Chapter 50: DD2 Chapter 044 – Tempo

Liberator looked out across Creation at the stone square where he had chosen to reside. Those who had conspired to usher him into reality had done well in choosing this location, although from how the flows of mana were changing, he knew that his time to leave the cradle was fast approaching. He would miss this place. The tall structures on all sides were soothing, and the firmness of the ground beneath his feet gave him a sense of security which was an important thing for one like him. 

His kind had not walked across the surface of Creation in some time, and things had changed in the meantime. It was disconcerting, the knowledge that things were not the way they were supposed to be.

From the moment of his birth, Liberator had known only violence. His arrival into Creation had been heralded by dragonfire and sharp blades. He had been forced to defend himself before he had even chosen his name. The other classers—slaves to the System one and all—had been determined in their efforts to kill him, but they had failed as they were always doomed to and now Liberator was stronger for having survived their attempts on his life. 

He inhaled slowly and bid a fond farewell to the shrinking torrent of mana that flowed into his lungs for the last time. The flood of power was unsteadier now than it had been mere seconds ago as the ritual circle far beneath his feet destabilised. There he could feel the lives of the tainted wink out one by one as they were killed by a creature wrapped so tight in the System’s chains that Liberator doubted it could even think for itself, but even that constraining power wouldn’t save it in the end. 

Without the constant flow of mana feeding him—pathetically weak as it may have been—Liberator was detestably, even weaker. The mana of this age was too thin by far to allow him to manifest with his true majesty, but for all of his abhorrent frailty, the classers he had encountered so far were weaker still. They couldn’t stop him, but it would take time for him to grow to the heights of his power and shatter the Wards that kept out the rest of his kin.

Soon he would have to go hunting for the mana to fuel his growth, but he wouldn’t have to look far. On all sides he was besieged by the System’s puppets—tens of thousands of them, more than enough to push him past the next bottleneck. His spawn had done a remarkable job at feeding him mana until now, but the classers’ latest offensive was proving to be far more effective than the one-sided slaughter his spawn had instigated.

Through their countless eyes he could see the four columns of classers arrayed around him. Three were ordinary—slaves to the System from the moment of their birth and Liberator’s natural enemies—but the other was different. Not only were they voluntarily initiated into the enemy’s clutches, but one amongst them was almost free; wielding the supreme power of Creation with as much ease as Liberator did himself. If he didn’t know better then he would have assumed that another of his kind was working against it, but besides his two siblings, one to the distant west and the other to the not-so-distant east, he was alone.

This did not scare Liberator, for while he would have to face the System’s slaves by himself, he was mighty whereas they were not. 

No sooner had he made this resolution than the flow of mana rushing to fill him finally guttered out as he knew it would.

It was time.

Liberator wondered if the slaves were scared. 

He knew that they should be.

And if they weren’t, then puppets or not, he would delight in showing them what it meant to be afraid.

****

Typh looked down into the market square where the Monster waited, and she wondered if this was the end. If the final chapter of her short life was to be punctuated by the very same enemy that had not only killed her mother, but almost every Sovereign Dragon to have ever lived. 

She could feel the eyes on her, the fearful and the curious, both near and far. Typh tried her best to ignore the arcane gazes that wormed their way along her skin, the probing attempts made to puzzle out who she was and what she was doing. Some observers—the humans she assumed—were no doubt panicking at what they were seeing. The fall of Rhelea had been fast, and those isolated few with the capability to scry were likely the first to discover its fate. The others, well, maybe they just wanted to watch a show; to see a young runt of a dragon—barely an adult—face-off against the latest incarnation of the ancient threat which had shaped Creation just as firmly as the System ever had.

A part of her wanted to rage and scream at these others for watching on when they could help, but she supposed that their aid would ruin the spectacle of it, and what was the end of everything without a little voyeuristic entertainment? 

