The dragon’s massive body, covered in cracked and chipped armour, toppled down from the sky, extreme winds howling around him.
His crystal horns glowed even brighter than before, shining as if he had small stars imbued within them.
The winds around him immediately started to calm down, the loud howling slowly quieting as the dragon flapped his wings, stabilizing himself in the air.
His two eyes scanned around, the golden glow radiation out of them piercing through the clouds like roentgen rays.
There were no signs of the wyrm around him. Even their aura vanished in the shroud of their domain.
To prepare for an attack, Vesuvius opened his mouth with heat radiating out, immediately evaporating all of the snowflakes before him.
Multiple magical square-shaped diagrams started to flare up in his mouth, brightly glowing.
Then a crooked neon-red star formed in his mouth, the vile cursed mana bursting out of the cursed heart beating within his chest, flowing through his veins and powering it up.
“Such crude magic, it looks like multiple spells hammered together”, a voice carried by a wind entered his ears from all directions at once, making it impossible to determine its origin.
The dragon strained his senses to the maximum, waiting for the wyrm to appear, his heart beating loudly with all of the adrenaline flowing through his veins. He was enjoying the fight, knowing that he was unlikely to die.
It was common for draconic races to fight against each other, beating themself up to close to their death, but it seldom went too far as one of them dying.
‘They are just messing with me. They didn’t even use their domain to attack me.’ Vesuvius felt shivers pass down his body, imagining the massive storm attacking him, the winds and lightning pelting his body continuously from every direction.
Suddenly immensely powerful magical waves flared up in the distance with a brightly glowing dot appearing on the horizon. The dot quickly started to brighten up and grow.
His eyes went wide, but before he could even move his body out of the way, the dot grew into a bright beam of concentrated lightning, water, snow and winds that drew a long glowing line across the whole sky.
He could only close his eyes and mouth and feed all of his mana into his scales.
At once, the beam hit him into his bulky armoured torso burning through his armour instantly and blasting against his scales.
His scales flashed in the light, his mana flowing through them and fighting against the unending beam.
His scales started to bend and creak, incredible pain erupting through his whole body. The electricity passed through him, his bones safely absorbing it and preventing it from reaching any of his organs.
He couldn’t even open his eyes as the lightning kept surging around him. He flapped his wings and tried to move out of the way, but the beam of lightning mercilessly followed him and each of his moves, quickly eating through his reserves of mana as he fed it all to his scales and nanites.
‘This is why dodging builds are bad for me. Some attacks like light or lightning are simply too fast to avoid.’
He kept desperately flapping his wings, trying to escape the unstopping beam as he started to panic for the first time, his fear quickly returning, ‘How far do they want to take this?!’
He knew that he had to counterattack and quickly too! He couldn’t risk opening his mouth and facing the beam, so he turned his head backwards and pushed as much mana as he could afford to his horns and breath glands.
He opened his mouth, and superhot blue flames burst out of his mouth, passing through the squares and concentrating into a beam thick as a watermelon.
The pure blue beam with golden lines in it burst out of his mouth, and then his horns flashed, the beam bending in midair and changing its direction towards the source of the lightning beam.
He couldn’t see but his other senses allowed him to still aim towards the source of the magic.𝒪𝓥xt.𝑶
It was easy to control the elements he summoned as they were his own from the very beginning. It was also easy to control natural ones and those that mortals summoned.
He could easily imagine himself stopping a fireball in midair just with a single thought.
However, it was extremely hard to wrestle control from the ancient wyrm, making it impossible for him to deflect the beam constantly hitting him.
The second blue line was drawn across the sky, vanishing into the distance, its effects obscured by countless layers of clouds in its path. It carried immense energy, boosted by his skills, fire core and titles.
Even the pouch of the dragon’s treasures hidden in his clawed hand constantly raised its power, turning it into a thin but highly potent beam.
The two lines kept glowing in the sky, the bright light radiating from them visible even through the thick clouds and snow.
Suddenly the storm beam changed its angle.
The wyrm likely moved to avoid the beam of fire. The dragon quickly redirected his beam, following the origin point of the lightning beam.
Both the dragon and wyrm flew across the sky, beaming at each other with their beams, flashes of light from their fight constantly pulling on the sky.
Vesuvius was quickly burning through his mana, his scales deforming with most of his armour already gone.
He ached with pain as he was constantly getting injured and then regenerating.
He flapped his wings with his remaining powers volcanic explosion booming across the sky as he boosted himself towards the wyrm hidden between the clouds, knowing that his only hope to win it was by getting into close-range combat where wyrms lacked.
All of the wind currents around him listened to his command as he got propelled forwards without stopping his beam attack.
He kept flapping his wings faster and faster, but the origin of the lightning beam wasn’t getting any closer.
Vesuvius already felt desperate, knowing he had no way to win, ‘If wyrm wanted, they could likely target my wings, turning me into a sitting duck, but they are just messing around.’
His body was already on fire, with so much mana surging through it.
“I have seen enough. Let’s stop this!” Finally, the beam of lightning got extinguished, followed by the beam of blue fire.
The storm immediately calmed down, everything turning dark and quiet.
The wyrm with their body still pristine, their scales glittering in the occasional lightning strikes, without even a single scratch of blemish. They slowly and nonchalantly flapped their wings, each of their moves carrying an elegance of a ballerina and the ferociousness of a predator.
On the other side, the dragon was in pain and tired. His mana reserves were almost gone but were quickly recovering thanks to his reactor-like body.
He wanted to just land on the ground and rest, but he refused, steeling his resolve not to disgrace himself by showing any weakness in front of the wyrm.
The wyrm spoke, their voice not carrying any sign of mocking but a slight indication of respect, “You definitely have more than enough raw power for your age, yet you lack in your techniques. They are crude. As expected of a young true dragon.”
“We wyrms always lacked this raw power, so we refined each of our techniques and magic into perfection. I am already surprised that you, a dragon, even show interest in learning this.”
The wyrm stopped not too far from the dragon, their golden eyes sparkling with lightning pressing against the dragon.
None of them spoke as they stared at each other, their auras slightly pushing against each other until finally, the wyrm spoke again.
“This fight brought its worth. I have already found three relatively easy ways to improve your combat with magic. “
Vesuvius perked up at these words, even the pain subsiding as he realized that the fight wasn’t just for the wyrm to beat him but served the purpose of helping him.
‘Well, who am I lying to? They could likely get this information without beating me so much…’
POV ???:
A young man with a scarf tied around his mouth in unassuming travelling clothes walked through the plains filled with nothing but ash and cooled down lava.
The cold wind of the late autumn was blowing ash clouds into the air, making it hard to see forwards.
A small group of heavily equipped mercenaries followed close behind him, their metallic armours clanging as they marched.
The young man kept waving his hand over the unending ash field as if trying to feel for some invisible force.
‘Nothing, there is nothing.’
He looked towards the horizon, but he couldn’t see far through all of the ash in the air. He stepped forwards, continuing his search.
“Wait, sir, maybe we should turn back. The deeper we get, the more dangerous it will be.” one of the mercenaries shouted behind him, the fear perpetrating through his voice.
“Nonsense! Captain, we can’t stop. I paid you enough, so we will continue.”
The mercenary just sighed in resignation and followed behind his employer.