Chapter 429
Gliding near the ceiling of the boss room, Draco allowed his momentum to stall.
His heart hammered against his ribs, but beneath the frantic rhythm, his thoughts cut through the panic.
He was dissecting his failures.
He was analyzing why his carefully choreographed strategies had been ineffective against Alfia so far.
And the answer struck him, like a bolt of lightning.
The truth was glaringly simple: he had been fighting with an invisible anchor, crippling himself by being overly cautious.
He had approached the battle like a chess player terrified of losing a rook, perpetually bracing for a counterattack that never quite matched his fears, yet always managing to keep him on the back foot.
The fact that Alfia could launch her devastating sound magic from any direction, albeit within a limited range, should not have come as a shock.
It was Alfia……a genius mage, a combatant of legendary pedigree.
It should have been anticipated.
Unlike their past skirmish, this time, Alfia had no reason to hold back against him.
She was fighting with the full weight of her overwhelming capability.
Yet, Draco reminded himself, his own magic possessed no such restrictive tethers.
He was not bound to a tight radius.
He could launch elemental spells from virtually anywhere in the room…...and beyond its physical boundaries, if he pushed himself to reach further.
Furthermore, while Alfia’s magic-nullifying armor was undeniably troublesome, it shared a fundamental flaw with his own dragon spirit transformation: it demanded a staggering expenditure of mind to maintain.
The distinction was merely structural.
Alfia’s spell functioned as a limiter-type skill, ruthlessly suppressing variables, while his own was an enhancer-type, pushing his biology past its breaking point.
Both drained their users at an alarming rate.
If that was the truth, what logical point was there in holding back?
Even if Alfia possessed a superior mind pool, or a higher baseline efficiency, wouldn’t defeating her swiftly….before either of them ran out of steam……solve the entire equation?
And what of his lingering dread that the Dungeon might spawn a Juggernaut in response to the massive destruction?
Draco scoffed mentally at his own hesitation.
Was a rogue automated executioner truly scarier than the living legend standing directly beneath him?
On the 49th floor, the apex of what the Dungeon could spontaneously generate was, at best, a Level 7 equivalent Juggernaut.
Dangerous, yes.
Fatal, potentially.
But entirely manageable compared to the terror of Alfia.
‘Perhaps because I haven't fought a truly superior opponent in the past few years, my combat instincts have dulled significantly’ Draco mused, letting out a dry, self-reproaching chuckle that echoed softly in the cavernous space.
The realization that his cautious approach was entirely unwarranted brought a strange, intoxicating sense of liberation.
The invisible shackles of hesitation simply dissolved.
‘Besides, if the absolute worst happens, I can always use that skill’ Draco thought, glancing briefly inward at the trump card he had hoped to keep buried.
The pure excitement for battle……an instinctual thrill that had, somewhere along the line, been choked out by creeping panic….reignited within his chest with a sudden, ferocious heat.
The unconscious terror of getting hurt, the dread of death, the visceral fear of losing everything...... it all vanished, burned away by a sudden, cooling clarity.
Tucking his wings tightly against his back, Draco allowed gravity to reclaim him.
He dropped like a stone.
Boom!
His talons impacted the flooring with bone-shattering force, instantly fracturing the ground into a spider web of deep fissures and kicking up a dense, blinding cloud of dust.
Naturally, he had calculated his descent to land well outside Alfia’s five-meter zone.
There was no tactical wisdom in handing her a free opportunity to intercept his recovery.
As the dust began to settle, Alfia stood unfazed, her posture upright and immaculate.
"So, are you done flailing around... whelp?" Alfia asked, her piercing eyes narrowing slightly as she noted the subtle, fundamental shift in his demeanor.
The frantic desperation that had previously defined his movements was entirely gone.
In its place was something far more dangerous.
"I sincerely apologize for my sorry display earlier," Draco replied, his voice deep and rumbling. He engaged his partial dragon transformation solely to retract his wings, folding them away entirely so they would not get in the way.
"From now on... I will be coming at you with the intent to die trying."
Alfia let out a cold, humorless scoff.
"Hmf. As if you weren't already."
She tilted her chin up slightly.
"But it doesn't matter. The outcome won't change in the slightest."
