Flames licked the air, slamming waves of searing heat against Lo Quen's face.
He rolled hard to the side, the hem of his robe catching the edge of the dragonfire and disintegrating into blackened scraps, leaving the pale flesh beneath exposed.
Fighting a chimera always meant ruined clothes, he thought grimly.
His eyes flicked to the vaulted dome overhead as he weighed his options.
The hall might seem vast to men, but to one who could take the form of a dragon, it was stifling.
A dragon's strength came from the sky, from the freedom of its wings stirring storms.
Inside this stone cage, there was no hope of dodging the chimera's torrents of destruction.
And with the Bloodmage's traps laid who knew where, staying here was suicide.
Slipping between the chimera's fiery strikes, Lo Quen gathered the Dragon Souls from the fallen Scaleclaws, darting through the gaps in the flames as though dancing on the edge of a blade.
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of Osarion standing beneath the massive stone arch he'd passed on entering.
The door.
An idea struck him at once.
If he could break free into the open, he could take to the skies and dismantle the beast at will.
His feet slammed against the cold stone floor, propelling him like a shadow along the hall's edge.
Behind him, the chimera's lion's roar, goat's bleat, and serpent's hiss merged into a bone-shaking cacophony.
A torrent of fire followed, the greedy tongue of hell itself lashing hungrily at his back.
Heat scalded his skin, but thanks to his [Fire Affinity] talent, the flames only boiled the sweat from his pores, leaving tiny crystals of salt in their place.
"Enough! You wretched beast!"
Osarion's voice cracked, shrill with fear, cutting through the roar of flames. "Kill him! Now!"
The chimera's lion head whipped toward its master, molten red light churning in its throat.
The roar that followed was deafening, steeped in savagery.
It was no answer—it was a warning.
Osarion staggered back, blood draining from his gaunt face.
The chimera was no dragon to be tamed. Its nature was fury, its moods merciless.
By then, Lo Quen was already at the stone arch, loosing forward like an arrow from the string.
The chimera lunged after him. Its serpentine tail curved forward, fangs bared to swallow him whole.
Lo Quen spat a blast of dragonfire. The blaze forced the snake's head to recoil.
Seizing the moment, he dove through the archway—only to find the long, broad corridor to the exit barred by a massive black stone gate, thick and unyielding.
The old bastard had planned for this.
His gaze swept the shadows like a blade. To the left, a spiral stair wound upward like a coiled serpent, vanishing into the tower's darkness above.
Without hesitation, he bolted for it.
The stairway was vast—fifty, sixty feet across—faint light glinting on the ancient stone, the air thick with mildew.
Plenty wide enough for the chimera to come charging after.
Behind him, its roars and fiery blasts thundered closer, every strike making the stair quake beneath his feet.
Lo Quen pushed his dragon blood to the limit, racing upward through the endless spiral.
The tower's height defied belief. He couldn't tell how long he'd been running, only that the steps seemed to stretch into infinity.
Yet every hundred strides, he noticed narrow windows carved into the outer wall, tall as two men.
Through them, frigid winds howled, dragging pale mist into the stairwell, whipping his robes about him.
At one such window he stopped, glancing out.
The city of Tyria lay smothered in rolling fog, its buildings reduced to faint, ghostly outlines.
The black walls and colossal gates that had once weighed on his chest like iron shrank to a faint, dark line far below.
Lo Quen drew a sharp breath.
He was already thousands of feet above the ground.
How else could walls so vast appear so small?
ROAR—!!!
From the depths of the spiral stair below came the Chimera's roar, so furious it shook the air.
A wave of crimson flame surged upward, flooding the stairwell with firelight. The ancient stone walls glowed red as the stench of sulfur drowned out the mold and damp.
It was coming.
On all fours, its corded muscles bulged in the shadows, crimson veins pulsing beneath taut skin.
Six eyes, burning like coals, locked onto Lo Quen by the window—eyes brimming with hatred and an endless hunger to kill.
In its throats, molten light swelled, death itself gathering for release.
Lo Quen stared at that glow, then at the window beside him, opening into endless fog. A wild, razor-sharp idea formed at once.
A crooked, mocking smile tugged at his battle-hardened face.
Just as the Chimera's throats flared with crimson light, he stepped onto the windowsill, raised a hand in a deliberate wave toward the beast—
—and leapt into the void.
"Rrrh?!"
The fire died in the Chimera's throat, its massive jaws freezing in shock.
Its hulking frame lunged forward, three heads shoving and clawing to cram through the narrow stone window.
The lion head thrust out, scanning the fog. The goat head rammed the wall in agitation. The serpent neck writhed furiously, stretching outward. But the only reply was silence, fog, and the shriek of icy wind.
The Chimera went berserk. All three heads roared, bleated, and shrieked at once, a cacophony of rage and helpless destruction.
WHOOSH—!!
The dense fog outside churned violently, whipped into a spiraling vortex by an unseen force.
A roaring updraft blasted upward from the abyss.