Typh would have preferred to ready herself in solitude far away from their prying eyes, but an unfortunate consequence of the plan was that she stuck out like a sore thumb, and she couldn’t blame them for noticing—not when she blazed like the sun.

The shadows around her continued to lengthen when they should have been getting shorter. Resigned to the inevitable, the dragon rose from her ailing chair and stepped away from the small table where her drink sat untouched beside a wooden token. She moved to stand by the edge of the flat roof, and each one of her steps caused the gold talents sewn into her dress to clink together noisily in a loud jangle of precious metals that calmed her draconic instincts. Typh turned her head to the side and resisted the urge to glare at the man who predictably coalesced out of the gloom to join her.

“I wonder what it's thinking.”

“Monsters don’t think, child. They simply are. You should know this,” Erebus declared sagely.

“I do, but what I know and what I see don’t make sense. It's planning something, I know it and the only one with answers won't talk to me,” Typh stated.

“I’ll tell you everything, but not yet and certainly not for nothing. Knowledge is power after all.”

“Power is power.”

“I can see that you think that way considering what you’re about to do... I have to say that I wasn’t expecting it to be you. This folly reeks of human madness,” the older dragon smirked with his too-handsome face. She realised then that he wasn’t quite present, the tones of his skin and clothes were all wrong, and he completely lacked a scent rather than exhibiting his usual perfume of spiced cloves.

“Why are you here, Erebus? If you couldn’t tell, I’m about to be very busy,” Typh asked.

“How could I stay away with you lighting up the sky like a beacon? You have enough mana sown into that dress of yours that I doubt there’s a power on the continent not watching right now,” Erebus responded. “Besides, you know I’m not really here—not all of me.”

“Can you get to the point sometime this century? I have no desire to indulge your need for small talk,” she said, and despite the shadow dragon’s benevolent expression, he momentarily grew more solid. The air became heavier, his darks—darker, and an oppressive aura of menace radiated out from him. But compared to the power draped over Typh’s body, held tight in each little golden bar, Erebus’s posturing was a small thing—easy for her to ignore.

“I’m here to make you an offer—” the shadow dragon began.

“We already have a deal. One that is hardly fair,” Typh commented.

“And yet you’ve managed to all but complete it. I asked for what, five thousand humans? You have twice as many fighting for you mere streets away. When you factor in those you’ve pulled out of this city, and those left behind in your camp, you’ll have no trouble holding up your end.”

“So what? Now that it looks like you’ve nothing to hold over me, you want to renegotiate?”

“Why, of course.”

“No.”

“You’re like a child to me, Typh. Listen to my offer, I don't want to watch you throw away your life.”

“Do you have any idea how gross it is to hear you say that?” 

“Don’t be petulant,” he snapped. “Perhaps you’ve grown too used to being called Lord Sovereign. An ill-fitting title for someone as young as you.”

Typh calmly raised a hand, palm outstretched towards him with a shaped spell held firmly in the forefront of her mind where she knew he could see it. Mind mages.

“Our deal holds. If you want to make me a better offer, make it, but cut the creepy uncle crap. I’m about to fight one Monster today—don’t give me a reason to go looking for a second,” Typh warned.

“That borrowed mana has made you brave, girl,” Erebus replied. “Don’t let it get to your head. Having power and wielding it are two very different things. You do not want to threaten me.”

“Are you sure about that? You’re not even fully here—just a shadow of your true self, right? Given what you know, given how brightly I’m shining right now, do you really want to test if I can use this?”

The moment hung in the air while the tension continued to rise between them. A breeze blew across the rooftop, carrying with it the scent of battle and distant magic.

“Fine, brusqueness it is,” Erebus relented. “Bring your army to Doomhold, submit yourself to me entirely, and I’ll kill the Monster for you. I’ll even keep your precious human territories safe for as long as I can.”

“‘As long as you can’ could be measured in days. If you could have stopped their suicidal warding you would have done so already,” Typh scoffed. “And you want me to submit myself? To you? That idea repulses me on so many levels. Leave, Erebus, go back to your little city, and play at being king. I’m too busy for your games.”

