In the distance, Merlin was wailing and crying, his handsome face practically covered in tears and snot. Behind him, from atop the white castle that rose from the ridges of the northern wall, a white dragon let out a roar. Its voice surpassed thunder itself. To call it earth-shaking and heaven-shattering was no mere exaggeration—it was a vivid, undeniable reality.
Across the mountains and fields, the quake shook the fortifications. The gathered barbarian tribes grimaced in pain under the roar, their faces twisted with agony, howling miserably. Many who were too close had blood trickling from their seven orifices before collapsing unconscious upon the ground. But the roaring Chalk Dragon paid them no heed.
Vortigern cared nothing for these Angles who had come from the north—he cared only for venting his wrath upon Merlin!
Spreading his wings wide, he launched himself skyward. His pallid scales blotted out the newborn rays of the sun. Masses of "black clouds" surged forth—dense magical power that swallowed the daylight, as though in an instant the world itself had been inverted, dragging all back to an ancient, primeval age.
The colossal body, dozens of meters long, radiated the dreadful aura of the divine age's supreme predator. Even at a distance, it was enough to shake the heart.
The "Dragon of the Isle," born from the island's own will, dragged its mountainous bulk as it streaked forward at immense speed, chasing Merlin's trail!
The panic on Merlin's face was no act.
"What in the world... did he do?" Even Morgan was dumbfounded by the sight. Not even when facing Lucan's open taunts had she ever seen Vortigern rage with such ferocity.
Lucan narrowed his eyes, wondering if Merlin had, in some "extraordinary" way, fulfilled his mission of reconnaissance. After all, hadn't he lured the enemy right out from its lair? Truly, Merlin's very existence was probably the greatest mockery of all.
Who wouldn't want to land a punch on that face with its eternal, false smile?
"I think," Lucan recalled Merlin's usual antics, then answered, "that guy probably dyed Vortigern's scales red, didn't he?"
Morgan: "..."
Within Britain's native mysteries,The White Dragon was the symbol of the isle.The Red Dragon was the symbol of the Celtic people whom the isle sought to drive away.
Such an act was far crueler than Lucan's face-to-face mockery!
And yet it was precisely the sort of thing Merlin would do—chaotic yet orderly, ever shifting from one side to another, all for the pleasure of watching others fly into a rage.
"But regardless—" Lucan declared, "the one who gets to beat Merlin up is us."
Those words snapped Morgan back to her senses. She took a deep breath and nodded. The girl, golden hair flowing loose, dressed as a traveler, gazed toward the enormous dragon rushing nearer under Merlin's lead. The ten-odd miles between them vanished in a blink, the monstrous clouds of magical energy Vortigern dragged with him reversing half the sky itself.
In that moment, she extended her palm, summoning forth a wooden staff.
"Court of the Abyss!"
The ritual of the courtyard was invoked in an instant. The island's mana, under the authority of its sovereign, wove itself into an immense formula inscribed upon the fabric of space. The next second, the pale dragon seemed to crash into a bottomless abyss—though one could see the four directions, one could never reach the end, though one could see the real world, it could never be touched. That was the abyss: visible yet untouchable, the truest terror.
It lasted only a single second.
A second later, the White Dragon shattered the "Courtyard" with its overwhelming mana, bursting free of confinement.
In that instant, the great dragon also realized—it was the daughter of his foolish younger brother, the one who had inherited dominion over the isle, "Morgan le Fay," who had acted.
Though only for a brief moment, Merlin had managed to escape alive. At last, he saw from afar the campsite of the previous night—the figures of Lucan and Morgan, staff raised high.
The silver-haired youth, beautiful yet tear-streaked, looked as though he might truly burst into sobs.
And behind him, the vast shadow loomed once again.
Accompanied by the dragon's roar.Accompanied by—The sudden crash of dragon claws, imbued with draconic might sufficient to rend all things!
Vwoom!
Space quaked. The air itself fractured in layers... Compared to Morgan's courtyard sorcery, which—even at its great speed—still required the span of a breath, the radiance of true "instantaneous" magecraft blazed forth in that very same moment.
Behind Merlin, before the claws could strike, a torrent of brilliance erupted—like a waterfall surging against the sky, like a sea of radiant clouds ascending.
Vortigern exhaled, his mana surging and swelling, pouring outward without end. It was as if his infinite dragon's mana had become a tangible abyss, seeking to consume all.
Though dragon mana was not on par with the highest concentration of True Ether, in the age of myth it was already a supreme power, the breath of the planet itself. In both quality and quantity, it should have been enough to devour everything of this age.
Yet the brilliance released into the sky was no less inexhaustible. In sheer quality, it surpassed even the dragon's mana.
The dragon's heart was the furnace of Vortigern's endless mana.But the other's power seemed the same!
Light and darkness—mind's radiance and the dragon's abyss. In that instant, the world between sky and earth was split into two.
And in that gap, Merlin finally fell downward, landing beside Lucan—who gazed upward, calm and unhurried, even while unleashing the highest mysteries in opposition to the dragon.
Morgan glared at Merlin with disgust.
Merlin merely hunched his shoulders, chuckling sheepishly.
He looked toward Lucan, and clicked his tongue in wonder. As a being with human blood, his sensitivity to mana was far less than Vortigern's. Having never directly opposed such power in sorcery, Merlin only now realized what Lucan truly possessed: True Ether, on the level of a divine body.
To wield True Ether in human form, walking the modern world as a "god"—Not a god in spirit alone, but a god in flesh and soul!
"No wonder he could withstand the glory of the 'Scourge of God' and again shatter the brilliance of the Roman Empire," Merlin thought.
Even the highest fairies and spirits—extensions of the planet itself, capable of rivaling gods as incarnations of nature—could not generate True Ether from within themselves.
In the ancient days, even gods themselves rarely remade divine bodies.
This was a re-creation akin to true magic itself.
The duel raged on in the skies. This was sorcery against sorcery, mystery against mystery. The dragon of the isle, embodiment of its malice, overturned the sky, while Lucan's radiance of the mind safeguarded the land below.
With his divine body, he invoked the "Spirit of God"—A grand thaumaturgy sustained by True Ether alone, altering the world's very environment!
Though he had spent much of this time refining his martial skill, that did not mean he would abandon sorcery in battle. Against true foes, the harmony of martial and magical arts was the only proper way.
And before him, Vortigern in his draconic form—without question, fit the definition of a true foe!
…
That day, the dragon rose.Yet Subotai's radiance stood proud.He repelled the dragon's advance.He stood firm at the world's end.He faced head-on the Vortigern spoken of as invincible.
[The Ballad of the Bard: Subotai]
…
A clash. A deadlock.
Though the dragon's output in that body was undeniably greater than that of Lucan in human form, the quality of True Ether—its omnipotence—surpassed the mana of dragonkind.
As the might of the greatest of phantasmal species, the dragon's mana leaned ever toward destruction, unlike the gods' power, which reshaped nature.
Thus—In this clash of mana alone, Vortigern was forced into stalemate with Lucan, standing firm upon the earth