Solstice barely had time to draw his great sword before Leviathan had made his way to him before unloading a punch that whistled through the air. When it landed on his sword, he launched backwards with his feet still planted into the ground.

“I see you’ve got some strength at least. I’ll up the pressure then.” With that Leviathan sped up even faster and increased his strength.

Leviathan didn’t use any weapon, he purely fought with his draconic body. A dragon hardly ever used any actual weapons, their bodies were tough enough to be used as a weapon. Their claws were as sharp as any other sword, their wings could be used to close distances or blow people away, as a whole just the existence of a dragon was terrifying.

After thirty seconds of being constantly on the defense, Solstice finally decided to start using mana and attempting to fight back, he began to imbue his body with lightning and start applying some of the knowledge about gravity magic to this fight. He managed to create some distance and jumped into the air to slam his sword down.

Leviathan went to block his sword, but his instincts screamed at him to dodge it, his pride wouldn’t allow this though. He braced himself for the attack and when the sword landed on him, his entire being just launched straight into the ground.

Solstice used gravity to launch himself into the air and increased it to shoot himself towards Leviathan, all this added pressure shot Leviathan multiple feet into the ground.

Solstice backed up and prepared for when he would stand back up.

“Seems you aren’t a complete idiot, might be worth teaching you.” Instantly a giant eruption at the crater occurred and all Solstice was a huge onyx colored dragon. The aura emanating from him was almost tangible and Solstice had trouble standing up.

“I bet Telarion hasn’t shown you this yet, has he? I’ll show you true fear kid.”

With that Leviathan upped his power to the max and this made Solstice buckle under the pressure and throw up all over the ground.

“Get ahold of yourself, use that gravity to counteract it.” Victor had seen some powerful beings in this world, but the true powerhouses wouldn’t show up until Aevis was on the verge of collapse. This man in front of them was the strongest person he had ever encountered, even Victor would find it taxing to stand in his presence.

Solstice understood what Victor wanted and used the ambient mana to make a dome of gravity lighter than the rest of the world, this finally allowed him to stand up and get his bearings again.

Leviathan saw this and inwardly smirked, this kid was clearly quick on his feet and was able to grasp magic quickly. He knew he was only thirteen currently, and the fact he could use magic to this caliber was beyond impressive.

When people use magic, it’s an incredibly long and tedious journey. Magic had no formulas or chants to cast a spell, it only consisted of firepower, control and understanding of it. After large amounts of practice, people can replicate certain things based on muscle memory essentially. It may be hard to create a blood spear the first time, but after practicing it becomes as easy as just thinking about it and it’ll appear. The only shortcut to this was talent and clearly Solstice had plenty of it. Being able to just hear Victor say something put it into action was impressive, what’s even more impressive is this was his first fight using gravity and doing it on fly.

Solstice began to charge at Leviathan but immediately regretted it, all he saw was a bright light coming from his mouth and a beam of black fire shooting out at him. He infused even more lightning into himself to dodge but immediately felt intense pain that caused him to fall down before getting out of the way. All he saw was the beam fixing to hit him and he had no idea what to do. All he could do was imbue his body with as much mana as possible and create a metal wall in front of him in hopes to alleviate some of the power.

Leviathan saw him collapse and immediately regretted doing what he did, this beam had enough power to completely erase Solstice’s existence and he had no way to stop it.

In almost an instant the wall he made was completely erased and just as the beam was about to erase him with it, a wall of blood and wall of metal sprung up barely blocking the beam.

“What the fuck Leviathan, what part of your mind thought that was a good idea?” Bela had felt the pressure intensify and hurried outside just in time to save Solstice while the dwarf had felt the tremors from underground and hurried to see what the commotion was.

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

Leviathan slowly transformed back into his humanoid form and was going to attempt to defend himself before he felt his blood slowing down. Bela was furious over what Leviathan almost did, and she didn’t want to hear any excuses from a dragon who never admitted his own wrongs.

Leviathan slowly began to realize he was in the wrong and just closed his mouth and waited.

Bela began to look over Solstice’s body and noticed his insides were fried. People who infused lightning into their body had similar conditions, but this was absurd.

“Solstice how much lightning did you try fucking using!”

“He used aether I bet.” Leviathan chimed in finally, he noticed that he hadn’t used aether the entire fight and came to the conclusion he had never been taught to use aether yet, and when he panicked he accidentally tapped into his aether reserves and with the potency increase to lightning instantly fried him.

