A kilometer-long emerald dragon pierced through the dense cloud layer and soared majestically into the open sky, its massive serpentine body undulating with grace.
The snow blade barrage and rotating halo attacks launched by the Jun father and son weren't even worth acknowledging as threats.
Snap. Snap.
The attacks struck the dragon's massive tail scales with dull, pathetic sounds—
And didn't even make the emerald armor tremble or crack in the slightest.
It was like throwing pebbles at a mountain.
"This... this is impossible..."
Jun Ao and Jun Kai froze completely in mid-air, their faces draining of all color as comprehension dawned.
Below them, Mia, Laura, and everyone else who had never personally witnessed Elric's true dragon form before stood equally paralyzed with shock.
They had known intellectually that Elric was powerful—had heard rumors, seen evidence of his strength.
But they never, never imagined anything like this.
A dragon of this incomprehensible size, this overwhelming presence, this reality-warping pressure radiating from every scale—
It completely shattered common sense and rational understanding.
This wasn't just a superpower anymore, wasn't just an enhanced human with special abilities.
This was a walking natural disaster. A living miracle. A god made flesh.
Elric's massive draconic head turned slowly, deliberately, golden reptilian pupils focusing with intensity.
His eyes locked directly onto the Jun father and son hovering pathetically in the air.
"What were you two saying just now?"
His voice boomed across the entire sky, deep and resonant, physically shaking the air itself and vibrating through everyone's bones.
Jun Ao's knees nearly gave out entirely despite him floating in mid-air.
"My lord... we were completely blind and ignorant!" His voice cracked with terror. "We didn't recognize your magnificence!"
"Please, please spare our worthless lives!"
Jun Kai immediately panicked and shouted desperately, all previous confidence and righteous fury evaporating instantly.
"That's absolutely right! We have nothing—NOTHING—to do with Laura or Mia anymore!"
His words tumbled out frantically.
"Whatever happened between us before is meaningless now! You can deal with them however you want! We won't interfere!"
At this critical moment, neither of them retained even the slightest intention of continuing to fight or rescue anyone.
They weren't complete idiots, after all.
In front of a genuine mythical being like this dragon—
Women, pride, romantic attachment, territorial ambition—
All of it was utterly meaningless compared to survival.
"Too late for apologies."
Elric's judgment was absolute and final.
He didn't even bother with dramatic attacks or elaborate techniques.
He simply... exhaled.
A condensed stream of superheated dragon breath washed over the two men in a focused beam of apocalyptic fire.
In less than a single second—
Jun Ao and Jun Kai were completely erased from existence.
No charred bones remained.
No scattered ashes drifted down.
Absolutely nothing was left behind to mark their presence.
They simply ceased to exist.
Elric's voice echoed calmly across the battlefield below.
"Natasha, Grace—you can all return to the floating island now. I'll be back later."
The women immediately nodded.
"Yes, husband."
Laura and Mia stood there in stunned silence, their expressions impossibly complicated mixtures of conflicting emotions.
Shock at the overwhelming display of power.
Fear of what this meant for their futures.
Helplessness at their complete lack of agency.
But also, mixed within all that—
Relief.
Especially Mia.
Watching Jun Kai—the boy she'd once believed she loved, who had promised eternal devotion—vanish so easily without even attempting real resistance, something fundamental inside her finally broke irreparably.
She had genuinely believed in pure, romantic love once upon a time.
One-on-one devotion. Soulmates. Forever partnerships.
But the moment actual death appeared as a realistic possibility—
That so-called eternal love collapsed instantly into cowardly self-preservation.
So this is reality, she thought with bitter clarity. This is what love actually means when tested.
She clenched her fists unconsciously, fingernails digging into her palms.
If romantic love was this fragile, this conditional, this ultimately worthless...
Then why not choose power instead? Why not align herself with overwhelming strength?
She looked upward toward the sky, where Elric's dragon form was already wheeling around and flying away toward the city ruins.
And without consciously realizing the shift in her own psychology—
There was a distinct trace of softness appearing in her eyes when she thought of him.
High above the devastated cityscape, Elric soared effortlessly through scattered clouds.
His Clairvoyance ability was fully activated, eyes glowing faintly as supernatural vision penetrated buildings and distance.
He systematically scanned the entire territory, sweeping methodically block by block, district by district, searching for anything valuable or interesting.
Potable water was desperately scarce now across the entire region.
Most survivors looked hollow-eyed, dirty, half-starved—barely clinging to life.
Even women who had once been considered beautiful were now barely recognizable under layers of grime, malnutrition, and despair.
So Elric searched very carefully, very thoroughly, unwilling to miss potential high-quality targets hidden beneath surface appearances.
Then—after nearly an hour of systematic scanning—
He found something that made him pause.
A walled villa compound in what had once been an affluent neighborhood.
The perimeter was surrounded by armed thugs carrying an assortment of pistols, machetes, and improvised weapons. Their postures screamed amateur violence rather than professional security.
But inside the compound walls—
Blood. Everywhere.
Severed limbs scattered carelessly.
Corpses piled without dignity or burial.
In the central courtyard, several people were tied up in a precise circle formation, wrists methodically slit, blood draining steadily into carefully carved grooves in the concrete floor.
They were being bled alive for harvesting.
Among the bound victims—
A woman caught Elric's attention specifically.
Her hair was matted and filthy with dried blood and dirt.
Her face was smudged beyond easy recognition.
But her eyes remained bright with desperate awareness.
Her figure, even emaciated, was tall and naturally well-proportioned—good bone structure visible beneath malnourishment.
Elric's predatory gaze sharpened with interest.
This one... potentially qualifies if cleaned up properly.
"Slash."
Below, two people positioned in front of her had their wrist restraints cut by a blood-soaked thug.
