The dragon's lightning breath tore through the air like a river of plasma, splitting the atmosphere and sending shockwaves rippling through the Dimensional Gap itself.
The graceful dragon soared overhead, wings beating steadily, unleashing devastating blasts of electrical energy at Leo. His hair stood on end, his body already going numb before the breath even touched him.
Leo spread all ten devil wings and shot upward faster than the lightning itself, dodging the breath that scorched the air and earth below.
But the dragon was already on top of him. Its tail whipped forward like a blur, the crack of a sonic boom trailing behind it, and slammed into his body.
Leo's body shattered on impact, crumbling apart like rock, dissolving into a spray of sand that scattered in every direction.
The sand quickly gathered and reformed into Leo's shape, letting him slip past the charging dragon and veer off in another direction.
The dragon wheeled around immediately, relentless, and dove at him again. Another blast of lightning breath flooded toward him, blanketing the sky.
"Seriously? What did I ever do to you?"
Leo streaked through the air, his entire form becoming a blur of light. He was faster than the breath, but the dragon only needed to turn its head slightly to sweep the torrent after him, tracking him without pause.
It had attacked him without provocation, and now it was chasing him like he'd stolen its eggs.
"Fine. You want a fight? I'll give you one."
A Dragon King was intimidating, sure. The old Leo would have had to run. But the current Leo? He could take it.
Decision made, Leo stopped running. He reversed direction and charged straight at the dragon.
The dragon wasn't about to waste the opening. It fired its breath head-on, filling Leo's entire field of vision with electrical devastation.
Leo locked his eyes on the incoming torrent. At the last possible instant before impact, he activated Nature's Hope and transformed into a bolt of lightning, plunging straight into the breath attack.
The breath ripped across the sky above the floating landmass, tearing through the air and shooting into the endless void of the Dimensional Gap.
Seconds later, it stopped.
Because Leo, in lightning form, had burst out the other end and appeared right in front of the dragon's face. He took in that surprisingly delicate visage and planted his fist square on it.
Fire erupted across the dragon's face on impact. Leo's fist had ignited at some point during the charge, and as it connected, the flames detonated like a bomb, releasing a shockwave of force.
The dragon was sent flying, its massive body crashing into the castle and collapsing an entire corner of the structure.
The punch seemed to have genuinely dazed it. After hitting the ground, it lay there for a long moment without moving, its head swaying side to side, clearly stunned.
"That felt good."
Leo exhaled, the frustration of getting breath-attacked point blank finally venting.
But the dragon recovered. Enraged, it threw off the rubble pinning it down and fired another lightning breath straight at Leo.
"Again?"
Leo raised an eyebrow at its persistence, shifted into lightning form once more, and dove into the incoming breath. He rode the current forward, burst through, and arrived in front of the dragon's face.
Just as he was about to repeat the same move, the dragon adapted. The instant Leo shifted from lightning back to his physical form, it cut off the breath and lunged with its jaws wide open, trying to swallow him whole.
Leo wasn't about to let that happen. His ten devil wings flared and he flickered sideways, dodging the snap of those massive jaws.
The dragon raised a thick claw and swiped at him, howling wind trailing behind it. Leo dodged again. Then again. He weaved around the dragon at point-blank range, dancing just out of reach of its claws.
Then the tail came again. A blur and a sonic boom, slamming into Leo and shattering his body once more.
This time, Leo's body broke apart into shards of ice. The fragments drifted down like snowflakes and settled across the dragon's body, clinging to its surface, spreading and crystallizing, slowly encasing it in frost.
The dragon shuddered violently. Sensing the danger, it unleashed its full draconic aura. The gradient-colored energy exploded outward and shattered every shard of ice on its body.
Leo's form coalesced out of the drifting ice and snow. He closed in and drove another fist into the dragon's skull.
This time it wasn't fire. It was wind. Savage, compressed wind wrapped around his fist, and the impact detonated like a mortar round, launching the dragon skyward. It nearly flew off the edge of the floating landmass entirely.
The dragon struggled to stabilize, beating its wings desperately until it finally steadied itself high in the air. But the stinging heat on its face left it in a foul mood. It stared down at Leo, and in its eyes... appeared something like grievance.
"The hell are you looking at me like that for?"
Leo was floored by the expression in those eyes.
You attacked first.
You're the one who wouldn't stop.
So what exactly are you feeling wronged about?
And... is that expression even appropriate on a dragon?
Please. You're a dragon.
In all his life, Leo had never seen a dragon look aggrieved. He didn't know what to do with that.
The moment passed quickly. The dragon dove back down, charging straight at Leo, resuming its assault.
