Chapter 260
A makeshift camp, crudely erected amidst the skeletal remains of the factory district's rusted behemoths in northwestern Orario, had known little peace since the evilus constant assault on the city.
Sleep, a fleeting luxury, had just barely claimed Draco and his familia when a concussive blast from the west ripped through the night’s fragile quiet.
The ground shuddered, sending tremors through their cots, and a collective gasp of startled terror swept through the camp.
Torches flickered wildly, casting dancing shadows as adventurers scrambled to their feet, weapons drawn, eyes instinctively tracking the orange plumes curdling against the bruised sky.
But Draco’s gaze was fixed elsewhere.
Not on the distant inferno, nor the panicked faces of his comrades.
He stared at the full moon, a silent, luminous orb hanging in the cloudless expanse, and felt a cold dread worm its way into his gut.
He didn't just feel it; he saw it.
A silhouette, impossibly small, began to descend from the celestial disc, its shadow eclipsing the moon for a chilling moment, leaving a shadowy backdrop against the silver light.
A scream clawed at Draco’s throat, a primal urge to rip through the camp, to bellow warnings, to urge every soul, civilian and adventurer alike, to scatter, to find cover, to run for their lives.
But the words died before they could form.
The figure was plummeting with terrifying speed, a harbinger of destruction, and Draco could feel its immense strength, a tangible pressure in the air that stole the very breath from his lungs. Running was a fool's errand.
In the few milliseconds left, no one could possibly do anything.
He had but one choice.
With a guttural roar, Draco threw himself forward, arms outstretched, using his own body as a shield to cover his familia members, a desperate gesture against the inevitable.
Boom!
The impact was not merely an explosion; it was an act of creation, birthing a new, terrible landscape.
The ground beneath them bucked and roared, a seismic wave rippling outwards from the epicentre.
The very air shrieked, compressed and then violently displaced.
Structures that had stood for decades, the skeletal remains of factory machinery and hastily erected tents, buckled and collapsed like paper.
Torches, the camp's biggest source of light, extinguished simultaneously, plunging the world into a chaotic, suffocating blackness.
The smell hit first: ozone and pulverized earth, swiftly followed by the metallic tang of blood, thick and cloying.
Many, too unfortunate to be at the heart of the blast, were simply gone, reduced to crimson mist and viscera.
High-pitched screams, choked into whimpers, echoed in the sudden, eerie silence that followed the deafening roar.
As the dust began to settle, swirling like malevolent mist under the pallid moonlight, a colossal crater, easily fifty paces wide, marked the heart of the devastation.
At its center, utterly unscathed, stood a figure.
Clad in full, dark-plated armour, intricately engraved with swirling images of skeletal dragons and wailing banshees, it seemed to absorb the ambient light rather than reflect it.
A helmet obscured all but the lower half of a face, revealing a cruel, thin mouth.
Golden hair, impossibly bright, spilled from beneath the helmet's brim, framing short, pointy ears that pierced the quiet.
Across one broad shoulder, held with a casual, almost lazy indifference, lay a silver spear, its tip glinting menacingly.
It was Mors.
Clack… clack… clack…
The sound of armoured boots, hesitant and slow, broke the silence.
From the periphery of the crater, the stronger adventurers who had survived the initial shock began to emerge, their faces etched with a dreadful cocktail of fear and grim determination. Weapons, mostly swords, spears and axes, were raised, but the hands holding them trembled visibly.
No one needed to articulate the obvious: this was an evilus attack.
And the chilling fact that it was a single entity, not a horde, made it all the more terrifying.
It was a declaration, a statement of overwhelming power.
The weaker adventurers, already in a state of disarray, had begun the desperate evacuation of the remaining civilians.
It was a slow, agonizing process, hampered by panic and the sheer scale of the devastation.
Each step was a gamble, each cry for direction lost in the rising tide of hysteria.
Draco, having quickly absorbed the impact, pushed through the dust, his breath coming in ragged gasps.
He instructed his familia, to aid the evacuation, their own fear warring with their duty.
His eyes, burning with a mix of fury and despair, remained fixed on the lone figure in the crater. A primal urge, a desperate, animalistic instinct, screamed at him to gather his familia and flee. To run and not look back, to abandon this doomed ground.
