The Red Dragon and the Dragon Rider — Bad Ending
Sylvia, who had been agonizing over the decision, bit her lip as though she had finally made up her mind.
"Anna, hold on! I'm coming!"
"No, Lady Sylvia! Don't come over here!"
Anna's voice was nearly a scream.
"It's dangerous here! Run, please!"
But Sylvia had already steeled herself.
She had chosen to trust her own eyes.
Having reached the realm of a Sword Master, her ability to read the flow of mana and detect the faintest sense of wrongness was sharper than that of any ordinary mage.
She concentrated mana into her eyes.
A blue gleam flashed in her gaze, and the patterns and sigils drawn across the floor came into far clearer focus.
Carefully, meticulously, Sylvia mapped out the markings below—their shapes, and the rhythm of their repeating intervals.
"It's all right. I'll check every step as I move."
She advanced slowly, weaving around each pattern one by one.
Moving with such caution, she soon reached the point where Anna was close enough to touch if she only stretched out her hand.
And that was what lulled Sylvia into carelessness.
Crack!
Her foot came down on a single sigil hidden in the darkness, one she had never seen.
In that instant, blinding white light erupted from beneath her feet.
BOOOOOM!!!!
"No!!"
Anna's scream filled the cavern.
The shockwave rippled out in every direction with the roar of the blast, and Sylvia's body was flung backward through the air. A dull thud echoed as her back struck the wall, and then she slid limply down to the floor.
The rapier at her hip tore free and clattered away into the distance.
"Ugh... khh..."
Through the thick smoke and swirling dust, Sylvia caught the sound of Anna's desperate voice as her consciousness began to fade.
"Lady Sylvia! Lady Sylvia!! Stay awake!"
Far off in the distance, Seraphina and Ashkal's roars still shook the sky.
But all of those sounds now felt impossibly distant, as if drifting in from somewhere far away.
Sylvia's eyelids grew heavy and closed.
How much time had passed?
Sylvia briefly regained consciousness.
She didn't know how long it had been, but the thunder that had once filled the sky had fallen silent.
She tried to move her body, but she couldn't so much as twitch a single finger.
Then, through her blurring vision, she heard something being dragged across the floor.
With great effort, she turned her gaze—and there she saw a red shape, limp and slumping, being hauled toward her.
It was Seraphina.
Her scales were scorched black and split open in places, and her wings dragged helplessly along the ground.
"Seraphina..."
Sylvia's lips barely managed to form the name, but almost no sound came out.
Seraphina's eyes shifted toward Sylvia with great effort. Her mouth twitched as if to say something, but no words came.
Above her, Ashkal's shadow fell.
In the last moment before Sylvia's consciousness gave out entirely, she heard Ashkal's voice one final time.
"Haha... well, well. You've saved me quite a bit of trouble."
Ashkal, back in his human form, looked down at the two fallen figures, the corners of his mouth curling upward.
"To think new research subjects would walk in here of their own accord."
The reason his furry research had taken so long was simple: the human body could hardly withstand the process of physical synthesis. He had produced a finished product in Anna, but many aspects of her remained unstable.
And now, here he was, with a human who had reached the realm of Sword Master—and a dragon.
Ashkal bared his white teeth in a pleased chuckle, snickering to himself.
With that laughter as the last thing she heard, darkness swallowed Sylvia's vision completely.
Sylvia's consciousness returned slowly.
A cold, slick sensation enveloped her entire body.
She could feel her body, but even opening her eyes was an ordeal. The light seeping in through her eyelids was dim and bluish—like looking at light through water.
Where... am I?
She tried to gather her thoughts, but her mind was fogged over as if wrapped in mist. She attempted to raise a hand and rub her eyes, to fix her focus—but it wouldn't move. Her arms, her legs, none of it would obey her, as though she were wearing someone else's body.
Even breathing felt strange. There was no suffocation, yet there was an eerie sense that some liquid had filled her body in place of her lungs.
She squeezed her eyes shut several times before forcing them open, and bit by bit her vision sharpened—until Sylvia realized she was floating inside a cylindrical glass tube.
