Incubus Lord: Lust Harem System

Chapter 171: Chapter 171: The Trial [1]

The Echo of the First Dragon moved.

For something that size, it had no right to be that fast.

Its foreleg came down like a falling mountain, aimed directly at the platform of rock they stood on. Damon grabbed Seraphina’s arm and activated Astral Steps, blinking sideways across the peak as the claw struck.

The impact sent a shockwave outward that cracked the mountain beneath their feet clean down the middle, a jagged split racing toward the edge and dropping half the platform into the void below.

Seraphina yanked her arm free the moment they landed.

"I don’t need saving," she said flatly, her green eyes already tracking the creature’s next movement.

"I know," Damon replied, watching the Echo pull its claw back. "I needed you alive long enough to be useful."

She shot him a sharp look but said nothing.

The Echo reared back and opened its jaws. The inside of its throat glowed a deep, furious crimson, building pressure like a furnace being sealed shut before it explodes.

A Dragon breath.

"Move!" Damon said.

They split without argument, Seraphina breaking left and Damon breaking right as the beam of crimson fire tore down the center of the peak, vaporizing the stone between them and sending a column of superheated air screaming upward into the storm clouds.

Damon landed on a jutting slab of rock near the cliff edge, the heat washing over him in a wave that singed the front of his robes.

He looked across the ruined peak at Seraphina, who had landed cleanly on a raised outcrop, her sword already raised.

She was good — genuinely, undeniably good. He could see that much in the clean economy of her footwork and the practiced ease with which she held her blade, not a wasted motion in her entire body.

But good was not going to be enough here. Not against this.

The Echo turned its massive head toward Damon, those dying-star eyes locking onto him with singular focus. It recognized the Chaos Devourer.

He could feel it in the way the creature’s attention sharpened, the way its body language shifted from broad aggression to something more deliberate and targeted.

’It knows what this sword is.’

The realisation settled cold and certain in Damon’s chest. The Echo had dismissed Seraphina entirely. It lunged.

Damon did not retreat. He planted his feet, pulled spiritual energy through his channels, and let sword aura bloom across the Chaos Devourer’s blade in a dense, crackling shroud.

The dark metal drank the energy greedily, the edge sharpening to something that felt less like a blade and more like a boundary between what existed and what didn’t.

He swung his sword.

Chaos Slash.

The spatial tear opened in a clean diagonal line, a dark wound in the air itself that screamed outward toward the Echo’s descending neck.

It connected. The creature recoiled with a sound that was less a roar and more a deep, resonant vibration that Damon felt in his back teeth, its neck snapping sideways as the spatial energy bit into the scales.

Black scales. But not unbreakable.

A thin line of luminous blue-white light traced across the Echo’s neck where the slash had landed, and the creature shook its head slowly, deliberately, the way something ancient and powerful acknowledges a wound without granting it significance.

Then it breathed again.

This time it aimed at both of them simultaneously, splitting the beam mid-release into two separate streams that tracked their positions with intelligent precision.

Seraphina raised her free hand and a wall of compressed wind qi erupted in front of her, deflecting the stream upward.

The force of it still drove her back three steps, her boots grinding against the cracked stone.

Damon took it head-on.

He brought the Chaos Devourer up horizontally and poured everything into the blade, letting the sword’s devouring property activate fully.

The crimson fire hit the edge and the sword pulled it inward, drinking the energy in a way that made the dark metal glow faintly along its length.

The pressure was immense, a crushing, devouring weight that travelled up through the blade and into his hands, his wrists, his shoulders.

His arms shook with the effort of holding the sword level, his channels burning along their full length like heated iron wire threaded through his bones.

But the fire stopped.

Every last trace of the crimson beam vanished into the Chaos Devourer’s edge, consumed completely, leaving only a faint reddish luminescence pulsing along the dark metal before that too faded.

Seraphina stared at him from across the ruined peak, her expression unreadable.

"Your sword just made the dragon breath vansish." she said.

The Echo pulled back, circling the mountain peak with slow, massive wingbeats that sent gusts hammering across the stone. It was reassessing. Recalculating.

Seraphina crossed the broken ground toward him quickly, keeping her eyes on the creature above.

"Its scales deflect direct attacks," she said, her voice low and focused.

"The slash you landed worked because it targeted space, not the scales themselves."

Damon nodded once.

"The joints," he said. "Between the scales at the joints. That’s where it’s exposed."

She followed his gaze to the creature’s massive wings, where the membrane connected to the body in thick, overlapping folds of scale and cartilage.

The junctions were visible even from this distance, darker lines where the armor plating could not fully cover the movement points.

"I can drive it downward," Seraphina said.

"Force it to land. If it folds its wings, those joints are exposed at close range."

"How?"

She glanced at him sideways.

"I can attack it from above it to push it down, but I need time to gather the qi. I need thirty seconds."

Damon looked up at the circling Dragon.

Thirty seconds was a long time when something that size was looking at you.

"I’ll keep its attention." he said.

He didn’t wait for her response.

He stepped forward to the edge of the broken platform, raised the Chaos Devourer, and released a full burst of sword aura into the sky, letting it bloom outward in a visible, blazing corona of compressed energy.

The Echo’s dying-star eyes snapped to him instantly.

It folded its wings and dove.

Damon exhaled slowly, watching several thousand tons of ancient draconic fury accelerate toward him through the crimson sky, and tightened his grip on the sword.