Then came the lightning bolt. But the flash was bright enough to light the entire sky, and the mountains crumbled under its unbearable power. He couldn’t help but gasp at the sight when a voice cried out to him.
“S-Sir! The Prominence Dragon is engaged in battle! Reports say he’s fighting the Arkdragon!”
“What?!” he yelled in shock, then the ground trembled as if to confirm the report was true.
Although they could not tell, the sight they had seen was caused by a mind-destructing skill known as Blackout. A deathly purple light flashed from the other side of the mountains.
§
Voices and static noises echoed through the Mind Link Chat. Kitase and the others were enjoying a light meal before their battle with the floor master. However, they weren’t just resting but scanning positional information with the elf girl’s skill, making predictions, and preparing for what was to come with Doula and the others. Though, Wridra could tell the elf had a carefree smile as she ate her favorite food.
Wridra chuckled to herself. If some bigwig had been there, perhaps they might have scolded the children for not staying sharp. Fortunately, they had easily overcome many hurdles in the past. No one could fault them as long as they continued to get results, even if it was comical to her.
“You seem to be enjoying yourself, Lady Wridra,” Kalina said.
“Yes, I have a disciple who will not get her act together no matter how many times I tell her. I have only seen her get serious once,” she said as she looked through her sights.
She saw dust rising in the far distance. The Prominence Dragon had returned to his original form, hovering in the air as he flapped his massive wings. It was the perfect chance for her to snipe him, but her dragon instincts warned her of danger for some reason.
“Magic particle emission detected. The Prominence Dragon appears to be waiting for something,” said Kalina.
Wridra pondered what that could be. His biggest problem was the distance between them. Her attack from outside his range of perception had enough firepower to break through his defensive barriers. Even Wridra couldn’t confirm the enemy’s life force from this distance, yet she was sure she could inflict some damage.
“He could surely escape if he wishes to, but he would not choose that option. He is a disgustingly prideful man,” said Wridra.
“He must be the conceited type. I suspect he is trying to figure out where you are. That creep will not rest until he tracks you down,” stated Kalina in her plain, emotionless tone.
Despite Kalina’s harsh words, she likely did this to show Wridra she cared. She completely ignored that this was Wridra’s current husband and that her creator wasn’t at fault. Regardless, she did want to kill him.
“Shall we set a trap, then?” Kalina suggested.
“He is no fool. I do not think it will work, but we shall try.”
Just as Kalina was about to speak, she swallowed her words. Instead, she set down Magic Tools on the ground. Both had brought these from the Arkdragon’s cave, which had become an armory. Having been granted permission to use her space manipulation technique, she concealed cylindrical metallic objects in the surrounding rocky area.
“Deployment complete,” she said.
Following this, Wridra pulled the trigger. A heavy metallic sound occurred, then a massive bullet was fired. She exhaled as she squeezed to soften the impact of the discharge and strengthened the concealment magic on the surrounding areas.
The shot was far too powerful, and the recoil was enough to distort the space around her. Plasma sparked from the colossal amount of energy emission created. The projectile easily surpassed the speed of sound, but the visual cue could tip off her location before it found its mark. So, she needed to use visualization magic in a wide area to keep herself hidden.
Wridra exhaled again and looked through her sights. The bullet sped forth with lightning speed and pierced through the layers of defensive barriers as if drilling through a giant onion. Her first shot had been the perfect surprise attack. But the barrier had interfered this time, redirecting the attack’s energy upward and deflecting most of its power.
There was a series of electronic beeps, and the bullet redirected its trajectory to fly toward the Prominence Dragon once again. This was a feature Wridra had added after her first attempt was unsuccessful.
With fifty kilometers of distance between them, her shot took about twenty seconds to reach its target. Even from this distance, she felt a chill down her back. There was no thought, only instinct, as she repeatedly pressed the button in her hand and turned away.
Kalina moved simultaneously, lifting her airframe and repeatedly firing her Magiguns toward the ground. Amid the thunderous roar and cloud of dust that enshrouded them, a black, viscous fluid appeared. It turned into spikes, spread all around them and pierced through everything from rocks to the mountain and Kalina. Whatever they were, they tracked down living organisms, spread through them like roots, and destroyed them from the inside.
