[Ouroboros' End]
Sitting at one of the campfires, Saroch winces slightly as one of his colleagues presses a bandage drenched in disinfectant against the cut on his side. Though not particularly deep, the wound was enough that even a mythic rank mage like him had to watch out for infections. It was a reminder that, for all his power, his body was still susceptible to many of the same dangers the manaless masses faced. Not to the same extent, of course, but enough that he still had to be cautious of what he came into contact with in the forest, especially since he never learned any spells to detect or cure illnesses. In his line of work, wounds were more dangerous, so that danger is what he focused his meager talent in support magic onto.
'Though if our dammed healers weren't so stingy,' He thought, only for his internal monologue to be interrupted by a sting of pain as the folded-up bandage lightly brushed against his wound.
Though he wanted to shout at the man treating him in response, Saroch kept his calm. Repeatedly reminding himself that the superiority in status that mages enjoyed was far less than what it would be in a purely human organization due to elves and other species that are more talented in the art, he kept himself from lashing out at his ally by redirecting his anger at the cause of their situation.
First, their mission had failed. The first target they had spotted had turned out to be a dragon of all things, and not even one of the weak ones. Not that he thought that any dragon would be lacking in potential, but he's heard that a couple of universes had fire dragons where even most adults could still be dealt with by a sufficiently prepared mythic rank.
Of course, some lucky bastards were talented or old enough to deal with stronger dragons, though if they met one that was powerful even for dragons, they too could only hope to flee. Not that he was one of these people anyway, so he should've probably turned and run the moment the woman turned out to be some other kind of dragon. Unluckily for him, his trust in their numerical superiority and the prestige of becoming a dragon slayer had won over his rationality.
As such, he was already moving closer by the time the second figure also unveiled himself to be a dragon. Maybe that should've been his cue to leave, maybe when the monster vaporized one of the few less annoying idiots he was traveling with in one attack. But whatever the point was at which a sane person should've fled, he stayed long enough to be teleported to the shared fallback point.
Normally, this should've meant that the day would improve. Saroch himself thought so at first. After all, no matter how powerful that dragon was, the weeks-long journey one would need to reach these deep sections of the wilderness without teleportation wouldn't be cut short too much just by flying. So even though they'd need another day and a half to reach the nearest outpost of the monster mercenaries they employed so that their boss would dare to open a portal to them, yet another thing he'd love to complain about but didn't dare to, the dragon wouldn't reach them before that.
But of course, they then had to run into these barbaric brutes. Not having expected yet another fight so shortly after they arrived at their teleportation destination, the ogre raiders had torn through their formation and had been upon him and the other mages before anyone could react.
That was another part of why he was forced to endure being treated through such basic methods. Of the two mages specializing in healing magic, one had been killed by the ogres and dragged away, while the other was still busy healing his own wounds. In fact, a majority of the mages had fallen victim to the attack, with some having been dragged away screaming when the ogres finally retreated. And to make matters worse, their spatial mage was among these, meaning a large part of their potion supply was also gone, leaving them only with a few flasks that some of the men and women had carried on their belts.
Together with the shock of the earlier attack, this meant that morale was exceedingly low. Even from the tree-stump he sat on, Saroch could see multiple of the people that he knew were tasked to act as lookouts resting instead of paying attention to their surroundings.
Not that he himself was any better. Even wounded as he was, his mana sense could still offer them a second or two to react to an approaching enemy. But after two battles and one near-death experience, Saroch simply didn't have the mental energy left to continuously keep up the detailed sweep of their surroundings needed for this. And with all of his superiors on the expedition either dead or heavily wounded, who was supposed to reprimand him? Not to mention that none of them expected yet another attack, not after the losses they had managed to inflict on the ogres during their retreat.
As such, Saroch wasn't focusing on his surroundings all that much when a presence abruptly flared to life at the edge of the small clearing. Like a burst of light, the mana radiating out from it flashed up on his mana sense, briefly blinding him and causing Saroch to flinch back in shock.
Pushing through the discomfort of this, he let his gaze snap upward when this was followed by a roar, his eyes widened as he caught a glimpse of the dark figure visible in front of the light of nearby universes. Then, before his eyes could adjust to staring directly at the ever-shifting light they illuminated the sky with, a bright flash exploded in his sight as a beam of silver tore across the battlefield.
