The battle between the two monstrous foes raged on, the dragonoid and Julius locked in a test of raw strength, their hands clamped tightly together. The dragonoid pushed harder, slowly gaining the advantage, yet Julius's calm, unreadable gaze never faltered.
In a blinding instant, Julius tore one hand free from the beast's grip and lashed out, the strike so fast it left a streak of light in its wake. The dragonoid's blood splattered into the air. But before Julius could press the attack, the creature's tail whipped around with instinctive speed, cutting through the air toward him. He narrowly evaded the blow.
Not giving his opponent the slightest chance to recover, Julius summoned blades from his invisible strings and drove them into the dragonoid again and again. Each impalement wracked the creature with pain, slowing its movements as agony overtook its body.
Then came a violent roar. In a flash, the dragonoid's body erupted in an overwhelming burst of light.
Astral Sovereignty: Solar Flare.
The searing brilliance engulfed everything, scorching the ground and air alike. Julius raised his arms instinctively, shielding his eyes from the glare that threatened to blind him.
The dragonoid lunged forward, seizing the moment. Its claws slammed into Julius—its first true, clean hit in the entire fight. At last, it had struck the so-called "Emperor Julius."
The impact hurled Julius backwards. As his vision cleared from the blinding assault, the dragonoid's claws carved through the air, manipulating vectors to create a force that shredded everything they touched.
Julius reacted quickly, weaving a dome of strings around himself. The attacks crashed against it, but could not pierce through. In one smooth motion, his strings exploded outward, slicing apart everything nearby. Without pause, he sent them whipping toward the dragonoid, ensnaring it completely.
Every swing of its claws was redirected. Every movement it attempted was halted or altered. Julius's mastery was absolute—he moved with the precision and grace of a puppeteer conducting an intricate performance.
The dragonoid flailed in frustration, but its every effort was met with flawless counters, each motion as deliberate and harmonious as a perfect note in a symphony.
For that stretch of time, the beast was no longer the predator. Julius was in control.
But as Julius bound the dragonoid in multiple layers of threads, something caught his attention—its regeneration had slowed.
Within the creature's mind, Alcmena's consciousness worked relentlessly, stripping away its strength bit by bit.
I can't let this creature keep growing, Alcmena thought grimly. The Dragon Seed is forcing an immense surge of ethereal energy—on par with a red ethereal core stage—into Xavier's body.
But this thing's core stage is still only green expert. Trying to mimic the power of someone stronger is reckless. I've already suppressed its transformation as much as I can, keeping it from fully reaching its dragon-human hybrid form. But if this continues, core corruption won't be the worst of it—the body will give out. And when that happens, Xavier dies.
Frustration burned in Alcmena's voice. This is my fault. I should have told him the truth—that I'm not the Alcmena he knew, but only a fragment of the original's will.
His thoughts wavered, bitter and heavy. If I'd told him… maybe he wouldn't have broken down. Maybe this transformation wouldn't have happened. Damn it… I let my emotions cloud my duty to protect him.
Outside, the fight pressed on. The dragonoid's aura swelled, raw and destructive, distorting the air. Julius tilted his head slightly, sensing the unnatural growth of its power.
The creature was getting stronger—faster than it should.
In a violent surge of power, the beast tore through the threads binding it, shredding its own flesh in the process. With a frustrated snarl, it swung a claw, but Julius slipped past it effortlessly. He countered with a whip of strings—only for the attack to miss. The dragonoid had shifted aside at the last possible moment.
Julius's calm expression cracked just enough to show a glimmer of surprise. "It's adapting."
And he was right. The longer the battle went on, the more the beast adjusted to his patterns. Though the process was grueling, its movements became sharper, its reactions faster, its power wielded in increasingly deliberate ways. This thing might have been a monster in form, but it was still Xavier—and Xavier's instinct and genius for adaptation had not been lost.
The relentless pursuit continued, the dragonoid's cunning forcing Julius to respond with equal precision. Minute by minute, the creature's persistence began to gnaw at him. Yet Julius kept pressing with his invisible strings, weaving attack after attack.