Within minutes of accelerated drainage—
They had been reduced to nothing but dried, mummified corpses.
The woman trembled violently, understanding with clarity.
She was next in the execution line.
Elric frowned deeply from his aerial vantage point, disturbed.
"What kind of twisted place is this?"
"Why is everything so deliberately ritualistic?"
Looking at the geometric precision of the blood collection grooves, the ceremonial arrangement of victims, a familiar and deeply unpleasant sensation surfaced in his mind.
Systematic blood collection and consumption...
It reminded him uncomfortably of that bespectacled man he'd encountered months ago.
The one who'd been terrorizing the area back when he first took in Sasha.
The Blood-Blood Fruit user who'd seemed almost cultishly devoted to blood manipulation.
Elric's eyes turned cold with recognition and disgust.
This had the same stench, the same methodology, the same twisted philosophy.
And in the next instant, decision made—
The dragon descended toward the compound.
"Please—no—no more!"
"I don't want to die like this! Someone help me!"
The woman's desperate screams echoed through the blood-soaked courtyard, raw and primal.
It was her turn for the draining procedure.
But her crying and begging didn't soften anyone's heart or inspire mercy.
Instead, a middle-aged man thoroughly drenched in other people's blood walked forward with confident, measured steps.
His skin was unnaturally pale, almost translucent. Bulging veins covered his exposed arms and neck like twisted ropes. Yet despite the blood coating him, he showed no actual injuries or wounds.
He sat directly in the pooled blood covering the courtyard floor, closed his eyes with obvious pleasure, and began actively absorbing it through his skin somehow.
The crimson liquid on the ground visibly thinned and receded, flowing into him like water down a drain.
After perhaps thirty seconds of this disturbing absorption, the man opened his eyes with satisfaction.
He licked his lips slowly, savoring residual taste, and smiled with genuine cruelty.
"Cut off her head before draining," he ordered casually.
"I'm growing tired of the noisy screaming. It's becoming irritating."
"Yes, boss. Right away."
Two heavily muscled thugs stepped forward obediently, raising machetes high.
But before the blades could complete their downward swing—
Whoosh!
A compressed blue wind blade flashed through the air faster than normal eyes could track.
The two executioners were cut cleanly in half at the waist.
Their upper bodies slid off their legs with wet sounds and collapsed separately into spreading blood pools.
Fresh arterial spray painted the courtyard walls.
"What the hell?!"
"Who dares?! Show yourself!"
The remaining thugs immediately panicked, guns and knives shaking visibly in their trembling hands as they spun around frantically looking for threats.
The middle-aged blood-user stood up slowly, deliberately, showing no fear whatsoever.
"Who has the audacity to cause trouble on my personal territory?"
His voice remained perfectly calm despite the sudden attack.
Confident. Arrogant. Absolutely certain of his superiority.
He genuinely wasn't afraid of any challenger.
His Blood-Blood Fruit ability made him exponentially stronger with every life drained, every drop consumed.
After months of systematic slaughter—hundreds of victims, thousands of liters absorbed—he believed with complete conviction that no superpowered human in this entire region could possibly threaten him.
Originally, he had been planning to personally hunt down the people responsible for killing his son during a failed raid.
But now, conveniently—
Some fool had delivered themselves directly to his doorstep for execution.
"Witness the power of the Blood Wraith," he announced proudly, savoring the dramatic moment.
Impossibly thick blood erupted explosively from his body in gushing torrents.
The crimson liquid twisted and writhed as if genuinely alive, forming tentacles and claws.
Bones cracked audibly. Muscles expanded grotesquely.
In just seconds, the man transformed completely into a four-meter-tall demonic entity—a blood wraith with curling black horns, skin like wet leather, and eyes glowing with malevolent crimson light.
"HAHAHAHA!"
The transformed blood wraith laughed with genuine madness, voice distorted and inhuman.
Even his own loyal subordinates collapsed to the ground, overcome by instinctive terror at the monstrous display.
Before the apocalypse, he had been an absolute nobody—
Divorced. Unemployed. Worthless. Invisible.
Forty-three years of failure and mediocrity.
After the apocalypse struck, this Devil Fruit power had transformed him overnight into a king among the ruins.
A god in a world of insects.
He had already carved out and consolidated his personal territory through systematic violence and terror.
Next phase would be expanding to control the entire regional district.
Then after that—
Eventually, perhaps, the entire country.
Just as his megalomaniacal ambition swelled to new heights—
A wave of absolutely scorching heat suddenly pressed down from directly above like physical weight.
The blood wraith looked upward instinctively.
And froze completely, confidence evaporating.
A massive emerald dragon head hovered impossibly close above him, blocking out the sky.
Golden reptilian eyes looked down with pure, undisguised contempt—the way a human might observe a particularly disgusting insect.
"Are you... some kind of shapeshifter?" the blood wraith managed to stammer.
"A dragon? That's impossible. Dragons don't exist."
Despite his visible terror, he forced false confidence back into his distorted voice.
"This is MY territory. I am the apex predator here."
"Even if you're supposedly a dragon, you won't leave this place alive. I'll drain you like the others."
Summoning desperate bravado, blood erupted again in massive quantities from the wraith's body.
A colossal blood waterfall surged upward with tremendous force, roaring toward the dragon's head like a tsunami.
Hundreds of gallons of weaponized blood, sharp as razors, corrosive as acid.
Elric didn't dodge. Didn't retreat. Didn't even blink.
A single dragon claw descended with casual, contemptuous ease.
SLASH.
The massive blood torrent was sliced apart effortlessly—dispersing like morning mist against tempered steel.
And the true, one-sided slaughter began.
There is 70 chapter Advance, in my patreon. If you are interested can check it out.
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