The Dragon's Deception
It was right after that chilling voice had frozen the cold air of the management sector in the Surface Ruins, where massive essence tanks loomed like grotesque monstrosities.
The weight crushing my entire body wasn't mere pressure. It was gravity. The magic unleashed by those red eyes poured every mass on the battlefield—friend or foe alike—straight down to the ground. Even the oxygen meant for my lungs grew heavy, scraping my throat like shards of glass with every desperate breath. I was squeezing out my Dao Force to shield my organs, but if my focus slipped even a little, I'd be reduced to a lump of meat slammed into the earth.
Pinned completely to the ground, unable to even turn my head. But my senses for reading flows weren't blocked. The energy beyond the crushed space clawed its way in clearly. Far off in the distance. The artificial light that had given me a pleasant warmth when I'd first encountered it on the surface. My senses stretched toward the boundary beyond that cascading white glow. In the thick darkness untouched by light, eyes glinted. Not just one or two. Contaminants lurking behind the tank facility ruins were silently crawling forward up to the edge where the gravitational pressure eased.
Under this kind of pressure, scattering would be the natural response. But they didn't scatter. They crept solely toward the center where I was pinned.
"······These wretched vermin just keep swarming endlessly."
The gaze of the red eyes hovering in the air dropped downward in disgust. Kwachik. With a casual flick of his hand, the contaminants pushing into the boundary were crushed in a straight line. Whatever did the crushing was invisible. In that instant, an explosion erupted somewhere on the outskirts. The air trembled once from afar, and the sensation that the battlefield's perimeter had already collapsed transmitted through my body pinned to the ground.
Ripping through that chaos came the screech of something slicing the air. A massive hunk of scrap metal tore through the sky toward the red eyes. It was drone wreckage—crumpled wings, flickering optical sensors, tangled wires all jumbled together. The red eyes turned his head and extended a hand; the flying scrap halted midair. Moments later, it burst apart with a rupture, pulverized beyond recognition. Chiiik.
Something emerged, tearing through the dust cloud. Liquid armor encased its entire body, writhing like a living creature. A heavy silence emanated from within the spiral mask. It wasn't a contaminant. Nor a human. It resembled nothing I'd seen so far.
The mercenaries' formation wavered behind me.
"Crazy······ that's a knight-grade. Why the hell is that thing here······"
The furious shout trailed off without finishing. It wasn't just the pressure radiating from that grotesque entity. It was the sound of everyone's common sense shattering at once—that such a being shouldn't be here.
Thud. It took one step forward. The surrounding contaminants all whipped their heads around. All toward the red eyes. Until moments ago, they'd been crawling in disarray; now they aligned in one direction.
The red eyes' gaze chilled and sank. His palm dropped downward. The ground screamed as it caved in. The grotesque thing's knee smashed through the surface. My head slammed back into the dirt as well. But it didn't stop. Wooduk. The armor warped. The next instant, it shot toward the red eyes, ripping through the air. Kwaaang.
They collided. The red eyes didn't budge. But his stance faltered a half-beat late. That was the opening. The red eyes' attention locked fully on the grotesque thing before him. The air in the sky shimmered like a heat haze. Behind the red eyes, empty space tore open, and an unfamiliar young woman appeared. Her pupils flashed red. The exact same shade as the red eyes.
But the red eyes hadn't sensed the presence at his back. Or perhaps he'd sensed it but chose not to react. A rusty dagger gleamed in her hand. Ominous energy leaked from the blade's tip.
The one-eyed old man, collapsed on the ground vomiting blood, saw her and widened his eyes in a scream.
"Leje! I told you not to come!"
The cry was nearly a shriek. But the woman's hand didn't stop.
"Die!"
The rusty dagger plunged toward the red eyes' nape. The moment the blade touched, whatever enveloped the red eyes warped like ripples. The woman's eyes flickered briefly. Kang.
The sound of metal striking metal cleaved the battlefield. The blade bounced off without piercing flesh. The red eyes didn't even groan. Just a single line of dark crimson blood trickled from his neck. And then he slowly turned his head.
"······You dare."
Killing intent exploded. At the same instant, smoke grenades burst from all directions with sharp pops. A group presumed to be the woman's allies began storming in. Late-arriving drones, surviving mercenaries, and forms resembling the grotesque thing tangled together. The battlefield sank into madness no one could control.
—
At the same moment, at the battlefield's highest point. A high-altitude flying artifact emblazoned with the Roen family crest floated silently in the air, mocking the red eyes' gravity field. A woman stood atop it, gazing down. Silver hair fluttered in the wind. Red eyes identical to the ones below calmly scanned the chaos.
Rin was gauging the position of her quarry. A short sigh escaped her lips in disbelief. At its end, her mouth twisted coldly.
"What a mess. Well, as long as I retrieve it in the chaos."
