Chapter 235
Translator: Ebonarch
Chapter: 235
Chapter Title: Part 2, Chapter 14: Dragon (2)
I'm angry. How long had it been since I'd felt such blind, impulsive emotion?
One thing was certain: since reincarnating, I'd never experienced rage like this.
In truth, it was merely one sword that had snapped.
But that single sword held the feelings of his father—of his parents.
It was a talisman bestowed by parents upon their child, wishing for their health.
And it had been shattered right before his eyes.
It felt as if someone had set his heart ablaze.
Suffocation and nausea surged up together.
His vision swam, dyed purple.
His entire body burned hot. Would dousing himself in cold water make it better?
This was emotion.
The first outburst of anger from the black sorcerer who had discarded his emotions, only to reclaim them later.
More awkward than familiar, it blazed all the fiercer, like dry tinder catching flame.
"I won't let you die easy."
His skin began to blacken.
Over the darkened skin, shadows rippled like flickering flames.
His entire body transformed.
Only his purple eyes glowed round above the darkness.
Don't think of anything else.
Right now, vent his rage solely at the thing that trampled his parents' feelings.
With that resolve, Jamie lowered his upper body.
Boom!
The ground beneath him collapsed outright.
Jamie's form vanished from sight.
Shadows stretched out in tendrils, coiling around the red dragon's long neck.
Rumble!
The colossal body, over 300 meters long, slammed into the earth.
Kairos couldn't conceal his fluster at the sudden assault.
He'd missed the movement entirely.
More than that, he hadn't even registered the shadows wrapping his neck until it happened.
What in the world was this?
He—a dragon, and among them, the red dragon hailed as strongest in raw destructive power—hurled down by some puny human?!
But he had no time to panic.
Kwaaaaang!!
A sphere of darkness materialized in midair, crushing the fallen Kairos.
Immense destruction erupted.
Kairos retched blood, his mouth gaping wide from pain that made his eyes roll back.
Thank goodness for his scales.
Without them, that blow surely would have killed him outright.
But the onslaught didn't end there.
"Die. Die. Die. Die. Die."
Jamie's form blurred at high speed, relentlessly hammering Kairos's massive frame without respite.
Each strike unleashed exploding shadows, ripping forth horrific screams.
Undeterred, Jamie wrought monstrous violence with his darkness.
This hulking body wouldn't die easily.
So he had to strike harder, faster, more agonizingly.
That was all he thought.
His movements were so swift now that Jamie himself was invisible.
Only black streaks like tangled threads swarmed over Kairos.
'I'll die at this rate!'
He didn't know what technique it was, but that human had far surpassed his limits.
That's how he could corner a dragon like this.
But the world always followed its natural order.
Power forcibly pulled beyond limits would soon run dry.
Maintaining such over-the-top strength indefinitely was impossible.
Just hold out until then.
Once the fool exhausted himself and collapsed, he'd trample him to death.
No.
He'd make him taste agony far worse than this.
'Can't just keep taking this, though.'
His scales were cracking.
He was holding on for now, but once they started shattering one by one, it was over.
Kairos, body tightly curled, summoned his mana.
First, he had to shake it off.
Kairos's body became encased in pristine white ice, the surrounding area freezing almost simultaneously.
From the sudden cryogenic freeze, white vapor sublimated from the iced surfaces.
Jamie, mid-assault, froze over too, shrouded in darkness.
For a brief moment, the one-sided beatdown paused.
Kairos moved first.
Crack—Crunch!
Bursting free of the ice, he rocketed skyward in one go, widening the gap.
Knowing no chance in a straight fight, he fled before the bastard broke loose.
A dragon fleeing.
No greater humiliation existed, but having sworn to Dragon God Brahman, he had to fell the enemy somehow.
As Kairos put some distance, the ice encasing Jamie was devoured by darkness and melted away.
"...Pointless tricks."
Jamie sneered at Kairos fleeing into the distance.
"You can't escape!"
Gremia was an artifact of form manifestation.
It could shift into any shape in the world at its master's whim.
Which meant distances within could be bridged in an instant by Jamie's will.
Boom!!
"Gah!"
Kairos, who'd flown hard the opposite way, glanced down at the excruciating pain in his gut.
When had he caught up? Jamie had slammed a massively enlarged dark fist into his belly.
His vision swam; he nearly blacked out.
Caught utterly defenseless.
"You... filthy cur!"
Kairos gaped his maw wide and inhaled deeply.
The dragon's ultimate weapon.
Power enough to reshape the land's contours.
Dragon Breath.
"Just a lizard's desperate last resort."
Jamie's body stretched long.
In a flash, he seized the right wing, then contracted his form to hurl the behemoth away.
"Kraaaagh!"
The breath launched.
The red dragon's signature crimson exhalation carved a long straight scar through Gremia's interior.
An earth-shattering explosion rocked everything.
————————————————————!!