"I beg to differ. Things will be much different from now on," Draco replied, a wide, razor-edged grin splitting his features.
Immediately, the magic flaring around him sputtered and died out like a torch plunged into water.
The dull brown scales of his transformation shifted rapidly, shedding their earthy hue and returning to their natural, deep obsidian finish.
Draco hadn't made a mistake; he had deliberately deactivated his spirit transformation.
Not only was the technique guzzling his mind at an unsustainable rate, but its physical activation speed was simply too sluggish to cope with Alfia's terrifying reflexes.
No matter how swiftly he cast and hurled his earth magic, Alfia was reacting equally as fast……if not faster.
There was simply a hard limit to how fast a heavy, solid mass of earth could travel, even when artificially accelerated by magic.
And Alfia’s reaction time comfortably surpassed that ceiling.
If spell speed was the deciding factor, maintaining the earth dragon hybrid form was nothing more than a handicap.
Instead, it made far more sense to fight without it, relying instead on his innate physiology. While doing so would technically increase his surface area and make him a larger target, channeling a bit of extra mind into his Magic Skin development ability would somewhat compensate for the exposure.
Magic Skin was an ability he had unlocked just before his grueling five-year hibernation.
Its baseline mechanics were deceptively simple: it passively conjured an ultra-thin, nearly invisible field of ambient magic around his skin, granting him baseline resistance to both physical blows and magical assaults.
However, the skill possessed an active component as well.
By actively infusing a stream of mind into the field, he could dramatically amplify its density and resistance.
It wasn't flashy, but it was brutally practical.
Undoing his partial transformation entirely, Draco’s limbs snapped back to their baseline proportions.
Then, to Alfia’s utter bewilderment, he began unfastening his armor and stripping off his clothes.
The bizarre action brought her short-lived monologue to a grinding halt.
For a fleeting second, her cool composure cracked, replaced by a sense of confusion.
She could easily have capitalized on his bizarre vulnerability, launching a volley of sound magic while his hands were occupied with his belt, but she held her fire.
Curiosity simply outweighed her killer instinct.
Besides, she found herself feeling strangely generous.
Ever since Draco had deactivated his spirit dragon transformation, the relentless, voice of the corrupted spirit echoing in the back of her mind had mysteriously quieted.
The sudden abatement of that psychic torment created a soothing wave of relief…..an intoxicating reprieve, akin to a blinding, chronic migraine suddenly vanishing.
"Gospel," Alfia muttered softly, snapping her fingers toward a secondary target.
A localized wave of compressed sound shot sideways, bypassing Draco entirely to strike the mutilated, female body type that had just regained its senses and dragged itself back to its feet.
The destructive shockwave slammed directly into the regenerating body and the stray Fomoire swarming it.
Boom!
The female body type was violently lofted into the air, hurtling backward down the room until it crashed heavily against the threshold leading to the 50th floor.
It was Alfia’s blunt way of telling the monster to remove itself before the collateral damage of Draco’s upcoming gambit obliterated what was left of it.
Missing a massive chunk of its torso, the female body type didn't waste time trying to heal; it desperately squeezed its mangled frame through the narrow exit before its regeneration kick in.
Draco watched the spectacle out of the corner of his eye.
While he filed away the bizarre dynamic between Alfia and the female body type for later analysis, he had far more pressing concerns.
Stripped down to his basic undergarments, Draco balled up his discarded clothes and hurled them toward the opposite end of the room…..the entry point of the 49th floor.
With a flick of his wrist, he wove a thread of wind magic around the bundle, carrying it far out of harm's way.
What he was about to unleash would generate a great amount of destruction.
When the dust finally settled, he still preferred to have a wearable set of clothes waiting for him. Waking up victorious on the deep floors only to have to hike back up to the surface entirely naked was a bridge too far, even for his hardened sensibilities.
"Why didn’t you attack?" Draco asked, unable to completely suppress his curiosity as he turned back to face her.
He had practically gift-wrapped a moment of vulnerability, and a combatant of her caliber could easily have capitalized on it to inflict grievous, if not fatal, wounds.
Of course, "vulnerability" was a relative term.
