TBATE: Corvis Eralith

Grey

The soles of my boots pressed against the Phoenix Wyrm's skull, the heat bleeding through leather and skin alike. It wasn't just scalding; it was a furnace blast trying to liquefy me, the massive beast beneath me bucking and thrashing like a volcanic island rejecting its burden.

Good. The thought was a snarl ripped from the core of my fury. I really needed a scapegoat for my oent-up anger. This Phoenix Wyrm was the perfect target, a conduit, a physical manifestation of the inferno consuming me from within—the helpless rage at Agrona's manipulations, the gnawing guilt for Sylvia's sacrifice, the sheer, impotent frustration of being trapped in this frail, child-sized cage of flesh.

'Papa, what's happening?' Sylvie's mental voice, a fragile thread of silver concern weaving through the roaring chaos in my mind. Fear for me.

I just need to go all out for a while, Sylvie. Don't worry, I replied.

The reassurance was a lie wrapped in necessity. If only this body matched the power straining against its seams. If only I had the reach, the leverage, the body of my former self.

This battle, against an S-Class mana beast fueled by elemental fury, would be brutal, decisive, final. Not this desperate, grinding struggle. But the word "if," was a luxury, a luxury Agrona had stolen. This was the hand dealt: a child's frame, my own rage, and a dragon's legacy burning in my veins.

The illusion shattered. The spell veiling the cursed horns—Agrona's mocking brand on the vessel he had crafted for the puppet that would host my soul—dissolved like smoke in the Wyrm's ambient heat.

As Sylvia's gift, the Beast Will as Cynthia called it, surged in response to my unleashed fury, it wasn't just power that flared. It was defiance. It was her.

The Phoenix Wyrm's own fire, clinging to its scales like living armor, erupted. Flames roared higher, hotter, a crown of incandescent death engulfing me, searing my vision white, singing my hair, threatening to turn bone to cinder. It was agony, but it was also fuel.

The Vritra blood, Agrona's vile inheritance, was the only thing keeping my flesh from sloughing off my bones.

I launched myself backward, the air whistling past as I landed hard near Kapani. My gaze snapped, searching frantically. Tessia. She was on the ground, fainted. Both of them.

Tessia and Kapani laid sprawled, unmoving, swallowed by the oppressive, superheated air that pressed down on us. They were unconscious, or worse. The sight was a dagger of ice plunged into the furnace of my anger. Without the bastardized resilience Agrona had woven into this body, I would be joining them in oblivion.

Above, the Phoenix Wyrm shrieked, a sound that scraped the soul. It ascended, a living storm of fire and fury, coiling for another dive. And then my eyes found him. Redson. Or what remained. My stomach lurched, bile rising sharp and acrid.

I had used Static Void. Sylvia's temporal gift, had frozen my own sliver of reality, letting me slip through the Wyrm's devastating charge like a ghost. Redson hadn't. He had been solid unable to move. And he had taken the full, annihilating force meant for both of us.

Charred plate, blackened bone… the image seared itself onto my retinas.

I promised her. The thought was a whip-crack in the silence of my own guilt. Sylvia, sacrificing everything to shatter Agrona's chains, to make me and Sylvie escape from Taegrin Caelum, to give me this chance.

She has told me to use my strength to make a difference. To not let the rage I had for Agrona consume me. Yet here I stood, blinded by my own volcanic fury, my focus narrowed to the beast, while those beside me fell.

The Phoenix Wyrm dove. A meteor of feathers and scales aimed straight at me, wings like molten scythes shearing the superheated air. I couldn't use a second Static Void. The temporal well was dry, scraped empty by the first use.

Moreove I couldn't tank it here. Not with Kapani and Tessia lying helpless in the blast radius. The firestorm would just vaporize them.

Instinct, honed across two lifetimes and countless hours of training, overrode the blinding rage. I moved.

Not away, but across, placing myself squarely between the diving Wyrm and the fallen. I made myself a shield for them.

The regalia on my back flared, cold against the inferno, and another blade materialized in my grip. I wrenched it into the sword, forcing it through my core, shaping it not into fire, but its absolute antithesis.

