Chapter 41
Sevin crested the hill and looked out over the valley of his birth. It was strange to think that his journey would take him back here so soon; it hadn’t even been a year since he’d left. Strange, and frightening.
Was his family okay?
He had no way of knowing who was dead and who’d escaped the dragon’s wrath, and the lack of information was driving him insane. He’d long since stopped thinking about the bandits that they’d killed, his thoughts consumed by the fear of his little sister being burned to a cinder by the dragon they’d arrived to hunt.
From their vantage point atop the hill, Sevin could see the ashes of the village in the distance, although no dragon was in sight. He swallowed nervously. Who had died in the attack? How many of his friends and family were no longer among the living because of this monster?
Why did he feel so helpless?
That was a stupid question, he thought, as he evaluated just how powerless he really was in the situation. He might have acquitted himself well against the bandits along the way, but Antoine had made it clear that neither he nor Rory were to be anywhere near the confrontation with the dragon itself.
They were here as witnesses. As students. As squires. Not as combatants.
Behind him, the winged horse of Aisha nickered and drew Sevin’s attention. The healer and Sir Tirns had joined up with them a few days ago, although Tirns was off in the air somewhere, presumably scouting. Ensuring that the dragon had not moved on since making its nest.
“We wait here for Tirns,” Antoine announced. “Come and help me prepare; if the dragon is in the valley, then I will go and face it.”
Aisha stood by and watched as the squires prepared Antoine for battle. He stood still as Rory and Sevin strapped him into his leather armor. Aisha thought that the man hardly looked like a knight about to battle a dragon. He looked more like a bandit than anything else.
“Shouldn’t you have some sort of fire protection?” she asked.
“I am the fire protection,” Antoine answered. “Dragonfire doesn’t frighten me.”
She looked at him, then shrugged. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”
“This won’t be the first dragon blood my blade has tasted,” Antoine assured her. “Although it will be the oldest. The other three were young, recently escaped from the World Dungeon. Resh has been on the surface for at least two centuries. I do not know how long she lived in the depths of this world before making her way to the surface, nor why she came to the surface. Was she driven out of her lair, or merely seeking easier prey?”
“Does it matter?” Rory asked. “She’s here now.”
“Indeed,” Antoine said. “Whatever Resh’s story might have been, it ends today.”
The boys finished checking the various straps of Antoine’s gear, and the group fell into an awkward silence as they waited for word from Sir Tirns. Twenty minutes passed before the wyvern rider flew in from an angle; he’d avoided flying over the valley directly as he’d sneaked as close as he dared for intelligence gathering.
He landed nearby, the talons of his mount scratching deep grooves into the soft earth. He raised the visor to his helmet and regarded the Vanquisher for a moment.
“Resh is waiting by the Core Stone,” Tirns said. “I think she was asleep. She didn’t stir as I flew within sight. I believe she must know that I’ve been following her, but she’s shown no signs of wanting to hunt me down so far, so I can’t be certain if she’s sleeping or just ignoring me.”
“It doesn’t matter either way. I don’t plan on sneaking up on her,” Antoine said. He turned to the others. “Be ready. Once the dragon is dead, we search the valley for survivors and render whatever aid we can.”
“Right,” Sevin agreed.
“Are you certain you’ll be alright?” Rory asked.
“Wait for me here,” Antoine said, walked off. Walked, because bringing the horse with him would only put it in danger. He was confident in his own safety, but not in his ability to protect anyone or anything else.
“Notre Père, qui es aux cieux, que ton nom soit sanctifié, que ton règne vienne,” Antoine began once he was alone. He was not particularly religious, but despite the calm facade he’d shown the others, he was nervous enough that he sought the comfort that prayer had once granted him.
He was level one hundred and six, a height he’d reached after decades of impossible challenges. He’d pushed his limits far beyond what he’d ever thought possible, and now he was about to test them once more. The dragons he’d faced previously had been juveniles. The first had nearly killed him, although that had been before the World Dungeon. Before he had become The Vanquisher.
Resh was a mature dragon well into the heights of her power. Her death would not come easily.
He began jogging, moving through the valley’s lightly forested terrain at a speed that Rory and Sevin would have had to spring and burn Stamina in order to keep up with. He was conserving his energy, this was just a warm up for the exercise to come.
He emerged over a hill and saw the burned down village, the dragon sleeping wrapped around the Core. He drew his blade, and with a flicker of his will, he locked down the mana in the area.
The dragon sensed this, lifting its head and looking in his direction. It roared a challenge.
Antoine screamed back at it.
It cocked its head in surprise, sniffing the air.
“You are no mouse,” the dragon said. “Have you come to feed me your flesh, human?”
“I have only one question for you, Dragon,” Antoine said. “What drives you to kill humans?”
The dragon cocked its head to the other side, regarding him. “Irritation. It shall not be long before the compact is broken and the land is purged of your kind. Those that I send into the afterlife are merely beating the rush.”
“Were you not a threat to the humans of this land, you might have been allowed to nest in peace,” Antoine informed the dragon. “Six others have made their nest within Welsius. They are tolerated because they do not burn villages or slay humans.”
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Resh snorted. “Why should I not act as I have? Your kind are but fleas to mine. I shall--”
Antoine was finished talking. Where he had been moving at a sprint before, he was suddenly a blur. The dragon, realizing that combat had begun, moved just as rapidly as it rose and turned to meet him. Instinctively it flared its lungs and prepared to breathe fire, but nothing escaped its throat but hot air.
“You have stolen my flame!” the dragon roared, outraged to have an ability so central to its identity taken from it.