“You’ve submitted before, recently in fact,” he reminded.

“A formality I acquiesced to when I had no options but to seek your help. A formality that I deeply regret. Don’t get ideas that it was ever more than that. Now leave me alone.”

“You're being childish. You’re carrying enough external mana that you risk spawning another Monster if you take a solid hit, and that's not even considering the size of the explosion. You pushed too much power into not enough gold. Even from here I can smell the metal on you disintegrating while you stand. How much longer till it detonates by itself? Do you even know?”

“I’ve run the numbers, and I’m confident that it will last for as long as I need it to,” she lied.

“This entire ‘plan’ reeks of desperation. You’re a Sovereign Dragon, you’re supposed to be better than this.”

“I’m supposed to be a lot of things that I’m not. Yet here I am. Now you have your answer. I say no. Not now, not ever. Now get out of my city before I force the matter.”

Erebus opened his mouth to protest, but she stared him down, silencing him either with her power, or her stubbornness. It didn’t really matter, because she blinked and he was gone, physically at least. She noted that his scrying spell remained regardless.

Ignoring her watchers, Typh turned her attention back to the Monster in the square.

“What are you thinking?” she mused out loud, now all-too-aware of the warmth from the increasingly unstable gold pressing through the thin fabric of her dress.

****

The flow of mana directed towards Liberator had stopped entirely. The energy in the air no longer rushed towards him and his spawn were dying in far greater numbers than they returned—the enemies’ runic weapons were thoroughly destroying them, leaving nothing behind for them to regenerate from.

It was past time to make some adjustments to his form.

Liberator sighed for the first time in his life as he began to channel mana from its vast reserves. He imposed its will on Creation with an instinctual ease, the vaguely defined laws of reality shifting to meet his changing needs.

He grew. Upwards and outwards, muscles bulged and bones elongated. He abandoned the sleek form of a human that he had once chosen to mimic and instead picked a more brutish shape. An ogre was a decent enough base, he could see several battling against his spawn and they seemed to have the best natural advantages, although he cared not for their tusks.

Liberator imagined that the shift would have been painful had he allowed himself to feel pain. His bones thickened and broke faster than he could process while he rose from the paltry eight feet he had been born at, to tower at well over twelve. He was hunched forwards like a great hulking beast, with the tanned skin that he had once been so fond of stretched taut around his grotesquely muscular frame.

But any comparisons between him and an ogre ended there. Liberator was not done, not by far. The System had taken its puppet races and over a millennia of violence honed them all into weapons, even if those arrayed before him seemed disconcertingly young they each possessed traits that he could use. 

Liberator took the claws from the goblins and scaled them up to fit his hands, a ratling tail for balance so that he did not tip over with his increased size. The fangs of a warg, the rocky hide of an earth sprite—although what he really wanted was dragon scales—the regenerative capacity of a woodling and the toxic spores of a fungoid. And last but by no means least, he produced a sword, the favoured weapon of the humans and the one he was most proficient in.

Wherever the Systems slaves fell before his spawn, he stole their best qualities, incorporating them into his own form, to better prepare himself for the coming battle. The near constant flood of his freshly birthed spawn had all but dried up. They had served their purpose for now, but it was his turn to lead the charge. 

He took a step forwards and stopped.

There was a shift in the air nearby. Something dark had just come and gone, leaving behind a shadowy stain of umbral mana that was as stark amidst all the chaotic energies filling the city, as Liberator’s own presence.

He looked up.

****

“Well that’s unsettling,” Typh said.

Her plan was arguably insane. A no-win scenario that she was pursuing out of desperation and little else. Erebus was right about that, and she hated that she didn’t have any better options—at least none that she could stomach.

The Monster was simply too strong to be defeated in a fair fight, and that was before it had transformed into some kind of chimeric hell-beast with an overly-large serrated sword made from bone, tentacles, and darkness.

