Ardyn's analytical mind was racing, trying to deconstruct the impossible biological mimicry. How could a Debugger, a class of logic and code, replicate the draconic ocular shift of a seasoned Dragon Knight? A skill illusion? Genetic tampering? But the fascinating puzzle was violently shattered as Korvath, his pride scorched by the display and the pistol shot, finally broke.
With a roar that held the echo of a drake's cry, he lunged. It wasn't a fencer's probe; it was a demolition strike. His fist, wrapped in a nimbus of heat-distorted air, shot forward with enough force to crater reinforced steel, aiming to obliterate Noctar's smug, composed face.
Noctar's hand snapped up. His Root Access vision painted the attack vector in glowing trajectory lines clear, predictable, slow in the landscape of data. But there was a disconnect. His mind processed at the speed of thought; his body, while enhanced, was untrained in the intricate, reflexive dance of close-quarters combat.
The block was brutally effective but aesthetically clumsy all raw, intercepting power and zero finesse, meeting the punch with a jarring THUD that echoed like a gong in the small office.
What followed was a chaotic, brutal ballet of violence. Korvath, now in his element, pressed the attack with the skill of a warrior bred for glory. His combinations were fluid, powerful, and economically vicious jabs like piston strikes, hooks that whistled through the air, low kicks meant to shatter knees.
Noctar gave ground, his movements a series of inelegant but unnervingly effective dodges, desperate parries, and uses of the office furniture as momentary shields. He wasn't fighting back; he was a system under stress-test, analyzing the rhythm, the patterns, the tells in his opponent's violence, learning the language of physical combat through immersion.
Frustration boiled over in Korvath. To be dodged by this… this brawler was an insult. He suddenly disengaged, chest heaving not from exertion but from fury. He turned his sneer toward Ardyn, his voice dripping with venomous contempt.
"Is this the caliber you've sunk to? This is why you rejected my offer? You trade the lineage of a Dragon Knight for a back-alley loser who can't even throw a proper punch?"
Ardyn's frown deepened into something dark and dangerous, a sharp retort about professionalism and autonomy on her lips.
She never got to voice it.
The insult was the trigger. The final line of corrupted code. The fatal exception.
Noctar moved.
It wasn't the calculated, data-driven dodge from before. It was a burst of pure, explosive, biological speed that bypassed conscious thought. One moment he was three paces away, the next he was inside Korvath's guard. He drove his knee upward in a vicious, rising arc, connecting with the Dragon Knight's jaw with a sickening, wet CRUNCH of teeth and bone.
Korvath's head snapped back. He staggered, eyes glazing over with shock and pain.
Noctar was on him like a falling monolith. He rode the taller man to the ground, pinning him with a weight that felt geologic. Then he began to punch. Not with wild rage, but with a cold, mechanical, piston-like ferocity. Left. Right. Left. Right. Each impact was a damp, terrible sound.
There was no rage on his face, just a grim, focused determination, the same expression he wore when deleting corrupted code. He was systematically dismantling a hostile process.
"ENOUGH!"
Ardyn's voice cracked through the room like a spell whip, sharp and absolute.
Out of respect for her, the only code that overrode his current protocol, Noctar instantly stopped. His bloodied fist hovered in the air, trembling with arrested momentum. He took a breath, the cold focus receding slightly, and began to push himself off the dazed Korvath.
It was a moment of mercy.
Korvath, humiliated beyond measure, his perfect face a mask of blood and swelling fury, saw the opening. As Noctar rose, he summoned a surge of draconic strength and roared, spearing forward from the floor. He tackled Noctar around the midsection, driving him backward with the force of a runaway siege engine.
They hit the already weakened wall beside the shattered door. Drywall and plaster exploded outward as they tore through into the brightly lit administrative hallway beyond in a cloud of dust and debris. The impact slammed Noctar into the opposite wall, knocking the wind from his lungs in a pained gasp.
And it awakened something.
Not calculation. Not strategy.
Something far older, and far more dangerous, sleeping deep in the code of his soul.
A low, resonant growl rumbled in Noctar's chest, a sound that vibrated the dust motes in the air. It wasn't entirely his own voice; it was layered with something deeper, a predatory frequency that made the few clerks in the hallway freeze in terror.
// ANALYSIS: HOSTILE INTENT CONFIRMED. TARGET HAS DISREGARDED CEASEFIRE PROTOCOL.
// ACTIVATING AUTONOMOUS COMBAT PROTOCOLS. SKILL SYNCHRONIZATION DETECTED.
// SYNCHRONIZING WITH TARGET'S PRIMARY COMBAT AURA: [A-RANK SKILL - DRAGON RAGE].
// EFFECT: SIGNIFICANTLY BOOSTS PHYSICAL DEFENSE AND ATTACK POWER. SENSES SHARPEN. PAIN RECEPTORS DAMPENED.
// WARNING: PROTOCOL MAY TEMPORARILY OVERRIDE HIGHER COGNITIVE FUNCTIONS. PRIORITY: TERMINATE THREAT.
A wave of raw, primal, crimson tinged power flooded Noctar's system. His muscles corded and swelled beneath his clothes. A faint, shimmering, scale like pattern flickered across his skin like a heat haze. His ice-blue eyes, already slitted, now glowed with an inner, bestial fire. He wasn't just a man who could mimic a dragon's eyes. In that moment, he was the dragon a creature of pure, unthinking, territorial fury.
He rose from the rubble, chunks of plaster falling from his shoulders. His aura erupted, a visible, crimson tinged haze of malice that warped the light around him. He was a predator about to end a rivalry in the most permanent way possible.
But he stopped.
Because he saw that Korvath, scrambling to his own feet, was now busy not with him, but with parrying a blistering series of swift, precise strikes from a blade of polished silversteel.
Ardyn stood between them, having stepped through the hole in the wall as if it were a formal archway. Her longsword, [Queen'sWrath], was a blur of chilling light, each clash against Korvath's now summoned drake scale gauntlets ringing with a sound like breaking icicles.
Her face was a mask of cold, professional fury, all earlier amusement gone. Her office was in ruins, her morning disrupted, her patience evaporated. The Rose Knight had drawn her thorns, and they were aimed at both of them.
"That," she said, her voice dangerously calm, cutting through the growls and the heavy breathing, "is quite enough."