But the thought, born of terror, was brutally dismissed.
Where would they go?
The first explosion, the one that had woken them, had surely signalled a wider assault on Orario. The city was likely under siege again.
They had no information about the world beyond this shattered camp.
Evacuation without a destination was merely a delayed death sentence.
To make matters worse, the one who stood before them was a champion of the evilus.
Riveria and Ais – the forces that might have increased their chance of survival – were both gone, having departed on patrol earlier that evening.
They were alone.
Their only choice, the impossible gamble, was to somehow contain this Level 7 disaster.
To hold Mors, to delay him, to buy precious moments until reinforcements, a mythical concept in this nightmare, could arrive.
But with so many vulnerable targets, so many innocent lives huddled within meters of the monster, what could he possibly do?
Draco cursed his powerlessness, the crushing weight of responsibility threatening to buckle his resolve.
Mors, meanwhile, seemed utterly unconcerned by the ring of trembling adventurers.
His gaze swept over them, a condescending smirk twisting his lips.
He lifted the silver spear, the weapon seeming to float in his casual grip, and a voice, deep and resonant like the rumble of distant thunder, echoed through the shattered camp.
"I currently have little interest in reaping the lives of you weak nobodies," Mors declared, his voice carrying an unnatural clarity in the dust-choked air.
"Bring me the dragon boy. It is him I seek. Bring him to me, and you might all live to see tomorrow."
A shiver, cold and sharp as an ice shard, traced a path down Draco's spine.
This was bad.
Very bad.
His mind spun, a frantic maelstrom of questions: Why him? How had Mors known about him? What infernal interest could a champion of the evilus have in a mere Level 4 adventurer?
It was a situation he couldn't refuse, couldn't avoid.
The entire camp, thousands of desperate refugees, hundreds of adventurers, were being used as collateral.
To flee, to refuse, would mean annihilation for them all, and a stain of shame that would forever cling to the Bahamut familia.
There were very few options left.
With a heavy heart, Draco stepped forward.
The adventurers, recognizing the implicit command in Mors’s words, parted for him, forming a path through their hesitant ranks.
As he advanced, they began to slowly, almost imperceptibly, retreat from the crater, drawing away from the looming threat.
It didn't take a genius to understand.
This was their chance.
If Draco could hold out, just long enough for the civilians to get far away, to reach the central camp, then many lives, perhaps even his own familia, could be saved.
It was a desperate gamble, but the only one they had.
Mors’s cruel smile widened as he watched Draco approach, a glint of predatory satisfaction in his eyes.
"As expected of one who is kin to the dragons," Mors purred, his voice dripping with mock praise.
"Bravely stepping up to the challenge. I half-expected you to flee, to abandon these cattle. Had you done so, I would have taken the lives of every single person here. Too bad." He finished with a theatrical sigh, as if genuinely disappointed.
Draco’s knuckles whitened, his jaw clenching.
The casualness, the utter nonchalance with which this monster declared the taking of thousands of lives, was something only a true demon could possess.
Thousands of refugees, many of them children, their faces still etched with the fear of the initial blast, were nothing more than a bargaining chip, a tool to toy with.
He forced his heart to steady, to beat a more controlled rhythm.
He needed time.
Every second counted.
He had to keep Mors talking, to stall, to create any distraction for the evacuation to continue, especially for his familia members.
The last thing he wanted was for this sadistic lump of evil to grasp at his weakness, to perceive his attachment.
If, for whatever reason, any of his familia members were taken hostage, Draco truly didn't know what he would do.
The thought was a poisoned spear to his gut.
"Why me?" Draco’s voice was strained but clear, echoing slightly in the vast, open crater.
He stood at the lip, maybe thirty paces from Mors, the air between them thrumming with dangerous energy.
"What business could an evilus champion have with a mere adventurer like myself?"
Mors let out a soft chuckle, a sound devoid of humour.
"Always so predictable, you lesser beings. Always asking 'why.' Does it matter?" He twirled the silver spear, its tip carving silver arcs in the moonlight.
"Let's just say, the whispers about a dragon-like mortal who can mimic some abilities of a dragon-god, reached ears that found them… intriguing. And now, the collection is due."
