Chapter 581: If You Insist on Continuing, I'll Have No Choice but to Run Away
The earth-shattering tremors from their martial arts brawl were clearly felt several kilometers away in the city. The sheer seismic force knocked several citizens off their feet, causing brief moments of panic. Heine and Juliet immediately directed their guards to assist the fallen and continued loudly reassuring the populace to prevent mass hysteria.
Back in the wilderness, the ground beneath Noah and Irene's boots was as fragile as wet paper.
Every time their fists or kicks collided, the resulting localized shockwaves violently ripped the earth apart. They were practically fighting inside a continuously expanding crater, with thousands of tons of pulverized soil, rock, and dust being violently blown away by the hurricane-force winds generated by their strikes.
Because her bulky witch's hat and heavy cape were incredibly impractical for high-speed close-quarters combat, Irene had discarded them. She had also slightly modified her lower garments to allow for maximum flexibility.
She swung her heavy wooden staff with devastating speed, seamlessly chaining the strikes with vicious kicks and heavy left hooks.
But the longer she fought, the darker her expression became.
When they both cast their respective physical enhancement enchantments, Irene had been absolutely confident that her boost would be exponentially greater than Noah's. As the master of Enchantment Magic, her formulas were infinitely more refined and efficient.
Furthermore, having fought on the frontlines of the apocalyptic Dragon King Festival four hundred years ago, Irene's pure martial arts technique and combat experience were leagues above Noah's. She was aggressively pressing the attack, forcing him entirely onto the defensive.
And yet, despite relentlessly attacking him with superior technique and superior magical enhancement, she absolutely could not break his guard.
To make matters worse, as the minutes ticked by, Irene noticed a profoundly infuriating shift in Noah's defensive maneuvers.
His movements were becoming eerily familiar. The subtle shifts in his footwork, the specific angles he used to parry her staff... the gap in their martial arts technique was rapidly closing.
Wait... are those my techniques?!
Irene's eyes widened in realization. This arrogant brat is actively copying my martial arts mid-fight!
Her face darkened with pure fury, and she swung her staff with even greater brutality. Yet, no matter how hard she struck, Noah flawlessly parried or dodged, his defenses completely impenetrable.
As the scale of their physical clashes grew, both mages subconsciously realized they were dangerously close to the city. By unspoken mutual agreement, they began subtly shifting their footwork, slowly dragging the brawl further into the wilderness.
Irene was secretly thrilled by the relocation. Once they were far enough away from her citizens, she could cast even stronger, wider-scale enchantments to crush him.
Seen from above, their migrating brawl looked like a colossal, invisible excavator was violently carving a massive, smoking trench across the landscape.
Moving at blinding speeds, they quickly reached a desolate, uninhabited mountain range dozens of kilometers away from the city.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The mountains stood no chance. The shockwaves from their punches violently uprooted massive swathes of ancient trees, shattered the bedrock, and literally leveled several smaller peaks.
They fought their way deep into the heart of the mountain range, entirely flattening a multi-kilometer radius of jagged peaks into a pulverized, smoking plateau.
Finally, having reached a perfectly isolated location, both mages stopped moving backward and completely abandoned all restraint.
Irene aggressively cranked her self-enhancement enchantments to their absolute maximum limit, fully intending to finally crush Noah's defenses. As expected, Noah instantly matched her escalation, amplifying his own enchantments.
Irene wasn't worried. She knew her enchantments were fundamentally superior; the gap in their magical buffs should theoretically guarantee her victory.
But as the unrestrained brawl resumed, Irene realized she had miscalculated entirely.
Noah's enchantments were significantly weaker than hers. He wasn't gaining as much power from the magic as she was.
And yet, her strikes still couldn't break his guard. It was as if her superior magical enhancement didn't matter in the slightest.
Irene's expression turned incredibly serious. There was only one possible explanation for this phenomenon.
Noah's un-enhanced, baseline physical constitution was vastly, undeniably stronger than hers.