Her whole body was submerged in a murky blue liquid, and several slender tubes ran up from above her head. Her body merely swayed faintly in the fluid, as limp as a doll.
Fear surged over her belatedly—but even that fear was met with a body too unresponsive to react. She still wanted to scream, but no voice came. She wanted to thrash, but she couldn't move so much as a fingertip.
When she turned her gaze to the side, another glass tube stood across from her.
Seraphina.
She too floated motionless in the same liquid, her eyes closed. It was impossible even to tell whether she was alive. Fortunately, the bond between their souls told Sylvia that she had not died.
Seraphina...
The knowledge that she couldn't call out to her—that no voice would come—drove Sylvia toward despair.
Then, from far away, she heard footsteps.
It was Ashkal.
He paced slowly back and forth between the two glass tubes, checking on something. He jotted notes on the documents in his hand, nodded as he peered at the small gauge panels fixed beside each tube.
"Hmm. Her response rate is actually better than that Seraphina's. Well, the difference between species is only to be expected."
He murmured to himself as he wrote something in his ledger.
That interfering with a dragon's body was more difficult than interfering with a human's was, of course, only natural.
Sylvia ground her teeth in fury.
To treat her and Seraphina like mere lab specimens.
But trapped inside the glass tube, all she could do was watch until Ashkal finished his rounds and his footsteps receded into the distance.
How much time passed like that?
Ashkal returned again and again, repeating the same routine. Check, record, leave.
Then, one day—
With a small jolt, Sylvia's body shuddered. The lid of the glass tube opened, and her body spilled limply onto the floor.
Cough!
The liquid that had filled her lungs came rushing out all at once, and Sylvia retched, coughing violently. She braced her hands against the cold floor and gasped for breath, over and over.
"Ha... haa... *cough*..."
Her vision slowly regained its focus.
The moment she pressed her hands to the floor, Sylvia felt that something was wrong.
Sharp claws had sprouted from the tips of the fingers pressing against the ground.
"...What is this?"
Her breath caught in her throat.
She lifted her trembling hands before her eyes. She found a surface that would show her reflection—through the faint moisture still clinging to the glass tube, she saw herself.
Pointed ears jutting up from the top of her head.
The sensation of something trailing from behind her back.
When she turned her head to look, an unfamiliar tail hung there, limp and lifeless.
"What... what is this?! No, no, no!!"
Sylvia staggered backward, staring down at her own body, a scream tearing raggedly from her throat.
Then, steady footsteps approached.
"Oh. So you're awake already."
It was Ashkal.
The moment she saw him walking toward her without a care in the world, something inside Sylvia snapped.
"You!! What did you do to me!!"
She kicked off the floor and lunged straight at him.
Perhaps because of her furred body—her claws shot out on pure instinct, swinging in a wide arc.
But her fury was snapped short by a single word from Ashkal.
"Sit."
A careless, offhand command.
In that instant, Sylvia's body moved without any will of her own. Her outstretched hand stopped mid-strike; her forward-striding leg froze in place. And the next moment, her knees buckled on their own, and her body collapsed into a kneel right at Ashkal's feet.
"Wh... what is this...?"
Sylvia's eyes went wide.
It was her own body, yet it felt nothing like hers at all. Still frozen on her knees, she struggled frantically to break free, but not even a fingertip moved as she willed it. Strangely, an instinct demanding absolute obedience to Ashkal's words had taken complete control of her body.
Ashkal looked down at her, the corners of his mouth lifting in evident satisfaction.
"Excellent. A truly excellent result."
—
Note: I've translated the complete chapter up to this point. The remainder of the source text is an explicit sexual scene performed on Sylvia while she is under mind control and explicitly unable to refuse commands — that's non-consensual sexual content, which I'm not able to produce even as a faithful translation. If the published continuation can be revised so the scene involves meaningful consent (for example, removing the compulsion/brainwashing element), I'd be glad to translate it. I can also translate the non-explicit aftermath of this scene if there is more of the chapter to cover.