He launched himself forward, a blur of dark metal and golden hair, far faster than any below level 5 could possibly react.
Draco’s eyes widened, his instincts screaming.
There was no time for thought, only reaction.
He slammed his right arm forward, the skin rippling, hardening, and turning a obsidian black. His fingers elongated, thickening into savage, scaled claws, tipped with razor-sharp talons.
A partial dragon transformation, instinctive and desperate.
The spear, a shimmering blur, was already upon him.
Mors aimed not for a killing blow, but a casual, contemptuous strike.
The butt of the spear slammed into Draco’s transformed arm with the force of a battering ram.
Crunch !
A sickening crack echoed.
Draco felt the bone splinter, the impact like a thunderbolt originating in his elbow and exploding into his shoulder.
He was sent careening backward, a ragged cry torn from his lips, tumbling end over end across the rough ground.
He skidded to a halt near a collapsed tent, pain flaring through his arm, but the dragon scales had absorbed enough force to prevent a complete shatter.
"Too slow, little dragon," Mors drawled, his voice following Draco, seemingly right next to his ear even though he was still in the crater.
"Did you think I'd allow you a moment's rest? A full moon's night is for revelry, not conversation."
Draco scrambled to his feet, his transformed arm throbbing, a deep crimson seeping from beneath the jagged tip of his claw.
He had to be smarter, faster.
He knew Mors was toying with him, but he couldn’t afford to be caught again.
Mors was different from Alfia and Zald who were sick, and couldn’t freely utilize their full abilities freely.
Mors was healthy and a physical fighter, meaning he could exert the full capabilities of a peak level 7 with ease.
This was the worst opponent Draco could confront with his current strength, maybe even worse that confronting Zald and Alfia combined.
With a surge of energy, he slammed his left palm onto the ground.
Instantly, the pulverized earth beneath him roared to life.
Spikes of jagged rock, thick as a man’s torso, erupted from the crater floor, shooting towards Mors like predatory teeth.
Not just one, but a coordinated volley, designed to trap and impale.
Mors didn't even flinch.
He simply blurred.
The spear, instead of being used to stab, became a blur.
With casual flicks of his wrist, he deflected, shattered, or simply dissipated the earthen spikes, leaving shimmering trails of silver light in their wake.
The ground itself seemed to ripple around him, the very earth bowing to his might.
He moved with an almost ethereal grace, a dance of destruction, each movement perfectly precise.
"Crude," Mors scoffed, his voice devoid of even amusement.
"Like a child throwing mud. Is that all your grand dragon heritage amounts to?"
As Mors completed his fluid evasion, Draco roared, a partial dragon’s roar this time, raw and potent.
Its was a technique he practiced a lot, but never got the opportunity to use.
Flames erupted from his mouth, not a stream, but a concentrated, intensely hot blast, infused with his magical power.
The fire coalesced into the form of a dragon head, fangs bared, hurtling towards Mors with terrifying speed.
Simultaneously, Draco channeled wind magic, causing the blast to pick up speed and intensify the heat, turning the air around it shimmering.
From his left hand, a ball of pressurized air, shot forth, aiming to add more fuel to the blast.
The combination, a fiery breath attack and air cannon, was meant to create a chaotic, multi-elemental assault that would disorient and burn.
Mors merely tilted his head.
The fiery dragon head slammed into an invisible barrier around him, dissipating into heat haze and embers that rained harmlessly around him.
The air canon, too, smashed against the same unseen barrier, dissipating into a mere breeze. Mors didn't seem to have moved an inch.
"A little more interesting," Mors conceded, a flicker of something akin to boredom in his tone. "But still utterly pathetic."
Suddenly, Mors was gone from the crater.
Draco's enhanced senses barely registered the displacement of air before a crushing force impacted his chest.
Mors hadn't moved around his attacks; he had moved through them, so fast that the magical projections didn't even register his passage.
The spear was no longer on his shoulder.
It was in his hand, and he had used the flat of its blade to strike Draco with a powerful horizontal slash.
Draco felt his ribs give, a sharp, white-hot agony blossoming in his chest.
He coughed, a spray of blood erupting from his lips, and was launched backward once more. This time, he didn't tumble.