Lightning breath rained from above, striking the earth with devastating force, pulverizing the terrain and kicking up clouds of dust and debris.
This time Leo didn't transform into lightning and charge through. He relied on his ten devil wings for raw speed, weaving through the breath attacks. The dragon chased him relentlessly, blasting away, but Leo flew ahead with acrobatic precision, dodging every shot with increasingly absurd maneuvers while the dragon ate his dust.
Eventually, Leo started hitting back.
Thunder and lightning filled the sky. Not the dragon's breath, but actual weather. Leo seized control of the atmosphere above the floating land, summoning storm clouds and calling down real lightning bolts, dozens of them in rapid succession, all striking the dragon.
In seconds, the dragon was completely engulfed in crackling light.
Against anyone else, even a thick-skinned Dragon King, that barrage would have left them charred black and smoking, plummeting to the ground.
But this dragon was completely fine.
Its fur was still smooth. Its body still graceful. Its eyes were half-closed, wearing an expression of... enjoyment. Like it was having a good time.
On closer inspection, every bolt of lightning that struck the dragon was being absorbed. Not deflected. Absorbed. Only a faint shimmer of electricity remained on its surface.
"It absorbs lightning...?"
Leo was genuinely surprised.
"It can do that?"
What kind of dragon was this? A Sprite Dragon?
But Sprite Dragons couldn't absorb lightning, could they? Leo wasn't entirely sure. Sprite Dragons were a high-level dragon species with lightning attributes. They used blue-colored lightning and electrical attacks that only harmed recognized enemies, never allies. They were especially fond of pure-hearted individuals, instinctively lowering their guard around them.
"But Sprite Dragons don't look like this. A subspecies? A mutation?"
Leo puzzled over it, but didn't dwell too long.
This dragon clearly had Dragon King-level power despite not being among the known five. That meant one of two things.
Either it had recently ascended to Dragon King class, and nobody knew about it yet.
Or its history predated the five Dragon Kings entirely, ancient enough that the world had forgotten it existed.
Leo leaned toward the latter. Everything about this place screamed age. If the dragon had been exiled to the Dimensional Gap along with this landmass, then however long this ruin had been drifting here was how long the dragon had been here too.
It might have reached Dragon King class during those long, forgotten centuries. Alone out here, unseen by anyone, absent from every record.
The dragon didn't share Leo's contemplative mood. After absorbing all the lightning, it looked unsatisfied. It gazed up at the thunderclouds with an expression that said it wanted to fly in and feast on more.
Leo immediately changed the weather, dispersing the storm and replacing it with freezing winds and hail. Temperatures plummeted. Snow began to fall, quickly escalating into a full blizzard that swallowed the dragon whole, ice crystallizing across its body.
The dragon unleashed its aura again, shattering the frost, then roared at Leo.
The message was clear: why did you stop with the lightning?
"First the grievance, now you're making demands?"
Leo had never met a more shameless creature.
"You want lightning? Have some fire first."
Leo raised both hands overhead. His white aura surged, and crimson flames ignited above him, expanding rapidly.
In moments, a massive vortex of fire spun above Leo's head. He compressed it, smaller and smaller, until the inferno that had spanned dozens of meters was condensed into a palm-sized fire lotus.
The lotus glowed red-purple with heat, blazing with an intensity that made the air warp around it. It pulsed with destructive energy like a bomb about to detonate.
Leo cradled the lotus in one hand, firelight casting sharp shadows across his grin.
"Go."
He hurled it. The lotus became a streak of red light, slicing through space and sky, hurtling toward the dragon.
The dragon sensed the danger instantly. Without hesitation, it fired its lightning breath to intercept.
Wrong move.
The devastating breath made contact with the lotus and failed to stop it. The lightning parted around it like butter meeting the sun, splitting cleanly as the lotus punched through without losing momentum.
It tore through the entire length of the breath and struck the dragon dead-on. The dragon's pupils contracted as the impact connected.
The world went still for a few seconds.
Then the explosion.
Above the floating land in the Dimensional Gap, a cataclysmic detonation bloomed outward.
Fire consumed everything. Heat became the only reality.
The blast flattened hills, scoured the wasteland bare, and the castle itself began disintegrating piece by piece under the shockwave. Even the Dimensional Gap seemed to react, hot winds howling outward, the floating landmass sinking under the force.
It looked like a sun had detonated. Worse than the end of the world.
If this explosion had occurred in any actual world instead of the Dimensional Gap, the devastation would have been catastrophic beyond measure.
Even Leo had to enter Nature's Hope the instant the lotus detonated, transforming into fire and merging with the inferno to avoid being caught in the blast radius.
The explosion raged on for a long time before finally fading.