Chapter 108: You Won’t Kill Me
Standing alone before an enraged, heavily wounded dragon, with only a few dozen metres separating them, Silas could almost hear his own heartbeat.
The cavern at the bottom was enormous, stretching several hundred metres across with a ceiling dozens of metres overhead. Numerous tunnels branched from its walls, disappearing into darkness.
To anyone else, it would have seemed spacious. To Silas, standing before the dragon, it felt like a prison. No matter how many tunnels surrounded him, none looked like an escape.
The two remained motionless, staring at one another.
The dragon was in a miserable state. Not a single inch of its body remained uninjured. Blood poured from countless wounds before hardening into strange, orange crystalline beads, gradually forming jagged clusters around its feet.
"I swear the ancient legends were true."
"Every Ashborne is a motherfucker who deserves to die."
The words caught Silas by surprise. He had expected the dragon to attack immediately without wasting a single breath, but the fall had clearly taken its toll. Even a creature as terrifying as this needed a few moments to recover before the battle resumed.
Hearing the name Ashborne, Silas recalled the warning he had received shortly after becoming an Enhancer. Someone had told him that any Ashborne who ventured into the open world outside the safe havens would eventually be hunted by dragons, and that he should never underestimate that danger.
The thought almost made him laugh. He had stayed inside a safe haven and still didn’t avoid that fate. A dragon had still found him.
’I hope Lara has reached her position by now.’
He looked at the dragon and knew that fighting it now would mean certain death.
For a brief moment, doubt and hesitation stirred within him. He wanted to raise his wristwatch and contact Lara, to see whether she had made it safely, arrived at the right spot or not. Yet in the next instant, he stopped himself.
’Trust your companions.’
Remembering Gaia Calling’s words, Silas decided against making any sudden movements that might provoke the dragon. Instead, he clenched his fists and met its gaze without flinching.
"You won’t get your way this time."
He muttered quietly while his eyes swept across the countless tunnels, unable to tell which one led to Lara.
"The flower you desperately need is in the hands of one of my friends."
"I know."
The dragon answered with a low growl. In its current condition, with an annoying A-Enhancer and several B-Enhancers hunting it, surviving without the flower was impossible.
The greatest consequence of its fall was not the injuries, but the distance that should now have separated it from the flower, with countless obstacles lying in between.
At first, it had believed Silas had orchestrated everything simply to keep it away from the flower. Yet the moment it crashed into the ground, it sensed the flower somewhere nearby.
It couldn’t understand how that was possible. Under normal circumstances, such a contradiction would have made it suspicious, but desperation left no room for doubt. Only one thought remained in its mind.
It had to reclaim the flower and consume it.
"I’ll retrieve it."
The dragon’s voice turned colder.
"But first, I’ll kill you properly, once and for all."
Nothing mattered to it more than reclaiming the flower and making the Ashborne suffer for everything he had done. Even so, the humiliation of being deceived and manipulated burned hotter than its desire for revenge, driving it to settle the score before anything else.
Especially when there were a few tens of metres standing between it and the Ashborne. Without anyone else around to intervene, without any means for him to escape.
"No, you won’t."
Silas spoke with absolute certainty, as though the outcome had already been decided.
The dragon let out a strange laugh, one that reminded him unpleasantly of the bizarre cackling Shadowheart used whenever it took control of his body.
"You’ve lost your mind," it hissed. "But that’s fine. I’ll kill you and put an end to this nonsense."
"These tunnels weren’t created by Gaia."
Ignoring the dragon entirely, Silas continued speaking as though he were holding an ordinary conversation.
"They were dug by Mana Squirrel Eaters."
Suppressing the pain coursing through his battered body, he crossed his arms and forced himself to stand as confidently as ever.
"My friend is a Tamer. She adores her little babies, and those Mana Squirrel Eaters worship her like their mother. I gave her the flower, and any mother would do everything she could for her babies. Within minutes, she’ll hand it to one of them, and once that happens, killing me won’t earn you anything."
To reinforce his words, Silas crushed a Mana Crystal. His body vanished in a burst of speed, circling the dragon before returning to the exact spot where he had been standing.
The movement sent agonising pain through every muscle in his body, feeling like he had been hit by lightning, making him want to scream.
Yet, not a trace of it reached his face.
"And I promise you this." His voice remained calm. "Killing me won’t be quick. I’ll make sure you waste every second fighting me until one of her babies finishes digesting the flower... and by then, you’ll lose it forever."
Silas had no idea what the flower truly was or what effects it would have on whoever consumed it.
He only knew one thing: the dragon wanted it more than anything else. Everything he had planned rested on that single assumption.
What he did not know was that the flower possessed the ability to evolve monsters. If a C-grade Mana Squirrel Eater consumed it, the monster would immediately advance to B-grade, undergo a qualitative transformation that would strengthen its body, awaken new abilities, and enhance the ones it already possessed.
Such a monster would still fall short of the A-grade dragon, but the dragon knew its own condition better than anyone. It was exhausted, grievously wounded, and trapped inside an environment that suppressed much of its strength while restricting many of its abilities.
The Mana Squirrel Eaters, on the other hand, were practically in paradise.
The mere thought of fighting an evolved Mana Squirrel Eater inside the mana mine was enough for the dragon to dismiss the idea.
No matter how badly it wanted to tear Silas apart, the flower remained its highest priority.
It immediately spread its senses in search of it.
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