Chapter 19

Eva Lemuria

In front of me is a dark blue dragon with large wings folded on its back. Its four arms are wider that I and it has a tail moving behind it. The most ominous thing is the eyes of the dragon. They are completely white. They feel incredibly ominous to me and that might be because I have black eyes, but at least my eyes are just black irises while there's still white in my eyes. The dragon's eyes are completely white. I can't see its iris or pupils. It's like a cloud is covering them.

“Have I offended you somehow? I will apologize if there was something I did to offend you?” Shadow has specifically told me dragons are an intelligent race and that I should be polite to them, but this dragon looks completely like a beast to me.

The dragon doesn't respond at all and instead, it swings its arm at me and I drop to the ground as the tree behind me is completely obliterated. I realize my best chance to survive is to definitely escape. This dragon seems to be completely berserk for some reason so I don't want to accidentally lead it towards the town. The dragon slowly makes its way towards me as if playing with a toy. I realize that it completely doesn't see me as a threat, but for the first time I am ok with that because it will allow me to escape. Since it's taking its time to come at me I have the opportunity to lightning shift. I shift and immediately shoot towards the sky to try and escape.

As I'm flying through the storm several lighting bolts all charge towards me and push me down. I wasn't harmed by the lightning. If anything I feel like I might have absorbed some of it, but it had pushed me back to the ground where I crashed and was forcefully unshifted. This was the first time it's happened so I feel lighting rampage in my body a little. I get up off the ground and grab my things to try and make a run for it. As I am about to start running I feel myself being pushed by some wind into a tree as the dragon has landed right where I am.

It roars at me again before swinging its arm at me. I realize that escaping seems to have been a naive thought. I guess the only thing I can do here is dying, but I will not die without fighting for the chance to survive. This might be the first time that I have ever felt such a large urge to survive. The dragon is definitely stronger than me and I'm already injured from a fight I just had. This is more that just fighting an uphill battle. This will probably be considered the impossible.

I drop everything except my sheathed dagger and halberd. On the ground is my bag filled with tails and supplies. I also drop the mana heart from the mana beast I fought. I look the dragon in the eye and can't help but feel hate towards those white eyes. I form a destruction edge on my halberd and slam it on the ground between us. The ground explodes creating a crater and a dust cloud. I take this small timing before the rain settles the dust to charge forward. I form a lighting edge and slash at the Dragons front limbs. As my halberd comes into contact a small little cut appears before the dragon smacks me to the side. I crash through a tree and look at the tiny cut that can barely be considered a paper cut.

I will not lose hope from this though. I will fight till the bitter end. I swing at the dragon and repeatedly attack it with destruction edges while dodging its claws being swung towards my head. All I seem to do is annoy the dragon as it roars at me with enough force to push me away. I feel my ears ringing from the roar. The dragon then looks up as lightning crashes down on it. I thought that nature is trying to help me, but it seems the dragon just absorbed the lighting before opening its mouth. I get a good look at its teeth as lighting runs along the dragon's body and rushes towards its mouth. I get a bad feeling so I cross my arms and focus more mana into my flame armors arms. Slowly a shield forms from my crossed arms just as the dragon releases all the built up lighting. I've seen similar attacks from mana beast, but this is on a whole new level. The blast rages forward for a couple of seconds and I feel my shield slowly crumble away. I feel like parts of my armor is being blasted off and my skin is being burned off.

When the attack stops I look around and see that everything around me has been incinerated. It's like a giant black scar has been cut into the forest. I don't stop to look as after the dragon attacked I charged forward with a destruction spear. I focus as much mana as I can at a concentrated point before stating it into the dragon's shoulder. This time I make it penetrate and it may be the first time I've inflicted a serious wound on the dragon. As I feel accomplished for my attack the dragons tails tip wraps around my ankle and throws me away. I fly through the air before crashing to the ground. I had luckily held onto my halberd so I use it to support myself up. The dragon has blood flowing from its shoulder and looks enraged.

The dragon unfolds its wings and flies into the sky. It circles around me before the storm seems to intensify where we are. Lighting begins to pour down on the circling dragon before it moves right above me and stops. It somehow hovers above me as it opens its wings wide open. From the dragons, wings lighting begins to pour down on me. I quickly stab my halberd into the ground and charge it with lighting. All the falling lighting attracts to my halberd and flows through it. Most of the lighting passes through my halberd while some of it goes through me. I can normally channel a little lightning from others, but this is too much. I can feel my insides burning from this attack. As the lighting stops, I feel nothing but pain while there's smoke coming off of me.

The dragon dives down at me and I quickly form an unstable destruction blade on my halberd I swing it at the dragon and my halberd clashes with an electrified claw. I feel a mountain press on me before both of me and the dragon is then blown away. The dragons hand is completely mangled and my halberd has a big piece of its blade broken. I feel sad that my partner has been damaged for the first time in all of our fights, but I can't give it rest. I must not let up and keep fighting. I charge the dragon again and it attacks with another lighting claw while I slide under it and form a lighting scythe pointed upwards. I slide under the dragon while cutting its underside.

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While under the dragon I notice something abnormal. There seems to be a glowing white nail head sticking out of the dragon's chest. It gives me a more ominous feeling than the eyes of the dragon. As I completely pass under the dragon I roll away as its tail chops down where I was. The dragon backs away from me and begins to coat its whole body in lighting. I feel as if the weather starts to get more intense as tornados begin to touch down on the ground. I feel my body is starting to slow down significantly so I want to try and make my next move. It's a long shot but maybe the nail in the dragon's underside is some kind of weakness.

