Abrinadus shuddered as great chunks were blasted into his body, the air around him roiling as the immense heat seared it. When the heat haze cleared, a skeleton of a monster was revealed, vast, weeping wounds covering his body, blackened flesh replacing his broken scales.
Sam began to smile, but the dragon shifted, chunks of flesh sloughing off his body. Twin orbs of fire burned deep within his eye sockets, and he opened his mouth, howling in rage and pain to the heavens. All around him, ghostly figures rose out of the ground, draconic humanoids crafted from red and golden light. Wielding a plethora of weapons, thousands of them appeared, gathering into rows. A titanic amount of Dao energy surrounded them, the air warping as reality itself was broken.
Sam grimaced, and headed in, knowing that to end this fight, he would need to take out Abrinadus before his summons could kill him. As the scarred dragon loomed overhead, Sam took a deep breath. One way or another, the fiftieth floor of the Tower would end soon.
Sam tore across the ground, ignoring the pain that seared through his body from his injuries. This far, he had avoided dismemberment, and his general fighting abilities were still quite high. Whether that would continue to be the case was uncertain.
The front lines of the golden army set off, racing across the shattered land of Wyrm’s Haven. They were slower than Sam was, but moved as a unit, meaning that flanking maneuvers would be more effective against him than their individual speeds would indicate.
Sam’s domain was useful for this, as he could use it to unbind enemy Dao constructs. While his enemy possessed a Dao far above his own, Sam knew that he could make a difference, given how stretched out Abrinadus’ conceptual energy was. Projecting his Domain before himself like a spear, Sam drew upon his Dao and exploded forwards, jets of light propelling him at supersonic speeds. The world was split in half, a cone of red and blue blasting the ethereal soldiers out of the way of his attack.
Terra’s Will glistened as Sam poured his Dao energy into it like water into a cup, the silvery metal turning into what looked like crystallized flame, colored brightly with the shades of his Dao. As the Dao specters summoned by Abrinadus were forcibly discorporated by Sam, the dragon himself opened his tattered maw, and screeched at the sky, summoning what looked like a river of crimson electricity, streaking across space.
Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.
It circled around in the heavens, forming a miniature star, before splitting apart into a thousand searing spears, hurtling towards the surface of the planet. The dragon stumbled as his skin continued to flake, the attack having taken a lot out of him. Sam saw his chance and took it, teleporting next to the dragon’s head, Terra’s Will already descending. Only, this time, things were different. An evil grin stretched the blackened flesh of Abrinadus, and quicker than thought, he snapped his jaws out, and sank his teeth into Sam. Space locked down around him, and the jaws began to squeeze, shattering his layers of armor, and sinking into the flesh below.
As the teeth began to grind through Sam’s flesh, his mind flashed back to his fight with Granthar, the searing pain of having his entire body ripped in half. He gritted his teeth, and howled in fury, battering his fists against Abrinadus’ head, dropping Terra’s Will in favor of getting close and personal with the dragon. Gauntlets of the Dao formed around his hands, and elongated into long spikes of crystalline energy, punching holes into the dragon’s head. The jaws continued to close, slicing through Sam’s stomach slowly but surely. His fists sped up, rage fueling them as much as his stats, and he beat Abrinadus’ head into a pulp, crushing scales and rending flesh.
The dragon groaned in pain, but continued to bear down, coming ever closer to slicing Sam in half. Without a D Ranker to swoop in to save him this time, and with an army of Dao apparitions swarming around him, such an injury would be fatal. Sam raised his hand once more, flattening his gauntlet into a blade, pouring every last drop of his Dao into it for one final hail mary attack.
Layers of yellow elemental energy wrapped around the blade, and a sheen of purified mana coated it, turning the attack into a ten foot long guillotine of merged energies. Sam brought it down, just as he felt the dragon’s teeth beginning to meet in the middle of his body. The blade sliced through the already weakened monster’s head like a hot knife through butter, and cleaved it in half, both cheeks bulging out grotesquely as gravity pulled them to the sides. The grip around Sam’s abdomen slackened, and he tore himself free with a welter of blood, some his own, and some of the dragon’s.
He fell to the ground, almost perfectly in sync with Abrinadus. The dragon’s summoned army dissipated as his Dao cracked asunder, utterly shattered by Sam’s victory.
