For a moment, Ethan’s mind was completely overwhelmed.
The moment those words echoed in his mind, any doubt he had left disappeared. He was now certain of it. The silver-haired man had looked at him earlier... and spoken to him.
But how?
The ancient magic, the unfamiliar kingdoms and the landscapes he had seen all suggested that these events had taken place centuries before the Solaris Empire was established, perhaps even further back. Whoever this man was, he should have been long gone.
Question after question rose in his mind, but Ethan knew that no matter how much he thought about it, he wouldn’t find the answers... at least not for now.
Putting his thoughts aside, he focused on the battle once again.
The silver-haired man’s stance lowered. The runes along his black blade began to glow brighter, and the air around him grew heavier with every passing second.
Then he moved.
And for the first time since the battle had begun, Ethan watched the man perform a technique, one that made his heart race.
Heavenly Rakshasa Art
First Form: Demon-Devouring Fang
His figure blurred.
The dragon swung its claws to meet him, but the man was no longer there. His blade struck the narrow gap between the scales behind its knee, then the thin cartilage beneath its shoulder joint, then the back of its left elbow. Every strike landed on the same few weak points, again and again, never wasting a swing on the dragon’s armoured scales.
The dragon roared and lashed out with its tail, but each time it turned, he was already somewhere else.
Then Ethan noticed something.
Each time the man prepared to strike, the dragon flinched, its body reacting before the blade had even started moving, as if it had already been cut. Every strike carried the man’s entire strength and focus, gathered into a single point.
Had Ethan possessed the strength of his past life, he could have performed something similar. But to do so, he would have had to unlock his will or the power of his domain. This man wasn’t using either of them. Apart from his sword, he was relying only on his physical strength, and even the aura he used was barely more than the minimum.
How...?
Ethan couldn’t understand exactly how the man was doing it. He couldn’t perceive it properly, no matter how hard he tried... but he didn’t care. He simply kept watching.
He had always believed his movements were efficient. He had trained them for years and refined them through every fight. But watching this man, he could see exactly where he wasted his strength. The extra steps he took to reposition. The small, unnecessary adjustments in his hips whenever he changed direction. The force he lost when redirecting or blocking a strike.
Each of those differences was almost negligible on its own. Yet put together, those minute changes produced an entirely different result.
Everything he had thought was refined suddenly looked crude.
He followed the man’s footwork, the angle of his wrist before each strike, the moment his weight shifted from one foot to the other. Even if he couldn’t understand everything now, he etched every detail into his mind. He could make sense of it later... but this chance might never come again.
The dragon was bleeding heavily now.
Thin cuts ran across its scales, and dark blood dripped onto the burning ground. Its crimson eyes burned with humiliation and rage.
ROOOAAARRR!
It roared, and the pressure around its body exploded outward.
The demonic energy wrapped around its limbs swelled until the air itself turned black. Its draconic mana surged alongside it, and the two forces twisted together into a storm that tore the land apart. The plains split open for miles. Columns of lava burst into the sky. The mountains of bones collapsed one after another, crushed beneath the weight of its power.
Then the dragon charged.
Every swing of its claws carried enough force to level a medium-sized city. Black fire poured from its mouth in between strikes, while crimson-black chains erupted from the ground beneath the man’s feet.
The man gripped his blade with both hands.
Second Form: Purgatory Crescent
The blade swept outward.
Ethan couldn’t follow it. He only caught the afterimage of a single arc that seemed to connect the earth to the sky.
The chains shattered. The black fire split apart as if it had struck an invisible wall. And the dragon’s claws, which had been descending towards the man’s head, were knocked aside as the armour of demonic energy across its chest split open in a straight line. The dragon was sent flying back, crashing into the burning plains far in the distance.
Ethan stared at the man.
Until now, his strikes had been calm, almost lazy. But in that strike, Ethan had felt his power rise. Not wildly, and not all at once, but just enough to meet the dragon’s power. Even now, the man had yet to properly bring out his true strength.
The realisation sent a chill through Ethan.
Had it been this dragon at Northwatch instead of Mythralis, the fortress would have been wiped out in seconds, even if Marcus and Evelyn had gone all out. Even the Sword Saint or Iris would have had to go all out, or at the very least bring out a considerable amount of their power, just to fight this beast.
The dragon dragged itself up from the ground.
It didn’t retreat. It couldn’t. Even after becoming a Demonic Dragon, it still retained its enormous draconic pride.