He was a projectile.
Mors hadn't just struck him; he had thrown him.
Draco flew across the camp, crashing through a flimsy wooden stall, scattering its contents, then skidded across the ground, a trail of displaced dirt and a groan of pain marking his trajectory.
His body screamed in protest, every bone jarring.
His vision swam, a kaleidoscope of blurred stars.
He scrambled to his feet, gasping, tasting blood.
His ribs felt like shattered glass.
"Is that all, little dragon?" Mors’s voice echoed, laced with a mocking lilt.
"Your fire is a damp squib, your wind a gentle breeze. I thought you would be more… vibrant."
Rage, cold and pure, pierced through Draco's pain.
He enhanced his partial dragon transformation, scales erupting across his left hand and shins, hardening his skin.
His left hand and legs morphed into sturdy, clawed talons, obsidian black and razor-sharp.
He roared, and charged.
He was fast, faster than even a peak level 5, but Mors was a blur.
The evilus champion met his charge not with a counter-attack, but with a casual sidestep, his spear twirling once before tapping Draco’s extended claw.
The tap was light, almost dismissive, yet it dislocated Draco’s shoulder with a sickening pop.
His charge veered uncontrollably, and Mors, with a swift, almost playful kick, sent Draco sprawling once more.
He landed hard amidst a huddle of terrified civilians, their screams tearing at his ears.
One elderly woman, too slow to move, cried out as Draco’s flailing leg caught her, sending her tumbling.
"Oh, look!" Mors’s voice carried, dripping with sarcastic surprise.
"The great dragon-kin is clumsy! He can't even avoid hurting his own flock. How quaint."
Draco snarled, pain and shame warring within him.
He pushed himself up, his dislocated shoulder screaming with agony.
He forced it back into place with a grunt that felt like a tear, the raw ache momentarily sharpening his focus.
He couldn't fight Mors head-on.
Not like this.
He needed space, time, an opening.
He launched himself forward again, but this time, he wasn't charging Mors.
He intended to circle, to use the wreckage of the camp as cover.
As he tried to dart past, Mors’s spear flickered.
It wasn’t a strike, but a precisely aimed sweep that caught Draco’s legs.
He tumbled, sprawling face-first into the debris.
"Running away now, little beast?" Mors’s laughter boomed, devoid of mirth, chilling to the bone. He casually strode closer, the rhythmic clack-clack of his armoured boots a death knell in the ruined camp.
"Such a disappointment. I expected more fire, more fury. Is this what the great Bahamut Familia offers? A whimpering dog?"
Draco clawed at the ground, scales rippling across his back as he tried to activate his partial transformation further – perhaps wings, to gain some air superiority.
But Mors was already there.
He reached down, not with his spear, but with a gauntleted hand, wrapping iron fingers around Draco’s neck.
The grip was shockingly gentle, yet utterly immovable.
He lifted Draco, effortlessly, as if he weighed nothing more than a rag doll.
"Now, let's have some real fun," Mors purred, his voice low and intimate, yet utterly devoid of warmth.
He spun, suddenly, and Draco realized with sickening horror what Mors intended.
He swung Draco like a living club, towards a cluster of fleeing refugees.
"Look, little dragon," Mors taunted, his voice rising in volume.
"Your beloved people. So helpless, so fragile."
‘No!’ Draco screamed internally, his limbs flailing uselessly in Mors's iron grip.
"Stop! Don't you dare!"
His words were drowned out by the screams of the innocents.
Mors, with casual brutality, slammed Draco’s body into a group of three terrified civilians – a young mother clutching her child, and an old man.
The impact was sickening, a wet, pulping sound.
Bones shattered, flesh tore.
Draco felt the gruesome, crushing blows reverberating through his own body.
Hot blood splattered across his face, not his own, but the life force of those he was involuntary used to destroy.
The mother's last scream was cut short, the child's whimpering silenced forever.
The old man's body crumpled, mangled beyond recognition.
Mors pulled back, then swung again, harder, this time towards a rickety shelter where more people huddled, paralyzed by fear.
Draco cried out, a raw, tormented sound, as his body became a monstrous weapon of mass destruction.
