What exactly did Aurora's death mean?
As the audience who had witnessed the day Lancer was born, Shane understood better than anyone.
She had been the only anchor preserving Lancer's sanity as a "human" or a "fairy."
No, he shouldn't call her Lancer anymore.
"Melusine…"
Through the crumbling fragments of memory deep within this body, Shane read the name Aurora had given her—only for that name to be abandoned in this very moment.
He gave a bitter smile. He hadn't expected Lancer's final true name to turn out, by pure coincidence, exactly the same as the one he had casually guessed before.
If he had known that sooner, maybe he could have avoided a lot of detours.
But now was obviously not the time to regret such minor details.
Thump! Thump! Thump!
An extremely familiar, heavy pulse thundered from deep within this small body like a war drum.
"This is… the prelude to dragonization?"
Shane's heart filled with shock and uncertainty.
In reality, Melusine's exquisite face was twisted in agony.
She desperately covered her face and collapsed into the cold pool of blood, letting out an inhuman, piercing scream from deep in her throat.
"AAAAAAAHHHHH—!"
That voice was filled with indescribable grief.
But what surprised Shane was this: through their fully synchronized senses, he realized that the source of Melusine's madness and regret did not seem to be merely the fact that she had personally killed her beloved Aurora.
He steadied his mind and let his consciousness sink like a stone into the deep sea of her shattered mental world.
In an instant, mottled memory fragments surged in like a tide.
He saw it.
In a gray, dim field of vision, the fairies known as the Mirror Clan were silently and gently protecting that lifeless black swamp.
He also personally experienced Melusine's state of mind at the moment she descended.
Deep within her heart, tenderness surged; yet on the surface, there was a chilling calm like stagnant water.
Then she raised the butcher's blade without hesitation.
What confused Shane most was this—
There was no fleeing. No screaming. Not even a single fairy tried to resist.
Facing the twin spears as they fell, the fairies of the Mirror Clan merely stood quietly in place and watched her.
It was as though they were embracing a child forced into committing a grave mistake, as though they pitied her, calmly offering up their lives.
"Why…?" Shane murmured.
Behind this grief, he could clearly feel Melusine's regret over the massacre from the third vision.
Since she understood better than anyone what a sin that had been, why had she still forced herself through the condemnation in her own heart and carried out the slaughter?
"Could it be… that massacre was something Aurora asked her to do?"
Thinking of Melusine's almost blind devotion to Aurora, Shane came up with an absurd possibility.
"No way…"
Shane wasn't sure.
Although he could now experience Melusine's emotions and past through this body, the history modified by the Book of Heroic Spirits was far too fragmented and distorted.
Each time, it only threw out a few scattered pieces of information. Trying to piece together the full picture of what this Heroic Spirit had experienced in such a short time was harder than climbing to heaven.
However, just as that thought of unraveling clues surfaced, it was forcibly interrupted by the changes happening to the body in reality.
Riiip—
That was the sound of flesh being forced apart.
Across the smooth, pale skin of the Fairy Knight, terrifying bloody fissures split open one after another. Black, cold, hard dragon scales irreversibly pierced through flesh and grew out in dense clusters.
"To become the dragon at the bottom of the swamp, and fly toward an unknown distance…"
And from the other party's already chaotic mind, Shane read this dangerous message.
"This won't do."
Shane clenched his teeth and forced himself to steady his mind.
Outside, there was still a troublesome mechanical evil dragon rampaging everywhere.
If the rampaging, insane Melusine also rushed out to join in, with two dragons going berserk, who knew what Edolas would be reduced to?
Shane forcibly steadied himself.
Fortunately, in the previous London vision, he had already learned the most important name.
Now, he had a way to stop this loss of control.
In the deep sea of the mind, Shane slowly recited the three names that represented her different aspects.
"As the human aspect, the knight's name granted by an unknown existence—Lancelot."
"As the fairy aspect, the beloved name bestowed by Aurora—Melusine."
"And after stripping away all illusion, as the remains at the bottom of the black swamp, the true form symbolizing the pure dragon aspect, the perfect dragon—"
"Albion!"
The moment that final declaration fell, Shane clearly felt the last shackle between himself and Lancer melt away like ice and snow.
He, who had originally been attached to this body merely as an observer, began to gain control over it little by little.
No—more accurately, those tragic phantoms of the past were breaking apart and fading like bubbles.
A truly existing colossal being, possessing warmth and weight, was struggling free from the cocoon of nothingness.
"This… is me?"
Shane lowered his head slightly and stared at his new self in disbelief.
This was completely different from the incomplete half-dragonization influenced by the vision earlier.
This black dragon body named "Albion" was nothing short of a perfect work of art.
