Anastasia remained motionless for a few seconds, one knee pressed into the snow, her breath still uneven. Tenkōsetsu was firmly gripped in her right hand. Her back throbbed, her muscles protested from the impact, but no bones were broken. Nothing irreparable. She inhaled slowly, methodically assessing every signal from her body before rising without haste.
When she lifted her gaze, she saw him.
Roughly thirty meters above the ground, suspended in the night sky as if gravity did not apply to him, hovered a dragon of such magnitude that the landscape itself seemed secondary. His serpentine body moved through the air with silent fluidity, scales so deeply black they appeared to absorb the moonlight rather than reflect it. Two long, tapered horns curved backward, streaked with faint silver veins that pulsed softly. His eyes were neither red nor gold. They were black—not merely dark, but utterly void, like twin abysses opened onto nothingness.
A massive scar ran across his left flank, long and irregular, cutting a pale line through the obsidian scales. It did not appear recent. It was ancient. Preserved.
So it was him who was watching me before I fell into the Néanthelyn's lair.
She immediately recognized what she had studied in the Imperial Library.
Azharyx. The last of the Void Dragons. One of the three great abominations of these mountains.
Her throat tightened slightly.
But… isn't he supposed to never interfere in the affairs of the world?
The dragon's voice resonated.
It did not emerge from his mouth at first. It vibrated through the air, deep and dense, as though the mountain itself served as a resonating chamber. His body undulated slowly in the sky while the words took shape around her.
"After these thousands of years waiting for you… I finally find you again."
A subtle but undeniable shock ran through the Empress.
For the first time since awakening in this world, she found herself in a situation she did not entirely control. Her mind raced through accumulated knowledge—chronicles, fragmented reports, intersecting myths.
The conclusion settled with merciless clarity.
The first heroine had exterminated his race during the human-demon war.
The Void Dragons possessed an exceptionally rare attribute: natural anti-magic affinity. A catastrophic threat to any army of mages. Humans had feared they might ally with demons. They had chosen to eliminate them before that possibility could become reality.
They had been hunted.
Eradicated.
One by one.
And now she carried the body shaped from that heroine. Her mana. Her weapon.
Ah…
"You prefer to remain silent?" the dragon growled.
This time, his jaws parted slightly, revealing lustrous black fangs. The vibration of his voice made the surrounding ridgelines tremble. Sheets of snow broke loose from the mountaintops, first sliding in narrow streams.
"Is it remorse that makes you so silent… or do you not even remember me?"
A low rumble spread along the slopes. The snow, layered and unstable, began to give way in broader sections. At first slowly. Then with increasing force. A white fracture line formed above them, widening as it descended.
Anastasia did not look away from the dragon.
He continued, his voice gaining intensity.
"I have spent my life—every day, every hour—preparing for this meeting. I withdrew from the world. I trained without rest to master my attribute… for this precise moment."
His body lifted slightly, fully revealing the scar along his flank.
"And when I finally find you again… you dare look at me like a stranger."
The air around him shifted.
Within roughly ten meters of his body, space itself seemed to warp. Ambient mana became unstable, impossible to condense properly. It did not dissipate. It scrambled, as if an invisible frequency disrupted any coherent formation.
She understood immediately.
A domain.
Exceptional beings could bend the laws of the world around them through their attribute. It was not a mere ability—it was a localized alteration of reality.
An anti-magic domain.
For the first time since awakening, Anastasia considered with absolute clarity the possibility of her own death.
The anti-magic field surrounding Azharyx was not symbolic power; it genuinely modified local laws. Mana became unstable in its proximity, difficult to structure, almost reluctant to respond. If she entered that field without preparation, her abilities would be impaired, and even Tenkōsetsu might not fully express its divine nature.
She acknowledged the fact without flinching.
Yet fear did not arise.
What took shape instead was a cold, measured anger—not because he invoked the past, nor because he accused her of a massacre she had not committed, but because he dared to hover above her and speak as though he were a judge.
He physically dominated the sky and presumed to demand accountability from her. He spoke as if he possessed moral authority superior to hers, as though her very existence required justification. That position was intolerable.
She was meant to govern this world.
No one was permitted to stand above her.
No one was permitted to strip her of preeminence, even for a moment.