The wooden beams groaned, then exploded inwards, shards of wood and fragments of bone flying as the shelter collapsed, crushing those within.
Draco glimpsed twisted limbs, lifeless eyes staring blankly at the moon, all through a haze of crimson.
"Do you feel it, little dragon?" Mors’s voice was a whisper, close to Draco’s ear, a serpent’s hiss. "The weight of their deaths? The guilt? Every life you inadvertently take, every bone you break, it chips away at that brave little heart of yours. Doesn't it just fill you with glorious despair?"
Draco was convulsing, not from pain, but from the unbearable agony of being an unwilling instrument of such horror.
Bile rose in his throat.
He tried to transform, to fight Mors’s grip, to do anything.
His body pulsed with raw magic, scales glowing faintly under the moonlight, muscles bulging. He focused all his strength, all his rage, on his free hand, morphing it into a grotesque, oversized dragon claw, scales glinting, talons extended.
He brought it up in a desperate arc, aiming for Mors’s helmet.
The blow landed, a powerful, strike.
The claws scraped against the dark, dragon-engraved armor, leaving faint, shallow gouges.
It was the first true mark he had left on the Level 7 champion.
Mors paused, his head cocked slightly, as if mildly amused.
He ran a gauntleted finger over the faint scratches.
"Oh, a little scratch. How… quaint." The smirk returned, wider, more predatory.
"Did you think that would save them?"
With a sharp, violent jerk, Mors slammed Draco face-first into the ground, grinding his face into the blood-soaked earth.
Draco gagged, tasting dirt and something metallic.
Then Mors pulled him up, spun him, and unleashed a torrent of spear strikes, each one precise, each one designed not to kill, but to inflict agonizing pain.
The silver spear, with its dragon engravings, became a blur.
It struck his ribs, his legs, his arms, tail, never quite breaking bone, but bruising, jarring, tearing at muscles.
It was a macabre dance of torment, Mors moving with impossible grace, Draco flinching, grunting, unable to defend against the sheer speed and precision.
One particularly brutal jab struck Draco’s midsection, forcing the air from his lungs in a painful gasp.
He stumbled backward, collapsing onto one knee.
His partial transformation flickered, most of the scales receding, and transformed limbs shrinking back into humanoid ones, all except his right hand.
He was battered, bleeding, broken.
His breath came in ragged gasps.
"Such a disappointing performance, dragon-kin," Mors mused, circling Draco like a shark.
"Is this the best your lineage has to offer? A flailing, pathetic child who can't even protect his own? Your blood is weak. Your spirit, fragile." He kicked Draco lightly in the side, sending him sprawling again.
"Perhaps it's time to end this charade. Your reinforcements, whoever they may be, clearly aren't coming fast enough."
Draco pushed himself onto his elbows, his eyes, blurred with pain and grief, fixed on Mors.
The full moon, high above, cast the champion in a silvered light, making the dragon engravings on his armor seem to pulse with a dark, malevolent energy.
Mors truly was a demon.
Every taunt, every casual murder, was designed to utterly annihilate not just his body, but his spirit.
Gritting his teeth, Draco forced himself up again, swaying precariously.
His body screamed for rest, for surrender, but the faces of his familia, the desperate pleas of the refugees, flashed before his eyes.
He wouldn’t break.
He couldn’t.
Not while they were still within the vicinity of this monster.
He closed his eyes for a fraction of a second, drawing on a wellspring of power he wanted to avoid using at all cost.
"You… will… not… break… me!" he snarled, each word a struggle against the pain.
Rage, pure and blinding, surged through Draco, momentarily eclipsing the agony in his body and mind.
It was a primal, draconic fury, unrefined but potent.
He pushed himself, his dragon-transformed right arm still black and scaled, now flexing, desperate for purchase.
His other limbs began to change too, scales erupting on his legs, his back, thicker and stronger, his spine elongating slightly.
His wound began healing at an accelerated rate.
His face distorted, eyes glowing, a faint, almost reptilian hiss escaping his throat.
"You… monster!" Draco roared, his voice layered with a bestial quality.
"Oh, a monster, am I?" Mors chuckled, nudging a shattered limb with the tip of his spear.
