Venmont launched forward with speed that would have been invisible to observers with lesser capabilities, his multiple extremities seeking to tear, pierce, and dissolve everything they touched.
The assault was beautiful in its coordination and terrible in its intent, six Gold-rank beasts moving as one organism inside their tar.
Dragarion dodged without moving too much.
It wasn’t that he had moved so fast Venmont couldn’t follow him. He simply wasn’t where Venmont had attacked, as if space itself had reconfigured to accommodate his intentions.
The evasion seed casual, almost lazy, like soone stepping aside to avoid a puddle rather than dodging a lethal assault from one of the most powerful tars alive.
"Good try," Dragarion comnted from a position that should have been impossible to reach under the intense attack.
Venmont roared with frustration and launched a combination of attacks that would have leveled a good section of the abyssal wall. Acid, claws, poisonous stingers, wind explosions, everything coordinated in a pattern that supposedly left no space for evasion.
Dragarion raised one hand.
All attacks stopped in the air, as if they had encountered an invisible but absolutely impenetrable wall. The Azure Dragon didn’t appear to have moved either.
The casual gesture was more insulting than any mockery could have been, effortless negation of everything Venmont had thrown at him, accomplished with the sa energy most people used to wave hello.
"Wood beats earth, earth beats wind, wind beats water, water beats fire, fire beats wood, finally, darkness and light increase or cancel themselves according to the tar’s intention..." Dragarion recited casually, as if giving a lesson in basic elents.
"But there’s sothing that beats everything."
His eyes turned jade.
"Authority."
The Azure Dragon moved.
It didn’t attack, didn’t charge, didn’t perform any elaborate technique. It simply moved, and the universe reconfigured to accommodate that movent.
Venmont was struck simultaneously from above, below, left, right, front, and back. It was as if reality itself had decided he was in the wrong place and had applied corrections from every possible direction.
His fused form partially disintegrated from the impact, beasts being forced to separate while he struggled to maintain any type of cohesion.
"How...?" Venmont gasped, blood dripping from wounds he didn’t rember receiving.
"Authority over your power is obtained through experience," Dragarion explained while descending slowly. "Impossible battles. Encounters with ’things that shouldn’t exist’."
The dragon entered through his back slowly, the fusion occurring with a fluidity that made it seem like the most natural thing in the world.
His form began changing too, but not toward sothing monstrous. Toward sothing purer, more refined.
"And the last battle taught that power isn’t what you have, but what you understand."
The Platinum Qilin and Azure Dragon didn’t fuse with him. They beca him. Dragarion wasn’t a human controlling beasts; he was the living embodint of his dragons’ concept, filtered through understanding and refinent.
"Your problem," he continued, now radiating power that made the air itself beco his platinum aura, "is that you still think like a human who steals power from your beasts."
Venmont attempted another desperate attack, channeling everything he could into a lance of corrupt energy that could have pierced several mountains.
Dragarion caught it with two fingers.
"I am power that chose to be human when it’s convenient."
He crushed the lance like glass, fragnts of purple energy dispersing harmlessly in the air like beautiful but aningless sparkles.
Venmont retreated, finally recognizing who he was dealing with.
"This isn’t over," Venmont declared, beginning to retreat toward where his forces waited. "Yino has more resources now than you can imagine... When we transform our 300 thousand soldiers into..."
"Oh, I’m sure," Dragarion nodded agreeably. "But here’s the thing about resources."
He moved again, appearing directly in front of Venmont before the other could blink.
"They only matter if you can use them."
The blow that followed wasn’t elaborate technique or complex elental power demonstration.
It was a simple, direct, honest punch.
It was also a punch that carried decades of battle experience, the weight of absolute royal authority over his powers, and the concentrated force of two beasts that had transcended normal classifications.
What followed was less a battle than a masterful lesson in the difference between raw power and absolute mastery.
♢♢♢♢
The deception wouldn’t last forever.
Venmont crashed against a rock formation, but when dust settled, he began rising again. Blood stread from multiple wounds, but the systematic regeneration of six Gold beasts was already working to repair the damage.
Dragarion was, for the first ti in this battle, unable to hide his real fatigue. He had been hiding it too long. Too many months.
The exhaustion was bone-deep and soul-weary, the kind that ca from pushing beyond normal limits for too long without proper rest. Even legends had limitations, and his were rapidly approaching.