Ice. Glacial, piercing cold erupted along the blade's length, a desperate counter-flame against the all-consuming heat. Frost crystallized instantly on the metal, steaming violently where it met the Wyrm's radiant aura.

It was a candle against a bonfire, but it was all I had.

The world narrowed to the plummeting titan and the fragile, freezing blade in my hands. This body, this place… it was nothing like I bad expected.

Arriving in Dicathen after Sylvia's final, world-rending act, escaping the gloomy cage of Taegrin Caelum, I had stepped through the portal into… chaos. And backwardness.

Alacrya was like a machine for the Sovereigns and Agrona—regimented, brutal, efficient. Magic was quantified, categorized, awakened through structured, often agonizing rituals. Mana Rotation, the core technique Sylvia drilled into me during stolen moments between Agrona's tortures, experiments and manipulations, was fundamental there.

Dicathen was a wild garden choked with untamed power. Mages here stumbled into their abilities. Cores developed naturally, haphazardly. Structure for them was an alien concept, they had a drastically different approach to magic.

Mana Rotation, I had assumed naively, would be commonplace. It should have been. Instead, I found a continent clinging to magic like a child wields a hammer—with raw power but little finesse.

Dicathen reminded me of a medieval tapestry woven with threads of uncontrolled arcane energy. Like Earth, but haunted by spells instead of technology.

Meeting Cynthia Goodsky—the 'Aunt' who had fled the High Sovereign's service, her eyes holding shadows I recognized—was the first anchor after the tragical loss of Sylvia.

Then came Tessia Eralith. She wass tol young, fierce, but perceptive. And then… the shock.

She used Mana Rotation. Flawlessly. Tessia claimed she had developed it herself, but the coincidence was staggering and a bit too suspicious.

However without proof, suspicion festered, but belief, however wary, took root. She was an anomaly in this untamed land.

I stayed in Xyrus faking to be Cynthia Goodsky's nephew.

I became an adventurer. Honed the swordsmanship that was my best when I was still King Grey, burying the Vritra abilities deep, a poisonous well I dared not drink from too deeply. And Sylvia… her final gift wasn't just escape. It was liberation.

She freed me from the mental locks Agrona forged, the barriers meant to cage my memories and twist me into his perfect tool, those barriers now laid in ruins.

I remembered everything.

I had no time to think, only to act.

The Phoenix Wyrm crashed beside me, its gargantuan form gouging deep trenches into the earth, barely missing Tessia and Kapani. Heat pulsed off its body in waves, distorting the air around it, a living furnace ready to consume everything in its path. My mind raced—how could I kill a beast forged from fire itself? Ice magic was the best bet.

The tainted blood of the Vritra coursed through my veins, granting me access to the deviant elements of the Basilisk race. Soulfire and Blood Iron were mine to wield, though I preferred to rely on traditional mana arts when possible. This, however, was no time for restraint—I needed every weapon at my disposal.

The regalia bestowed upon me before my escape from Taegrin Caelum allowed me to forge weapons imbued with my magic. And now, I had to make that power count.

Black flames coiled around my blade like vipers, writhing hungrily as I brought the weapon up to intercept the Phoenix Wyrm's descending talon. The impact sent a brutal shockwave through my arms, my feet carving into the ground beneath me. A screech tore through the battlefield as Soulfire bit into the beast's flesh—not burning, but corrupting, decaying, devouring. Even fire itself couldn't resist its ravenous entropy.

But I was no master of it. Agrona's lackey, Cadell's brutal training had shaped me, but Soulfire remained foreign, untamed in my grip.

The Phoenix Wyrm reared back, wings unfurling in a monstrous display of power. A single beat of them sent a wall of wind tearing toward me, its force threatening to uproot me entirely. Instinct took over—I drove my blade into the earth, anchoring myself.

But I needed to attack. I summoned another weapon in an instant—this time, a rod of Blood Iron encased in jagged ice, its surface glistening with frost. Looking like a stalagmite of pure ice with a black core inside.

