(Third POV)
The forest of the western frontier of the Dragon King Mountain Range was silent, save for the groan of ancient trees swaying in the wind. Buried deep within its heart, half-swallowed by roots and earth, lay the forgotten bones of a fortress. Its towers had collapsed long ago, its walls reduced to moss-choked rubble. Few alive remembered its name, and fewer still cared.
Four centuries past, it had stood as a bulwark during the Laplace Campaign. Now, it served a darker purpose.
A single personal chamber remained intact beneath the ruins, its stone reinforced and refitted, luxuries cluttering its space. Furs lined the floor. A long oak table bore bottles of wine and parchment maps. At the chamber's center, an ornate chair cradled the King of the King Dragon Kingdom.
White streaked his long hair, which fell over broad shoulders draped in a cloak stitched from scaled hides. Though age carved faint lines across his face, his eyes still burned with restless ambition.
Tonight, he was not a commander to a battlefield, but a man savoring the fruits of years of cunning.
He leaned back, swirling his goblet, and spoke into the silence.
"Strange, isn't it," he mused, voice echoing off the stone, "how a single dream can alter the fate of a kingdom that is neither very strong nor completely weak?"
No one answered. None were present to hear but the flickering candlelight and the ruins themselves. Still, he went on, as if preaching to an invisible congregation.
"Getting those recruits from the Strife Zone was one thing, but to get North God and Death God is another."
His lips curled into a grim smile.
"Especially since I've tried for so long to get that Randolf to join my army."
The King's eyes glimmered with cruel amusement.
"Even that fool North God. He thought he was saving the world, dragging my little prize here in chains. He actually believed this was all for some noble crusade against the Asura Kingdom's rot." The King chuckled, shaking his head. "Gullible. So eager to believe he was striking down evil, when all he did was hand me the key to a greater throne."
He raised his goblet in a toast to the empty chamber.
"From nothing, I forged an empire's edge. And soon, the world itself will bow once they see the might of that abomination we dug up from that ruin at the Demon continent. And now... that wretched Asura will bow to my will."
Digging up the part from the boss monster of the White Fire Coffin, using the recruits from the Strife Zone as cannon fodder for North God to capture Ryuta, and combining Ryuta's vast manapool and the monster remains to use necromancy from a ruin on the Demon continent, all to use the advantage of distraction teh Asura Kingdom had with the Upper Jaw at the north.
All the king had to do was wait for the three commanders of the undead monster to stir up the Red Dragons from the Upper Jaw, so that whatever was left of Asura could be easily conquered by the same monster.
A dark and twisted snicker escaped the king's mouth, the thought of expanding his country's territory like the god in his dreams promised him, no longer being out of reach.
"To glory. And the power that comes with i-"
The King's words died as the chamber itself seemed to exhale. Dust rained from the ceiling, the stone groaning like a beast in pain.
Then it came—laughter.Low at first, muffled behind walls and corridors. But it spread, rippling like thunder until it pressed in from every direction, rattling bottles on the table and splitting the silence wide open.
The door shuddered once. Then it exploded inward, wood and iron shrieking as they flew apart.
And through the smoke stepped Ryuta.
He was no longer a man. His skin gleamed chalk-white, faint scales shimmering beneath his eyes. Three gray crystals jutted from his forehead, pulsing in rhythm with the faint violet glow threading down his arms. Silver hair spilled loose around his face, catching the candlelight like molten steel. His robe had blackened into a scaled weave, its fur collar and sleeves wreathed in ghostly fire that did not burn. A tail scraped against stone, wings coiled tight against his back.
Worst of all were his eyes—black sclera, gold irises, silver slits that pinned the King like prey beneath a hawk's shadow.
The jagged black sword dragged at his side, sparks shrieking across the stone with every step. In his other hand, something swung heavily.
When he crossed the threshold, he flung it forward.
A head rolled across the floor, leaving a dark smear in its wake. Veynar, Captain of the Dragonfang Knights, stared upward—his eyes glassy, his jaw still clenched in a warrior's final defiance.
The King choked, his goblet slipping from his hand. "N–no… not Veynar… not my shield… my sword…"
Ryuta did not answer. His smile was slight, deliberate, terrifying in its calm.
"You thought hiding behind loyal dogs would make you untouchable. You thought chains and hooks could strip me down to nothing." His lips curved in the faintest smile. "Now you see how safe you really are."