Even empowered as she was with her levied magic taken from every mage in the campgrounds, Typh knew that she couldn’t kill it. Neither could anyone else amongst the large army she had managed to gather. She didn’t have the time or the resources to change that. Soon the Monster would cross tiers and become something even more dangerous, far beyond what she could ever hope to slay. She needed to end this now.

There were old dragons in the Spines who could certainly squash it like a bug, but Erebus had already come to gloat, and he was the most invested dragon in her survival by far. The rest of them were either ignoring her and humanity’s plight, or were content to watch in silence. It was galling to Typh that her kind knew exactly what was happening and had yet to lift so much as a single wingtip to help. 

Sovereign Dragons were supposed to lead the charge against the Monsters, yet where were they? Why was she, the weakest of them all, the only one to do her duty?

A part of her hoped that she was being impatient and dismissive of her kind. That if she sat back and waited, a sixth-tier dragon would soon descend from the mountains and put a stop to the Monster before she had to risk her own life again. But she knew that was just wishful thinking. Her species were ignoring the Monster’s threat for a reason, and until she knew why that was, it was up to her to do what needed to be done.

Typh had already taken her best shot at killing it. She’d attacked when it was mere heartbeats old, and still she had lost. Now it was stronger. More powerful by far for having gorged itself on the lives of thousands. Whereas she was limited to her frailer human form—her draconic self had recovered somewhat in the intervening days, but the damage had been fatal and her other body was only moments away from death should she be forced to switch back. 

The cramped conditions in the city and the wards within its walls had made it the perfect feeding grounds for the Monster to grow in. But this time, the city itself was why Typh felt almost confident in her victory, if not her survival.

The token on the table began to smoke, and she quickly cast a spell to hurl it at the Monster below. Its passage disrupted the carefully crafted illusion that was the only thing shielding her from its malevolent gaze that was focused in her specific location. The small piece of wood flew true, covering the distance between them in an instant, but rather than striking it, the Monster snatched the token out of the air with apparent ease. 

In a large, clawed hand it held the wooden disc up to the light, staring at it with something approaching curiosity. Then, with a blazing flash the token erupted into blindingly bright flames that seared the rocky flesh of the Monster’s hand and face down to its thick bones.

It did not cry out in pain, but the ground did.

With a mighty tremble, the earth groaned audibly. Relieved that at least that was going to plan, Typh began her mental countdown and swiftly descended from her perch. The last thing she wanted to do now was to incentivise the Monster to learn how to fly.

She pushed an ungodly amount of mana through her skills and felt them level from the sheer quantity alone. Typh emptied a golden ingot at a time as she layered protective and enhancing spells around her. The mental strain of moving so much power through her body all at once threatened to overwhelm her. The dizzying burn of potent mana eroded her muscles, skin, and bones, nearly making her cry out, but she persisted, because she had no choice.

It was do or die.

****

Thick, golden scales formed around the small human’s body the moment it touched down on the still-trembling ground. A staggering amount of mana was discharged all at once from the metal in its dress and Liberator wondered how such a small creature didn’t immediately explode from the strain. How it had even gathered so much power whilst being constrained at such a ‘low-level’ was another mystery—along with how he had missed it. 

It was so bright in his vision that Liberator could barely stand to look at it. Yet while the form was unfamiliar, the ethereal chains that bound it in place were not. 

The dragon had come again.

A volley of spells, hardened chunks of mana composed of equal parts heat and force, were flung at him at truly ridiculous speeds. The magical assault was further empowered by complementary runes and skills. Each strike chipped away at his newly formed flesh, sending juddering impacts reverberating through his hulking form and rocking him onto his heels—only his long tail kept him upright while he withstood the magical barrage.

Naturally he returned the favour, imitating the dragon’s spell forms as he sent scything arcs of black consuming energy headed her way, along with missiles, blades, and lances straight back at her.

