The night sky flashed with dragon fire as Nom-Nom hovered high above the treeline, her four black wings spread wide.
She lifted her hand before extending two fingers.
"Here goes..." she said.
- FWOOOOOOOM!!
A surge of draconic fire ripped from her fingertips like a shooting start, carving through the night in a straight line aimed directly at my face.
"Nice!" I yelled, grinning like an idiot.
45 MP surged into the cloak all at once.
And -
-WHOOSH!!
… my entire body shot sideways at 25 meters per second.
The air screamed past my ears as the flames scorched through the air where I'd been a heartbeat earlier.
My vision flickered as Precognition flared with a two-second flash of Nom-Nom's next angle of attack.
"Bring it!" I shouted as my hands moved on instinct, feeding five MP into the spell before unleashing the Gatling gun.
- PAPAPAPAPAPAPAPAPAPA-!!
A torrent of AP Ice Pebbles erupted from my hands so fast they blurred into a white line, each one leaving a tiny sonic crack.
Nom-Nom's wings flared as she moved.
No… she disappeared.
- BOOM-!!
A shockwave burst behind her as she broke the sound barrier, sliding sideways like a streak of lightning.
My volley carved through the empty sky.
And the next second, Precognition flashed again.
[Above!]
I frantically kicked the air, skidding backward as a surge of violet fire ripped downward past me before scorching through the canopy below.
"Woo! Now, you're just trying to crisp me!"
"I'm not!" she called back, and she sounded genuinely distressed about it. "I am aiming near you!"
"That was not near me!!"
"You moved into the fire!"
"That's…!! Okay, that's actually fair."
She giggled mid-air before vanishing again with another sonic boom, and reappeared behind me with a rush of wind.
Precognition screamed a warning, and I twisted before a fire coated hand skimmed past my hood.
I retaliated with a spray of ice pebbles that turned the night into a glittering hailstorm.
And she dodged all of them.
All. Of. Them.
Dipping between them with the fluidity of a creature who'd lived five centuries in the sky. Every dodge left a trail of shimmering purple as her wings sliced through the air.
"You're cheating!!" I yelled.
"I am simply flying!" she chirped.
"That's cheating!!"
"Then you are cheating too, Master!"
She swooped past me and poked my cheek as she flew by at Mach speeds.
That's right, she poked me.
At Mach.
Yeah, I didn't know how that worked either.
"Now you're just messing with me!"
"I would never mock you," she said sweetly, already charging fire at her fingertips. "I am simply enjoying myself."
"Yeah, well ENJOY THIS!!"
I pumped another 5 MP into the spell and unleashed the full-auto storm.
This time, I let Precognition track her blur. It wasn't perfect, but enough.
A dozen shots clipped her as she gasped in delight.
"You hit me!"
"YES!!"
"That is wonderful, Master!"
Then she stopped.
Mid-air… no wingbeats... or sound.
"Master," she said with the gentlest smile in the universe, "I will now go… a little faster."
"…faster than what you're already doing?"
"Yes."
"How much faster?"
"Yes."
And before I could fully process that philosophical threat -
- BOOOOOOM-!!!!
She vanished, leaving behind an explosive shockwave so violent that it flipped my entire body end-over-end.
"OH COME ON!!!"
Precognition tried to warn me.
It really did.
But it only managed a single, panicked instinct:
Above you.
I looked up.
Nom-Nom was a purple streak, reappearing directly over my head…
"Master~"
"AAAAA!"
And –
BOOP
She booped my nose… At Mach 2.
If she hadn't held back, that would've been the end of the story, roll credits, Nico deleted from existence.
She cupped her hands proudly.
"You lasted much longer than before," she said, glowing with praise.
"I…" gasp "…was…" wheeze "... Trying… NOT… to DIE."
She floated down until we were face to face, eyes warm and absolutely smug.
"This is very fun," she said, "... but you are still too slow."
"Oh, really? Because I thought I was doing gre- "
And then she tapped my cheek with a single finger.
Lightly… Gently.
But the mana that gentle tap carried spiraled me 30 meters backward through the sky like a kicked pebble.
"YEP… OKAY, " I tumbled. "NOTE TAKEN… NOM-NOM IS A FIGHTER JET… AND I AM A PAPER PLANE!"
Nom-Nom flew behind me, catching my cloak gently to stabilize me before I fell straight down onto a tree, all the while grinning like a dragon trying very hard not to break her new toy.
"Master..." she said sweetly, "shall we continue?"
I hung there mid-air, exhausted and panting, and questioning every life choice that brought me to sparring with a Greater Dragon.
"…gimme thirty seconds."
"Okay!"
She hovered patiently with her wings fluttering like a very murder-capable hummingbird.
I hung there in the air, hunched over while panting like someone who'd just tried to fistfight a thunderstorm.
[I can't tag her like this… she's too damn fast.]
And that's when the thought hit me.
A stupid, reckless, beautiful thought.
"Oh," I whispered to myself.
And the next moment, an ice pebble blossomed into existence in front of me.
Not AP, or the Snow Ball.
Just a normal one.
But instead of reinforcing the entire structure, like I do with AP… I shoved 2 MP straight into its center.
And the core flickered violently, like a balloon ready to pop.
I'd noticed this earlier:
A standard AP pebble could only hold so much mana before it destabilized and exploded on my face. If I wanted to add more punch safely, I had to increase its size.