I hurled the stalagmite with all my strength, my breath held as it tore through the air. It struck true, burying itself deep into the Phoenix Wyrm's right eye, a shard of ice piercing its bloodred bulb. The beast convulsed, its screech splitting the air like rending metal. I anticipated its falter, readying myself to finish it off before it could regain control.

But I had underestimated its fury.

The Phoenix Wyrm responded not with hesitation, but with utter, devouring, rage. Flames erupted from its maw—a molten inferno surging toward me. The heat alone was suffocating, stealing the air from my lungs before it could even reach me. Without thinking, I cloaked myself in ice, my mana pushing to its limits to encase me in the only barrier that could withstand such an assault.

The fire consumed my shield instantly, the ice melting into steam, rising in curling wisps from my skin. I leaped away, escaping the blaze just in time, feeling its phantom heat licking at my face.

This beast wasn't simply strong. It was relentless.

I had to end this. Now. Before Tessia or Kapani were burnt alive.

Sylvie's voice rang through my mind like a desperate plea, but I couldn't let myself waver.

'Papa! I am coming to help you!'

No. Not this time.

I gritted my teeth, the fire of my resolve burning as fiercely as the beast before me. I can do this alone—I have to! If I couldn't defeat a single mana beast, no matter how powerful, how could I ever hope to stand against Agrona? How could I ever hope to avenge Sylvia?

The Phoenix Wyrm let out an ear-piercing screech, its massive body shuddering with pain from my previous assault. The wound in its eye bled molten fire, searing the ground beneath it as it writhed in fury. But it wasn't done. It wasn't defeated yet.

The beast beat its wings furiously, sending razor-sharp gusts tearing toward me. Each gust carried lethal force, the wind cutting through the battlefield like spectral blades. I moved with instinct, weaving through the torrents of destruction, my eyes locked on the beast's vulnerable core.

This had to end now.

A new veil of ice wrapped around me, solidifying like armor, its crystalline surface glinting in the smoldering light of the Phoenix Wyrm's rage. I pushed forward, my feet pounding against the scorched earth as I rushed toward the beast. Its talons swiped down, but they were sluggish, weakened by the relentless decay of my Soulfire.

This is my chance.

I lunged toward its scaled chest, the heat radiating from its body like the heart of a dying star. My fingers tightened around the hilt of my newly conjured blade—this one sharper, faster, shaped from both wind and Blood Iron, a sword transformed into a living cutter of air.

With all my strength, I drove the blade forward.

The moment steel met flesh, the beast howled. I heard the sound of scales yielding beneath my force, a sickening crack followed by a screech that trembled the earth.

But I wasn't done.

A burst of mana surged through me as I unleashed my most deadly assault yet.

"Bloodfrost Hex!" I roared, my voice cutting through the battlefield like thunder.

Soulfire erupted, corrupting and consuming, while ice snaked through the Phoenix Wyrm's bloodstream, freezing it from the inside out. The beast convulsed, its entire chest solidifying, crystal shards of frost encasing its fiery core. It couldn't regenerate—not this time.

Its body trembled violently before cracking apart, fractures spreading like shattered glass.

And then, with one final, agonized screech, the Phoenix Wyrm collapsed, its frozen body splintering into countless fragments.

It was over.

As the shattered remains of the Phoenix Wyrm settled around me, I wasted no time turning toward Tessia and Kapani, my chest tightening with urgency.

Tessia's disguise—the illusion that concealed her true identity as a princess—had faded completely. Beside her lay the accolade I had given her, now fractured beyond recognition.

A sharp breath escaped me. She's alive. Relief washed over me as I quickly checked on Kapani. His chest still rose and fell, his heartbeat steady beneath my fingertips.

Sylvie, I need help getting them out of here. I reached out to her through our bond. Do you think you can bring someone to our location?

Her response came with undeniable excitement.

'I'll do it myself! I've grown a lot in the last three months!'

I blinked in disbelief. Three months? How much could you possibly have grown in that time?

Her excitement echoed through my mind. 'You'll see.'