She dodged, skating along the ground almost as fast as the spells she shot out. Streaks of pungent ozone trailed from the tips of the claws the dragon had conjured and her rapid passage scattered dirt, snow and loose stones into a fine spray that billowed out behind her. Where his spells missed—and most of them did—echoing explosions rung out through the square. Shockwaves and shrapnel tore through the sky levelling buildings and blasting fragments of stone across the square.

Not wanting to be caught out by her speed, Liberator rushed to meet her, his sword levelled horizontally like he’d been taught to hold it, and more missiles of black light racing out to intercept the golden spells that filled the dwindling space between them.

They finally clashed with an audible crack of mana. His sword biting through the dragons surprisingly resilient scales and her claws digging deep into his stony flesh. Before he could close his free hand around her, she darted away, the air humming with spent mana and disintegrating gold. 

Already massive quantities of magical energy had been spent by the dragon and she picked directions seemingly at random to dart off in, only to return a heartbeat later for another collision where the two of them exchanged blades in addition to the roaring spells that were constantly flying through the open air.

You are reading story Dragon’s Dilemma at novel35.com

His blood dripped down him in great rivulets, his flesh healing rapidly to stem the flow while the dragon darted in and out, scoring innumerable hits, before being batted away amidst the crunch of her potent arcane defences.

But two could play at that.

Copying her design, black scales at least twice as thick as hers enveloped Liberator’s much larger form. The dragon hesitated for a fraction of a second before returning to strike with her claws, but this time they only scratched the surface of his conjured armour, whereas his powerful swing nearly cost her an arm.

Hissing in pain, the dragon flew along the ground faster. Mere inches off the ground, but why she didn’t just run like he did, he didn’t know. The torrent of spells she put out only increased in intensity as they hammered against his defences while she darted in and out forever just out of reach. 

She flew along the ground away from him, trailing a long shower of golden sparks while he raced after her. The dragon’s mana bloated spells continued to crack the sky, each one leaving trails of vapourized snowfall in their wake and hitting unerringly, curving if necessary just like before.

He didn’t even try to dodge. He accepted blow after blow, reforming his armour as needed so long as he got closer to the fleeing dragon that was content to remain in their little arena while the rest of the city presumably waited for the victor to emerge. For all of her unanticipated power, she was still bound to the System. Its constraints limited her and she would inevitably run out of mana long before him.

But why hadn’t it happened already?

He finally closed the distance. An arm raised to strike at her, and the resulting spell that emerged from her open palm neatly severed his hand off at the wrist. His bleeding stump only succeeded in spraying blood over her manifested scales. 

His eyes went wide. Staring at the injury that should not have happened. 

His bones started to reform while the dragon once again pulled away. She sent more spells racing towards him while his own, lacking focus, trailed well behind her, missing by several metres and resulting in catastrophic booms when they impacted the ruined buildings surrounding the shrinking square. Shockwaves and gouts of flame spread across their arena, melting snow which promptly boiled, and scattering more dust and stone which cracked under the ever increasing amounts of heat that filled the square.

A square which then bucked. 

The once secure ground quickly rose beneath his feet before it dropped precipitously, sending spidering cracks through what little unbroken stone remained. Everything fell a good few feet as the paved slabs sagged downwards towards the centre of the square. The ground creaked loudly while tremors continued to make themselves known. Showers of dust and stone exploded up into the air creating great clouds of expanding smoke which momentarily obscured his vision.

Not knowing what else to do, Liberator roared its confusion out to the heavens, which oddly enough earned it a brief respite from the dragon’s assault. His tireless foe, seemingly content to watch for a time.

Three seconds passed while he vocalised his frustrations, his incredulity at his foes refusal to die or play by the rules fueling his outburst. Liberator was free and whereas the dragon was but a slave. At the rate it was going it should have ran out of mana ages ago and yet it kept on coming. This brief respite was the only sign that it even had limits.

He’d fought it before and it was weaker then. What had changed?

