Starting out as a Dragon Slave-Chapter 177: Return to Shadow

The battlefield stretched behind Mordred like a titanic sea of flames, an apocalyptic symphony of muffled explosions and unleashed magic. The heavens themselves seemed to weep tears of fire, streaked with magical lightning that tore through the nascent darkness. The air was saturated with energy so dense it crackled against his skin, each breath burning his lungs with the acrid bite of gunpowder and blood.

The pain in his side still tormented him, throbbing like an ember that refused to die, but he could distinctly feel the new powers acquired from Patriarch Ignivara miraculously accelerating his regeneration. This wasn’t simply healing - it was transformation. Each beat of his heart diffused renewed power through his aching muscles, a supernatural vigor that gradually strengthened his wounded body, repairing not only flesh but fortifying his very essence.

- "The patriarch’s power..." he thought with dark satisfaction. "I feel his knowledge intertwining with my essence, his combat techniques inscribing themselves into my muscle memory. Every dragon I’ve killed has made me stronger, but Ignivara... he was a treasure of condensed power."

Mordred propelled himself into the air with controlled violence, deploying his mana wings to their maximum span. The translucent membranes pulsed with pure energy, each beat creating visible ripples in the magic-charged air. He now flew at a speed that defied ordinary physical laws, become a black comet cutting through the blazing horizon.

Behind him, he already perceived the first signs of reorganization. Syléane Ignivara - that terrifying woman he had been wise to avoid - would soon gather her scattered forces. When she had done so, when her rage had taken form in coherent strategy, it would be too late for anyone still on her territory. All of China risked burning under her fury.

He had to leave this continent. Immediately.

Crossing the firmament blazing with blood red and incandescent orange, Mordred quickly breached the multiple Chinese defense lines in complete chaos. The soldiers on the ground were merely tiny silhouettes scurrying in all directions, invisible to his piercing eyes as he had become a simple shadow streaking among the clouds of black smoke and toxic vapors. Their panicked cries and contradictory orders were lost in the ambient din, creating a pathetic cacophony that contrasted with the deadly silence of his flight.

The cities he flew over bore the stigmata of war: collapsed roofs, streets gutted by destructive spells, ancestral gardens transformed into smoking craters. The millennial beauty of this land was dying under the blows of this interdimensional war, and Mordred couldn’t help but feel a pang of melancholy. So much culture, so much history, reduced to ashes by the dragons’ excessive ambition.

In less than an hour of intensive flight, he found the exact point where he had initially arrived. The dimensional portal still pulsed, faithful sentinel in the middle of a plain that had once been verdant but was now charred and silent. The magical structure itself was a marvel of arcane engineering: a ring of worked metal fifteen meters in diameter, engraved with draconic runes that illuminated in hypnotic sequences, creating a vortex of pure energy at the center.

The portal was guarded by a unit of elite humanoid dragons, their scaled armor glinting under the magical glow of the vortex. Mordred halted discreetly several hundred meters away, melding into the shadow of a carbonized rock, taking all the time necessary to precisely assess the forces present. His sharpened senses analyzed every detail: postures, equipment, movement patterns, potential weak points.

- "Twelve guards total," he counted mentally, his eyes methodically sweeping the enemy formation. "Two archers positioned high on adjacent rocks, four spearmen in tight formation before the portal, four swordsmen on peripheral patrol, and two support mages near the portal’s base. Classic but effective formation. No visible captain, which suggests either overconfidence or underestimation of potential threat."

He observed their movements for long minutes, studying their habits, their weaknesses. The guards were disciplined but not exceptional - probably regular soldiers assigned to a routine mission. They clearly didn’t expect to face something like him.

- "A minor obstacle," he analyzed with the clinical coldness of an experienced predator, "but I must strike with surgical precision. No witnesses, no traces, no alarm. If even one of them manages to transmit a signal, Syléane will know exactly where I left from."

He took a deep breath, feeling the cool night air fill his lungs and soothe the last burns from battle. Slowly, methodically, he gathered his mana throughout his body, particularly focusing energy in his right arm until the veins became visible under his skin, pulsing with supernatural glow. The patriarch’s newly acquired power blended harmoniously with his own essence, creating a synergy that multiplied his capabilities tenfold.

His legendary blade, Narukami, materialized silently in his right hand in a whisper of condensed energy. The black steel immediately absorbed all ambient light, creating a zone of perfect darkness around his blade. It was more than a weapon - it was an extension of his murderous will, a fragment of solidified shadow that thirsted for draconic blood.

