"The measure of a man is what he does with power."
— Plato
***
From the bottom of the mountain range, up till the boundary of the skies, a crimson twinkling line was etched upon the world; it looked as if an artist had painted a sparkling maroon thread connecting the heavens and the earth below.
In reality, it was nothing so glamorous. Rather, it was simply the remnants of blood-tinged mana left by Rya's ascent and slash.
And atop this magnificent painting, Rya continued to move upwards, leaving the split dragonoid behind him.
Bloody fog leaked from his every pore and orifice, his mana churning violently both inside him and suffusing the area around him in quiet desolation.
His body, still being infused with the enigmatic energy from the transcendent being, could barely keep his skin from bursting and his organs from spilling out.
His mana pathways were almost a fried mess, with his mana pool still barely regenerating itself. And as time passed, they continued to change in an incomprehensible manner that seemed to defy logic. After all, how could a degrading mana pool start to mend itself, but Rya didn't mind these trivialities.
He was dying… no, 'he' was being erased from himself, so why would he still give a damn about anything.
A furrow of his brow and a slight grimace on his countenance were all the reactions he had to show for all the pain he had endured.
Using [phantom flicker] while wincing, he looked at the two separated parts of the dragonoid falling to the ground with numbness and almost…. Disappointment.
Seeing the corpse plummet down, he still felt weird about the situation.
Aside from his discomfort at that, his body could only endure one or two more of such powerful attacks, which he was unfamiliar with, any more, and he would burst… literally.
He looked at the sword in his hand with calm silence. It was a blade befitting an emperor… but he was no emperor.
He was a duskblade, his blade wasn't made from any precious alloy or moulded by any elusive enchantment; it was a normal steel blade doused in his mana for the entirety of his life.
It had shattered in the final explosion the dragon had levied, and now all he was left was something unfamiliar…. And wrongly instinctive.
Wiping the crimson mana mixed with his blood streaming from his nose and eyes, he looked at the horizon, towards the empire where the Roc lay.
Only one obstacle remained in his path, and then he would finally have his… oblivion.
Shaking that thought, he started to move.
I could do it now, probably….
He raised his hands, sensing the spatial nodes connecting this continent to the Polathros' continent, right near the Roc's nest.
A shimmering network of interconnected strings emerged in his mind that spun in mind-boggling patterns, making no sense.
He focused and narrowed down the spatial nodes which connected the two places and flared his mana.
Here!
The blade clasped in his hand was about to rise and push to connect the two nodes as he felt something nick at the back of his mind again.
Just when he was about to stab the blade forward, his body instinctively leapt back without his mind even comprehending the situation.
Buzz!! Whoosh!!
Right where he stood, a pulsing violet ball of plasma blasted and continued to torrent upwards to the edges of the sky.
It didn't radiate heat or sound, nor did it make the mana fluctuate; it simply devoured all that stood in its path.
Finally, looking down below, he saw the two pieces of the draganoid pulsating with a weird glow and stitching themselves back with wiggling tentacles of light and flame, connecting the flesh and preventing it from falling apart.
The eyes of the draganoid shone with a weird light, emanating both intelligence and the wrath of a savage predator.
It seemed the bastard was finally in his full mental faculties.
The sight made his almost mechanical heart beat faster, akin to a revving engine.
His mouth opened, and his lips moved slightly with a single phrase leaving his mouth.
Come!
The draganoid's stitched body burned with violet flames and reconnected in a heartbeat. Looking closely, its scales had dimmed, and its flames reeked of death.
Resurrection like this came at a price, which was good news.
Analysing these small details, Rya began preparing himself and fell while stepping on air to continuously change direction.
Both the fighters left afterimages and sonic booms in their wake as they prepared to clash.
The dragon, being more wary, seemed to adopt a long-range attack method. It put its claws together and pushed a mass of mana towards Rya in a wide range.
[Flare]
The mana pulsed and formed incandescent white halos that rocketed outwards from the dragon in undulating waves, trying to swallow Rya in their torrential assault.
In response, Rya grabbed his sword tightly and poured all the intangible will into this attack, with all his being focusing on that single motion of the sword.
Pierce!
And with that thought filling his soul, he pierced downwards with all his might, pooling in the mana and concentrating it entirely on his blade.
Crack!! Shatter!!
With all his mana weighing down like a mountain, it crashed through the flaring solar waves, akin to a sledgehammer shattering a glass.
Rya could've been more precise and focused his mana more, but his clear inability to control [-----]'s will was showing.
Not minding this, he phantom-stepped on the air again and twisted while slashing outwards.
In response, the dragonoid hurriedly pulled its hands up in guard and punched with full force.
Boom!! Creak!!
The air whined and boomed as the scales of the dragon managed to offset some of the damage, but the rest rippled through its body and made its innards quake.
What is this will?!
This was obvious enough; this kind of will was never seen or recorded by the dragon in its life.
Still not wanting to give it any breathing room, Rya disengaged and prepared to clash again with full force.
The dragonoid, seeing this, while enraged, was feeling more and more shock and dread.
The mana emanating from the dusk was weird in a way it couldn't put a finger on.
Still, its instincts flared again. Telling it something even worse was coming if it couldn't end this vermin in the coming moments.
It was relying on its regeneration and betting on a battle of attrition, but clearly that plan would have to be thrown out of the window now.
It continuously dodged and stepped out of any attack that seemed to have a particular scent.
Rya blurred again, flashing beside the dragon and levying a [mana severance]
This time, the dragon couldn't dodge completely and almost lost its tail, along with its abdomen being nearly sliced open.
Sensing the whiff of death approaching, the dragon roared with all its might, pushing almost all of its mana through ashy grey flames that ate at its flesh and mana itself.
Sensing something grave, Rya stopped recklessly charging and stepped away cautiously.
These flames were inherently different and profoundly wrong. If the dragon was let alone for some time, these flames would eat at it till it withered away, but alas, it seemed that he had pushed it to the brink.
There was a maddened light in its eyes that was entirely too familiar to Rya, as he had lived the same way for years on end, but weirdly enough, it didn't affect him that much.
"... So what?"
It was laughable; he wanted to feel vindictive glee, he wanted to feel cruel delight seeing this pathetic state of the dragon.
But all that he could feel was… hollowness.
It was so utterly pointless, his rage, his opponent's crazed suicide trump card. So utterly pointless.
All he wanted to do was kill it and the roc, not out of malice, out of revenge, but out of a hollow sense of duty.
It was disquieting, this thought process. Was this what it meant to become an 'avatar'?
Well, that transcendent was as insane as he thought he was.
He only came out of his reverie as the dragon was about to reach him with its body burning with ashy flames that flowed like tar.
Swoosh!!
He used [illusory sword] to split into several figures and dodge the attack, while one of the phantoms moved along the dragon to cut it open from behind.
Surprisingly, the dragon swept around abruptly and snapped a roundhouse kick, which enveloped the phantom in ashy flames and disintegrated it into mana particles.
Seeing this, Rya put some distance between them and analysed the flames, not caring about the dragon at all.
As he was about to daze out again, a distant cry of a Roc reverberated through the sky, and thunderclouds began to form and rumble with insistent might.
Crackle!! Crackle!!
He looked back, finally showing some seriousness on his impassive face.