Chapter 270: Daevic’s Rage (Patreon)

Daevic

Daevic watched as Isaiah Kent fought against Ren Kimbal, the Twilight Illusionist, appearing to be losing, but it wasn’t hard to see how Ren’s energy was draining at about double the speed of the dragon’s even while the dragon was almost certainly holding back, yet Ren couldn’t surrender even though Daevic knew the man wanted to. Like Daevic, Ren had signed a contract with the head eunuch of Sunrise Valley to never surrender, and the enemy was now seemingly making use of that contract, either knowing about it beforehand or surmising its existence, to drain Ren’s energy.

The fight lasted almost an hour, becoming the third longest battle in the tournament, and only then did Isaiah Kent start making the move he’d obviously been planning from the beginning.

First, he stopped pretending he couldn’t find Ren and moved straight toward his body, not too fast but faster than Ren, who had barely any of his energy remaining, could match, cutting off both of Ren’s arms and cauterizing the stumps with the power of destructive flames. Second, he took out a different weapon, a seemingly Fabled grade spear designed to inject poison, and pushed it into Ren’s heart, injecting whatever foul concoction the weapon had been filled with. Then, finally, third, he surrendered, flying not back toward where Krysta La’Vordi and the two scarab gods were staying, but to the compound where the Law Master had taken up residence, leaving Ren in pain and Daevic’s two uncles and his aunt frowning.

At the Lord of Twilight Flame’s signal, one of the B ranks from his sister’s force, a healer, flew up to check on Ren, leading the man down to see them, but the prognosis wasn’t good.

“My Lady and Lords, this poison is too vicious. His energy channels have been completely destroyed.”

“Can you fix him?” asked the Lord of Twilight Flame, his expression dark but his aura still fully in control.

“Not without considerable cost, no.” The healer, a female human wearing olive green robes, bowed to the Lord of Twilight Flame. “Maybe with the boon he’ll earn from the System and some valuable A rank materials, he might be able to recultivate, but he’ll almost certainly never make it to B rank in his life.”

“Bah.” The Lord of Twilight Flame’s expression stayed dark. “That means he’ll lose in round 21.”

The Lord of Twilight Flame then turned to Daevic. “Daevic, it seems they are deliberately targeting you with one of their best.”

“Yes, Uncle.” Daevic bowed, having learned from others in Sunrise Valley that proper procedure and respect was the best way to interact with this uncle of his when the man was upset. “And I’ll make sure to win.”

“No.” The Lord of Twilight Flame almost growled the next words. “Make sure you kill him.”

“Yes, Uncle.”

Daevic felt himself grow angry, but he held it in, walking to the side of the compound with the healer and Ren to see if there was anything he could do to help. But of course there wasn’t.

Ren was still conscious, tears forming in his eyes, and the healer was at least able to help regrow his arms over the next couple minutes, but Ren had lost all his cultivation, his C rank body alone barely making him more powerful than most E ranks.

“Is there anything you want from me?” Daevic asked, feeling he owed Ren given the man had been one of his main sparring partners over the last year.

“Kill that bastard for me.” Ren’s voice was weak, and his aura was virtually non-existent, but his face showed fury. “Or at least cripple him like he did to me.”

Daevic felt his anger grow even more, but he kept control over himself.

This next fight wasn’t going to be easy. Looking back on what had already happened in round 19, Thomas Garcia had deliberately forced him to show most of his strength, and, as a result, Daevic’s seed for the next round was going to be 2nd. Given the power already shown by Krysta La’Vordi, it wasn’t possible for him to raise his seed any higher by showing off more of his strength between rounds.

So, when the dragon fought Ren, the beast had deliberately hid most of his strength, to the point he, who was in the same force as everyone else left in the tournament with only one loss, could control his own placing, allowing him to be seeded second from last and thus fight with Daevic.

They were deliberately targeting him with a lowly dragon, and they were going to pay the price.

* * *

The rest of the fights in round 19 didn’t take long, most ending with an immediate surrender by the weaker party, and soon it was the start of round 20, Krysta La’Vordi’s opponent immediately surrendering as well.

