The complete and total release of all remaining power, all the power of his body, the potion and the seven dragons synergized and channeled through a single man.
The light that filled the chamber wasn’t simply bright; it was the light of creation itself, the force that had ford the stars and given life to worlds.
For a mont that felt like an eternity, the corrupted chamber was replaced by sothing that was pure potential, energy in its most fundantal form.
When the light finally faded, everything in the chamber had been disintegrated.
The purple veins that had covered the walls had vaporized, leaving only clean crystal that glead with residual radiance. The creatures that had been erging had also been erased from existence so completely that not even traces remained that they had ever been there.
The purification was perfect, absolute. Where corruption had twisted light into nightmare, now there was only pristine clarity.
Selthia had disappeared too...
Dragarion remained standing stubbornly in the center of the devastation, but the cost was evident.
His body had crystallized to such a point that small crystals had begun erging from his skin. His breathing was labored, each exhalation accompanied by drops of blood that glead with residual light from the power he had released.
The damage was grotesque yet beautiful. The crystals weren’t random growths but followed patterns that suggested his mana system was being rewritten by the force just like the "Dragon Hearts" in the second chamber.
The pain was now beyond anything he had experienced before.
It wasn’t just physical; it was spiritual, as if his mana system was being torn apart. Every breath felt like inhaling molten glass, every heartbeat like being struck by lightning.
But he stood proud.
He had done what he had co to do. He had destroyed the heart of corruption, had cleansed the chamber of all malevolent influence, had severed the connections that would have allowed abyssal forces to continue their expansion.
His children were safe. His kingdom was safe. The years of sacrifice had been worth it.
He allowed himself a mont of satisfaction, observing the clean chamber he had created.
He had won.
Then he heard the heartbeat.
A deep and rhythmic sound coming from the mana vein itself.
A small sphere was growing within it...
What he had destroyed were only superficial connections, this wasn’t superficial... but sothing much deeper, sothing that had been hidden in the very flow, outside everything he had attacked.
The realization hit him like a physical blow. All his power, all his sacrifice, had only touched the surface of sothing vast and patient.
He watched with growing horror as, from the main mana vein, the organic heart grew again slowly.
The veins began extending from it again... across the clean walls, but now they carried patterns he hadn’t seen before. Straighter and more efficient patterns that suggested the corruption had evolved, maybe it had avoided optimizing what already worked well, but was taking advantage of this rebirth to structure its connection neatly from zero.
Selthia’s mocking voice was heard again, though it ca from increasingly multiple directions at once, as if she were speaking from each vein simultaneously.
"Did you really think it would be so easy?" she laughed, and the sound was worse than before because it maintained that childish quality while expressing pure malice. "Did you think that after decades of growth, we could be destroyed by a single attack that can’t encompass our entire network?"
The abyssal voices joined her laughter, creating a symphony of mockery that resonated throughout the regenerated chamber.
"You’ve wasted part of our energy, but... Thanks for the lesson," they whispered with false gratitude. "Now we know exactly what kind of reach the power we’re facing has. Now we can respond appropriately."
Dragarion remained standing in the center of the chamber, feeling how his body complained while watching all his victory disappear before his eyes.
The power he had used, the pain he had endured, the price he had paid... all had been useless. Worse than useless... it had provided intelligence to an enemy that had learned from the encounter.
The weight of understanding fell upon him like an avalanche of reality he had been avoiding.
He realized that what they had told him about Victor was his fault. A bad inheritance.
He had raised his first son to be like him: impulsive, brave to the point of recklessness, willing to sacrifice everything for principles they believed absolute.
He believed he had the power to back up that impulsiveness. Today he was wrong.
The deepest and most painful realization: he realized he didn’t really know how far his limits extended.
He had believed he knew them, had spent decades asuring his power against legendary dragons and believed himself one of them. But deep in his subconscious he knew those were small ones... there was always sothing bigger, always sothing different, sothing new to understand.
He had traveled the world, had learned, had faced creatures that existed in myths. He believed he knew much of the world through everything he had experienced.
But in reality... he knew nothing.
How could I get so arrogant? he asked himself while feeling how his body gradually crystallized. To think there was a creature capable of living without its core... regenerating from connections I couldn’t even sense...
His complete epistemology, everything he believed he knew about power and victory, had been demolished in a matter of minutes.
Selthia and the monsters began erging again from the veins, materializing like nightmares made real from every corrupted surface of the regenerated organic chamber.
Dragarion could no longer defend himself.
Even moving required more energy than he had available. All his willpower, all that remained to him, barely kept him standing in a parody of defiance.
The corruption threads gathered into a dense and sharp whip that Selthia wielded with inhuman accuracy.
The abyssal voices channeled their maximum output through this, combining the essence of hundreds of thousands of monsters into a single concentrated attack.
The whip headed directly toward the king’s neck, moving with speed that cut the air and promised instant death.
It cut off his head.
Or that would have been the logical conclusion of soone observing from outside, seeing an exhausted and wounded king facing an attack he had no way to block or dodge.
If not for the fact that Selphira erged just in ti from Sirius’s spatial jump.
User Comments
0 comments from readers