The large neon-red beam of radioactive magma shot through the sky and passed through the clouds, painting them in red.
The beams headed straight towards the incoming heavily armoured volcano dragon with its shiny armour reflecting the red light.
Rings of spiralling magic letters were orbiting along the whole length of the beam, brightly glowing in orange light and forming the spiralling rings.
The metallic magma gathered in front of the incoming dragon, forming a bubble-like barrier, its surface emitting immense heat and blinding orange light.
Vesuvius folded his wings, launching into the distance like a bullet launched out of a railgun, his body turning into a blur, leaving purple a purple behind him. The bright light was glowing in his mouth, quickly gathering for a new attack as he refused to underestimate his enemy.𝒪𝗏𝔩xt.𝗇t
He flew further and further away from the dragon. The beam of magma was shooting out of his mouth, bending to shoot behind him.
The neon-red beam finally smashed against the barrier of magma, tearing through it in a matter of few moments.
It burst through the barrier of magma, pushing through it with its sheer pressure and heat. It smashed straight into the monumentally giant volcano dragon, hitting straight into its black, shiny metallic chest.
The magma produced more heat with each passing second, with the fission reaction happening without any break.
It splashed in all directions as it incinerated the armour, loudly hissing, searingly hot droplets raining down towards the already destroyed landscape.
The next moment, the symbols orbiting the beam pulsed as the beams exploded in a blinding neon-red light.
The shockwaves, heatwaves, and waves of radioactivity swept through the sky with radioactive magma raining down, the whole sky catching on fire.
Vesuvius felt the force pass through his body and wash over his armour as he braced with his wings, abruptly stopping to face the explosion.
The massive black silhouette of the dragon fell from the sky like a boulder. Its massive stadium-sized wings were limp. Its whole body was mutilated, with a huge hole burned into its chest. Its scales were missing over most of its body, revealing burned muscles and tissue under them.
Its golden eyes lacked light, looking dull and lifeless.
Vesuvius looked around, scanning his surroundings in search of any threat.
Two giant, ravaged dragons were sprawled in the craters on the ground, their bodies ravaged and burned with massive bleeding wounds.
The blood was pooling under their bodies. The radioactive magma of molten metal and corium was spilled everywhere, constantly burning deeper and deeper into the soil.
Clouds of radioactive particles and volcanic fumes drifted across the sky, enshrouding everything in the darkness.
‘A dragon with the power to level up is truly a deadly combination. I feel like I could fight even more.’
Even the crimson-red flames in the sky remained silent, with only the rumbling of thunder and the howling of winds resounding through the trial space.
Finally, the cold voice of Satanael reached the dragon, “You have done it… Now I think that I should have used three imprints at once.”
The whole green pasture, the clouds of smoke in the air, and even the two massacred dragons sprawled on the ground turned into motes of golden light, everything quickly dissipating.
The space changed and twisted, turning black, leaving only the crimson flames and Vesuvius behind.
A pair of massive, reverse-slitted golden eyes glowing like the sun appeared on the black background, their size so huge that it made even a colossal dragon like the Vesuvius feel small and insignificant.
Even the crimson flames became non-threatening, their previously intimidating aura vanishing and fizzling out under the golden radiance.
“You have passed! From now on, you are the lord of the new apocalypse dragon’s kind and the temporary lord of the thunderstorm and volcano dragons until a new permanent lord rises.”
The golden radiance became even brighter, the rays of golden light falling on Vesuvius, covering his whole body in the warm divine energy.
This time, Vesuvius noticed something he had missed before. The dragon god’s golden light and the system’s mysterious energy felt similar, ‘It is as if they were the same thing, only a little bit different, like different colours of light. How could humans on Earth tame such a force? Maybe they are not even humans behind this whole game stuff.’
The more he thought about it, the more ridiculous it felt for humans on earth, a civilisation that didn’t even manage to travel out of the solar system to create something so impossibly miraculous and powerful.
‘It would be like a monkey suddenly building a car, absolutely ridiculous.’
He returned to his senses as the golden light intensified, and the warm feeling turned into a blazing hot and burning sensation over his whole body, making him feel as if he had entered a furnace. His vision quickly faded under the ever-present golden colour.
POV Some random noble that I am lazy to name:
The council room of the kingdom was almost empty. The decorated chairs were unoccupied, with their owners either dead, fighting for their lives, accused of treason, or already far away from the kingdom.
Only a few, less than a fifth of them, were occupied, the whole chamber split into two separate groups: the remaining human nobles and those who drank the blood and survived the purge.
They were warily looking at each other with the corners of their eyes, the tension between them palpable as they were until recently enemies.
‘How could this have happened?’ Just a few months before, everything was in order, the kingdom prospering while being at peace, ‘And now, everything changed.’
A noblewoman sat between the human nobles with a lost look on her young face. She was surprisingly unassuming, looking like a regular young brown-haired girl.
Her body trembled. The faces of her parents and siblings getting lynched by the mobs of immortals and clergymen were still before in her mind.
She was just a young girl that wasn’t even supposed to inherit her title, yet now she ended up as a temporary noble in the kingdom that was burning in the flames of chaos.
She was shaking, knowing that a single wrong word could mean her death as a large portion of the highest echelons of the kingdom had been replaced by monsters wearing human faces.
‘Vampires ruling the former kingdom? Such nonsense, it’s nothing but lies and propaganda.’
She looked towards the highest ranking officials of the old kingdom that remained, the old archduke and marshal sitting in the front, ‘I wonder if they worked for the dragon the whole time. No wonder that we lost with them sabotaging our efforts.’
A single woman stood in front of the whole room, all eyes trying to remain focused on her. She looked young, with surprisingly long horns growing from her black-haired head.
‘How is it that she raised so high? She was just low a ranked noble before.’
She waved her hand, and magical energy passed through the whole chamber.
The magical projection of the kingdom map appeared on the ceiling, showing large red areas covering large territories around the capital and the whole northern part of the kingdom.
More red swatches were thrown here and there. They were territories held by the nobles that switched sides or surrendered to the new ruler, with the largest being the huge red stain belonging to the archduke.
The young, horned woman pointed at the map, her expression grave, making her look older.
“The kingdom is in chaos. We have only managed to secure the north, centre, and personal territories of those of us present here. Yet a large portion of the kingdom is still not under our control. It is either ruled by local nobles that went rogue or were taken over by the rebelling immortals or other local powers. So from now on, the whole kingdom will be temporarily split into the inner and outer parts until we gather a force to fully take control of the whole territory.”
Question marks appeared in her head as she was confused about what the changes signified, but she already felt like it would be some evil scheme.
“Our forces lack numbers, and they would get easily strained if we spread them through the whole territory. So from now on, we will only secure the internal security of new inner territories and borders, leaving the rest to govern themselves autonomously for the near future. The central government will step in only in emergencies. All of the autonomous governments that are hostile against our central one will be… removed.”
She immediately spotted the meaning behind the fluffy words, and her face paled in shock as she realised how atrocious they were, ‘They are turning most of the kingdom into a lawless area, with no central power to uphold the order and they will move only to extinguish any attempts at rebellion or external enemies.’
Murmurs and whispers resounded through the chamber, everyone’s fears vanishing after harassing such an outrageous plan. However, no one dared to oppose it, everyone knowing that it was the only way how to take control of the kingdom with their limited forces.