The sap illusion he learned from the Dragon Tree had served him well so Venmont wouldn’t defend adequately at first, but reality was settling. The defense and regeneration that six Gold beasts conferred wasn’t so easy to pierce, even for a double Platinum.
Although reaching Platinum level doubled all his increases, six Gold rank 1 beasts left things dangerously close to that duplication.
Dragarion had spent massive energy in battle against the Dragon Tree, barely recovering halfway thanks to Zhao saving him. Then he had to spend more energy bringing the professor as isolated as possible from mana, pushing through the zone plagued with abyssals. He had tried to rest, but abyssal invaders had approached by bad luck and awakened him.
He was literally exhausted from the journey.
Venmont regenerated for the umpteenth ti, his six beasts channeling healing power while he concentrated more on defending and using his power strategically to survive.
The learning curve was steep but effective... each exchange taught him sothing new about his opponent’s patterns, limitations, and tells.
"It doesn’t hurt so much anymore," Venmont murmured, levitating again with more caution.
The battle that followed was different. Where before it had been a demonstration of superiority, now it beca an exchange though still heavily tilted in the king’s advantage.
Venmont no longer took as much damage and occasionally managed to see where his enemy was.
Dragarion adapted his style, conserving energy while seeking openings. But openings beca rarer as Venmont learned from each exchange.
"I thought you were playing with , but... You’re getting tired," Venmont observed after successfully blocking a sequence that should have injured him gravely.
Dragarion didn’t respond, but his breathing had beco slightly more labored.
The tell was subtle but unmistakable to soone who had spent the entire battle studying his opponent’s patterns. Fatigue was beginning to show through even legendary endurance.
The turning point ca when Venmont managed to connect an attack that made Dragarion retreat for the first ti in battle.
The impact was solid and real, forcing the king back several ters and leaving visible marks on his previously unblemished scale armor.
"I see," Venmont smiled. "The great King is human after all."
Dragarion looked down, where Yino forces continued crossing the bridge in growing numbers. Each minute that passed, more enemies entered his territory.
He sighed and made a decision that would change the war’s course.
He discretely touched the two main rings while also activating elental increases from his three secondary rings.
It was more power than he wanted to use, power he couldn’t sustain for long in his current situation. But the alternatives were worse than the risks.
"Actually I was having fun, but... You’re right," Dragarion admitted, preparing the final attack. "I’m tired... I’m human."
His eyes glowed with power that made the air itself crystallize.
"But I like it. And my dragons like it too."
Venmont felt the change imdiately and began charging his own offensive desperately, gathering all energy from his six beasts in a counterattack that should completely cancel almost anything.
Dragarion finished accumulating power but didn’t attack directly.
Instead he approached to give Venmont ti, and when the latter launched his counterattack, Dragarion created a vortex of power that captured Venmont’s attack, amplified it with his own accumulated energy, and redirected it toward Venmont in a direction the corrupt hadn’t anticipated.
The bridge.
The combined attack... the power of Venmont’s 6 beasts plus the energy of five rings and 2 platinum beasts concentrated, was shot in what seed like a dragon roar. It dragged Venmont down at insane speed and impacted him against the structure that had been reinforced with high-level magic by the king himself.
For a mont, the bridge resisted. Its magical defenses glowed while absorbing energy that would have leveled mountains.
The ancient structure had been built to last millennia. For one mont, it seed it might withstand even this unprecedented assault.
Then it began cracking.
"NO!" Venmont tried to resist disintegration from the attack when he realized what Dragarion had done.
Cracks spread, magic maintaining structural cohesion finally yielding under force that exceeded its design specifications.
The bridge’s central section collapsed in a powerful explosion, disintegrating on impact and taking with it Venmont and dozens of Yino soldiers who had been crossing.
Dragarion observed debris falling toward the abyss, breathing heavily from massive effort while canceling fusion.
With the bridge destroyed, Yino’s invasion had effectively ended for now. The 3000 soldiers who had already crossed were now isolated, cut off from reinforcents and supplies.
Below in the castle, Arturo observed the remains of the bridge that had defined geography for generations.
His father had stopped the war’s advance by destroying the battlefield itself.
It was, Arturo admitted, a very typical Dragarion solution.
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