"Human happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected."
― George Washington
***
My world was lit aflame by a roaring tempest of hellish flames, blasting every inch of my body with unimaginable agony. It felt as if the air, the very mana around me, wanted me dead.
A couple of seconds later, the incoming heat dissipated. I could feel my burnt skin and the unmistakable agony of an unfamiliar mana trying to creep into my body, licking at my burnt flesh and burrowing into my mana pathways. It hurt like hell... maybe even worse.
I ground my teeth hard and tried to push myself off the ground, taking a shaky step to stand up. I tilted my head and looked at the bastard in front.
The dragon's orifices were still billowing out with lingering flames and scorching mana. It gradually calmed its overflowing mana and looked at my figure, then the bastard widened its maw, as if trying to grin.
Never in my life had I hated any being more than this lizard; it probably recognised my mana signature and my sword techniques, which were unmistakably a sign of the Duskblades. It was provoking me, trying to rattle me... or just revelling in my misfortune.
The facial wound I had given it was already starting to heal, but noticeably slower than earlier; it was a point-blank attack after all.
Rage was all I could feel at that instant, rage at my incompetence, rage at being weaker than this wretch, and rage for what this creature had done to me and my family. The flame of wrath was burning wildly in my mind and heart. After seeing the bastard's grinning maw, it eventually reached a state that could be called the truest embodiment of the word 'wrath'.
My features relaxed, and a focused expression crossed my face. It didn't matter what I had to do; I just wanted to kill this creature, even if I had to carve my flesh and rend my bones in the process. I wanted to feel its blood dripping on my body, its flesh in my hands, and its bones under my feet.
That was the sole reason for my existence; nothing else mattered, not myself, not the world. The only thing left in my eyes was butchering this creature to death, even if I had to die in the process.
Releasing mana through my body in torrents to numb the pain and relieve some of the damage, I grabbed the hilt of my sword tightly and began stepping forward.
[Haze embodiment]
My blade heart pulsed, and a ripple of blade lights flashed around my body. The armour encasing my body shattered and reformed into a skin of blade lights encasing my sword. The blade in my hands became reddish yellow, akin to the last rays of sunlight at the horizon.
This was the awakened form that every person in the haze or the mana law realm attained enlightenment in, and as my haze was built around the law of speed, my embodiment naturally reflected it. Absolute speed trumps everything else. If nothing could touch me, why would I need armour to protect me? I only needed my blade and my body to sweep through everything in the world.
My scorched hair started floating, and my body began to blur. Afterimages began forming where I had stepped earlier, and the place I would plant my foot next.
Seeing this, the dragon responded in kind.
It opened its jaw and roared at me, then flames began dancing around its form. Gradually, its flesh and the fire around it couldn't be distinguished anymore. Then, the raging flames started to tighten and compress into a pulsing white-red glow, and what emerged from it was something I hadn't expected.
A man with ungodly features encased in tiny reddish purple scales, wearing a thin beastpelt at his waist and bare-chested, walked out of the flames. The side of the man's face was torn off, and flesh was continuously regenerating, trying to mend itself.
A long, thin tail covered in the same scales jutted from his tailbone. It whipped back and forth, leaving booming sounds in the air.
[Rampage form]
Seeing this sight, my face didn't twitch a muscle. I slowly brought some of my blood from the wounds and smeared it on my chest, right above my heart.
As the blood splattered across my chest, a tiny tattoo of an eye right above my heart pulsed, then, overflowing mana and life force from the quintessence stones in the dimensional pocket began pouring into my body.
A sigh of relief left my mouth as I began sprinting forward. The wind whipped my body and then went quiet as I pushed my own mana outwards, trying to surround myself so that the scene from earlier didn't happen again, and even if it did, I'd have a slight stopgap to react.
Seeing me approach, the man let out a growl, then he also erupted forward with his fingers drawn back, nails as long as swords, jetting out of his fingers.
Booming shockwaves erupted from both our speeding bodies, and as I drew near, a fleeting thought crossed my mind.
'Should I use the space-tearing strike?... The chances of failure are nearly 90%... forget it... duskblade sword it is...'
The problem with using that strike from earlier was that the spatial points I tried to connect had nearly stable ambient mana. Aside from that, I had to concentrate for a couple of seconds to sense the spatial nodes and perfectly connect them, in a fast-paced battle like this one, which was a sure-fire way to die.
Leaving that faint thought behind, I planted my feet on the ground and pushed nearly 50% of the inflowing mana through the quintessence stones into my legs and blasted forward.
The world blurred as I pushed the rest of the incoming mana into my blade and clashed with the dragon.
[Duskblade fourth form - illusory sword ]
My figure split into several dozen figures, and all of my phantoms attacked from differing angles with different motions.
Some of them slashed ahead, some stabbed, some bent low and aimed at the man's torso diagonally, while some jumped up and prepared to pierce down at the man.
All of the phantoms were real, and each one carried at least 90% of my power.
As the man saw this, his eyes constricted, and he began to unravel his dominion in a flurry.
There was a slight delay in the man's movement, which was unnatural. Sensing something amiss, I prepared to clash using my own dominion.
Just then, the ambient mana churned and pressed down on my figure. Just as I had predicted from the clues, this must be one of the abilities of the 'will' we had researched over the millennia.
All other phantoms of myself froze for a split second, but my figure didn't stop, just as the dominion of the man was about to erupt, my blade heart beat like a drum, and I poured all of my reserves of mana into my next attack.
The world slowed to a crawl as my unblinking eyes honed in on every twitch, every movement, every single fluctuation of the mana about to erupt from the man.
Sensing the minute opening that comes before the deployment of a dominion, I erupted with one of my strongest attacks.
[Duskblade fifth form - netherworld annihilation ]
The world went silent as a wave of darkness engulfed my blade, which went whistling straight towards the man's neck.