Dragon Gods Reign

[On the battlefield]

Diving after Lucius as the latter fell to the ground, Darganth shot his dragon's breath after him. Impacting the vampire lord's hastily erected blood barrier, it exploded upon contact and ripped it apart.

Carrying on, the explosion quickly spread through the area in the form of raging space energies that left tears in reality as they passed. Within a fraction of a second, it expanded to reach Lucius, shredding the vampire's body while only barely being counteracted by his regeneration. This continued even after he crashed into the ground, with the explosion cutting a crater into the ground below him.

The nearby high order members were also affected by this, with most forming flaming barriers and shields out of reflex. But even these could only do so much, resulting in a handful of them having parts of their skin and flesh ripped apart by the chaotic space that reached them.

Following this explosion, the battlefield became absolutely motionless for a few moments. Only when the layers of space that Darganth's attack had destroyed slowly healed and the silvery energy that was released during their destruction dissolved did any change return to the area.

This situation remained for a few seconds, with the space fully repairing itself in that time and allowing physical matter to exist in the area. Only then did Lucius's wounded body start regenerating at any meaningful pace.

Previously it had been hampered due to the broken spacial foundation making it normally impossible for physical matter to exist in the area, with only his mana preventing his entire body from instantly being shredded. But while it could largely stabilize his physical form, though, at the cost of a rapid depletion of his reserve, it barely had any leeway to allow him to regenerate.

As he slowly lifted himself out of the hole, he was noticeably paler and still carried a pained expression from the feeling of having parts of his body ripped apart at a fundamental level. Finding Darganth with his gaze, his look hardened as he growled in rage.

“Tsk, still not dead? Like cockroaches.” Darganth scoffed in response.

Instead of answering his provocations, Lucius abruptly spun to his left before turning into a blurry streak that rushed towards the closest high order sorcerer.

Before the man could even understand what was happening, Lucius's fangs had already dug into his neck and the vampire was gulping down his blood. And after not even a second of this, the vampire lord's complexion had already bettered noticeably.

By then the other bloodline sorcerers had enough time to react, with their spells combining into an inferno of flames at their fellow's position.

For a moment it even looked like their attacks also caught Lucius, though just as the first of them formed this hopeful thought, the vampire lord appeared next to the fire.

“Pah, phoenix blood is still as disgusting as I remember it.” He spat.

Following his words, an unsure feeling permeated the area as neither the high order members nor the three remaining seats knew how to react. On one side was Alicia, who they had previously been fighting against, while on the other one was Lucius, the closest to a rule that the vampires have.

Amidst this confusion, there was a sudden boom as something or someone came crashing down nearby.

Hastily turning in the direction of the sound, the high order members froze when they saw Alicia standing there.

“Quite popular, aren't you?” Jennia joked when she saw this.

“Why wouldn't I be?” Alicia answered half-jokingly.

Overhearing the two's casual attitude, the high order individuals as well as Lucius felt even more unease from being trapped between the trio. A couple even turned to the largest gap in their encirclement, only to come to a stop after just a handful of steps when they spotted Allaire.

Fighting against Isaiah, she was still enclosed in her aura avatar as she chased him around. Whenever he would attempt to escape her, she would use her superior physique and her aura avatar's nearly three times longer steps to easily catch up to him.

In addition, Isaiah had already started their fight with his mana pool quite exhausted. Allaire was meanwhile still fresh, having fought only for a fraction of the time that Isaiah had, not to mention the fact that aura users were generally better suited for drawn-out battles of attrition than mages.

So with Isaiah going into the fight without the mana necessary to overwhelm her and gain a quick victory, the way most mages needed to fight against aura users if they wanted any substantial chance at winning, she had an easy time against him.

As he neared the point of total exhaustion, he was slowly getting desperate. Launching another attempt at losing Alliare, he prayed that the situation with his allies was better than he had seen and dashed in their direction.

Pausing for a moment as the current situation there came into her view, Allaire thought for a moment before letting Isaiah escape. But instead of blocking his path, she jogged after him to fully close the encirclement.

A couple of seconds later the fighting near Darganth, Alicia, and Jennia still hadn't restarted, with Isaiah arriving at that moment. As soon as he did, a glimmer of hope rose in the remaining bloodline sorcerers.

But when they saw the state he was in, this was crushed just as quickly as it emerged. With a large wound on his side that was being healed at an excruciatingly slow pace by the dim flames that danced across it, it became clear that his state was even worse than theirs.

Despite his state, Lucius tensed up visibly as Isaiah appeared. Staring at each other in silence, both were ready to attack at the first suspicious movement.

“Don't mind me, I'm still enjoying this immensely.” Alicia said in amusement.

These words acted as the trigger for the two opponents, with Lucius acting as soon as she reminded them of her presence and Isaiah being not far behind.

Lashing out with a whip of blood, he could only see Isaiah stumble out of the way before all hell broke loose around him. Flaring up phoenix flames on their arms, the bloodline users joined in as a screaming horde.

At the same time, Darganth also burst into action, shooting forward and firing a time breath at a fleeing man. Striking the elf in the back, it aged him rapidly until his body no longer had the strength to stay upright and he collapsed to the ground.

Turning his attention to the ground below, he saw Jennia crack it open with earth magic. Snaking out from beneath her claw, a crack snaked across the battlefield, splitting and twisting to cover most of its area and make it difficult to walk on.

Once these cracks had fully spread to everywhere she wanted, she sent another burst of magic along them. Lighting up in a brownish-gray shine for a moment, the cracks suddenly sent a tremor through the ground that broke its surface apart.

