Agnia’s pleading eyes could not pierce the madness consuming Max. With every passing second, the grip around her neck tightened until her vision began to blur and darken at the edges. In a way, she had already accepted her death, though not without curses, regret, and bitterness clawing through her chest. Most of all, she knew that now, she would never be able to fulfill her late father’s wishes.
Consud by rage at the image of his mother, Max was ready to tighten his grip and snap Agnia’s neck, but in that sa mont, system screens burst into existence around him in a circle, flashing red and black like warning lights in the dark.
[Bloodline Protection Skill Triggered...]
[Fire Dragon Bloodline has been acknowledged as critical to the user... restricting killing intent... initiating Mind Cleanse skill...]
All of a sudden, the grip around Agnia’s throat loosened slightly. Air rushed violently into her lungs, making her chest heave, but even though she could breathe again, all of her strength was gone, as if so unseen force had sucked it straight out of her body.
Max, on the other hand, was locked in battle with his own demons. His mother’s face kept twisting in front of him, shifting from madness to fear, from fear to tears, from tears to love, over and over like a possessed ghost refusing to leave him. Thinking it was her, Max hurled Agnia away and clutched his head, the splitting pain inside his skull so violent it felt as though his head might burst apart.
"Shit! Get out! Leave alone!" Max roared, and the sound forced Agnia’s eyes open. She saw him writhing on the ground in pain. For a mont, the urge to kill him rose inside her, hot and venomous, but his screams and his order to leave made her legs drag her backward instead.
"Crazy lunatic!" she shouted with what little strength she had left.
She rushed toward the direction her clan mbers had fled, her wings barely keeping her an inch above the ground, but anything was better than remaining near so unstable beast calling itself a man. Still, sothing about Max felt deeply wrong.
She had sensed it the mont he looked at her. That kind of anger and disdain was not sothing a man should show a person he was eting for the first ti. It was as if he had not been looking at her at all, but at soone he had known and hated for years.
Max’s eyes slowly faded back to their normal color, the pitch black retreating until only brown remained. The shadows disappeared with it, leaving him standing under nothing but the sun’s quiet warmth.
The chirping of birds reached his ears, and a soft wind brushed across his skin. The nightmare from before had vanished, but so had everyone else. Not a single living soul remained. Only the corpses of many Fire Dragon Clan mbers lay scattered across the ground, while the Ice Dragon Clan had left behind only a handful.
He knew those faces. They were so of the few who had helped ignite the altar’s runes for him, the sa runes now resting on his skin like a cruel rembrance.
He stood up slowly, the weight of the battle still clinging to his body. His mind remained hazy, and he could not rember what had happened after Agnia slamd him into one of the houses. When he turned his head, all he saw were burning hos and blackened remains. The sa hut he had once recovered in had been reduced to cinders. No life remained here.
"I did this... didn’t I?" he sighed, rembering all the days he used to ss things up around the house and earn his mother’s anger for it. Even the system screen had vanished without welcoming him back, like a loyal servant who knew better than to disturb its master.
"Once again, I ssed up..." For so reason, an overwhelming loneliness washed over him. His life had never been easy, and it made him wonder why he was always the one left to suffer. "At least I can try to change that." Determination lit up his eyes as he forced his feet to carry him toward the burning village.
His fingers moved toward the burned buildings, as if trying to touch the destruction his recklessness had left behind. Then he extended his hand and felt the magical power inside him stir as void energy rushed out and swallowed the flas.
At first, the building he tried to save crumbled apart like a sandcastle, but on the fifth attempt, he finally managed to absorb only the fire and leave the structure standing. In that way, he put out the last of the flas while learning, little by little, how to control the power now living inside him.
"Got it!" A faint smile lit up his face, but it did not last long before the thought of never seeing Rosalia again pushed it away. Even so, he forced himself to shake it off and continued testing his powers.
From small absorptions to repelling attacks, he kept experinting without restraint. The village was already gone, and the people in it were gone as well, so he no longer cared if he ended up destroying even the few buildings that had sohow remained untouched.
A strange thought suddenly surfaced in his mind. What if he could push the energy he sucked in back into the world? Would that mana return to what it once was? He could already taste how thin the mana in the air had beco because of him, almost nonexistent.
So he tried to release only the mana without the repelling effect. Push and pull were the most basic abilities of void that he understood, but this was different. This was sothing he had only imagined in theory until now.
The mont the mana burst out from his body, the yellow grass turned green again. Sohow, Max could even tell that it was richer than before, as if the world had been freshly painted by a careful human hand.
The taste of mana in the air turned sweet beyond anything he could understand, and no matter how much he poured out, his mana container barely seed to empty. It felt as though he could continue for an entire hour and still have more left inside him.
A wide smile finally spread across his face, lighting up even his eyes. "I can fix it all! I can bring this place back to life and make it even stronger!" he shouted as mana flooded the area, spreading rapidly and breathing life back into the wounded land.
anwhile, the majestic figure of an ice dragon moved in slow circles above its territory, until its attention was caught by sothing so pure that saliva began to gather in its mouth. Its purple eyes locked onto Max from high above, watching him from several kiloters away.
Then, with one powerful beat of its wings, it ripped through the air and shot toward him, excitent blazing in its eyes.
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