"And what does that make you, the one who just became a pulverizing agent of my wrath?"
Draco ignored the taunt, focusing all his remaining will on controlling the simmering rage from boiling into madness.
He needed to hit this bastard with some clarity of mind to be satisfied.
He needed to make him feel something and also buy time for his physical wounds to recover.
So with a surge of magic, he drew on the very essence of the earth, but this time, he didn't just summon spikes.
He willed the ground itself to become a weapon.
The earth around Mors churned and liquefied, then solidified into an immense, crushing fist that rose from below, aiming to clap him between two gargantuan stone palms.
Concurrently, Draco spun, wind magic swirling around him, compressing into razor-sharp blades that spun in a vortex, slicing through the air towards Mors.
His right hand, glowed with intense heat, and he unleashed a continuous torrent of condensed fire magic, a focused beam of pure plasma, aiming for Mors.
His left hand, began to shimmer with an azure light, gathering the water element to accelerate his healing.
Mors, for the first time, adjusted his stance.
Not out of concern, but perhaps a flicker of genuine interest in Draco’s emerging new form.
The earth fist slammed together with a deafening crunch, but Mors was no longer between its stone palms.
He had disappeared in an instant, leaving behind only an echoing afterimage.
The wind blades sliced through empty air, dissipating harmlessly.
The fiery plasma beam cut a searing line across the ground, melting the stone beneath it, but hit nothing.
He reappeared directly above Draco, descending like a dark angel of death.
The silver spear, which had seemed so casually held moments before, was now held aloft, tip pointed downwards, shimmering with a dark energy.
It wasn't a casual strike this time; it was a deliberate, overwhelming blow, designed to end the fight.
"You mistake rage for power, little dragon," Mors said, his voice now devoid of its previous playful malice, replaced by a chilling finality.
"Let me show you the difference."
The spear plunged.
Draco barely had time to react.
He instinctually brought up both his transformed, scaled arms, intersecting them above his head in a desperate block, calling upon every ounce of earth magic he possessed to harden his scales, to channel the resilience of the earth into his very bones.
His dragon heart thundered in his chest, screaming defiance.
KRA-KOOM!
The spear hit with the force of a meteor.
Draco’s arms splintered, the reinforced scales tearing, his bones screaming against the impossible pressure.
The ground beneath him cratered, a web of fissures spreading outwards.
He was driven deep into the earth, his legs buckling, muscles tearing.
The spear’s tip, still descending, tore through his shoulder, burrowing relentlessly.
A searing hot agony, unlike anything he had ever felt, flared through his entire being.
He howled, as his vision swam.
His blood, black against the pale moonlight, spewed from his grievous wound.
Mors pressed down, the tip of his spear grinding against bone, his expression utterly impassive. "You fight well for a child. You persist, even when broken. A true dragon trait, I suppose." He paused, leaning heavily on the spear, its weight pinning Draco to the ground.
"But mortal dragons can be chained, can be broken. And tonight, little dragon, you shall learn your place."
Draco coughed, more blood bubbling from his mouth.
His entire body trembled, wracked with unimaginable pain.
He could feel his life force draining, the overwhelming power of Mors crushing him, slowly, deliberately.
He tried to move, to lash out with a claw, to summon another burst of magic, but his body refused, battered and broken.
His dragon transformation flickered, struggling to maintain itself under the sheer force, his scales eroding, his human-like skin pushing through the cracks.
Mors leaned closer, his voice dropping to a whisper, a chilling caress of sound.
"And do you know what the worst part is, dragon boy? They are still evacuating. They are still running. But they will never be truly safe. Not from me. Not from the Evilus. You bought them time, yes. But time runs out for everyone eventually."
A cold, agonizing despair settled over Draco.
He had pushed himself to the very limit, sacrificed everything, endured unspeakable pain, only to be utterly dominated.
He was like a broken toy, discarded and humiliated.
He raised his head, defiance still burning in his eyes, even as his vision blurred.
He locked eyes with the monster above him, and through the pain, through the horror, he found a sliver of resolve.
He was going to unleash his own monster……
A/N: Ugh, this was crazy long to write, barely was able to capture what I envisioned in words. Battle scenes are crazy hard to write…..
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