It gathered every scrap of draconic mana and demonic energy it had left, compressing all of it into a pitch-black orb at the centre of its chest. The air around it twisted and warped as the orb grew denser and denser, ready to be unleashed in a single final attack.
The silver-haired man watched it calmly.
Then he lifted his blade high above his head.
Heavenly Rakshasa Art
Fifth Form: Demon King’s Descent
The moment the blade began to fall, the world changed.
A pressure unlike anything Ethan had felt in either of his lifetimes descended across the crimson land. It wasn’t like Dragon Fear, nor was it like the authority. It was far heavier and far more ancient, as though it looked down upon everything in existence, and no one was worthy of crossing paths with it.
Unlike before, the moment felt as though it was moving slowly, so slowly that it almost hurt to watch. Yet at the same time, it moved incredibly fast, as if the man was teaching him.
Ethan watched the form as it moved, his mind desperately trying to etch every part of it into memory. Just by looking at it, he could feel his comprehension deepening with every passing moment, even if he couldn’t grasp all of it yet.
Finally, the blade fell.
BOOOM!
The orb at the dragon’s chest froze.
A crack appeared across its surface. Then another. Within moments, it fractured into countless pieces before dissolving into dust.
The two forces never even clashed. The black armour covering the dragon vanished, followed by the crimson-black energy coating its claws. Every trace of demonic power it had gathered was wiped away in an instant, leaving only its scaled body behind, exposed and smoking.
Ethan stared at the dragon in disbelief.
The dense demonic energy it had fused so seamlessly with its draconic power, the energy that had made even its smaller body strong enough to match the man blow for blow... all of it had been erased with a single strike, as if it had never existed in the first place.
The dragon staggered.
It looked down at its own hands, as though it couldn’t understand what had just happened.
And then Ethan saw it.
For the briefest moment, something flickered in the dragon’s crimson eyes.
It wasn’t fury or madness.
It was the fear of death.
The dragon finally realised that the man standing before it now was not the same one it had once fought as an equal... and that it could never hope to defeat him.
Panic seized the dragon, and its body began to change once more.
Its humanoid form swelled and stretched as its wings burst from its back. With every passing heartbeat, its frame grew larger until the colossal dragon once again towered over the plains. It beat its wings violently and turned away.
Ethan could hardly believe what he was witnessing.
The dragon was trying to escape.
None of the dragons he had known would ever do such a thing. Not even in the records he had read had he ever come across something like this.
The silver-haired man stopped.
His golden eyes shifted towards Ethan... as if making sure he was watching.
Then he shifted his stance.
The moment Ethan saw it, he froze.
That stance...
From the angle of his feet to the position of his blade, everything was familiar. It was the one form Ethan had performed more than any other, so many times that he could perform it even in his sleep. It was rooted in his very instincts.
T-The Mountain Cleaving Strike?
Before the dragon could finish turning, the silver-haired man was already above it, his blade raised high overhead.
The sword came down.
SHHRRRK!
For an instant, nothing seemed to happen.
Then a thin line of light appeared at the crown of the dragon’s head, running down its neck and along its spine until it reached the very tip of its tail.
The dragon froze in mid-air, its wings still half spread in an escape it would never complete.
Then, slowly, its massive body split in two.
The two halves crashed into the plains on either side. Yet the strike’s force had not ended with the dragon. The ground beneath it split apart with a deafening roar, a vast chasm tearing across the crimson landscape and stretching far into the distance. Even the clouds overhead parted along the same line, as though the blade had cleaved the sky itself.
———
The silver-haired man landed and lowered his blade. A moment later, the black weapon dissolved into motes of light and vanished from his hand.
His clothes were torn in several places, and a few shallow cuts marked his shoulders and arms. Yet his expression remained as calm as it had been at the beginning, as though he had merely completed an ordinary task.
Slowly, he turned his head, and once again, his golden eyes found Ethan.
The coldness had left them, and the corners of his lips lifted slightly as he spoke.
"Grow stronger..."
W-Who are you...? Ethan thought.
Then the memory began to crack.
Fine lines spread across the crimson sky, across the burning plains, across the two halves of the fallen dragon. Then, all at once, everything shattered like glass.
Ethan found himself back in the grey expanse.
The black sphere still hung before him. The final strand of purple mist remained coiled around it, barely holding together. The will lingering within it had weakened so much that Ethan could scarcely sense its presence anymore.
The Unknown Energy closed in one final time, consuming the remaining strand until it disappeared completely.
A wave of warmth spread outward from the black sphere, flowing through Ethan’s restored pathways and strengthened body.
Then, the grey expanse began to crack.