The whistle of cloven air shrieked through the sky.
The piercing sonic boom forced the retreating Hitsuya to cast a frantic glance over his shoulder. That single look sent a chill of pure terror through his soul.
Behind him, a massive stone spear—long, thick, and impossibly hard—was closing the distance at a terminal velocity. Hitsuya twisted instinctively to dodge, but he was a heartbeat too late.
Pfft-shlack!
A spray of crimson painted the sky.
With the Haste +5 attribute imbued into the Earth Spear, even a dragon's reflexes couldn't outrun it. Under the combined pressure of its Penetration and Sharpness effects, Hitsuya's battered body offered no resistance. The spear tore through his chest and out the other side. The sheer momentum carried his gargantuan frame downward, slamming him into the earth with a thunderous crash.
The sight left everyone speechless. Even his teammates, Natsu and the others, hadn't dared to dream of this. From the moment Hitsuya revealed his true power, they had understood one thing.
Slaying a dragon? Impossible.
Simply surviving the night would have been a miracle.
"ROOOAAR!!"
"Human...!" Hitsuya's bellows shattered the surrounding boulders into dust.
He was unwilling to accept it. As he felt his life essence hemorrhaging away, fear and fury warred within him.
"No... I cannot die here..."
Hitsuya struggled to rise, his legs buckling beneath him. The massive spear impaled through his chest hadn't just dealt a fatal blow; it was draining the last of his vitality.
"I refuse to accept this!" Hitsuya roared at the heavens, his eyes turning a deep, venomous crimson.
He could accept death, but never at the hands of a human. That humiliation could only be washed away by the blood of the man who brought him low.
As he watched Ur rapidly closing in, Hitsuya's eyes suddenly flared with a blinding light.
Every drop of remaining mana surged toward his throat. His blood-red eyes locked onto the human silhouette in the sky, and just as Ur came within a hundred meters, Hitsuya unhinged his jaw.
"ROOOAAR!!"
This final breath carried every ounce of his magic and every shred of his hatred. A pillar of concentrated mana tore through the horizon, missing Ur by a hair's breadth and slamming directly into the mountain peak they had fought on.
Boom!
Amidst a rising mushroom cloud and the literal groan of the Hogria Mountain Range, the tortured peak finally collapsed. A tidal wave of earth and stone overturned, instantly burying Natsu and the others beneath the rubble.
In the sky, the human silhouette vanished.
Seeing this, the corner of Hitsuya's mouth curled into a grotesque, satisfied smirk.
But before the smile could fully form, a figure wreathed in killing intent materialized directly above his head. In an instant, the drake's triumph froze.
"NO!" A final roar shook the clouds.
Schlick!
The Dark Dragon Fang, wreathed in hellish flames, cleaved downward with absolute finality. Blood sprayed across the firmament as Hitsuya's defiant scream was cut short.
Ur landed heavily on the drake's head, his boot pressing down on the beast's unseeing eyes. He reached down, yanked the Dark Dragon Fang from the drake's flesh, and slowly stood tall.
At that moment, a sliver of golden light broke over the horizon of the Hogria Mountains.
The dawn light caught Ur's back, casting a long, jagged shadow across the broken earth.
When Ichiya and the others finally clawed their way out from the rubble, this was the tableau they witnessed. It was a scene of such raw power that it left them rooted to the spot.
"He did it... he actually slew the dragon."
Ever since the dragons were said to have vanished four hundred years ago, their kind had become ghosts on the Ishgar continent. Even sub-dragons like drakes were exceedingly rare, and when one did appear, it was far beyond the power of any lone human to resist.
Ur's feat was likely the first of its kind in a century.
The group watched him with wide-eyed disbelief. Only Natsu's gaze flickered with a hint of disappointment. From the battle itself, he had already suspected this drake knew nothing of Igneel's whereabouts, but he had hoped to hear it for himself.
Now, that was impossible. The situation had been too dire; even if Hitsuya did know something, Ur couldn't have afforded him the chance to speak. Ur didn't have the luxury of taking risks with a cornered beast.
This had undoubtedly been the most grueling battle Ur had faced since becoming a mage.
The power of the dragon kin far exceeded his expectations. Even a crippled drake had forced him to exhaust his entire arsenal and nearly succeeded in a suicidal counter-kill at the very end. If Ur hadn't remained hyper-vigilant until the final second, that last roar might have actually finished him.
The battle had raged throughout the night.
Such inhuman endurance left Ichiya and his team marveling in awe. Having recovered just enough strength to move, they gathered around Hitsuya's mountain-sized corpse, their gazes shifting between the dragon and Ur.
The more they looked, the more their shock grew. Seeing the physical majesty of the dragon up close only emphasized the sheer terror of Ur's power—to have traded blows with such a creature in melee and won.
"Bloody hell... they're both monsters," the Elephant King muttered, his eyes darting between Ur and the dragon.
As a mercenary who couldn't use magic, his pride lay entirely in his physical conditioning and martial arts. But in a single day, his confidence had been shattered twice. Hitsuya could excuse the beast wasn't human, but the young man standing before him was an enigma.
The Elephant King glanced at his own bulging muscles, then at Ur's lean, battle-hardened frame, and began to question the meaning of his own life.
Of course, it was a misunderstanding. In terms of raw, unaugmented strength, Ur was still a step behind him. It was the massive boost from the Lava Beast Armor that had created the illusion of total physical superiority. The Elephant King had trained for decades; even with Ur's system advantages, catching up that quickly was no small feat.
While Ichiya and the leaders kept watch over the dragon's remains, the few surviving subordinates spent hours digging through the ruins of the mountain.
Finally, after half a day of labor, the ruins of the dragon's nest were unearthed.
Now, it was time to divide the spoils.
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Next Chapter: Dividing the Spoils... or the Corpse?
Next Next Chapter: Rolling in Wealth
Next Next Next Chapter: Broke