Kalina immediately detached one of her feathers and let out a blare as her master jumped in. Wridra didn’t even have time to fix her posture before they broke the sound barrier, shaking from the violent vibrations as they blasted their way through the dark clouds. Kalina repeatedly fired her Magiguns behind her in quick succession, and the guns fell off the airframe as the heat caused the connecting pieces to melt off. Yet it still wasn’t enough for them to escape, as even Kalina couldn’t surpass the speed of light. There was a whooshing sound as a hellish purple encompassed everything.
“Urgh! This...is Blackout!” Wridra shouted.
“System error. Unable to obtain data. We are at risk of collision―”
“Never mind that! Fly!” ordered Wridra.
A flash of light surrounded them, engulfing them in Blackout. Wridra instinctively knew they would need to fly for at least ten more seconds before escaping its domain.
“Shadow Gate!”
Wridra immediately opened a Shadow Gate and was sucked into it along with Kalina.
Dust erupted into the air as they crash-landed in some distant dunes. While they suffered extensive damage from the impact, they fled without the Prominence Dragon detecting them.
Someone slowly rose at the rocky area where Wridra and Kalina had originally been. It was Lavos in his draconian form. He put his legs up on a nearby rock and stared into the horizon where his opponents had vanished. There, he saw what appeared to be multiple suns rising into the sky. Those were long-range missiles that shed their exterior shells as they increased their velocity.
Lavos stared at the unusual sight and said, “Oh, she still thinks she can win. I hate it when a girl doesn’t know her place.”
He licked his fingertip, then the missiles exploded all around him and erupted into a blazing inferno.
§
An alarm repeatedly blared as Wridra descended to the ground. The blue sky had vanished, and everything around her had gone dark. She checked on Kalina’s smoking frame as she said, “Hmm, he must have located me using magic particles. Well done, I must admit.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand. And how did he close such a distance instantaneously?” Kalina asked. No matter how much she analyzed the situation, she could not figure it out.
The Arkdragon crouched and picked up a handful of sand, scattering it slowly as she spoke. “I presume this is what happened: countless magic particles had been created in the air. My bullet came in contact with them, alerting him of the angle of my attack and allowing him to determine my location across the terrain.”
Kalina fell silent. Finding her location faster than a bullet surpassing the speed of sound was unheard of. It was impossible. But he had outsmarted them somehow, so there was nothing she could say.
Wridra pointed across the horizon. There, the wounded Prominence Dragon was there, spraying a copious amount of blood into the air.
“Look, he is wounded,” said Wridra. “He must have left his main body as a decoy, then cast Divine Haze on one of his dragon cores to approach us.”
“So he used that strange technique that allows one to freely modify their existence... That would indeed allow him to travel through the ground, but it’s hard to believe such a thing is possible,” replied Kalina.
Wridra nodded, knowing she had lost to him once before. Lavos had used an unusual ranged attack to whittle down her life force, eventually outmatching her with sheer firepower. However, she couldn’t afford to lose this time. Dragons had been deemed neutral in the world’s affairs. If the Prominence Dragon sided with the demons, it would significantly tip the world’s balance in one direction. Should such a thing happen, Wridra could no longer spend time with Kitase and Mariabelle. She hated the thought, although she was unsure why.
And so, she would win. She would overcome this hardship, defeat the enemy, and enjoy herself on vacation in Japan. Kitase and Mariabelle would surely praise her efforts, though it wasn’t as if she sought their praise.
Then, Wridra stood tall in her tattered dress, determined to emerge victorious. She had to figure out her next move. She could no longer snipe her target from afar, and she had already revealed her super weapon, which had been one of her trump cards.
An idea flashed through her mind. “I will snipe him and draw him here.”
“Warning, Master. That is a dangerous proposition. You will surely be subject to even harsher retaliation. Even if you draw him out, it would only be one of his many dragon cores.”
Still, Wridra nodded. It would be a highly dangerous move that could put her in a situation where she would have to fight him at close range. She nodded again, and Kalina resolved to fight alongside her master.
The Arkdragon fixed the aircraft buried in the sand and began chambering bullets filled with pure magic matter.
A cylinder fell upon the dunes beneath dark clouds, giant puffs of white smoke trailing from it. The cannon had melted off of the aircraft, unable to bear the heat from consecutively firing. Wridra brought in a replacement cannon with space manipulation, then promptly disassembled and fit it into place. Her mind raced throughout the process, but her eyes showed a sense of serenity.