Ryuta advanced, each step grinding sparks from the floor. Veynar's severed head lay between them, a grim offering, a reminder that even the King's most loyal shield had already failed.
The King staggered back, voice cracking. "I… I was chosen. The God of Man entrusted me—entrusted me with greatness!"
His hands trembled, clawing at the air as if grasping for invisible armor, as if words alone could shield him.
"I can give you power, more power than you've ever dreamed! Together we could—"
Ryuta tilted his head, his words slow, cutting, unhurried. "Entrusted you? No. He used you. The same way you used me. You were never chosen. Never king. Only a pawn—too small to even see the board beneath your feet."
The King's mouth worked soundlessly, denial cracking into madness. Spittle flecked his lips as his voice broke into a shriek. "No! No, I AM CHOSEN!"
Ryuta's jagged sword lifted, its edge wrapped in hungry white fire. The glow etched cruel lines across Ryuta's face, scales glinting faintly beneath the light.
"Do you know our difference?" he whispered, leaning close enough that the King could see the fire bleeding beneath his skin. "You see people as tools. Corpses waiting to serve. I remember being that tool—bound, chained, laughed at."
His smile sharpened, eyes burning."And I swore I would never wear chains again."
The King's knees buckled. His protest strangled in his throat.
Ryuta's voice dropped to a death sentence."Your knight died believing you were worth his blood. He was wrong. You die here—not as a king, not as chosen. But as nothing."
The jagged sword lifted, white fire crawling up its edge. The King shut his eyes, shaking, waiting for the end.
But the strike never came.
Ryuta lingered, blade poised in silence, his shadow stretched long across the trembling chamber. The pause itself became a cruelty.
Then, softly: "No… too quick. You don't deserve mercy dressed up as justice."
His wings unfurled with a snap, scattering embers. In one motion he seized the King by the throat, dragging him upward as his crown clattered to the floor.
With a single beat of his wings, Ryuta smashed through the ceiling in an eruption of stone and dust. The fortress groaned, its ruins trembling as the two figures tore free into the storm-swept night.
The King flailed helplessly in Ryuta's grasp, his voice breaking. "L–let me go! I am chosen! I—"
Ryuta cut him off with a snarl, his eyes blazing gold and silver against the dark. "Again with this? Well, see what being 'chosen' has bought you."
He extended his free hand. The crystals on his brow pulsed, and violet fire swirled into existence, condensing into a roiling sphere above his palm. Its light painted the clouds sickly purple, its heat warping the air.
Then, with a flick of his wrist, Ryuta hurled it downward.
The sphere plunged into the fortress below. For an instant, silence—an awful pause before the world broke.
Then came the roar. A shockwave ripped outward, flattening walls, shredding banners, turning towers to clouds of stone dust. Violet fire surged like a tidal wave through corridors and halls, devouring soldiers and necromancers alike. Screams rose—dozens, hundreds—but the fire smothered them in seconds, snuffing out voices as easily as candles. Then only the crackle of violet flame remained, a silence more horrifying than the cries.
The ground itself split beneath the fury, stone and soil hurled skyward in a rain of molten ruin.
From above, the King could only watch, wide-eyed, as his "empire's edge" dissolved into ash.
Ryuta leaned close, voice cold and merciless. "That is the truth of your power. Not glory. Not destiny. Only ruin. And those who seek it… must always face its consequences."
The King's mouth opened in a final protest, but no words came. Only terror.
Ryuta released him with a smile too calm, too deliberate. Not rage, not triumph—only the satisfaction of a hunter letting its prey realize, in its final breath, how powerless it truly was.
The King's scream tore through the night as he plummeted, a broken shadow swallowed by the fire below.
His body vanished in the firestorm below, swallowed whole by the destruction he had once called his own.
Ryuta hovered above it all, wings spread wide, white fire trailing from his form like a banner of judgment. His jagged blade burned at his side, and the violet crystals on his brow pulsed with hungry light.
Slowly, his gaze lifted beyond the ruins, toward the horizon.
Somewhere out there, a greater horror stirred—the three-headed abomination, born from his stolen mana.
Ryuta's wings snapped once, scattering embers across the sky. His voice was low, steady, burning with promise.
"That thing you stitched together with MY mana…" His grip tightened on the sword. "…is mine to unmake."
And with a single beat, he launched into the dark, streaking toward the undead dragon as the ruins of the fortress smoldered far below.
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