Mordred briefly closed his eyes, synchronizing his breathing with his heartbeats, entering that state of absolute concentration that only the most accomplished assassins can achieve. The external world gradually faded until it existed only as a set of trajectories, attack angles, and deadly sequences.

- "Optimal elimination sequence," he calculated with mechanical precision. "Eastern archer, western archer, mage one, mage two, then the swordsmen before they can react, and finally the spearmen. Thirteen seconds maximum for the entire operation. Beyond that, probability of alert becomes critical."

He counted mentally, each number resonating in his mind like a death knell:

- "Five... four... three... two... one..."

He vanished in a flash of pure shadow.

Narukami split the air with speed that transcended the limits of human perception, creating a wake of spatial distortion behind it. In less than a heartbeat, Mordred had covered the hundreds of meters separating him from the draconic guard, materializing directly behind the first archer like a nightmare emerged from the void.

The first head detached from the body with surgical cleanness, before the dragon’s brain could even register death’s presence. Blood didn’t even have time to spurt - Mordred was already moving toward his next target.

A supernatural silence suddenly settled among the surviving guards, as if reality itself had held its breath. The air froze, charged with deadly tension that made scales rise on their necks. Something unthinkable had just occurred, but their minds still refused to accept it.

The second dragon, the archer perched on the western rock, instinctively turned his head toward his decapitated companion. His mouth opened to sound the alarm, a cry of horror rising from his throat... but before the first sound could pass his lips, Narukami’s black blade pierced his neck with a surgeon’s precision, severing vocal cords and spinal cord in one fluid movement.

The ten remaining guards desperately tried to react, their formations collapsing in panic. But Mordred, galvanized by freshly acquired power and shaped by years of murderous experience, had become an unstoppable force of nature. He was no longer simply fast - he was everywhere at once, a multiple shadow striking from all angles simultaneously.

Each of his movements was a masterpiece of lethality, every strike calculated to the millimeter to cause instant death. No unnecessary suffering, no sadism - just the pure efficiency of a perfect predator accomplishing its natural function.

A spearman attempted a desperate strike, but his blade met only void. Mordred was already behind him, Narukami tracing a perfect arc that separated head from trunk with deadly elegance. A mage cast a protection spell, but the magical energy dissipated against the shadow aura that now surrounded the assassin, unable to touch someone who no longer belonged entirely to the physical world.

In less than ten seconds - three fewer than planned - the ground around the dimensional portal was strewn with the silent corpses of its guardians. Not a cry had rung out, not an alarm had been given. Only the metallic perfume of draconic blood testified to the massacre that had just unfolded.

Mordred slowly straightened, Narukami still smoking with residual magical energy, the blade vibrating imperceptibly like a deadly tuning fork. His incandescent eyes quickly swept the perimeter, analyzing every shadow, every corner capable of concealing a forgotten witness.

- "No survivors. No witnesses. No detectable magical traces." He breathed deeply, momentarily savoring the perfection of his work. "Ignivara would have been proud... ironically."

Without further delay, he launched himself toward the portal and plunged without hesitation through the undulating magical surface, feeling dimensional energies envelop and transport him to his destination.

In Paris, night had fallen like a shroud over a dying city. The French capital, once Europe’s jewel, now lay in ruins under an ink-black sky pierced by indifferent stars. The great Haussmannian boulevards were nothing but gaping craters and heaps of rubble, historical monuments reduced to skeletons of charred stone. The Seine itself seemed to have lost its vitality, its dark waters reflecting the dying gleams of fires still smoldering in certain districts.

Mordred emerged from the portal in the ruins of what had once been the Luxembourg Gardens. The centuries-old trees were nothing but black trunks raised toward the sky like accusing fingers, and the carefully maintained paths had disappeared under a layer of ash and debris. The air was heavy, saturated with fine dust that irritated the lungs and gave the landscape a ghostly aspect.

He crossed the rubble with prudent but assured speed, his senses constantly alert to detect any hostile presence. The deserted streets echoed with the sound of his steps on debris, occasionally punctuated by the sinister creaking of a structure about to collapse. Here and there, furtive silhouettes disappeared into shadows - survivors, looters, or worse creatures that war had released from the depths.

- "This city was so beautiful," he thought despite himself while stepping over the remains of what had been an ornamental fountain. "Centuries of art and culture, annihilated in a few weeks. Dragons don’t understand what they destroy - to them, these are just worthless human structures. But every stone tells a story, every street carries the memory of generations..."