I start to add more mana to my flame armor. Instead of trying to make it denser like I usually do, I instead make my armor bulkier and heavier. I form a large ball of my destruction element in my right hand and throw it at the dragon. It dodges the attack by jumping to the side and I take this chance to follow my attack. When it passes the dragon I turn towards the dragon and charge it. I use my shoulder to knock the dragon over on its side. My surprise attack works and the dragon flips on its back. I weaken my flame armor before flame boosting straight up. I weaken all my other spell including my flame armor and focus almost all my mana into a destruction spear point as I drive my halberd down. I pierce through the dragon's gut and I succeed in pinning the dragon down. I leave my halberd to hold the dragon as I quickly move towards the chest and focus all my remaining mana into my right fist. I form a condensed destruction fist and then slam it down on the white nail. The second my fist touches the white nail and explosion of energy burst forth. All I can see is white as I feel my right arm slowly being incinerated and the right half of my body is being burned away. I feel like the lower half of the right side of my face is being burned as well. I feel myself be blown away and then land in some mud. I look over and see the dragon pull out my halberd pinning it to the ground. It seems like the energy release harmed it too, but the white nail is still there except it seems to have been damaged and is about to break. The dragon rolls to its side. I can tell it can't get up without lying on its damaged chest.

With my last bit of willpower, I try to get up myself, but I noticed the right hand of my body is completely destroyed. My arm seems to just be a little-burned muscle and bones while the rest of my right side is burned to just my damaged muscles. If I survive I'll probably be a cripple the rest of my life. I manage to get up somehow with only my left arm and I slowly make my way towards the dragon that's still trying to get up. If it had never tried to play with me it would not have ended up in this situation. I don't know how I offended this dragon, but I will not spare it at this point. As I'm walking towards the dragon I pull out my dagger. When I finally reach the dragon I put what little mana I have left to for a simple mana edge on my dagger and then I stab the white nail on one of the cracks that formed earlier. The nail shatters and I don't even see a wound on the dragon from it.

The second I destroyed the nail I felt an incredible pain come from my chest. I look down and see the dragon's tail piercing through my chest right where my heart should be. I look up and see my own blood and heart have splattered onto the chest of the dragon. I feel blood leaking from my mouth. The tail comes out of my body as I fall to the ground on my back. I try to get up and move, but I can’t. I try to yell for help, but I can’t. I try to feel my mana, but I can’t. I feel tears form in my eyes as the world starts to go blurry. I look to the dragon and see those white eyes I hated so much are now a dark blue like its body. The eyes no longer hold a wild rage. They now have confusion as they look around and then shock as it looks at me. The last thing I see is the dragon starts to glow a dark blue light before I feel all control slip away and I die alone with tears in my open eyes.

Shadow

I am currently walking through a small border town that looks over the dwarven kingdom. The reason that I am here is that we have received a report on rumors of a missing town before and now another similar report has come in except this town is on the other side of the kingdom. It's highly suspicious because there are no actual signs of the town at all. They simply vanished as if they were never there. It's highly troubling because all the people vanish with those towns. 

I originally didn't want to take this mission, but it was too serious to leave to a subordinate. I was originally assigned to finding Princess Eva. A few months ago the princess had completely disappeared from the academy after a fight with her brother the prince. The Princess did do her family a huge favor by forcefully getting rid of the annoying old man Roland, but after the duel, she completely disappeared without a trace and even us shadow guards are having trouble finding her. The king had actually yelled at me for teaching her too well. The Queen and Princess Lora have been completely distraught as they walk around almost lifelessly. When they heard that the Princess had disappeared they broke down then and there while the Queen tried to leave to look for the Princess herself. Luckily the King could restrain her. Since then the shadow guard has put in all our efforts to try and find her.  

A more troublesome thing is the adventures guild completely refuses to help us find her. We know the princess will probably use adventuring as a source of income so she would have to sign in at some adventures guild branch, but the guild refuses to help. That had even refused the king himself by saying they will stick to their confidentiality policy that the king himself created. It's like the adventures guild is protecting the princess for some reason. 

We had shadow guards going town to town looking for any sign of the princess, but nothing has shown up until now. I'm at an Inn right now where supposedly a young female stayed a night. The weird thing is she kept all her features hidden, she paid to bathe in the baths alone, and she carried a large weirdly shaped weapon. I know it is a good chance that it's her so I go to the adventurers guild and ask for the guild manager. When I finally get in the room alone together I disappear from his sight and appear behind his back with a dagger on his throat. I get him to tell me that there was an adventurer who signed in yesterday and she was named Eva. I knew the Princess would keep adventuring to raise her rank. She's always been a little bit of a fighting maniac. 

I leave the guild and then send a message to the king to inform him of my findings. After the message was sent I remember I came her for the missing towns so I turn back around to the guild so I can peacefully talk to the guild manager again. I know the princess will come back to this town so, for now, I will wait for her here as the king sends more shadow guards as back up. I don't think the princess will peacefully come back with us so I can't be blamed for asking for help. Hopefully, by tomorrow I can bring the Princess home safely so she can go back to her family.