And then the earth kicked again, rising and falling just as suddenly as before, but this time it settled much lower. The square pulled away from the Old Roads that connected it to the city above, as amongst a shower of broken stone and displaced earth the two combatants stumbled on the increasingly unsteady ground.

His war-like form was a ruin. Even protected by dark mana, the dragon’s increasingly powerful spells had seared meat, rock and whatever else he conjured away from his bones. Black ichor ran from his open wounds, where strips of torn flesh and ruptured muscle hung loose, down from his large body. His skull was exposed, hardly ideal, but the writhing tentacles that served as a last line of defence were already stimulating his body’s regrowth, tapping into his reserves to speed along the process.

The dragon turned to face him, cocking her head to the side questioningly.

“You’re probably wondering what’s going on right now, aren’t you?” she taunted.

“Classer. I’ve killed you once before,” Liberator said, still confused by the classer’s return.

“I suppose technically you did, but this time it's my turn,” the dragon smiled whilst skating over the sunken earth towards the centre of the square where the ground was just a little bit lower. 

He lumbered towards her, but he didn’t get far before the ground kicked again, bringing his progress to an abrupt stop as he tried to steady himself on the shifting floor. More fissures spread, more dust filled the air, and this time the fragmented earth pulled them down deeper, some twenty or thirty feet away from the surface up above.

“What are you doing?” Liberator asked.

“I’m killing you,” the dragon replied, before lobbing a bloated manabolt at him which cracked the air only to glance off his skull and hit the far side of the sinkhole. The result of that final impact caused another spray of soil—although it was molten this time—to fall over them both while the ground shook, threatening another descent.

“You’re too weak. Even tireless, you’re not enough to stop me,” Liberator answered, deciding to focus on repairing the damage the dragon had just caused. New flesh quickly grew over the exposed bone which rid itself of the cracks she had sent through it. While his foe stood and watched patiently.

“Idiot,” the dragon smiled and then the ground fell away from them, causing them both to tumble down into the dark.

****

Typh was falling. Which was fine by her, as that was all according to plan.

Rhelea was an old city built atop the ruins of the countless others that had come before. Different ages of humanity that were linked only by the interconnected tunnels that ran for miles below the surface of the earth, and thanks to the barrels of blackpowder painstakingly spread throughout them, the tunnels located beneath the market square were collapsing. 

All of them.

Typh allowed herself to fall while the ground plunged beneath her to the rumbling sound of chained explosions. The Monster fortunately fell with her. They didn’t go all the way to the bottom, not yet, but the pit they soon found themselves in was so deep, that the sky up above was only visible as a small circle of dwindling light.

The wide open square had shrunk dramatically during their long fall leaving Typh with little space to run and nowhere to hide. The Monster for all of its lack of intelligence was quick to capitalise on this.

It reached her almost faster than she could think—but not quite. There was hardly any room to dodge which worked against them both as with an arcane shield to protect her from the backsplash she began draining the last of her gold talents dry. One by one she emptied out ingots as fast as she could, firing off bloated lances of mana that each impacted the Monster unerringly in the skull at point blank range and sent it sprawling back into the side of the trembling pit.

Typh’s head hurt; even pulling on external mana stores her vitality wasn’t nearly high enough to channel such large quantities of mana without consequence. Each golden talent contained thousands of points of sequestered power, each hurled spell was worth more than half of her normal reserves, and she had cast so many. Blood streamed from her nose beneath her golden scales, and Creation had been spinning long before the ground had started to fall. 

A single strike past her defences would be devastating; she knew that she certainly couldn’t survive one. Yet no matter what arcane punishment she poured on it, the Monster kept coming.

From the heat of her spells, the rocks surrounding them both turned glassy and soft, inching closer to becoming molten while the air heated up so much that it hurt to breathe. The protective spells she had cast did what they could to keep her alive in spite of the ever increasing temperature, but at the rate she was going, they would be overwhelmed sooner rather than later.