The beast suddenly dug its claws deep into the earth, tearing free an enormous mass of rock and soil and hurling it toward Julius. He cleaved through it with ease, but the move was a feint—by the time the debris split, the dragonoid was behind him, its killing intent palpable.
Its claws slammed across Julius's face, driving him down to the ground with brutal force. It followed with a barrage of amplified strikes, each blow tearing through his defenses. Still, Julius remained composed—annoyed, perhaps, but utterly calm.
The dragonoid sought to crush him under the sheer weight of its vector shield, pressing down with overwhelming force. Julius rolled clear at the last instant and countered in a blur, severing its leg, one arm, and carving a deep gash across its chest, nearly cleaving it in half.
The beast regenerated, its agonized screams splitting the sky.
"Wild varmint," Julius muttered, almost impressed by its blend of raw savagery and cunning intelligence.
He conjured fresh strings around his hand, igniting them into searing flames.
"Pyreveil Cleave."
The infernal threads poured across the sky like a burning tide, engulfing the dragonoid and tearing into its flesh before it could recover from its last wounds. Fire scorched through its body, stalling its regeneration—exactly as Julius intended.
But desperation drove the beast. It unleashed Blackstar Authority, and a black hole bloomed into existence around it, devouring the flames entirely.
Julius remained unfazed, sidestepping as the dragonoid sent the black hole barreling toward him. The earth tore open in its wake, its pull threatening to drag him in. Julius resisted, unraveling the threads he had scattered across the battlefield and gathering them to a single point until they spun into a vortex around his fingertips.
In one swift motion, he struck.
"Threads of Reality: Maximum Output… Evercutting Blade."
The attack ripped through air and stone alike, screaming toward the dragonoid at blinding speed—only to halt in place, suspended unnaturally in midair.
Space itself seemed to fold around it.
Xavier's vector shield had activated. The deadly strike hung motionless, locked in place by the invisible force.
Julius's eyes narrowed, recalling Percival's words to him a long time ago: Xavier's vector shield—an untouchable barrier that could stop virtually anything with a vector. No physical force could bypass it; to do so would require an attack devoid of vectors entirely, something impossible by the laws of reality.
"So, it's finally using it defensively," Julius thought. "That means I can't touch him without awakening and tapping into my other abilities to find a counter… but I can't."
He clicked his tongue—not in frustration, but in acknowledgment of the beast's power.
Before he could think further, the dragonoid acted. It dispersed his halted attack—then redirected it straight back at him.
Just as Julius sidestepped his own redirected attack—sent back at him by the dragonoid's vector shield—the beast altered its defense. The shield, normally a full-body barrier, compressed into a razor-thin plane of impossible density, wrapping the length of its right arm. Thousands of vector calculations layered together until the force became a singular edge.
An invisible blade no thicker than an atom.
Warped Regokinesis Slash.
Julius's eyes widened as the air split with a soundless violence. The arc of force carved through the battlefield in a single sweep, vaporizing everything in its path—stone, soil, life—leaving behind not even ash. The ground where it passed no longer existed.
Only luck—or fate—kept Julius intact. The strike missed by a hair, its sheer devastation drawing an uncharacteristic expression from him: a cold, almost amused smirk. For the first time in the battle, genuine emotion crossed his face.
"I will admit," he said, voice like ice, "you are strong, child. Strong enough to make me reconsider my earlier judgment."
Then his tone sank lower, colder. "But you forgot something… I have yet to break a sweat."
Darkness began to leak from him—not the absence of light, but an aura so heavy it bent the air. The temperature plummeted. The world felt smaller, tighter, as if the sky itself held its breath. Every remaining trace of life within reach—plants, grass, even the smallest insect—withered in an instant.
This was not an attack. It was acknowledgment. A predator's respect for prey that had dared to bite.
Because Julius, the embodiment of malice, still honored strength when he saw it.
"Yield," he murmured.
The dragonoid's knees hit the ground—not from any supernatural compulsion, but because every instinct screamed obedience before the apex predator before it.
"You may have courage," Julius said, his eyes shadowed, "but I am more than fear."
"I am the shadow that consumes all light.
The inevitable.
The omega of stories—the end of all things."
His voice dropped to a deadly whisper.
"I am… the Grand Emperor."