Blinding white light flared beyond the blast itself.
Gremia's tough inner and outer membranes partially melted where hardest hit, punching straight through.
Transparency lifted, revealing Gremia's colossal true form atop Bepos Mountain.
In the breathless silence born of the breath's detonation, Jamie seized Kairos's neck.
He slammed it to the ground, then raised shadowy tentacles to bind the elongated jaws, limbs, wings—everything.
Utterly immobilized.
Shadows unspooled like threads from his back, forging a long, slender spear.
Concentrated with vile malice, it oozed energy that denied the very world.
Longinus.
The spear that, long ago, dealt a mortal wound to Zenith.
Jamie's most lethal weapon, ever harbored deep in his heart.
Even at immature 9th class ascension, he couldn't manifest it.
Now, fused with rage, it emerged naturally.
"I'll make you an undead servant so you can't even die in peace—eternally mine. Kuhahahahaha!"
Any pierced by Longinus was cursed forever.
The curse's nature was random.
But none were weak.
Every one doomed the victim to lifelong torment.
Hence its name: Weapon of Evil.
-Kill it.
The Weapon of Evil prodded.
-Kill it.
Its trigger seemed to be fury and hatred.
A perfect fit for "evil."
-Kill it.
No prodding needed; that's exactly what he intended.
Shrouded in darkness, Jamie thought little.
Kairos thrashed.
Even bound in shadows, the dragon's overwhelming mass made targeting the heart tricky.
He'd instinctively grasped Longinus's peril.
But it was too late.
"Longinus. Activate."
Kieeeek!!
An ear-shredding shriek resounded as the thin spear shot forth in silence.
Amid the evil relic's wail, a white grin spread across the darkness veiling his face.
Pfbt.
Against the dragon's titanic bulk, it was like pricking with a needle.
Utterly negligible on the surface.
Yet the darkness swiftly turned Kairos's hide a sickly, mottled black.
The curse triggered.
Pain of rotting flesh.
Kairos's eyes bulged wide in torment.
He writhed beyond any prior agony, but the darkness held him fast.
An ancient dragon might brute-force free, but a mere adult one's power fell short.
For the strength Jamie Welton had awakened via rage's trigger surpassed most dragons.
"Breaking that sword is a grave sin. So..."
It was then.
Crack—the darkness fissured.
Jamie watched the shadows cloaking his face split precisely in half and shatter.
From there, the darkness enshrouding his body began slowly dissipating.
'Of all the damn moments!'
The forcibly overstepped power crumbled.
High risk, high return.
The backlash crushed his body in proportion.
Jamie spewed blood and plummeted from the sky.
All mana cores distributed through his body went inert.
Full Body Breathing Method extinguished.
He crashed into the ground.
Dizzying pain followed, but his pain-hardened body dismissed it.
'At least that's done.'
Before losing power, he'd embedded Longinus in the bastard.
The Decay curse would show Kairos hell.
"...Impressive."
Yet contrary to Jamie's expectation, Kairos stood rigid.
A chunk of his left abdomen had been torn away, blood gushing freely.
True to dragonkind, the spilled blood already formed a lake on the ground.
He'd tried staunching with recovery magic, but with flesh gouged out wholesale, it proved difficult.
"Huff... huff..."
Such a wound was a first for him too; his breaths came ragged.
He hadn't dreamed it'd go this one-sided without landing a proper hit.
He'd deemed all humans mere vermin.
Some exceeded vermin, sure—but still ants to dragons.
Elders' words resurfaced.
-Sometimes, exceedingly perilous humans emerge. They pose real threats even to us. If you encounter one beyond you, flee at once and alert the kin.
-Dragons are supreme... but remember, they may not always be.
He'd dismissed it as senility.
No species outstripped dragons.
High elves and such were potent, true—but dragons ruled the world truly.
He held that belief still, yet had no choice but to concede the elders' point.
"A few more years... and perhaps at the end, I'd have been the one felled."
Thus, he offered respect to this human who'd driven him this far.
"I'll grant you a swift death."
Kairos parted his jaws.
He drew mana into his lungs anew for another breath.
That was when.
"Kekeke... spewing such drivel."
The wretch, collapsed and immobile on the ground, began to laugh.
His purple eyes glared as he sneered.
"Did you seriously think ripping out some meat would do it?"
"...?!"
Kairos's entire body turned a putrid, mottled black.
The freakish change prevented him from unleashing breath.
Jamie spoke.
"A curse. It's over the instant it touches."
Decay.
A dragon—hailed superior race—rotting away from some trifling curse.
Impossible.
Absolutely should not happen.
Jamie shuddered, forcing himself up somehow.
On the verge of collapse, he flashed a grin and jabbed his index finger at Kairos.
"Burn this into your memory, lizard."
Fear clouded Kairos's eyes.
The battle was decided.
"I'm a man who always keeps his promises."
"...No."
Longinus's darkness fully engulfed Kairos.