A brutally clear thought crossed her mind: if given the opportunity, she would repeat the massacre of his race. Not out of loyalty to the heroine, nor attachment to that past, but to affirm that no race, no being, could challenge her ascendancy. The idea stirred neither guilt nor hesitation. It aligned perfectly with the order she intended to impose.
Azharyx spoke again, his voice deeper now, vibrating despite the growing thunder of the mountains.
"Do you remember killing mine one by one? The elders who carried our memories. The young who were learning to fly. The newborns who could not escape."
The accusation struck without causing the slightest tremor.
Above them, the accumulated snow finally collapsed. A sharp fracture split the white ridgeline, and the entire mass gave way in a prolonged crash. The avalanche gathered speed as it descended, widening as it absorbed rocks and ice. The roar became continuous, rolling through the valley with impersonal force that drowned out all else.
"The terror you inflicted upon my kind," the dragon continued, "I will return to you a hundredfold."
The white wall approached rapidly—dense, inevitable. The air vibrated with its imminent impact, thick with frozen particles and debris.
Anastasia subtly adjusted her stance, her grip firm on Tenkōsetsu, and held the dragon's black gaze without hesitation. Her rage had crystallized into a clear intention: she would not merely survive. She would break him. She would silence his domain and make him understand what it meant to defy the one destined to reign.
Then the avalanche swallowed them.
Anastasia left the ground at the exact moment the avalanche reached her position. The white mass surged beneath her in a continuous roar, engulfing the slope in a torrent of snow and fractured stone. Suspended for a fleeting instant in the air, she lifted her eyes and immediately understood that the dragon had anticipated her movement.
Azharyx had not fled the avalanche.
He had used it.
Between his partially opened jaws, a black breath was already forming—dense, compact, compressed to a level she recognized at once. This was not a diffuse discharge of energy, but a methodical concentration, similar to the way the subterranean serpent had condensed its own destructive force.
Anastasia's mind shifted into pure analysis.
She had no stable footing, no fixed trajectory. A lateral evasion was impossible. A frontal counter would be suicide. In less than a heartbeat, she recalled the condensation method she had observed before. Without hesitation, she compressed her own blue mana along her right flank, forcing it into a single unstable point.
She triggered the detonation.
The blue shockwave hurled her body sideways at the precise instant the black breath was released. The beam tore through the space she had occupied half a second earlier, vaporizing snow, carving a monstrous trench into the mountain and ripping away an entire section of rock across dozens of meters. Residual heat and pressure distorted the air in its wake.
Her body struck the slope brutally, rolled several meters, then came to a halt. She rose at once, drawing Tenkōsetsu fully in her right hand while keeping the scabbard in her left, lowering her stance into a stable, grounded position.
Another fraction of a second… and I would have died.
She cast a brief glance behind her. Where the beam had passed, the snow had vanished down to bare rock. A section of the mountain had collapsed entirely. The trajectory was clean, gouged, irreversible.
She raised her eyes toward the dragon.
I need to understand his—
Azharyx's form tore through space.
The air itself folded inward. In a blink, he reappeared less than ten meters from her. The shift was immediate. Her mana destabilized even within her own body, becoming difficult to maintain in coherent form.
The claw descended.
Anastasia blocked with Tenkōsetsu and the scabbard, crossing both arms to absorb the impact. The force was crushing. Her legs sank deep into the snow, muscles straining violently under the pressure.
But it was only a feint.
The dragon's tail swept behind her at brutal speed. She had no time to pivot. The strike caught her across the back and hurled her violently across the slope.
She drove Tenkōsetsu into the ground to reduce the impact, the blade carving a deep furrow through rock concealed beneath the snow. The force diminished—but did not disappear. Blood rose in her throat and spilled from her mouth as she came to a stop, a dull, spreading pain radiating through her ribcage.
Without delay, she channeled mana to stabilize internal damage, taking advantage of the brief distance from his domain to seal what she could.
Azharyx did not rush her.
He remained suspended at a measured distance, his immense body moving slowly through the air as though evaluating how she would rise. There was no haste in him. No impatience. This pause was deliberate.
He wanted her to stand.
He wanted her to try again.
Anastasia pressed herself upright with Tenkōsetsu. Her left arm hung at an unnatural angle, unusable, each slight movement sending a sharp wave of pain through her shoulder. Blood ran from her brow into her left eye, partially blurring her vision. She inhaled slowly and forced her mana to stabilize vital functions, leaving the broken bone unattended for now. This battle would grant her no luxury of recovery.