Left stunned by the rapidly progressing series of events, Saroch hadn't even reacted yet when he suddenly heard a gargling sound from the aura user that had helped treat his wounds. Turning toward him with an irritated look, he froze when he saw the arrow that had pierced through the man's throat and was now stuck there.
Finally shocked out of his ignorance of the situation, Saroch threw up a shield spell around himself. And he did so just in time, as only a moment later, the blue flash of a lightning bolt flickered across his shield. The lightning itself then followed immediately after, exploding against the shield that surrounded Saroch with a deafening boom and sending him flying across the ground.
When his vision returned a few moments later, the battlefield had already devolved into total carnage. As he slowly rose into a seated position, Saroch's eyes widened at the sight of two more dragons hovering where the first one had been, their wings throwing nearly the entire clearing into darkness.
Meanwhile, the first dragon was tearing through his allies. Blood already stained its claws, with even more of his colleagues lying strewn around in the muddy soil due to hits from the constant barrage of magic that seemed to burst forth from the dragon's scales.
Moments later, Saroch's evaluation became even worse as his thoughts cleared enough to piece together the picture his mana sense painted. At least three more presences were perched atop the surrounding trees, with Saroch needing another moment to connect them to the sudden attacks that struck his colleagues even in moments in which the dragons should've been focused elsewhere.
When one of the dragons hovering above then opened its maw and sent yet another beam of silver at a closely gathered group of his allies, Saroch snapped. Pushing to his feet in a panicked scramble, he turned away to avoid seeing the results of the attack and ran. Rushing into the cover of the trees with only thoughts of survival on his mind, he forced himself to swallow his screams and later the heavy breathing as he fled from the scene.
There, Darganth was meanwhile following up on Yldra's breath attack. Breaking through the encirclement that surrounded him with a swipe of his claw, he dashed forward and was upon his targets before they recovered.
Propelled by a shallow leap and carried by his wings, he reeled back one of his front limbs and brought it down on the nearest aura user. Met by a sword that the man raised above his head, his claw was caught on the blade, interlocking and forcing his opponent onto one knee as Darganth leveraged more of his weight behind the strike.
But just as the man's feet started to sink into the soil despite the aura reinforcing it, a figure came flying at Darganth from the left. With a thunderous impact, it struck Darganth at the shoulder, forcing him a few steps to the side before he caught himself. Reacting the moment he regained stable footing with his hind legs, he spun away from the new attacker and used the momentum to retaliate for the strike with a wide swing of his tail.
Only feeling the slight pressure of impact through his scales as confirmation of the hit, Darganth then immediately turned his attention to the next best enemy. Making note of the positions of the three other enemies in his field of view, he flared his mana in preparation for the formation of spells before charging at his main target.
Barreling forward, he swung his open claw forward just as an aura avatar was forming around his target. Ripping the man out of the construct through its back, he cut the mana supply before it fully formed, leaving a dense cloud of mana in its place as it disintegrated. And though utilizing it took some of his far more limited supply of draconic mana as normal mana couldn't interact with itself in an unstructured form directly, effectively limiting interactions with mana that wasn't controlled by a person or bound in the veil as those were the most common instances of structured mana, it did more than cover the mana he had spent on the spell barrage he still kept readied.
The latter came into play just a moment later when the three additional opponents sprang into action after seeing their colleague being ripped out of his aura avatar. While a portion absorbed mana rushed into his heart and formed a temporary reservoir outside his actual mana pool thanks to his draconic heart's unique properties, the majority of it only briefly flowed through his heart to benefit from the enhancement it bestowed before rushing through his mana channels and spreading across his body. From there, it surged outward and through his scales before coalescing into nine spell circles that erupted into various fire elemental spells.
In an instant, the air around Darganth was thus turned into an inferno. Covered in these raging flames, he broke through the assault of the two aura users by forcing them back, while the first barrage of ice spells from the mage vaporized before even reaching him.
As such, Darganth quickly reached the edge of the clearing and burst past the treeline, his main target still trapped in a cage of razor-sharp claws from his now half-closed hand. Only once they were almost a hundred meters away from the clearing, and thus at least a hundred and twenty meters away from the nearest enemy, did Darganth start his true attack.
Having singled out this aura user as one of the strongest opponents early on despite the man's injured state, Darganth had been careful to ensure that his opponent couldn't get help in their fight. That now left him on his own as Darganth opened his palm again and slammed it against the sturdiest tree nearby.