With the earth beneath their feet suddenly shifting and turning into debris, the high order members standing on it fell into a panic. Abandoning all coordination, they started scrambling to get to safety.

Taking advantage of this situation, Allaire swung her sword and launched the crescent aura strike she had prepared together with Jennia's spell.

Cleaving through ground and person alike, her attack caught the panicked defenders by surprise. Leaving them no time to prepare, it tore through their ranks with ease and left them decimated after its passing.

Following up on this, Darganth picked the last surviving seat out of the ground and descended upon him. Thanks to him being a bit further from the epicenter of the devastation he was still relatively unharmed and managed to mount a desperate defense against the attack.

Dodging the bolt of fire sent his way, Darganth's claw swiped through empty air a moment later, with the seat having retreated just in time.

Using the opening, the seat took a moment to activate a stronger spell and a moment later, he fired a concentrated beam of fire at Darganth.

Left with no time to react, he was forced to bear the full brunt of it. Digging his claws into the ground right as it impacted his chest, he was pushed back due to the beam's force, leaving long claw marks in the ground during it.

After being pushed back a few meters, Darganth felt a solid foothold beneath him. Stopping his backward movement, he was just about to push ahead when he saw Allaire appearing behind the seat.

Swinging her sword vertically, she left the man stunned as she cut straight through him. Staring ahead in disbelief, his body split in two and dropped to the sides.

Nodding at Allaire, Darganth turned towards the handful of remaining high order troops together with her.

Around the same time, Alicia was watching with calm eyes as Lucius and Isaiah clashed repeatedly. Over the course of a minute, blood and fire clashed thousands of times under her watchful gaze.

As the two separated after having exhausted each other, she turned into her human form and slowly walked in between them.

“I'm honestly unsure whether I should be insulted that both of you had seemingly forgotten about me.” She said with a sigh.

“Of course I didn't, how could I forget my source of uncontaminated blood?” Lucius said with a grin, “And thank you for coming this close.”

Smiling viciously, he reached out with his hand. Staring at her with anticipatory eyes, it took a couple of seconds before he realized that what he was hoping for wouldn't happen.

Staring at his hand in confusion, he tensed the muscles as he tried for a second time to force Alicia's blood under his control.

“Are you serious? Just watching,...” Alicia started, searching for the right words, “...whatever that is, is embarrassing.”

Noticing Lucius's eyebrows twitching at her words, Alicia suppressed her chuckle and rushed at him.

Covering her arm in scales and transforming her fingers into claws, she dodged the hasted swing of his claws before dragging hers across his chest. Following this up by spinning around him and piercing her other arm into his back, she let him suffer for a couple of seconds before letting him drop to the ground.

Reaching out towards Isaiah, she forced him to his knees by increasing the gravity around him before turning most of her attention to Lucius.

“Let me tell you something interesting I've learned from my brother during these past few weeks. Firstly, the afterlife is real here. And secondly, if you really want to let a person suffer, make their time there as miserable as possible.

And that made me think, how far do I want to take that for you? Because compared to the high order, your kind hunted me for only a fraction of the time. But you still did, giving me more than enough reasons to despise you.

Then, recently, I had an idea.

You're a vampire lord, the vampire lord of all vampire lords even, so wouldn't it be funny if you were to die like a common vampire? Thus I present to you, your end.”

Finishing her little speech, Alicia reached out and pointed her hand towards Lucius's heart. Focusing on the blood near it, she locked onto it and expanded this focus to all the blood flowing in his body.

With a slow upward movement of her arm, she activated a gravity spell that took advantage of Lucius's weakened state to extract the blood from his body.

Slowly holes started opening across his body as the blood broke through his skin. For a couple of moments the blood reserves he stored in his heart, in a similar manner to mana in a mana pool, managed to refill the missing liters, though even they quickly ran dry.

As this happened, the vampire lord's body slowly grew paler before starting to form wrinkles. With his skin drying out he slowly turned into a zombie-like husk of his former self. Losing the ability to act either physically or use magic, as well as his previous handsome appearance, he fell into a helpless state.

And with his power waning, the dark clouds that obscured the sky also started falling apart. Now that his power no longer kept them together, the wind was free to blow them in whichever direction it wanted.

Waiting for a minute, she watched with a smile as the sunlight slowly crept closer to the helpless vampire lord. When it finally reached him, it started burning every part of his body it came into contact with.

Having no strength to scream, Lucius was forced to silently endure as his life came to a slow end.

By the time this was finished, Isaiah had also stopped struggling against her spell and was looking at the sight before him in horror.

“Now for you. I had quite a few ideas, but honestly, what my brother proposed was just too good to pass up on.”

With those words, Alicia walked over to Isaiah and placed her palm on his forehead.

As soon as she did, the vision of the future that Darganth had previously shared with her was passed to him.

Seeing a rapid play-through of what would happen after his death today, at least one possible version of it, his eyes slowly became filled with despair. Not only did he see the dissolution of the high order as an organization, his legacy and those of most of his colleagues being smeared by the reveal of their darkest secrets, but it also showed him how insignificant he was in the grand scheme of things and how little he truly achieved.

When Alicia pulled back her hand and dragged him back to reality, his eyes had lost all will. Kneeling before without struggling to get up, he didn't even attempt to defend himself as her claws pierced through his heart.

Watching his dead body fall to the ground, she sighed as she felt a weight falling off her shoulder. And with it came the silence of her draconic instincts, with them no longer pushing her to seek revenge.

“This was the end you deserve, no glorious last stand but dying like the worms you are.” She whispered to herself, closing the chapter of revenge.