The carriage rolled deeper into the emerald heart of the forest. Inside, the silence between Alice and Adam was heavy, almost physical. Alice let out a long, weary sigh that finally cracked the stillness.
Adam looked up, his sharp eyes catching her boredom. "So... what is the true nature of your power?"
Alice leaned back, a flash of pride crossing her features. "Raw strength. I can augment my physical form to surpass any limit."
"Then it must have a weakness," Adam countered, his voice clinical. "Every power has a flaw."
"Not mine," Alice replied, her tone dipping into a sudden, haunting melancholy. "I am simply too strong. But... I suppose I do have one vulnerability."
Adam leaned in, his curiosity piqued.
"My emotions," Alice whispered, her gaze drifting to the sun-drenched trees. "My family. They are my greatest weakness... and my greatest strength."
A strange, phantom pain flared in Adam's chest. He looked at her then—really looked at her. The warm sunlight bathed her face, making her appear like a goddess emerging from a sapphire sea. Her beauty was so staggering, so pure, that the words escaped his lips before he could stop them.
"So dazzling..."
"What?" Alice asked, genuinely confused.
Before he could answer, the world screamed.
A violent tremor buckled the earth, nearly overturning the carriage. Alice's instincts flared—a predator sensing a rival. "Go! Now!" she roared to the guards. "Turn the carriages back! Run as fast as your horses can gallop!"
The fear in her voice was enough to send the caravan into a panicked retreat. No sooner had they vanished than a colossal wave of molten lava erupted from the treeline. Alice didn't flinch. She swung her arm, the veins glowing a violent red, creating a wall of wind pressure that shattered the flames into harmless sparks.
Then, the shadow fell. It was massive, eclipsing the sun.
A Dragon.
It was a titan of scales and ancient malice. Alice's eyes widened, not with fear, but with a terrifying, ecstatic joy. "I've always wanted to fight a dragon," she laughed, her voice rising above the creature's deafening, mile-wide roar. "Let's see if you're as tough as the legends say!"
The dragon's aura was a physical weight, grinding the stones beneath her feet into dust. Alice smirked, a dark thought crossing her mind: You won't be as difficult as He was.
The beast lunged, its wings creating a hurricane. It unleashed a torrent of dragon-fire, but Alice was a blur. She took to the sky, her eyes sparkling with an emerald-orange bloodlust. She blinked through the air with light-speed precision, delivering a devastating blow to the dragon's underbelly.
The beast didn't even flinch.
"Tough bastard," Alice hissed, her hands trembling with an intoxicating surge of mana.
They clashed in mid-air. Alice intercepted the dragon's tackle with a dual-fisted strike to its skull. The impact triggered a cataclysmic explosion of electrical waves. The sky turned obsidian; lightning coiled around them like snakes as the sheer pressure of their collision birthed a localized cyclone.
Suddenly, the dragon's massive tail whipped through the storm. Focused on the head, Alice was caught off guard. The blow sent her hurtling toward the earth like a fallen meteor. She slammed into the ground, creating a crater that swallowed the forest floor.
The dragon roared in triumph, but the sound was cut short.
From the depths of the smoking crater, dark red lightning began to arc. Alice rose, her face a mask of primal wrath. Her eyes had darkened to a blood-soaked crimson. "You're dead meat," she growled.
She launched herself upward, a streak of lethal energy. She struck the dragon's head with a force that shattered mountains. The shockwave rippled for miles, crumbling nearby peaks. As the dragon fell toward the earth, Alice gathered a massive orb of crimson energy in her palms—a localized sun ready to detonate.
But before she could launch the finishing blow, the sky split open.
A sword—faster than anything Alice had ever seen—pierced the clouds. It moved with a velocity that defied her Grand Mage senses. It was a streak of divine judgment. The blade plunged into the dragon, pinning the beast to the earth with unimaginable force.
A violent, atomic shockwave of black flames and golden aura erupted from the impact site, blowing Alice back through the air.
Adam, watching from the distant hills, turned pale. His voice was a choked whisper of terror and awe.
"The King..."