Embedding the aura user deep into the trunk with the slam, he pulled his hand back and snapped downward with his head. Tearing through the wood with his teeth, he attempted to close his maw around the man. But before he could succeed, the tree was suddenly shaken by an explosion, causing it to burst apart into multiple large, vertical pieces. A few of these were flung in the direction of Darganth's head, with two lodging themselves against his teeth and jaw respectively, diverting his head to the side and causing him to slam into the ground snout-first.
Rattled by the impact, Darganth acted only on instinct when he felt his opponent's mana flare up to his right and swung his unfurled wing in a wide swipe. Feeling multiple impacts against it and hearing the cracking of wood that confirmed that at least some weren't his target, he couldn't confirm whether he hit or missed until a sudden cut tore into the membrane of the wing.
Recoiling with a roar of pain, Darganth tore through multiple thick trees as he blindly moved away from his opponent. Only regaining his bearing a few short moments later, he had already crossed a dozen meters in that fraction of a second. Though little in comparison to the sheer size of his body, even in the shrunken-down state he was using at that moment, it did at least bring him out of the physical striking range of his opponent.
Still, with mana flooding his body, the aura user had more than enough alternative ways to attack. Still catching a glimpse of his opponent as he took on a stance with his sword reeled back, Darganth predicted the man's next action before the aura strike even erupted from his sword.
The moment it did, time slowed to a crawl around Darganth as temporal magic flooded into his body. At the same time, he peered into the river of time, its azure green reflecting in his eyes and filling them with a radiant glow as future after future played in his mind in but a fraction of a second.
Suddenly, his lips curled up into a smile. Having found an adequate series of events, he let out a rumbling laugh that echoed through his bared teeth as he tensed his muscles and prepared to act.
Waiting for the perfect moment, he kept time in his immediate vicinity accelerated until he saw his opponent draw back his sword for a second strike. At precisely the moment the motion reached its zenith, Darganth then pounced forward.
In a burst of speed, he shot forward at an upward angle that carried him over the first strike. As the flying projectile of condensed aura passed by beneath him, he fully unfurled his wings. Watching his opponent react as predicted and raise the angle at which he held his sword, Darganth waited until the man was fully committed to the strike and then acted.
Dropping the temporal acceleration, he rocketed almost to a halt as time around him slowed to a twentieth of what it had been before. Along with it, the planet's gravitational pull, whose force had previously been spread across twenty seconds, resumed affecting Darganth fully. Aided by a further increase in its effect due to the help of his gravity magic, this allowed for a sharp downward maneuver that almost left him crashing into the ground.
And with his position and thus flight path suddenly two dozen meters closer to the ground, Darganth watched with glee as his opponent's eyes widened as the lightning-like arcs of aura that erupted from the tip of his swords struck only empty air.
At the same time, Darganth was already charging a breath attack in the depths of his maw. Tearing through the devastated forest section their fight was happening in, the beam of silver barely weakened even as the aura user's domain erupted out of him and struck true. With an eruption of spatial energy, it cut into the man's armor, tearing out chunks from the metal and ripping apart a good portion of the right side of his torso.
Meanwhile, the forest around him fared even worse, as with nothing remotely durable enough to stop them, the spatial fluctuations spread for easily a dozen meters, twisting, cutting, or ripping apart matter wherever they encountered it.
In the wake of the devastation, the aura user stumbled forward, barely still keeping himself upright. Meeting his rage-filled gaze as he continued charging closer, Darganth took note of the shaking in his opponent's left arm as he was forced to switch his sword into that hand with satisfaction. While not his doing, unlike the bloody mess that was now the man's right arm, his estimate of his opponent's injuries seemed to have been proven accurate.
Preparing himself to finish the fight in melee, Darganth reeled back one of his front limbs. Spreading its fingers, he was about to slash down with his claws when his opponent deviated from the future he had envisioned.
Remembering the scenario as one of the unlikely branches of the future, Darganth briefly hesitated as he weighed the risk. Recognizing it as the last opportunity to change course when his opponent finally sank his sword into the ground, Darganth let his pride and bloodthirst win and pushed on even as his target pushed as much mana as his body could channel into the ground.
Arriving in front of him a moment later, Daranth met the man's eyes and mirrored the latter's smirk as well as his draconic lips allowed it. Still briefly catching the hint of surprise that flashed across the aura user's face in response, he then snapped forward with his head and closed his maw around him at the same time as his opponent detonated the gathered mana.