Even stripped down and casual, Draco’s senses had never truly relaxed; he was primed to spring at the slightest hostile twitch.
To his surprise, Alfia answered his inquiry with a dry, sarcastic counter-question.
"Does someone of my caliber really need to resort to such cowardly, opportunistic means to put down a whelp like you?" she asked, her chin lifting with haughty disdain.
Draco let out a sharp breath of laughter.
"Hmm. Fair enough."
It was undeniable; Alfia had held superiority throughout their entire exchange thus far.
Without wasting another heartbeat, Draco finally let go.
His body erupted.
A suffocating, oppressive draconic aura flooded the room, thick enough to make the air visibly ripple with phantom heat.
The interior of the boss room groaned in protest as the temperature spiked.
Draco’s physical frame began to pop and snap, bones audibly breaking, shifting, and fusing together in a violent cascade of reconfiguration.
His mass swelled exponentially, shooting upward until he towered at a staggering twenty meters in height.
Even then, it was a restrained size…..a clever technique he had painfully learned from Aasterinian during their journey back to Orario, utilizing a hybridized synthesis of partial and full dragon transformation abilities to control his true body.
In place of the human-sized warrior stood a nightmare made flesh.
A massive, wingless dragon occupied the space, its heavy, muscular torso supported by four thick, powerful limbs tipped with dagger-like, obsidian talons.
Interlocking, dense scales covered its entire body, gleaming with a dark, light-devouring sheen that screamed impenetrable.
A majestic, horned head crowned the behemoth, featuring two sweeping, curved horns, slitted crimson eyes that burned with intelligence, and jaws lined with rows of serrated teeth.
A deep rumble vibrated through the floor with every breath the beast drew, and the ambient aura it leaked was suffocating.
Instinct overriding conscious thought, Draco threw his massive head back and unleashed a deafening roar that violently shook the foundations of the entire 49th floor, sending loose rocks cascading from the ceiling.
Yet, the display failed to rattle Alfia in the slightest.
If anything, she looked mildly inconvenienced, as if a particularly loud dog had begun barking outside her window.
"So, is that it?" Alfia’s voice rang out, effortlessly cutting through the lingering echoes of the dragon's roar.
"Was turning into this overgrown lizard really worth wasting my time?"
Draco closed his massive jaw, lowering his gaze to lock onto her tiny, fragile-looking form.
"Do not take this form lightly," Draco growled, his voice vibrating through the stone floor like a localized earthquake.
"Lest you come to severely regret it."
Alfia scoffed softly, raising a single, slender hand to point directly at his snout.
Magic pooled around her fingertips.
"Gospel," she whispered.
Instantly, a concentrated wave of sound erupted forward, tearing through the air like an invisible cannon aimed squarely between Draco's eyes.
Draco didn’t bother dodging, nor did he blink.
With casual movement, he whipped his massive, spiked tail through the air, intercepting the sound wave dead-center.
Boom!
The collision of appendage and condensed magic triggered a concussive blast wave.
But the shockwave simply dissipated into nothingness.
Draco’s tail remained entirely unmarked, not a single scale out of place.
Draco pulled his tail back, flashing a row of terrifying, dagger-like teeth in a smirk.
"See?" Draco mocked, his deep voice dripping with overwhelming confidence.
Alfia’s eyes narrowed by a fraction of a millimeter.
For the first time, a genuine flicker of acknowledgment crossed her features.
"It would seem you weren't lying," Alfia conceded quietly, her expression returning to its customary, chilling indifference.
"However... this still changes nothing. If resistance is what you prefer, I can simply increase the potency of my attacks."
"True," Draco rumbled, shifting his massive weight as magic around his body began to violently churn and whip around his obsidian scales in a raging tempest.
"But so can I."…….
A/N: Sorry my dear readers, never planned for the fight to draw out this much, yet somehow it did. I will wrap it all up by the next chapter, so we can move on with the story.
The whole Alfia thing was a spontaneous idea……. additionally Alfia as a creature seemed like an interesting romantic interest down the line.
If you readers don’t like it, she can be killed off during this fight's conclusion……lemme know your thoughts.
Feel free to read ahead on pat3on, donate and read 2 extra chapters as a free member.