She chose to attack.
With a sudden burst of acceleration, she launched herself toward him, pouring dense mana into the blade. The surface of Tenkōsetsu glowed with concentrated blue light, the energy compressed until it emitted a sharp vibration. She struck upward, aiming precisely at the joint between two scales.
The moment the blade entered the domain, the mana disintegrated.
The energy fragmented as if torn apart from within, losing cohesion before it could reach flesh. The strike connected—but without the amplified force she had calculated. Steel scraped scale, cutting shallowly without inflicting meaningful damage.
The counterattack came immediately.
A claw descended with precise violence. She parried with blade and scabbard, but the impact lifted her from the ground. A violent shock ran through her right arm, micro-fractures spreading along a wrist already strained. She was thrown backward, her body bouncing across hardened snow before slamming into exposed stone.
She attempted a ranged attack.
Without fully rising, she condensed mana outside the immediate boundary of the domain, forming a sharp crescent wave and launching it horizontally toward the dragon. The attack took shape perfectly in open air, dense and stable, but disintegrated the moment it entered the anti-magic field. The crescent dissolved into fragments of light before reaching its target.
She clenched her teeth.
Azharyx descended upon her.
He did not strike first with his claws. He used his entire mass. His shoulder crashed into her with overwhelming force, sending her flying several meters. She rolled, tried to regain footing, but the dragon's tail swept in a wide, brutal arc. The impact struck her midsection and lifted her again, her body tracing an uncontrolled trajectory before crashing heavily against the slope.
This time, she coughed up blood in large quantities.
And yet she rose again.
Abandoning subtlety, she hurled herself forward once more, slashing diagonally toward the massive scar along his flank. The scale there yielded slightly—but before she could deepen the cut, an opposing claw seized her shoulder.
Pressure increased.
The talons pierced through unstable mana reinforcement and into flesh. She felt skin tear, blood flow freely down her side. The dragon lifted her briefly into the air, holding her suspended for a heartbeat.
Then he hurled her into the ground.
The impact was more violent than the previous ones. Snow burst outward, revealing bare rock as her body struck it full force. Her breath vanished. Her right arm trembled, on the verge of failing entirely.
She attempted once more to reinforce herself with mana.
The energy formed for an instant—then fragmented, destabilized by the domain. The counterattack she had prepared never materialized. Another charge struck her before she could reposition. This time, claws raked across her back, four deep gashes tearing through muscle.
Pain became constant.
She stood again, unsteady, blood running from her brow, her mouth, her side, and now her back. Her breathing was uneven. Her vision blurred. Her left arm was broken. Her mana unstable.
Azharyx withdrew to roughly thirty meters away.
He did not pursue her.
He watched.
His black, hollow gaze revealed neither haste nor visible satisfaction. He waited for her to find an answer. To recognize the impasse. To accept her inferiority.
For now, the battle was entirely one-sided.
"Are remorse the reason you allow yourself to be beaten like this?" Azharyx growled, his voice cutting through the wind. "Do not insult me by holding back. Fight seriously, heroine."
It was not the word that struck her.
It was the command.
Fight seriously.
He spoke as though evaluating her. As though what she had endured was merely a disappointing attempt.
Anastasia's body trembled slightly. Her breathing grew uneven. Blood dripped from her chin onto the snow while her broken arm hung uselessly at her side. Mana swelled violently around her, unstable, crashing against the anti-magic domain in blue bursts that shattered on contact.
"I will massacre you…" she rasped.
Her energy intensified further, chaotic, disordered, as if she were losing control. Snow blasted outward under the pressure of her aura, and the air vibrated with the surge of apparent fury.
"I will massacre you. Massacre you. Massacre you."
Her voice rose, nearly breaking with rage, as she hurled more mana against the domain. Each attempt disintegrated on contact, exploding into fragments of light before reaching his scales. Outwardly, she appeared like a sovereign overcome by humiliation, unable to comprehend why her power no longer obeyed her.
Yet behind that distorted expression, her mind remained perfectly calm.
A nearly imperceptible smile flickered in her bloodshot eyes, hidden within the storm of mana she continued to unleash deliberately as a display of blindness.
I've found how to kill you, you damned lizard.