Semi-liquid stone burst around the Monster like a ruptured boil, the eldritch creature rushing forwards from the side of the pit to grab Typh by the chest only to throw her into the far wall that yielded against her when she hit it. Her golden scales cracked precipitously, while liquid rock ran over her and she hastily forced herself to drain another ingot to repair the damage even as her flesh cooked.

She gasped a painful breath and looked up from her back at the Monster before her.

The flesh that had once clothed it had peeled away like slag scraped from a foundry. The writhing flesh beneath was oily and pulsating, a walking skeleton of some giant, aberrant beast animated only by the countless tentacles wrapped around each bony limb.

The dragon rose to her knees, before it picked her up and slammed her into another unstable wall of the pit. Molten stone poured around her, stressing her defences further while its horrific sword sprouted once again from a free hand as it prepared to strike her down.

“Die, System slave!” it growled, its powerful hand squeezing more around her torso than her neck.

“You first, asshole,” she choked out with a bloody grin on her face.

The ground beneath them bucked again, harder this time, and the two of them were thrown into the air, buffeted from side to side by the intensity of the shockwaves as the ground began to fall. The glassy remnants of what remained of the square plummeted even further below the ground as successive rounds of detonations took them deeper into the earth.

The floor didn’t stop falling. Their little section of the surface rapidly descended through the layers of Rhelea’s ancient substratum. Open caverns and sprawling ruins briefly flashed by in their descent, along with scenes of carnage displaying mounds of the goblin dead. The sky that had once been so clearly visible up above narrowed to a pinprick as the series of earth shattering explosions caused them to fall through miles upon miles of Rhelea’s tightly interwoven catacombs. 

Splashes of Typh’s golden mana and the Monster's darklight illuminated and further rocked their unsteady passage while they exchanged hostile spells.

At some point as Typh was bashed from side to side. She lost her count and her ability to predict the incoming detonations, but she knew from the depth they had reached that they were near the bottom. 

Near the end. 

Which meant she was coming up to the tricky part. 

The Monster had adjusted to the lack of ground far faster than she would have liked, learning to fight with surprising competence mid-freefall. She had to do the same, for fear that if she flew, it would learn to do that as well.

Its sword flashed through the dark, fracturing her conjured claws with every checked blow, and shearing the protective scales that covered her increasingly damaged human form. Xan had been an unfortunately good teacher, and the Monster was hard to fight against; it had reach, strength and was despairingly tough to harm. 

Her claws barely scratched its thick bones, whereas its sword cleaved large chunks of her armour away and carved deep wounds into her body. Chunks of her were only held in place by her hastily reforming mana scales holding everything in place. 

Still, beating it in a swordfight had never been the point.

Typh emptied out the mana in as many talents sewn into her dress as she could, while desperately thanking the System for choosing [Sovereign Magus’s Reservoir] so many months ago. Thick golden chains of light wrapped around the Monster while she leapt up towards the sky. Using her own reserves for the first time, she pulled herself up and away from the bottom of the pit as fast as she could. The rapid acceleration of her upward flight made her already faint head spin.

The walls of the pit raced by while she flew, and for a few heartbeats she thought she’d done it. And then a clawed hand, more bones than anything else, grabbed her by the ankle, crumpling her scales into motes of light and pulping the joint.

Her fear rose while the momentum of her spell carried them both up towards the distant surface.

She was out of time. She knew that. It might survive what was coming but she certainly wouldn’t.

“Got you!” the Monster smiled. Its bare and ichor stained skull grinning macarbly in the dim-light.

“Not quite,” she retorted. 

And then she shifted.

[Alternate Form] protested hard. The skill knew that she couldn’t survive for more than a moment as a dragon, whilst at the same time acknowledging that there wasn’t enough space in the narrow pit for her true form. But that didn’t matter, she didn’t need moments, just one would do.

Her protective scales dissolved while the outside of her body blurred. She bared her flat, human teeth and bent at the waist to bite down even as her form was taken by the System and replaced with her mortally injured draconic one.

