearly ten minutes-- over five whilst firing off spells with clear abandon.

The wings of fire had obtained several extra hues within them, not to mention the increasing number of halos that had begun appearing behind him. Each held a static spell, a ‘buffered’ version, like a bomb that he could light up with a fuse that was his Mana. It was exponentially difficult to use, especially since it was a combo of six different created Spells working in perfect concert to maintain the equilibrium, but he had to push whichever direction he could.

He had lost his human form in the process, becoming a featureless, human-shaped fire of endless colors, edgeless. He shone like a star of his own-- perhaps one far less bright than the Dragon’s, but a star nonetheless.

A brief silence and stillness emerged between the two, as though the time itself froze beneath the weight of their Mana. It was so brief, however, that a normal person’s concept of time wouldn’t be able to capture it. And then... it all erupted.

The Dragon fired off a tidal wave of fire that spanned over a mile toward Cain, the infernal wave swiftly shaping into a set of a hundred coiling Dragons diving toward him. On the opposite end, Cain roared from the top of his lungs and summoned an equally impressive, five hundred yards wide circle that began to rotate and spit out Mana in the form of liquefied light due to the sheer abundance. A hum and a silent quake later, the circle spun until all the colors bled into one.

It fired off a quasar-like beam that illuminated the entire world, boring through the coiling Dragons and destroying them all within a nanosecond, venturing forth toward the Dragon itself. In the meantime, all the other battles were forced to stop, partly because of the blinding light and partly because of the Mana spillage that was so severe it disrupted Spells over ten miles away, on the ground.

Ethan was just about to lunge forward and use Wyvern’s own shadow to attack it from the back when he realized... the skill didn’t set off. It almost felt like before the Towers fell, before there was magic and before he was an Assassin. He felt... human.

He wasn’t alone in the feeling; in fact, the stronger one was in terms of the connection to their Mana, the more severely they were impacted. The worst off was Senna, especially because of how deeply she recognized the connection with Mana during her last trial. It was so severe, in fact, that she received an outright backlash, forcing her to kneel and vomit a mouthful of blood.

That wasn’t the most terrifying part, however; though others were clearly impacted by the spillage, all to the varying degrees, to her it was more than just that. She could... see it. Perhaps ‘see’ was too strong of a word, as she merely caught a glimpse of something. But it was more than enough. It felt like staring into the eldritch nightmares entirely unprepared. Forgoing the Mana’s quality, the sheer quantity was... Immeasurable, she was certain. It was likely that even if the entire world pooled together their Mana reserves they’d be unable to reach such a mass.

She knew, however, it wasn’t just raw output that was the culprit; she was well aware that, even if Cain’s Mana was quite a few degrees higher than everyone else’s, it wasn’t nearly this insane. There were many more things here at play beyond the simple, raw Mana capacity. She looked up from her knees at the tiny silhouette within the world-encompassing light. It danced there like the tiny flame on top of the dying wick... yet it endured, against all odds. It seemed sturdy, somehow, more so than weak. All else aside, she realized that he was blowing a lot of hot air claiming she, or anyone else, would eventually surpass him.

Rather than being bitter, she smiled instead, her heart swelling up with pride. After all, that up there, that tiny figure standing opposite a Dragon, unwavering in the midst of the flames that could end the world, was her dad. He, as always, remained a shield against the fire and the rain and the thunder and all else. Once again, all she could do was guard his rear and stand in awe at what his tiny figure was able to accomplish.