Then—a colossal golden shadow split the mist.
It shot skyward along the sheer tower wall like a spear hurled by the gods, smashing upward with thunderous force.
The sheer speed sent stones cracking loose from the tower face.
Before the Chimera could react, the golden shadow struck. Saw-toothed jaws snapped open and clamped around the lion's neck.
CRUNCH!
Bone shattered. Blood sprayed.
The lion's head loosed a scream so shrill it scarcely sounded alive, thrashing in agony.
It was Lo Quen—Lo Quen in his true form, a golden dragon.
After cutting down the Scaleclaw guards in the hall, his Dragonblood purity had climbed to 3.3%, enough to sustain a ten-meter dragon form.
The moment he saw the window, he'd known: use the blind spot, leap into the fog, transform, then strike from the sky.
The beast had never imagined its prey was a dragon.
Now the golden dragon's massive body clung to the tower's cold wall. The hooked claws at the tips of his wings gouged deep into stone, hind legs carving furrows as they braced.
His jaws locked on the lion's neck, thrashing side to side, ripping through bone and sinew.
Each violent jerk brought the crack of snapping vertebrae, the wet rip of torn muscle.
The lion's howls faltered into choking gasps.
The other two heads snapped from their shock.
"Baaaah!" The goat head bellowed, its teeth gleaming.
The serpent head opened wide, baring venomous fangs.
No order was needed—survival drove them. Both spewed torrents of fire hot enough to melt steel.
Two blazing streams tore through the fog, the air warping and popping under the heat. Stone at the window mouth reddened, softened, and began to melt.
But a golden aura flared across the dragon's scales. The flames slammed into it like waves against a cliff, their force shattered and dispersed.
[Fire Affinity] shielded him from the initial blaze, but the aura thinned with every second.
This needed to end fast.
Lo Quen bit down harder, his dragon fangs piercing deeper, grinding into vertebrae with a sickening crunch.
Scalding dragon blood mingled with the Chimera's foul ichor, running down his jaw in steaming rivulets that vanished into the fog below.
Then, with a rending crack and the final snap of spine, the lion's head tore free.
The golden dragon loosed a triumphant roar that shook the sky.
Releasing his grip on the wall, he beat his colossal wings, blasting gales as he soared upward.
Hovering high outside the tower, he looked down at the blood-soaked window.
His jaws opened wide, golden flame gathering in his throat—hotter, purer, more violent than anything the Chimera could unleash.
BOOM!!!
A pillar of golden flame roared down the spiral stair like divine punishment.
The Chimera's two remaining heads shrieked in terror. It could not touch Lo Quen, soaring outside with ease and speed, and so it did the only thing it could—flee, scrambling deeper into the stairwell in a blind panic.
Lo Quen's cold dragon eyes tracked it unerringly, spewing fire without pause.
Each burst of Dragonfire landed like a hammer blow.
The tower walls, once so solid, crumbled like rotted wood under the onslaught. Massive slabs of stone exploded free, exposing the stair within. Rubble tumbled endlessly into the fog-drowned abyss below.
One dragon, one beast—one raining destruction from the skies, the other fleeing for its miserable life within the stone cage.
The dragonfire followed the Chimera's flight with lethal precision, burning and breaking all in its path. White-hot debris rained down upon the creature.
Its serpent tail was already blackened and charred, stinking of burnt flesh.
The goat head had one eye seared shut by molten fragments, oozing down its face like melted wax, leaving the surviving eye bloodshot with madness.
Where the lion's head had been torn away, its chest was nothing but a grotesque ruin—shredded flesh, snapped vessels, glimpses of torn organs. Each desperate bound splattered the hall with foul rain.
And still, the monster wrought from blood and black sorcery clung stubbornly to life.
On all fours it bounded, wounded but swift, until at last it hurled itself back into the circular hall at the tower's base.
Lo Quen folded his wings and dropped down, his colossal bulk squeezing through the breach his own flames had torn wider. The ground shook with the weight of his landing.
In the center of the hall, Osarion stood frozen, gaunt and motionless, his face a mask of horror and despair.
The creation he had staked his pride and countless lives upon—his ultimate work—was now a ruin, drenched in blood, its body split open and stinking of death, whimpering as it crawled pitifully back to him.
Then his gaze lifted—and froze.
From the smoke and dust, a dragon emerged. As large as the Chimera, clad in scales of resplendent gold, radiating majesty and wrath.
Each step of its massive hind legs made the ground tremble. Its taloned foreclaws scraped the stone with quiet menace. Golden slit pupils, cold as twin suns, fixed upon the Bloodmage.
"N… impossible…"
Osarion's withered lips quivered, his voice full of stunned denial. "Dragons are extinct… I tried… so many times… sacrificed so much… and never could I waken one… never could I reshape one… it cannot be… it must not…"
His skeletal fingers twitched spasmodically, reaching as though to grasp the vision before him—the vision that shattered everything he thought he knew.
...
[Upto 40 chapters ahead for now]
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