He was physically stronger than a four-hundred-year-old Dragon Queen masquerading in a human shell. The only way she could overpower him physically was if she abandoned her human form entirely and transformed back into her massive draconic body.
"What kind of creature are you?" Irene demanded, suddenly leaping backward to break the engagement. She glared at Noah, her chest heaving slightly.
Seeing her retreat, Noah didn't press the attack. He dropped his guard and rolled his shoulders. Hearing her question, he couldn't help but roll his eyes.
"That's incredibly rude. I'm a perfectly normal human being," Noah replied casually, flexing his bicep playfully. "This physique is just the result of years of incredibly hard work and dedication."
"Do not insult my intelligence. A normal human cannot possess that level of physical durability," Irene stated flatly, ignoring his posturing.
Having lived as both a human and a dragon, Irene intimately understood the absolute, insurmountable biological chasm separating the two species.
In terms of pure magic, there were extremely rare human anomalies—like August—who could rival or surpass a dragon's output. But in terms of pure physical strength and durability, the gap was astronomical.
A human could only reach a dragon's physical level through two methods. The first was Dragon Slayer Magic, which fundamentally mutated the human body by planting a Dragon Seed. The second was through highly specialized, extremely dangerous forbidden body-modification magic, which always carried severe, horrific side effects.
But her draconic senses told her the truth: Noah hadn't been mutated. There was no Dragon Seed inside him. He smelled entirely, undeniably human, and he bore none of the dark, twisted signatures of forbidden body-modification magic.
He had genuinely achieved near-draconic physical strength while remaining completely, one-hundred-percent human.
A sharp, painful stab of profound jealousy pierced Irene's heart.
She had spent four centuries agonizing over her lost humanity. She despised her dragon body. She wanted nothing more than to be a normal human again.
And here was this young, arrogant brat, possessing the perfect, pure human body she so desperately craved, while simultaneously wielding the physical strength of a dragon and the magical mastery of a god.
It was maddening.
"I really am just a normal human. I haven't undergone any biological modifications," Noah confirmed, easily reading the conflicting emotions crossing her face. "I do know Dragon Slayer Magic, but I've deliberately never utilized it, so my body has never been subjected to the Dragonification process."
Over the years, Noah had studied countless theories regarding physical enhancement and biological modification. He had deliberately avoided all of them. He had never felt that his natural physical potential had capped out. Why risk horrific mutations when he could simply increase his gravitational training multiplier?
If he ever did hit a true biological ceiling, he was confident he could engineer a flawless, side-effect-free enhancement protocol using his own research.
"You arrogant, insufferable brat," Irene hissed, her eyes narrowing with pure malice.
Not only did he possess the perfect human body she coveted, but he had casually dropped the phrase "Dragon Slayer Magic"—the exact magic that had ruined her life, cursed her existence, and driven her insane.
Just looking at Noah made her blood boil. His mere existence felt like a profound, personal mockery of her suffering.
A terrifying, suffocating wave of crimson magic violently erupted from Irene.
Since they were far away from the city, she had absolutely no reason to hold back. If she couldn't beat him in a fistfight, she would simply obliterate him with catastrophic, wide-area enchantments. She knew her raw magical reserves were superior; if she unleashed her full fury, she would win.
The atmosphere around her warped under the sheer pressure. The pulverized earth beneath her boots violently cracked and splintered as she prepared to unleash an apocalyptic spell.
"Alright, I think that's enough fighting for today. I'm not going to continue this," Noah suddenly announced.
He dropped his combat stance entirely and took several deliberate steps backward, waving his hands in a placating gesture.
"If we continue escalating, neither of us will be able to pull our punches, and the resulting collateral damage would be catastrophic," Noah said seriously, taking another few steps back. "If you insist on continuing this fight, I'll have no choice but to turn around and run away."
Irene froze. The rapidly gathering crimson magic instantly stalled.