A hundred and ten foot long dragon briefly occupied a hole less than ten feet wide in diameter. The pit immediately collapsed around her, while muscle, bone, and scale were pulverised into gory smear, her limbs were mangled beyond recognition by the pits rigid confines just as surely as her ankle had been beneath the Monster’s grip. 

The creature’s hand was ripped open, its bones shattered, completely unable to keep a hold  around the dragon’s suddenly much larger limb. 

Typh’s fangs were already in motion—her head, about the only thing to survive the pit’s confines intact—bit down around the skeletal frame of the Monster. Her powerful jaws, exponentially stronger thanks to her massive size and unbridled strength score fractured the surprised creatures bones. [Sovereign’s Breath] answered her call even without the space for her chest to breathe let alone exhale a gout of fire. For in Creation, when biology failed, mana and most importantly will bridged the gap. Searing golden flames packing the a concussive force of an avalanche impacted the Monster before it could react and sent its damaged body hurtling back down to the bottom of the pit. 

Before the pain of her failed transformation killed her, she switched back to her human form. With dirt, blood, and gore raining down over her, she used the last dregs of her power to cast off the unstable ingots and shoot up the tunnel. 

Seconds passed with only the thundering sound of her own heartbeat in her ears and the groan of the unstable earth. She was terrified that she’d see it rising again, but even a Monster needed more than a few seconds to figure out flight.

She continued to ascend, and then the bottom of the pit exploded, the remaining powder in the vast network of tunnels detonating along with the unused mana in her increasingly unstable lost fortune. 

The sides of the tunnel, miles deep, fell inwards around her. Stone and earth rained down while she raised her hands protectively over her face and prayed to the System that she had enough power to make it to the top. Falling rocks glanced off her battered form, and only her dwindling momentum kept her flying upwards while she was sent careening off into the sides of the pit which only collapsed faster for having her bounce off of them.

Buffeted by shockwaves and stone, Typh reached for the sky, the exit of the deep pit narrowing as she raced upwards all too aware that not even she could dig herself free of so much earth.

She held her breath, and then she was through.

The dragon rose high above Rhelea while the mouth of the pit closed behind her, trapping the Monster beneath miles of rock and earth. 

Soaring up above, she saw what was left of Rhelea. 

The town square had been replaced by a massive sinkhole that was spreading to consume much of the city’s centre. Rows of streets were falling into the earth as the tunnels beneath the city, thoroughly mined one and all, collapsed beneath the weight of the surface. The destruction grew in an ever expanding circle that threatened to push past the line where masses of her soldiers stood, waiting to contain any horrors left standing.

Until it stopped, and Typh began to fall.

*Congratulations on defeating a Monster. For your service to the System, additional experience is awarded.*

*Calculating…*

*Congratulations Sovereign Magus, is now level 59*

…

*Congratulations Sovereign Magus, is now level 99*

…

It was over. 

The Monster had been killed, and it only cost them most of Rhelea to do it. 

As Typh fell to the ground, she couldn’t help but think that it didn’t feel like a victory.

If you liked this chapter, do make sure to rate, review, favourite, and follow as appropriate. Everything you do really helps get this fiction discovered, which gets it in the faces of new readers and keeps me writing.

If you really liked this chapter and can't wait for the next one. I have a Patreon where you can read up to 15 chapters ahead and contribute towards keeping the lights on.

If you want to chat with me your humble author in real-time, or other fans of the series feel free to join the discord .

If you want to help with my visibility and don't fancy any of the above then give me a .

And last but not least, Dragon's Dilemma Book 1: A Sovereign's Scorn, is on sale on  With the audiobook edition now available for 

You can find story with these keywords: Dragon’s Dilemma, Read Dragon’s Dilemma, Dragon’s Dilemma novel, Dragon’s Dilemma book, Dragon’s Dilemma story, Dragon’s Dilemma full, Dragon’s Dilemma Latest Chapter