Her fingertip twitched toward the scene below. Wooong. The battlefield's gravity shuddered for an instant. The weight pressing me trembled faintly. I didn't know what caused it. But my senses beneath the scales caught it crystal clear—that it had shaken.
The momentary gap in gravity's dominance. Or more precisely, survival instinct overrode reason. No skill meant anything against overwhelming power. My previous life's end had proven it, and so had the mercenaries crushed moments ago. I couldn't die torn apart again without landing a single blow at their feet.
Terror pulled the trigger. Wooong. The explosively compressed balance of Yokai Force and Dao Force. I consciously released the precarious tail it held. Pasus.
The inner dam crumbled pathetically. Rampage. It was a dimension of destruction I'd never felt even as a daoist in my previous life. The energy from the unidentified mass I'd just swallowed detonated through my veins like a bombardment. Muscles tore to shreds beneath the scales, bones twisted. Kwaaaah.
What ripped from my throat wasn't a scream. It was a beast's horrific roar. The ground around me pulverized formlessly under the overwhelming yokai aura. The energy bursting from within shoved everything aside. The battlefield froze. Gravity, blades, the grotesque thing—everything halted a beat late.
In that instant, at the deepest core of my crumbling consciousness, my master's voice echoed.
—I warned you: Do not be dragged away by the power you grasp.
If I let this rampage continue, it was over. I'd die as a beast. I forcibly clung to the fraying thread of awareness. Twisted the erupting dual forces—and my shredding body—back into form. It bounced inside. Exploded. Tore. It wouldn't stop. The madly clashing core slowly found its place at the center.
Two alien wills intertwined, biting their own tails in rotation. On the verge of snapping yet not, eroding each other yet not fully collapsing—a grotesque cycle. Golden light condensed within. Inside my vertically slit pupils, a pattern slowly spun. A snake. Biting its own tail in endless continuation.
The word surfaced first. Ouroboros. I didn't know why or where it came from. It was simply there the moment thought touched it. Dao Force and Yokai Force took the snake's form, meshing together. Thanks to the mass I'd swallowed, my power had risen a step. But it was still laughably insufficient to smash those red eyes head-on.
To survive, I needed not power, but judgment. And my judgment now was clear. Escape. In the most overwhelming way possible.
Techniques from my previous life flashed through my mind. Storm-calling winds? Insanity. Shrinking Earth? Too risky to dash through their focused sights in this state. Clone technique? No shallow illusion could fool their detection nets.
"···Yeah. This'll do."
No reason to hesitate. I lowered my body as much as possible. Aligned with the vibrations of the surrounding space's flows. Spread my Dao Force thin, layering it over my entire form. And then, I unleashed the most deceptive and grand dao art I'd never even touched in my previous life.
Transformation Art. I used the horrific destructive energy I'd ramped up to the brink of rampage as bait. Projected the rotating snake pattern inside outward on a massive scale. Wooong.
The energy enveloping my body twisted like an old shell bursting, and an entirely new form erupted from within. Immense. It expanded to an overwhelming size that seemed to coil around the entire hundreds-of-meters-wide battlefield. A legendary colossal dragon's shape, blending deep silver that devoured light with fluorescent venom.
At the heart of that deceptive illusion, I twisted my body upward like ascending to the heavens, blasting all energy skyward. Kwaaa. A massive wave crushed the battlefield. The soaring illusion drew every gaze. The red eyes' head tilted upward. The woman gripping the dagger froze. The grotesque thing's motion lagged a beat.
That was the opening. Pasuk. What shot into the sky was the husk. Bluff to swallow their eyes. The real body lurked in the shadows beneath that afterimage. I hurled it into the blind spot.
Shrinking Earth. Vision cut short, then seamlessly resumed. Distance folded like paper, sliding me out of the battlefield. Once more. Position fully shifted. Thuduk.
Concrete debris rolled across the ground, and my view opened. Massive cylindrical essence tanks lined up before me. Cold, artificial white light poured over them. Where the light touched was crisp and clean. All the more exposed, without a single hiding spot.
I didn't stop. Leaving the energy at my back behind, I threw myself toward the Light Boundary. One step. The moment I crossed the line untouched by white light, the world flipped.
Heavy, dank darkness enveloped my body. Thick yellowish-gray fog laced with toxins blocked my vision. Acrid smoke and metal dust wormed stickily between my scales. That foul darkness was the curtain I craved. The crushing pressure lifted. Thick dirt brushed between my scales. I didn't stop.
—
Beyond the Light Boundary, thick fog roiled, swallowing the ruins. The small shadow slipping into that darkness evaded every eye. All that remained at the battlefield's center was the colossal dragon's afterimage soaring in the sky.
Silver venom and golden pattern intertwined in that phantasm, slowly crumbling. The red eyes, the woman with the dagger—everyone stared up briefly, speechless. Rin in the sky was no different. But even after the illusion fully collapsed, only her gaze lingered there a while longer. The wind scattered the great dragon's afterimage through the air.