Luke stood before the dragon, chest rising just a beat too fast for his liking as the runes on his knife burned white along the blade, pulsing with each breath he pulled through his teeth.
Nom-Nom looked worse.
Her shoulder wound dripped thick, hot blood down her arm, hissing as it hit the scorched ground. Four wings twitched behind her like a living storm barely held in place.
[Still just a newborn…], Luke thought, lips curling. [Fast… but predictable.]
And the next moment, Nom-Nom blurred.
One moment she was ten meters away, the next she was a violet streak breaking the sound barrier, her fist drawn back and primed to crater a mountain.
But Luke didn't flinch.
He stepped into her momentum, hand snapping up to catch her fist by the knuckles, twisting her strike past his torso with a practiced, almost lazy efficiency as his knife plunged into the meat of her arm just above the elbow while he drove a punch toward her throat with his free hand.
Nom-Nom's answer was a sound no human should ever hear.
A deep, draconic rumble rolled from her chest as her slit pupils narrowed to burning amethyst slivers as she caught his wrist inches away from her throat.
Her jaw opened.
Purple fire began charging in her throat, lighting her teeth like molten steel.
Luke grinned at the sight.
"Cute."
The shadows reacted to his command instantly.
From the ground, from the trees, from the darkness clinging to the forest itself, black tendrils erupted upward, coiling around Nom-Nom's forehead before yanking her head back with brutal force.
And-
-BOOOOM-!
The beam of dragon fire split the sky instead of Luke's skull, carving a violet scar across the clouds.
Luke ripped his knife free in the same motion, sliding the blade in a clean arc toward her now-exposed throat.
One second more, and the fight was over.
But Nom-Nom didn't freeze.
She shoved his restrained arm aside, her blood-slick hand clutched his knife wrist just before he could finish the cut.
Air itself snapped as she hurled him away, sending him flying back through a line of shattered trees as she let out another guttural, furious growl.
Luke's grin only widened as he skidded back across the earth, body carving a long trench before he flipped upright again.
He rolled his neck once, cracked a shoulder, and thought:
[Still barely used to its humanoid body… much less fighting someone like me.]
And then he vanished.
The darkness folded over him, swallowing him like a curtain dropping over a stage.
But he didn't rush in recklessly this time; he'd learned from their first exchange that Nom-Nom could sense him even during Shadow Step.
She didn't see him; she felt him, the way predators feel shifts in the wind.
So Luke adapted.
All around the clearing, he began planting concentrated mana points.
Miniature signatures, perfectly replicating his aura, scattered through the darkness.
Each one saying I'm here even though he wasn't.
It didn't matter if the ruse lasted ten seconds or one; he only needed it long enough to slip the blade inscribed with Dragon's Rot Runes under her guard.
Nom-Nom, meanwhile, looked ready to tear the world in half.
Panting with ragged fury, she swept her gaze across the forest like a wounded beast cornered by something it could smell but not touch.
Her shoulder wound dripped molten-looking blood.
Dragon Rot's poison crawled through her limbs with every shuddered breath.
But her pride took the worst hit.
She hadn't landed a clean strike even once. Every time she lunged, he vanished and flickered somewhere else. Every time she caught him, he'd counter like a coiled viper.
Nom-Nom's growl deepened as she unleashed another gout of dragon fire at a mana point, vaporizing an entire line of trees.
While Luke watched all of this from his pocket of shadows.
Almost amused.
He wasn't here to defeat her; he had no illusion he could outlast a dragon in a straight brawl.
He was here to contain her, weaken her enough to extract her.
And with the gash in her shoulder, the stab in her arm, and poison threading deeper into her veins, she would collapse long before he did.
Just a matter of time.
A few more feints, and a few more precise hits.
He prepared his next strike and paused, watching her ragged growls stop suddenly.
While a sharp tug snapped through Nom-Nom's bond.
'Nom, you done yet!?'
Her nostrils flared.
Even mentally, her voice held a snarl.
"Master, it's getting annoying. This holding back business is frustrating! He keeps disappearing into the darkness!"
'Then delete the darkness! I need your help!'
Came Nico's panicked reply.
Nom-Nom paused for a moment before, "Understood," she said out loud.
Luke had precisely one second to understand the meaning of that word.
And then -
- BOOOOOOM-!!!
It was like a nuke had detonated at the center of the forest.
A wave of purple dragon fire erupted outward in a sphere, incinerating the forest in one blinding flash.
Luke's mind stalled as every single mana signature he planted winked out in the same instant, like candles crushed by a hurricane.
A pillar of violet flame blasted straight into the sky, and from the silhouette still visible, four wings unfurled.
Luke's cackling stopped mid-note as he saw the wings.
[Four wings… That's a Greater Dragon!]
Luke's instincts screamed at him to run, and the very next instant -
- BOOOOOOOM-!!!
A second explosion split the heavens as a floating sun of purple fire formed around Nom-Nom, engulfing her silhouette until she was encased in the center of a burning star.
The entire island trembled under the sheer pressure.
Then:
- ROAAAAAAR-!!!
She roared.
Not the growl of a frustrated dragon forced to fight in a form it barely understood.
But the roar of an ancient lineage awakened: a primal, ground-shaking, marrow-cracking bellow that reminded the world who sat above predators on the food chain.
Even the earth deep beneath the island, rumbled in primal terror.
The halo targeting Nico brightened instinctively, reacting to the threat, but it was already too late.
A wave of dragon fire swept across the island, hot enough to melt stone and fast enough to tear across half a kilometer in a heartbeat.
Then -
- SHRRRRRRAAAAAK-!!!
Gorran's dome flared once in resistance before Dragon Fire tore it apart like wet paper.
So were torn apart the blessings of Amaterasu channelled from within Naya.
The Halo above flickered once before disappearing, and so did the haze of gold on Luke.
And from the collapsing sun up above, the silhouette emerged.
Four black wings spanning tens of meters.
A serpentine neck, radiant with death.
Jagged, violet scales glowing from the fire within.
A maw lined with teeth longer than tree trunks. And eyes like dying stars.
Luke watched from the shadows of the burning forest, the only thing saving him being the fact that Shadow Step hid him partially inside another dimension.
And even then, he felt the pressure crash onto him like a mountain.
Only one person he'd ever met radiated that kind of dominance.
Strelitzia.
Director of the Pantheon.
Except this wasn't her.
This was just a Chimera.
"Shit… shit… SHIT!" Luke hissed, stumbling out of the shadows, hands fumbling for the artifact on his back.
His fingers closed around it, and a shaky grin flickered across his lips.
[Boy… am I glad I brought this along!]
He swung the Boomstick forward and channeled everything… every drop of mana he had left straight into it.
Runes mimicking the First Hero's Esper Skill flared gold within the barrel, converting his mana into metaphysical virtual mass.
In his hands, the gun still felt light, but to the rest of the world, its weight shifted.
And high above, the Greater Dragon opened its jaws again, gathering enough fire to make the sky glare white.
Now that Luke was exposed, he could feel the heat blistering his skin.
"Alright… that's ten tons… predicted velocity… Mach ten…" he rasped, feeling the last drop of his mana channelled as he lined up the shot directly at the dragon's head before -
"Behold!" he roared at the dragon, "This is the weapon of the Heroes!"
He wasn't thinking about extraction anymore.
He was thinking about survival.
And for the first time since he'd stepped onto the island, Luke Aurelian felt something close to fear.