Antoine said nothing. He Dashed into range, sliced twice with his blade, scoring shallow cuts to the dragon’s side as he rushed straight past it.
Resh roared in outrage. It spun around, swinging its tail at the human.
Antoine dodged, but the wind of the tail’s passage knocked him back. The dragon turned, moving as fast as Antoine yet seeming ponderous in comparison due to its bulk.
Antoine stood between the dragon and the Core Stone. He glanced back at the blue crystalline monolith and cursed. He couldn’t use his signature skill here without damaging the Core.
The dragon lunged forward, and Antoine back-flipped out of the way, its teeth passing mere inches from him.
He dashed forward again, slicing the dragon on the forearm as he moved past it. Operating at superhuman speeds, he launched himself into the air and slashed at the dragon’s wing, carving out a notch in the sinuous membrane.
Outraged, the dragon once more attempted to breathe fire, and again bellowed in outrage that its skill was not working. It flapped its wings, trying to take off. It found that its flight was just as reliant upon the use of magic as its breath, and succeeded in doing little more than causing a few gusts of air.
Antoine dashed in and out of range, his enchanted sword slicing shallow wounds in the dragon’s hide. But he might as well be wielding a pin for all the damage that he was causing the beast.
“Little mouse, annoying you are,” the dragon exclaimed, snapping forward to try to catch the man in its jaws. Antoine retreated, allowing the beast to follow him now that he had its attention.
“Your anti-magic will not save you,” Resh informed him. “I will crush your bones and taste your marrow!”
“So do it!” Antoine challenged. “Catch me if you can!”
He fought a staggered retreat, keeping the dragon in range as he allowed himself to be pushed back. He glanced behind the dragon, judging the distance between it and the core stone.
One hundred meters. Still too close.
He misjudged one of his forward dashes. Resh’s swipe knocked him twenty meters through the air. He landed badly and rolled, shoving himself to his feet. The dragon roared in triumph and dashed forward.
Antoine cursed. The talons had sliced through his breastplate, and he was bleeding from his abdomen. He had no time to slow down and evaluate his injuries.
The dragon reared back to breathe fire, and Antoine realized that he had let his concentration slip. He froze the mana field once more, but not before the fire was flying at him. He reached out and used a Skill.
His hand touched the flame, and the flame was absorbed into his skin. His level seventy skill, potent as ever, filled him with jittery mana. He forced it under control and channeled it into another skill.
The foreign mana shifted through his body, into his blade and, with a slash, sliced through space itself. The attack flew through the distance between the man and the dragon, catching the dragon on the left thigh. The cut was deep and passed straight through flesh as though it were not there. Were it not a glancing blow, it would have amputated the limb.
Antoine grinned. It had been a long time since he’d unleashed that attack. It wasn’t something he could use on his own; he had to absorb mana in order to charge it.
The dragon roared, significantly injured for the first time in its life. It bled freely from its leg as it dashed forward. It was in no danger of bleeding to death, but it made an awful mess.
Antoine continued retreating. Then, once he was three hundred meters from the Core Stone, he abruptly stopped.
“Vanquish!” he cried, and he activated his level one hundred skill. He flinched as the remaining mana that he’d absorbed from the dragon recoiled from his own skill’s power within his body, shattering and shifting like ice forming a thousand needles.
It hurt. If he hadn’t vented most of it with the Void Blade, it would have done considerable damage. He’d retained a mere fifty points of mana or so, and that was enough to cause petechiae to form on his swordarm, where most of the mana had remained.
That was nothing compared to the damage his ultimate attack caused the dragon.
The dragon roared in agony as its own power rebelled against it. Blood burst from its eyes, filling its lungs and leaking out from between its scales. Resh collapsed to the ground, writhing as its body struggled to regain control of itself.
Antoine looked past the dragon, at the Core Stone, and exhaled a sigh of relief.
“I was never worried about slaying you, Resh,” Antoine informed the dragon. “My lethality scales exponentially with the concentration of mana within my opponent. Tom would be most annoyed with me if I killed any hope of rebuilding his village, however, so I needed to get you away from the Core.”
“What are you?” the dragon asked, coughing up a lungful of blood.
“My name is Antoine Durand,” Antoin answered. “That’s not what you asked, but I suppose you at least deserve to know the name of the man to kill you.”
“I am not dead yet,” the beast said, straightening itself out. It reared back and spat fire at Antoine once more.
Antoine didn’t bother moving. Once more he raised his right hand and caught the fire in his absorption skill. He didn’t bother stopping the flame this time, and he took up all of the magic that the dragon was willing to give him.
“I don’t believe you’re thinking straight,” Antoine informed the dragon. “Do you not remember what happened earlier?”
Before the dragon answered, Antoine brought his blade down. One Void Blade, then another, and another, and another.
Slash, slash, slash and slash.
Each Void Blade passed through the dragon as though the flesh were no more than cheese. Resh’s left wing was severed, as was its right forepaw. Deep wounds opened in its torso and sealed just as quickly as the dragon’s awesome vitality immediately healed the wounds.
Antoine tsked. This was a mature dragon, after all, and it was too much to expect it to simply fall over dead.
“I will crush you!” the dragon roared.
“Then do it!” Antoine bellowed in challenge.
The fighting continued. With the mana field locked firmly down, Antoine fought with delaying tactics until his Vanquish skill would be available to use once more. The cuts he scored in the mean time were shallow and ineffectual, but kept the dragon enraged and chasing him.
“Three,” Antoine said to himself. Two more doses of his ultimate mage-busting attack, and Antoine was confident in his ability to end Resh the violet dragon once and for all. The dragon’s high mana concentration would serve to be the weapon that would bring about its death.