Then it was Daevic and the dragon’s turn, both of them rising into the open battlefield at the center of the space station’s giant ring.

“Do you have any last words?” Daevic asked, summoning out the purple-golden lightning-covered set of armor and sword the Master of the Eternal Forge had given him

“As Diana would have said, hasta la vista, baby.” The man spoke in a language Daevic didn’t know for the first part, but the word baby was in Universal Common, so he could tell it was an insult.

Then the dragon summoned out his own artifacts. First there was an olive green sleeveless robe which appeared around his body, a sub-dermal layer growing under his skin, which radiated an aura of chaos, some type of symbiotic armor, maybe an extremely high grade Bloodforged Living Armor. Second was a shield, round with a groove for a polearm in one side and made of black iron quintessence and what looked to be the chest scales of a B rank chaos dragon. Then, finally, third, there was a spear made of black iron quintessence and a chaos dragon’s fang, the dragon’s third Empyrean grade artifact and one which radiated as pure an aura of destruction as the shield did of defense.

The new artifacts, however, were the least of the dragon’s changes.

His aura, previously filled with an element of slaughter and what had felt like an early grade Law Scarab of Destruction, was gone, and, in its place, was an aura full of the power of chaos, absorbing and combining the power of 60 plus Laws. Most were Law Eggs and Law Larvae, but there were nine Law Pupae, including a peak grade Law Pupa of Sword and two high grade Law Pupae of Halberd and Blood. More important, however, there were six Law Scarabs, two early grade Law Scarabs of Spear and Shield and four middle grade Law Scarabs of Speed, Defense, Destruction, and Regeneration.

Sure, this was nothing compared to Daevic’s six high grade Law Scarabs, but chaos dragons were one of the three top species of dragons, known as the kings of monsters, for a reason. The power of chaos made combining multiple Laws easy, and the dragon in front of him had so many to combine at once, led by the four aspect Laws, generally considered among the top Laws for combat in the universe.

And then there were the dragon’s stats.

With an Aura stat of quite a bit over 143,327,232, and base stats averaging nearly 322,486,272 while holding a weapon, the dragon’s stats were absolutely ridiculous for a C rank, significantly higher than even some of the universe’s weaker A ranks. The weakest max level A rank possible, for example, with only a Legendary grade race and class, disregarding bonus stats from advancing Laws, would only have an average of 60,250,071 in each base stat.

Granted, no one in the universe had ever reached A rank without consuming a whole bunch of stat increasing external resources, but it still put into perspective just how high the dragon’s stats were.

Take Vanar Tedros for example, someone with a Fabled grade race who had maximized his stats under the same master as the dragon while somehow increasing the max stat values his race allowed by 50%. Even with the rather high boost to his stats from his racial abilities, classes, and now several uniquenesses, Vanar Tedros’s average base stats were more like 33,592,320, a bit more than a dozen times less than the dragon’s.

Even Daevic, whose race was Empyrean grade and whose racial abilities, classes, and uniquenesses would place him at the top of all contestants in over 99% of Universal Tournaments, only had about a fourth of his opponent’s stats.

This was not going to be an easy fight, or at least it wouldn’t have been if the man weren’t a dragon.

Taking out one of the other artifacts the Master of the Eternal Forge had given him before the start of the finals, a small purple-golden buckler covered with intricate rune-work Daevic couldn’t understand, Daevic watched as the dragon shuddered for a second, his aura noticeably decreasing and all his stats lowering by about half until they were only double Daevic’s own.

Then, realizing the Dragon Suppressing Shield his uncle had specially made wouldn’t be enough, Daevic also summoned out the Heavenly Enlightenment Pill his aunt had given him, one of only two types of pills in the universe for allowing cultivators below B rank to automatically enter into a state of enlightenment, and ate it.

As a training pill, with no inherent combat boosting effects, it wasn’t against the rules, but the boost it would provide to his combat power was immense, so, as he looked into the draconic eyes of his opponent, which had turned golden with the activation of some skill, Daevic felt confident.