"I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself."
― Franz Kafka
***
The humanoid dragon continued to chomp down on the comrades of his attackers with lavishness, with fresh mana-rich blood continuing to flow down his chin, splattering onto the sizzling hot ground.
It could already feel the silencing barriers and the anti-divination formations weakening due to the intense explosions of mana it had released earlier. The only reason it didn't brute force through them was due to a single thought.
If the men who attacked it were from the dregs of Mag-daha, the rest of its kin would also have been attacked and thus should be in a perilous situation.
And herein lay the chance, if its kin were to be more injured than it, it could just sweep in and consume them in order to progress in its cultivation.
It wasn't like it was family with that quilin, roc, and phoenix. As far as it was concerned, they were just bigger prey that would eventually fall beneath its flames.
The only reason they even tolerated each other was that this nascent world was abundant with world essence enough for all of them. But it was only a matter of time before they tore each other apart.
Thinking all this, its mind drifted to the man who bore the crest of dusks. It made him irate that a lineage of lessers whose origin lay in its flames dared to lay a hand on its scales.
Unlike the other kin of his, the dragon had mingled and experimented with these lowly races, and one of the results of this experimentation was the dusks, or, as they liked to call themselves, the duskblades.
One of the reasons the dragon accepted that foolish king's proposal to end the duskblades was to increase its cultivation, and as the duskblades were the ascendants with the character of dusk, like flaring blade intents. Its consequent mastery of another aspect of 'the sun' had increased.
It almost growled as it remembered the slashes the man from this lowly kind managed to inflict on it. The reason was that the inherent abilities were more effective in their source, their origin.
Well, now the man was dead, along with his other comrades.
Just after it blew up the duskblade, two other companions of the man attacked it from the spirit realm.
It was lucky that its consciousness had awakened in time, or it would still be fighting with only its instincts and surface-level mana output.
After all, waking up after having such a hefty meal was utterly unpleasant for it. And another reason was that its will had been weakening in its potency due to such long times of sleep and practically no progress in cultivation.
It would have to be careful not to be this inactive in the coming few centuries.
Just as this thought crossed its mind, the place where the charred corpse of the dusk had been had its mana fluctuate wildly.
The meal dropped from its hands as it whipped towards the direction, and there, far away, on the corpse of the man, a weird, incongruent light erupted.
It rose akin to a tide, flaring in crimson violet hues.
The dragon's scales bristled as its instincts blared warning signs. Not even a second passed as it blasted forward, with flames erupting from all its pores.
Its blade-like nails blurred to the corpse's head, intending to sever it.
Then.. in a flurry of motion, the corpse's eyes snapped open with a chilling flash. The dragon had but an instant to react as it crossed its arms in order to dampen the force from the uppercut levied by the charred corpse.
BOOM!!!
The mana churned as it pressed against the dragon with its body folding akin to a ragdoll and blasting upwards, towards the damaged roof of the cave.
The giant underground expanse, which was already on the brink of collapse, rumbled with the dragon hitting the ceiling and blasting up till a hole was blown through the mountain.
Thoughts blurred through the dragon's mind, with its maw opening and spilling out blood mixed with flickering blade lights.
'how?!'
The insect, which should've been dead, had punched it with mana…. And a will.
It knew that will was something forged after centuries of practice and gruelling battles. So how come an insect was able to gain it?
Over the hundreds of thousands of years, not even one will ascendant had been crowned on this wretched planet.
They had made sure of that; all those who had even a 5% chance of doing so without the help of the world's will had been killed! So how?!
The sky tore as the draganoid continued to rocket upwards, sputtering out flames akin to a meteor tracing through the skies.
Down below, in the crumbling cavern, Rya exhaled a breath and looked up with twinkling lights dancing in his eyes.
His perception bloomed faster than it ever had, and he looked at the battered corpses of the sixth and tenth. His lips pursed together, while his hand went to his broken dimensional bracelet.
His life-mana sensing artefact flashed into his hands, and he took in the sight of two of the four targets having been neutralised.
"... Only the roc and the dragon left."
Putting it away, he finally looked at the swirling power tinged with violet-reds entering his body and soul, making his ego degrade slowly but surely.
On his head, a crest, vague and mighty, seemed to be etching itself onto his skin.
Its character was still elusive, but one thing was certain: when it completely formed, he would no longer be himself; he would become the extension of [-------]'s limb.
Finally taking a deep breath, he looked up, towards the flaming meteor still climbing towards the very edge of the heavens themself.
Putting a hand out, a shimmering blade forged from crimson-tinged starlight formed, resting in his grasp, not at all feeling unnatural despite the lingering familiarity he still had with his sword.
That finally left a bitter taste in his mouth, but still, his duty came first.
Crouching low, he instinctively started absorbing the mana from the quintessence stones nearly ten times faster.
His quads flexed as hazy wisps of snowy blade lights danced around him.
Then, the cavern shook, its open top nearly being melted by the frenzy of mana erupting from down below.
Sonic booms tore through the mountain and the collapsing barrier that encased the cave.
A quiet phrase left Rya's mouth as his body blurred, streaking upwards with enough momentum to ionise the air and burn the mana in his path.
[Sky splitter]
The simple two words came from Rya's mouth and the world itself, as if Rya had willed them into existence.
In less than a blink, Rya was already upon the dragonoid with blade lights flaring and carving the dragonoid cleanly into two halves.
In the sky, the inky eyes of the draganoid seemed to still be in shock and fury as its two halves separated cleanly.