In an instant, a cataclysmic impact tore across the surroundings. Centered around the tip of the sword, a wave of power swept outward without any visual indication. Not just tearing up but wholly disintegrating the first few meters of soil around, its power intermixed with the underlying elemental energies of its surroundings, causing it to transform from a wave to a destructive force whose nature varied between each point on the rapidly expanding sphere.
Below ground, this was mainly fueled by earth, nature, and the occasional metal elemental energy. As such, its power became largely structured, though not in any way less destructive. Sweeping earth and rock along as it pushed outward, it compressed them and caused them to erupt in the only direction they could, upward.
There, most of the soil got intermixed with the raging hurricane that had formed above ground. Infused with wind and nature energy, the shockwave there had turned into a storm of uncontrolled growth, with both the uprooted plants and the raging wind itself benefiting from the nature element's prominent concept.
As such, the soil mixed with an already massive cloud of everything from fully formed plants, over small thorns, to minuscule seeds and spores. And with the introduction of solid ground, these loose pieces found something to anchor on, filling the ever-expanding hurricane with small, overgrown planets and ever-shifting masses of vines, wood, and other plant life.
Though even that paled in comparison to the wave that hit Darganth. Just from the short contact with his outstretched claw that he had placed next to where his opponent had been to catch his momentum, that portion of the blast became attuned with spatial and temporal energy through the surge his mere presence causes on the other side of the veil. And while the resulting wave wasn't remotely as chaotic as the other two sections, it more than doubled down in its deadliness.
Like a silent wave, this section of the shockwave simply twisted both time and space in its wake. Not even leaving an easily observable danger to avoid, it was an invisible field of death where matter simply fell apart and aged into dust.
Despite sensing this, Darganth didn't retreat. Watching with narrowed eyes as the wave of energy rapidly encased more and more of his outstretched arm, he pushed out his own mana to counteract it. As the two opposing forces met, a wild mix of implosions and explosions erupted along their edges as space and time collapsed and solidified in rapid succession.
With each clash, Darganth felt the strain on him increase as the collisions sent shockwaves through the channeled mana that propagated all the way back to his mana pool. Soon, they shot through his body from all directions as the expanding wave fully encased him.
At the same time, his stomach finally finished extracting the mana from his consumed opponent. Streaming through his heart and into his mana pool, this mana is further molded by the pressure of the shockwaves before it is woven into the metaphysical walls that contain his mana reserves.
The moment it does, Darganth is surprised to feel the immediate drop in pressure from the clashing forces. Though this was in part expected considering his opponent could undoubtedly be classified as a mythic rank of the Shaping Stage, as seen from his final attack, and had the mana potency expected for this, its combined effect with the constant inward pressure on his mana pool was beyond anything he had hoped to achieve.
For a few heavenly seconds, the task of keeping the foreign mana encasing him at bay was taken over solely by instinctual response as Dargnath focused on the sensation of his rising power. Flexing the hold he had over his own mana, he basked in the feeling of the last few whisps of mana reinforcing the walls of his mana pool, empowering the spiritual imprint he infused into his mana, which is what gives it its qualitative edge over natural mana, one more time.
Feeling the increased power that now thrummed in his heart, Darganth was sure that just like his opponent had been, he too would be classified as a Shaping Stage Mythic by more reputable metrics. And with the feeling of power came the desire to unleash it, prompting him to channel his mana into a burst that erupted from his body and tore through the lingering effects of his opponent's final attack.
In an instant, the chaos that surrounded him was silenced as Darganth's mana tore through the area. While the physical changes like the massive crater and the floating masses of earth and plant remained, though the two did come crashing down again as the winds ceased, the expanding sphere of uncontrolled power that caused all of this was shattered.
In its wake, it left a scarred section of forest that extended even slightly onto the clearing where the fight had started. In this area, both plants and trees alike had ceased to be as the earth had been churned through and piled up into multiple wave-like hills that encircled Darganth's position like rings.
Meanwhile, the plants and animals that had been picked up by the storm were flung wildly in all directions when it ended. Some simply dropped to the ground and scattered an unrecognizable mix of biological matter across their surroundings, others were flung to the sides and tore through still standing sections of the forest, while yet another group was flung upward and would continue to drop over the following seconds, if not even minutes.
At the center of this stood Darganth, wings unfurled and confidence practically radiating out from him as he met the stunned gazes of the remaining enemies.