Bela sent mana inside Solstice to check on what he said and noticed his aether heart was half empty confirming that he was right.

“Take him inside, I want to talk to both of you.” Leviathan had seen the potential Solstice had and decided to teach him about his roots as a dragon.

Bela scowled at him and just picked Solstice up back to his room to let him rest.

Half an hour later Darius, Bela and Leviathan were sitting at a table to discuss how to proceed from here.

“I apologize for earlier, I got too excited. But what the fuck is up with that kid?” Leviathan had been in Aevis since its conception, and in his entire lifetime he had never seen someone be able to use mana as freely as Solstice could.

“What’s funny is you haven’t even seen him use his trump card yet.” Bela just smirked when she said this, she was hoping to completely sell Leviathan on training him. She may hate his existence as a whole, but having someone who was regarded as the guardian of Aevis as your trainer was an incredible boon. Little did she know, he was already sold.

“His trump card? Is it something with his eyes?” The first thing Leviathan had noticed about the kid was his eyes, one eye had two rings and the other looked like the cosmos.

“Yes, but I’ll let you find that out for yourself, old timer.” With that Bela knew he was roped into training Solstice.

“Whatever, but if I train him, I’m taking him to my home. So, when he’s ready let me know.” With that Leviathan walked outside and flew away to prepare.

“I fucking hate dragons.” Darius muttered to himself before he went back downstairs to get his experiment ready. For the remainder of the day, Bela would attend Solstice until his insides recovered.

——In hell

“You suck at running your dimension Lyrus, can’t believe after not having to see you all this time, I got to come over here and help you cleanse.” Ariel complained to the same demon that was in her house a short time ago.

“Let’s just finish this as fast as possible please, I’d rather not talk about it.” Lyrus said while rubbing his temples. Lyrus was the same height as Ariel, he looked like a regular human currently but with two black, two giant black wings, and short blonde hair.

Time in hell moved differently than it did in the main dimension, currently she had been in hell for around 2 years since she left, during that time she had been with Lyrus and his kingdom attempting to cleanse it of three of four dukes.

Using his pull, Cinder had roped in two of the other dukes to help him in attempting to take over hell. But what he didn’t account for was Telarion going berserk and finally turning back into a dragon, even Alpha 2 didn’t take this into account. Over the course of that time, most of Cinder's army had been destroyed and Telarion had returned to Ariel’s side but was currently in a coma, in order to survive against Cinder and Alpha 2’s trap he had to burn lifeforce for a boost in power.

When he fell into the trap, he had to deal with 10 S-rankers who were subordinates under Cinder, along with weird technology they acquired from Alpha 2.

Even with all of this, not many people had fought a fully grown dragon since most of them stayed inside the confines of their homes. The entire point of Alpha 2 setting up a trap was to get more info on dragons, but clearly even the previous info he had been given was entirely wrong.

“This shouldn’t take no more than another year, hopefully by then Telarion wakes up.” Lyrus felt slightly bad about his people causing trouble in the Lightmane Kingdom, but he was a demon at heart and took this opportunity to rope in another primordial to help wrestle control of his hell once again.

“You owe me again, and I’ll cash that in soon. Don’t think you got one over on me.” Ariel looked over and smirked at Lyrus, she knew he was an opportunistic demon, and knowing how he would rope her in she would get another huge favor over him. Lyrus heard this and shivered before flying away towards the battle that was currently raging on.

Hundreds of thousands of demons were currently fighting, many varying in sizes and colors. This battle was taking place at the edges of Cinder’s territory; the other two dukes had already fallen and been executed. The family had been enslaved by the royal family and were going to suffer horrid fates.

——Cinder’s Castle

“Where the fuck is that human!” Cinder was livid, after the failed attempt to subdue Telarion, Alpha 2 had completely disappeared without a trace. Cinder was on the verge of losing his mind since he had gone through the trouble of bribing one of the wardens over purgatory to let Alpha 2 escape.

“I’m going to find that fucker if it’s the last thing I do.” With that Cinder returned to his study in an attempt to track down Alpha 2, without the dimensional gate in the royal capital nobody could leave hell, unless you’re Ariel who can’t ignore all of that with space magic.

Like that time advanced in hell while things in the overworld were calm for a period of time.