But what if… what if I didn't reinforce everything?
What if I reinforced nothing except the core?
[Just overload the middle… and let physics do the rest.]
The outer shell creaked with cracks spidering across its surface like a cracking egg.
And I knew that thing was seconds from blowing up in my face.
So I fired it.
- CRACK-!!
It shot downward with a sonic crack before colliding with a tree trunk before -
- BOOOOM-!!
A brilliant flash of white erupted, like a grenade going off.
The overloaded center exploded cleanly, and the outer shell, still solid ice, shattered into thousands of jagged shards.
Supersonic shards, mind you.
And the next beat, the tree collapsed with a groaning protest with a trunk riddled with icy shrapnel.
While my grin slowly stretched into something wicked.
"Oh… oh, hell yes."
And I got to work.
For the next few minutes, the sky lit up with strobing white bursts as I fired off hundreds of Fragmentation Ice Pebbles, each overcharged to a slightly different degree, resulting in each detonating at a slightly different timing window.
1.2 seconds.
0.4 seconds.
Different levels of MP reinforcement, and different velocity profiles.
And by the time I finally stopped, the forest below looked like a war crime.
Glittering frost and shrapnel were littered everywhere like the worst kind of hail storm just hit the forest.
Nom-Nom floated over, stopping just beside me.
Her eyes were glowing with delight, soaking in the chaos like it was art.
"That's creative…" she murmured, sounding genuinely impressed.
While I wiped a bead of sweat from my forehead and grinned at her.
She froze for half a second before grinning right back.
"Oh," she breathed before her voice dropped into a playful, eager challenge, "You're on!"
While unbeknownst to us, past the forest, the coastline, and a kilometre worth of ocean away, the entire crew aboard one of the most advanced warships on the planet was inches away from having a psychotic meltdown.
The Southern Vigil drifted over restless waves.
Captain Thane Aurelian stood in the command dome, arms behind his back, and every muscle in his body taut as a bowstring.
He'd been staring at the island for hours now.
Hoping for anything that would tell him Chimera B-41 hadn't done something catastrophic.
So naturally, the universe obliged.
Because half an hour earlier, the entire northern quadrant of the island had lit up.
First with flashes of violet.
Then, with sonic booms and explosions that even reached the ship.
Thane's voice was the first to break the silence.
"…B-41 is probably flexing the muscles of its new body," he muttered.
Behind him, a dozen operators pretended very, very hard not to panic as their hands danced across rune-consoles and scanners.
And every few seconds, their runic displays would light up with mana spikes, heat blooms, and unstable signatures.
Then -
- CRACK-BOOM-!
Another shockwave rattled the dome's reinforced glass while someone swallowed audibly.
"Nymira," Thane said to the girl in the glass pod behind him, still wrapped in her halo of glowing runic ribbons as she floated in her pod.
"Captain," she acknowledged.
"I am detecting extreme mana disturbances across the island. Multiple explosive signatures. Repeated high-velocity projectiles. And aerial movement exceeding twice the speed of sound."
"So..." Thane said, "B-41 testing its new powers."
"That is a reasonable hypothesis," Nymira replied."
The captain let out a breath that was mostly irritation.
"Of course it is." He pinched the bridge of his nose. "Because why shouldn't a freshly evolved Dragon see what's the biggest explosion it could make..."
Even with all their tech and magic, they still hadn't realized that B-41 hadn't evolved into a dragon, but a Greater Dragon.
Nymira continued calmly while ribbons flickerd in different colors as she processed.
"There also appears to be… a secondary mana source," she added, "Weaker… but unmistakably human… But its mana frequency does not match any known Pantheon registry."
Thane's eyes slowly narrowed.
"A human? On the island? Inside the barrier?"
"The readings indicate elevation in the air," Nymira replied, "He appears to be flying."
Thane's stare went dead.
"…flying?"
"Correct."
"Humans do not fly."
"Most do not, Captain."
Thane dragged a hand over his face.
He'd been in the Pantheon navy for four hundred years. He's fought beasts, rogue mages, even a damn living mountain once.
But nothing prepared him for a flying human sparring with a Dragon like it was a training exercise.
Another CRACK split the air as heat bloomed somewhere over the treetops, rising in a column of orange and violet while someone's console beeped frantically.
Thane exhaled through his teeth.
"Team Laps should be here by now… We're one surprise away from a containment failure."
Nymira didn't answer immediately while her eyes flickered beneath her eyelids as she scanned the surrounding waters.
"Captain," she finally said as voice dropped an octave. "Team Laps is… still not within range."
"What are they doing... braiding each other's hair?" he growled as his hand curled into a fist behind his back.
Nymira offered nothing but silent tact.
"Nymira," Thane said quietly, "if it decides to leave the island…"
"All four warships in all four directions are already on standby and ready to engage," she replied. "Should it break containment, we will engage, with or without Team Laps."
"And if that fails?"
"…Captain, at your age, I do not recommend combating with a Dragon by yourself."
He snorted bitterly while the sea wind howled around the dome and the island flashed white again.
Then…
A faint, distant glow appeared on the northeast horizon, and Nymira's runes flashed gold.
"Captain…" she murmured. "Team Laps inbound."
He turned slowly and looked out the glass.
And across the moonlit ocean, a bright glow wobbled closer with the unmistakable silhouette of a mana-powered assault vessel cutting across the waves.
"About damn time." Thane finally grinned as his posture relaxed.