Its streamlined form was covered in pure, flawless black scales. Every inch of its musculature seemed to have been tempered thousands of times in the bath of magic.
Powerful, elegant, and carrying a pressure that did not belong to the mortal world.
It was as though a creature had descended directly from the highest realm of fantasy and myth.
"ROOOOAR—!"
The ocean-like power surging within him made Shane unable to resist raising his long dragon neck and letting out a long roar.
His enormous wings unfurled with a thunderous sweep, bursting through the thick smoke and clouds.
Hovering in midair, he glanced at the dim, oppressive yellow sky.
"The materialization of the vision still hasn't fully ended, huh…"
After that brief thought, his dragon eyes, burning like cold flames, locked onto the steel evil dragon high above.
In the next second, a sonic boom cloud exploded where he had been.
Rumble—
Two terrifying forces of similar size, yet entirely different in essence, crushed against each other. A visible circular shockwave instantly emptied all the clouds within several miles.
It was as if the sky itself had been punched open.
"Roar?"
The instant its head was seized by that black-scaled claw and violently dragged down from the sky with absolute force—
for the first time ever, a trace of almost human "horror" flashed through the evil dragon's emotionless eyes.
This was the first time since transforming itself into this form that it had been so completely overwhelmed in terms of "pure flesh."
Crack! Screech!
The earth trembled. Shane pinned the evil dragon deep into the ruins.
His thick forelimbs did not hesitate in the slightest, savagely tearing apart the metallic shell body the other dragon took such pride in.
Every claw strike came with ear-grating metal distortion and a spray of sparks.
The evil dragon realized in horror that its current body was like a toy for the other party to vent rage upon.
Piece by piece, it was being violently dismantled.
Under such pressure, it could only twist its broken body on the ground in miserable survival instinct, like a snake pinned to a field by a pitchfork.
"How ugly."
Shane looked coldly down at the prey struggling beneath him.
"As a powerful creature standing at the top, at least keep a little dignity for your final curtain call."
Perhaps because he had been somewhat affected by Melusine's lingering grief, Shane's mind in Albion's perfect form was also somewhat chaotic, full of agitation.
It seemed only by repeatedly tearing apart the body the other party was so proud of could he slightly vent the heaviness accumulated in his chest.
"Arondight!"
"Arondight!!"
"Arondight!!!"
The cold, cruel, yet calm release of the Noble Phantasm's true name rang out again and again across the sky.
In the perfect form of "Albion," the output of Shane's [Dragon Reactor Core] had been pushed to an unprecedented maximum threshold.
Across his enormous body, tangible azure magic poured from every gap between his scales.
The Noble Phantasm, which originally required chanting to release, could now be fired repeatedly without restraint, like the most ordinary dragon breath.
One thick azure pillar of light after another blasted from Shane's open dragon maw like merciless laser rain.
The violent streams of magic completely swallowed his evil dragon counterpart's broken body again and again.
Under this endless barrage, the ruined body slowly melted in the light, and its repair speed visibly slowed.
Inside the royal palace hall—
Dazzling azure light poured through the shattered stained-glass windows, illuminating the faces of everyone inside in flickering brightness and shadow.
They stared dumbly at the exaggerated scene outside, the image reflected in their pupils, unable to remain calm.
"I heard everyone in the guild say…"
Lisanna swallowed dryly, her voice trembling slightly amid the roar of magic.
"Wasn't this the killer move Shane-nii used back then to defeat a Wizard Saint in one strike? Such a powerful spell…"
"Why… can he now use it so many times in a row as easily as spitting?"
"No, isn't your focus wrong?"
The corner of Mira's mouth twitched slightly. She pointed at the brutal giant shadow outside that was pinning the other dragon down and bombarding it.
"What you should be worrying about now is whether Shane has completely turned into a vicious dragon—not just in body, but even in personality."
"With how violent and unrestrained he's acting right now, if someone who didn't know the situation saw him, they'd probably immediately mistake him for the real evil dragon."
Compared to the white-haired sisters, who were shocked but still relatively relaxed—
Faust, standing on the other side, was in a state of frenzied collapse, as though his faith had crumbled.
"How is this possible… this is absolutely impossible!"
The old king gripped the window frame tightly with both hands, his nails nearly splitting.
"That is the invincible evil dragon! Why is it being defeated? What right does that lazy fake have to possess power of that level?"
"Faust, the overall situation is already decided."
Mystogan gripped his staff and calmly watched the light of destruction outside the window.
He did not call him father. There was no longer the slightest ripple in his voice.
"Being continuously bombarded by magic like that… the magic the evil dragon spent years plundering and stockpiling is destined to run dry."