Chapter 280

Felling a Dragon (VII)

Emma breathed heavily, her muscles feeling as though they were made from lead. Strands of her golden hair, now dyed Crimson with blood, lay flattened against her forehead due to sweat, partially blocking her view. She must have been fighting for at least an hour now, usually facing at least three to four Wyverns on her own.

her surroundings by now had become ruins of what was the mountain range, wreckage exposed everywhere around her. looking around, she saw that the others weren't in any better position. Senna was struggling mightily, facing nearly 10 Wyverns all on her own, flying speedily through the air and unleashing the barrage of weaponry upon the world.

Similarly, everyone else was off fighting their own battles and struggling just to survive. Wyverns as it turned out were far more powerful than they initially anticipated and planned for, and, as such, they were forced to improvise which wasn't necessarily the strongest suit. Nonetheless, the battle had been going on well so far, save for the occasional distraction from the main battlefield far up into the sky. Every so often, the ground battles would come to a halt as everyone would tilt their heads toward the sky and stare at the sight that left him gasping.

somewhere far up there, two creatures beyond one's normal comprehension were duking it out in a manner that left the sky constantly flashing as though with thunder. It was almost impossible to quite comprehend the extent to which the two had destroyed the world, although the crushed mountains and meadows and gaping holes in the ground had done a volume to try and do so.

All the same, however, Emma didn't have the luxury to pay much attention to what was going on in the sky as their battle here on the ground was more than dangerous enough. She abruptly swung her warhammer toward the ground and barely missed the screeching creature. The weapon landed squarely against the already destroyed earth prompting yet another explosion that sent debris flying all around her.

She didn't rest, however, immediately swinging it back over her shoulder and managing to land it at the leg of one of the creatures behind her. The Wyvern cried out painfully, immediately flapping its wings and ushering itself backward out of danger. At the same time, another one swung its claws toward Emma who barely managed to duck out of the way, retaliating swiftly by swinging the warhammer with all her might and imbuing it with a massive amount of Mana.

the strike landed squarely, prompting yet another screech from the wounded animal and causing it to flip and roll backward until it hit a nearby hedge that was once a rock that was a part of the mountain that fell and was now in ruins scattered all around them.

Meanwhile, some 400 feet away from her, Ethan was stalking one of the Wyverns that was fighting Kramer. The young boy was careful not to make a sound lest he be discovered and immediately crushed under the weight of the behemoths who is every single movement caused his heart to pound. Unlike Emma, Kramer’s awakened Class wasn't all that efficient in offense and watch for more inclined toward raw and brute tanking. Because of this, Kramer required an attacker on the side to supplement his lack of damage and Ethan volunteered.

Sensing an opportunity, Ethan cooled closer his daggers at the ready, already locking onto the creature's weak spot just down its elongated neck where it met with the rest of its body. Just as the creature extended its head forward and swiped with one of its claws, Ethan sees the opportunity mended forward through the shadows, His daggers extended and easily passing through the creature's skin.

The creature screeched at the top of its voice, clearly heavily wounded, and was just about to turn around and retaliate against him when the world once more quaked and shook from the battle high up in the sky. both the creature and Ethan lost their footing but the latter managed to use the warping of the shadows as though they were arm hinges to immediately prop himself up and shadowmend forward once again, but this time striking directly into the creature's eyes with a pair of poison infused blades, blinding the creature as a consequence.

Wyvern Violently trashed immediately, hitting eastern in the process and knocking him back some 40 feet where he landed unstably and directly on a jagged piece of rock. Pain assaulted each one of his senses as he felt his blood boil, every one of his bones crying with each attempt to draw in a new breath. he was in agony unlike any of the agonies he felt throughout his short-lived life. But just as he was about to pass out from the inordinate amount of pain, he felt a warm surge of energy swarm his body and almost instantaneously heal up all his wounds.

Gasping for breath, he managed to stand up and glance to his left where he saw Yuki staring back at him from some distance away waving with a smile. He waved back and nodded gratefully but still felt, in the back of his head, the pain that nearly drove him mad within just one moment. He then looked up into the sky where he saw brilliant flashes of light beyond the clouds and heard the distant compressed sounds of what felt like the universe being born anew.

“That's really something else,” He said in a hushed self-mocking tone, realizing that his own struggles seemed so infinitesimally small when compared to the battle that was the actual decider of their fates.

"Don't look up there," Daniel's voice suddenly trailed into his ears, forcing him to look to the side where he saw a shadow-wrapped figure crouching on top of a broken boulder beneath which a Wyvern's corpse lay splattered in blood. "That battle has nothing to do with us. No matter how much you think and how much you doubt yourself, his battles are his own, and ours are ours. All the same, our matter just as much as his."

Ethan nodded subconsciously, the new fire under his own feet, reinvigorating his battle spirit. Daniel was right; no matter how much he wanted to be part of what was happening in the sky, he would never belong there. there were plenty of battles to be had here on the ground, among mortals as it were, that the more time he spent with his neck craned and angled toward invisible stars the more likely was it to be stabbed by someone right here, right beside him, on the very hallowed ground.

Cain hastily dodged a laser-like beam of light, engulfing himself in the coral flames and slapping his palms together as a tidal wave of Mana surged from within him, becoming a radiant fixture in the shape of a shield that did manage to deflect the secondary beam, though it immediately cracked afterward.

Sighing and smiling bitterly, he once again energized his Mana unbelted forward into melee combat. He realized that trying to fight a dragon of all things at a range might not be the most brilliant idea he had conceived in his life, and, as such, he figured giving melee combat a shot was worth it. Though his current Class hardly afforded him the tools to fight in melee properly, It wasn't as though all his previous experiences of fighting hand-to-hand combat were entirely gone.

He swiftly crossed the distance between the two of them and landed some 40 feet away from the Dragon's massive head; he had nearly forgotten just how large the dragon actually was because he was at the range for so long. watching the behemoth up close was like staring at the summit of a mountain covered in jagged edges that he was supposed to climb barehanded. It was nerve-wracking, to say the least, but he took a deep breath and calmed himself down to the best of his abilities before once again unfurling the wings made out of Mana and flipping them to gain some momentum for his forward strike.

He shaped a huge pool of Mana into a 30 feet long sword made of fire and swung it toward the Dragon's head. The irony of trying to kill the Dragon, or at least wound the creature, with fire did not escape him but he had had little choice since he was most confident in displaying his complete prowess in controlling Mana whilst using the element of fire.

After all, from the start this battle wasn't about defeating the creature-- he never stood a chance, no matter how strong he appeared to the rest of the world. He sensed it, the Dragons Mana pool was so innumerably large that it was physically impossible to quantify it in human terms. A tiny fragment of that pool was enough to fuel his casting for at least 100 years without ever taking a pause from fighting. Trying to match something like that with his partly strength was not even a joke, but rather an insult.

“Jesus,” he mumbled with strained breath. “How long do I have to keep the shit up?”

"For as long as I desire, no?" a heavy, ancient, even primordial voice spoke directly into Cain’s mind, startling him.

" huh? You can freakin' talk? Let's do that instead! I'm much better at that than this whole fighting business that we've been doing for the past… how long has it been? An hour or so? So, yeah, let's talk big boy!"

“ I find very little amusement in the fancy talk,” the dragon said, still speaking directly into Cain’s mind.“ and would much rather see how you hold up in a battle. So, entertain me, tiny creature .”