She stared at Noah in bewilderment.
She knew neither of them had been fighting at absolute maximum capacity. She also knew that while her magical reserves were greater, the gap wasn't massive. If Noah genuinely wanted to retreat, there was absolutely nothing she could do to stop him. His speed and Spatial Magic were simply too advanced to lock down.
The fact that he was explicitly offering her a choice—stand down and talk, or he leaves—completely threw her off rhythm. She slowly, reluctantly reeled her catastrophic magic back into her core.
"Hmph. What exactly are you playing at?" Irene sneered, though the murderous intensity in her eyes softened slightly. "If whatever you have to say displeases me, I promise you will suffer the consequences."
"I highly doubt that," Noah smiled, stopping his retreat. "I came here because I have a very important matter to discuss with you.
"Because I share a profound, intimate bond with your daughter, I have spent years actively searching for her biological parents. I wanted her to know her family. And if her parents had abandoned her, I wanted to know exactly why.
"After a massive amount of research and preparation, I finally found you.
"And after crossing blades with you just now... I confirmed my suspicions.
"You aren't actually human anymore, are you?" Noah asked softly, looking directly into her eyes.
"Tch!" Irene flinched violently, a sharp, audible hiss escaping her lips.
Her eyes darkened with absolute, frigid hatred. Her complete dragonification was her deepest trauma, the source of four centuries of agonizing psychological torture. To have it casually thrown in her face by this arrogant brat ignited a desperate urge to slaughter him where he stood.
But the memory of their prolonged, stalemated brawl forcefully stayed her hand. She knew she couldn't kill him easily.
Irene's eyes darted around frantically before a dark, cruel smirk slowly twisted her lips.
"You want to know why I abandoned my daughter? Fine. I will tell you the tragic, pathetic truth," Irene sneered coldly, deciding to weaponize her trauma to shock him.
"It all started four hundred years ago..."
Irene began to recount the apocalyptic history of the Dragon King Festival. She spoke of her time as the Queen of Dragnof, the kingdom where dragons and humans coexisted. She detailed the outbreak of the war between the dragons who protected humanity and those who viewed them as food.
When her side began to lose, she had conceived the idea of enchanting draconic power directly into human bodies, birthing Dragon Slayer Magic.
The magic turned the tide of the war, but the horrific side effects quickly manifested. The immense, primal power shattered the human psyche, driving the Slayers violently insane. And worse, the Dragon Seed planted within them began mutating their bodies. The ultimate fate of all Dragon Slayers was complete dragonification.
During the war, Irene's own body began to mutate. Dragon scales started growing across her face.
Tragically, she was already pregnant with Erza at the time.
Despite the Dragon Slayers' efforts, the war remained a brutal stalemate. The turning point arrived when Irene's closest companion, the Sage Dragon Belserion, fell in battle. To honor his sacrifice, Irene adopted his name as her surname, continuing to lead her people.
But then, Acnologia appeared. A human Dragon Slayer who had fully dragonified, Acnologia went on an apocalyptic rampage, indiscriminately slaughtering every single dragon on both sides of the war.
The war ended abruptly, leaving Acnologia as the undisputed, solitary victor.
A week after the war concluded, Irene's dragonification rapidly accelerated. Half of her face was covered in scales, and her eyes shifted into cold, draconic slits.
Her politically arranged husband, a general from a neighboring allied kingdom, was terrified. Having just witnessed Acnologia's apocalyptic slaughter, he was paralyzed by the fear that Irene would become a second Acnologia and destroy humanity.
Driven by paranoia and cowardice, he stripped her of her crown and threw her into a subterranean dungeon.
For three agonizing years, Irene endured unspeakable torture, violence, and humiliation at the hands of the very people she had sacrificed her humanity to save.
To protect her unborn child from being born into a torture chamber, Irene utilized her immense magic to halt her pregnancy, keeping Erza safely suspended in her womb for three full years.
~~~
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