The Apostle, having fallen completely into madness, let out its first howl, a cry filled with unrestrained delight in destruction. It had won. It had finally crushed the stubborn human before it.
Yet its proclamation of victory caught abruptly in its throat.
Because it saw, behind the man it had impaled and nailed in place with its tail—a man who should have already lost all life—a pair of eyes lighting up at some unknown moment. A pair of pure golden eyes. They were not human eyes. There was no panic in them, only a sovereign authority that looked down upon all living things.
Then, an ancient and obscure chant echoed through the cavern, its sounds nearly impossible for a human throat to form.
“Kyor’igni’s…”
The Guide prided himself on being well-traveled and knowledgeable. He spoke the common tongue, Elvish, and even certain obscure dialects of orcish tribes. But what was this? He had never heard such a language. Each syllable carried a strange tremor and resonance, stirring the ambient magic in the air.
Nolan “understood.” Though he did not know its meaning, he knew what it was. It was the language of dragons. The most noble and powerful casting language in this world.
At the very instant the silver-haired girl, no, the dragon girl, completed her chant—
Boom! A pillar of flame, compressed to its absolute limit, erupted without warning from beneath the Apostle’s feet. The fire burned in a pure platinum-white, carrying the force to purify all things.
That was an eighth-circle draconic spell: Divine Punishment of the Dragon God.
The shadow of death fell instantly over the Apostle, forcing a shrill, desperate scream from its throat. It did not even dare to pull its tail from Nolan’s shoulder. Instead, it twisted its body violently, relying on the brute strength of its golden-tier flesh in an attempt to break free from the spell’s lock and dodge to the left.
But it was too late.
Draconic magic carried almost no delay upon release. The platinum pillar of fire, formed from pure mana, had already taken shape the instant it reacted, swallowing half its body whole.
ROAAARGH—!!!
A wretched scream echoed through the underground cavern. The Apostle’s right half, including the human arm, one leg, and half its tail, was reduced to char the moment it touched the flames. Not even ashes remained. Its massive body lost balance and crashed heavily to the ground, writhing in agony.
This terrifying strike had landed mere inches from Nolan. Yet he felt almost no heat at all. The caster’s control over mana was so precise that not a single trace of the raging flames leaked outward. Every bit of destructive power had been perfectly confined to the target.
“Damn it, she’s awake!”
At the sight of the silver-haired girl standing with one hand extended, the Guide completely lost his composure. He frantically raised the short crossbow in his hand and fired repeatedly at Evelyn. Several poisoned steel bolts shot toward her, slicing through the air.
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!
Yet before they could even reach the fading pillar of flame, they melted midair into molten iron under the lingering heat.
RAAAAGH!
The Apostle writhed and howled on the ground in madness. At the severed edges of its body, platinum flames clung like parasitic worms, continuing to burn its flesh. Its once-prided regenerative ability had become nothing more than a cruel joke before these draconic flames. New flesh would sprout, only to be burned into char once more. The endless cycle of destruction inflicted unbearable torment.
After unleashing that strike, the dragon girl’s already pale face grew even more translucent. She clutched her right shoulder, where golden blood continued to seep from an old wound she had clearly aggravated. Yet within her golden, slit pupils, there was only pride. Dragons never bow.
The searing pain drove the Apostle into a final frenzy. Propping up its broken body with what limbs remained, its lizard eye and the inverted human head both locked onto the two of them. With a violent surge of strength, it made one last desperate attack. Three intact green tentacles lashed through the air, thrusting straight toward their hearts.
At that critical instant, a streak of green light flared in the distance, and a figure burst out from within it.
Hank had finally broken through the blockade.
The moment he steadied himself, he saw the mutilated creature lunging with its last strength toward the fallen Nolan and the silver-haired girl.
“Trash! Get the hell away from him!”
There was no time to think. With a furious shout, a domineering crimson sword arc tore through the air, striking before anything else could land.
Slash!
The three tough tentacles were severed cleanly at the root, foul green fluid spraying everywhere. Hank had returned at the most crucial moment, still carrying the aftershock of dimensional banishment.
The instant he reentered the battlefield, no words were needed. A veteran’s instinct allowed him to grasp the situation at a glance, and he unleashed his most powerful killing move without hesitation.
Blood Lion’s Fang!
With Hank there, Nolan had no intention of standing aside. Though his health had long dropped to zero, he was not dead. His life was being sustained by Unyielding. At that moment, his fighting spirit surged to its peak.
“Stance Release!”
A deep hum reverberated through the air. The Mountain’s Resonance in his hand emitted a low, resonant vibration as heavy earth-element energy surged in from all directions, stretching and broadening the blade. In the blink of an eye, it transformed into a massive two-handed greatsword over two meters long.
“Radiant Sun Charge!”
Nolan launched forward in a charge. Despite the immense size of the blade, he wielded it with effortless control, its tip scraping the ground and carving a burning trench through the rock.
In the very instant after Hank’s Blood Lion’s Fang severed the tentacles, Nolan arrived.
He poured everything into this strike: the doubled strength of Assault, the last of his willpower, and all the unwillingness and fury carried across both his past and present lives. The weight of earth, the searing force of Radiant Sun Charge, and the refined technique of the Falling Star Blade converged perfectly at the sword’s tip. With a roar, he swung the massive weapon in a clean, unadorned downward slash aimed straight at the Apostle’s head.
Boom! The thunderous impact reverberated violently through the enclosed cavern.
There was no resistance, no struggle. The grotesque lizard head of the Apostle, along with the inverted human face within it, was split cleanly in two by that earth-shattering strike.
The momentum did not stop. The heavy blade crashed into the ground.
Rumble! The entire cavern shook. A massive crack spread outward from the point where Nolan’s sword struck, splitting the ground ahead.
The Apostle’s enormous body froze in place. In the next second, a straight line of blood appeared from the top of its head. Its body slowly parted, completely cleaved in two, before collapsing to either side. Organs and dark green blood spilled across the ground.
The Guide’s eyes nearly popped out of his skull. What kind of weapon was that? It could even change form?
That had been a fully transformed Apostle. Even an ordinary Fantasy-grade weapon shouldn’t have been able to break through its formidable defenses so cleanly. Unless—
Realization dawned on him. He grabbed at his hair in disbelief and pointed at the massive black blade in Nolan’s hands, shrieking, “Y-you… what is that thing?!”
Hank didn’t even spare the corpse a glance. He spun around, tilting his head to dodge a crossbow bolt, then pushed off the ground and became a streak of crimson.
In less than two seconds, he was in front of the utterly stunned Guide.
Under the man’s terrified gaze, Hank’s sword flashed twice, cold and merciless.
“AAAH—!”
The Guide’s right hand, still holding the crossbow, along with both his legs, were severed in an instant. Amid the spray of blood, the man who had seemed so certain of victory moments ago let out a shrill scream before his eyes rolled back and he fainted.
Nolan gasped for breath as the glow around the Mountain’s Resonance faded and the blade returned to its original form. The will that had sustained him finally dissipated. Exhaustion and searing pain surged over him like a tidal wave. He could no longer hold himself up and collapsed forward.
The silver-haired girl clutched her shoulder, her golden slit pupils reflecting the figure as he fell heavily into the pool of blood. A complicated emotion flickered within them. As a noble dragon, she had always looked down upon all living beings, never holding any race in high regard.
Yet this human before her… so “weak,” yet burning with a will fiercer than dragonfire; so utterly spent, yet willing to unleash a brilliance even a dragon could not ignore, all to protect a stranger like her.
Such a contradictory, radiant existence stirred a faint ripple within her proud heart.
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