Chapter 58: The Shadowheart’s Scheme
The past thirty minutes had been nothing short of chaotic.
The moment the Shadowheart shouted its insult, the dragon abandoned everything else. With a furious roar, it beat its wings once and shot forward.
Its previous burst of speed suddenly seemed like a leisurely stroll. Compared to it, even the Shadowheart’s frantic escape looked painfully slow.
Silas had already resigned himself to dying in the most agonising way imaginable when the Shadowheart performed another impossible feat. This time, instead of using its dagger to alter its course, it simply burst sideways with explosive acceleration, slipping past the dragon’s claws by the narrowest margin.
At first, Silas dismissed it as luck. Yet after watching the same impossible dodge happen again and again, he realised there had to be a trick behind it. Instead of staring at the enraged dragon, he focused entirely on the Shadowheart.
Only then did he notice the difference.
Every time the dragon lunged, the Shadowheart reached into its backpack, pulled out a Mana Crystal, and turned it into dust in its hand. The crystal dissolved into fine dust almost instantly, disappearing before the eye could properly follow the motion.
The action lasted less than a heartbeat, but Silas recognised it immediately. The Shadowheart was absorbing Mana Crystals. And it was doing it at a rate that far surpassed anything Silas saw so far.
’How can this be?’
’Isn’t it impossible for me to absorb Mana Crystals like other Enhancers?’
For a moment, his curiosity eclipsed even his fear.
Thinking back, Silas realised he had never actually attempted to absorb one. Ever since discovering his Mana Heart, he had assumed his path was fundamentally different, that he could only draw Mana directly from the world instead of relying on crystals like everyone else.
Yet the Shadowheart was proving him wrong with every desperate escape from the dragon’s claws.
Countless questions flooded his mind, but he forced them aside. There was little point in wondering about the future if he failed to survive the current disaster.
Each time the dragon closed the distance, the Shadowheart consumed another crystal, unleashing another burst of speed that widened the gap once more. Eventually, even the dragon seemed to realise brute force alone would not catch its prey.
It came to an abrupt stop, which made Silas’s heart sink.
He expected another devastating attack, but instead the dragon’s colossal body began to glow. Its towering frame gradually shrank as scales and muscle shifted beneath the orange light.
Moments later, the dragon stood in a humanoid form nearly five meters tall, with flowing crimson hair and long, fiery eyebrows. Silas stared in disbelief, not knowing how this was even possible.
’It... turned into a human?’
He instinctively looked toward the Shadowheart, but it never spared him a glance. It continued sprinting deeper into the valley, weaving through the terrain with unwavering determination.
Although the dragon had sacrificed some of its overwhelming speed by taking a smaller form, Silas felt no relief. If anything, Silas felt it had become even more dangerous.
The Shadowheart continued burning Mana Crystals whenever the dragon threatened to catch up. It didn’t even wait for the dragon to come close like before, instantly dashing forward the moment it became near.
Watching it, Silas couldn’t shake the feeling that it understood exactly what kind of opponent it was facing, as though it already knew every technique the dragon could use.
As the chase settled into a tense rhythm rather than a desperate scramble for survival, Silas finally had enough composure to study what the Shadowheart was doing. He focused inward each time a crystal dissolved, carefully observing the flow of Mana through his body.
After a few tries, without warning, the Shadowheart raised its head, and its crimson eyes met his. The cold gaze startled Silas so badly that his thoughts froze. Yet it didn’t matter, as Silas realised he had finally understood the process.
The Shadowheart absorbed the Mana Crystal, directed the energy through its body, concentrated it in its legs, and only then activated its Wind Element to amplify the burst of speed.
The sequence flowed so naturally that it was obvious this was far from the first time it had done so. Yet the lingering stare left Silas unsettled. It almost felt as though the Shadowheart was warning him that he had seen enough.
Before he could make sense of the thought, the surrounding terrain began to change.
The once vast valley steadily narrowed as the mountain walls closed in from both sides. Within minutes, the open landscape became a broad passage between towering cliffs before ending abruptly at a massive wall of stone.
A solitary rocky hill blocked the only path ahead. Seeing this surged panic through Silas once more. And yet, the Shadowheart never slowed.
No matter how many times Silas urged it to turn back, it charged straight toward the dead end.
"See? Cheap tricks only delay the inevitable."
The dragon’s mocking voice echoed from behind.
The Shadowheart finally came to a halt only a few meters before the towering rock wall. Meanwhile, the dragon closed the remaining distance at a steady pace, the murderous smile on its face leaving no doubt about its intentions.
"Now... how should I kill you?" it muttered. "Should I torture you for a few days first... or would that simply be a waste?"
It spoke as though Silas’s death had already been decided. Even Silas couldn’t imagine a way out.
"No... that would be a waste."
The dragon stopped within striking distance. A crimson radiance erupted from its body, growing brighter with every passing second. Silas had no idea what attack it was preparing. He only knew one thing: he was about to experience the most painful death imaginable.
FWOOSH!
The moment the dragon transformed into a crimson silhouette, it vanished.
A violent gust of wind erupted beside Silas as the Shadowheart burst sideways with explosive speed. An instant later, the dragon flashed past the spot where Silas had stood less than a heartbeat earlier.
CRASH! BOOM!
The crimson bolt slammed headfirst into the rocky wall.
’Run! Run before it gets back up!’
Silas shouted instinctively, but his voice was drowned by an earth-shattering explosion.
BOOM!
The dragon unleashed the crimson energy enveloping its body. Flames erupted outward like countless serpents, crashing against the cliff face and bathing the valley in blazing light.
CRACK!
Deep fissures spread across the towering wall under the ferocity of the fiery attack. Even Silas could tell the entire structure had become unstable. It was only a matter of seconds before it collapsed.
Yet instead of fleeing, the Shadowheart calmly took a few steps backwards, as though it had expected exactly this.
CRASH!
As expected, the cracks deepened until the cliff gave way.
Countless boulders broke loose and thundered down upon the dragon, burying its humanoid body beneath an avalanche of stone. The impact shook the entire valley, sending dust and shattered rock billowing in every direction.
Before the dust had even begun to settle, the Shadowheart finally moved. To Silas’s horror, it sprinted straight toward the buried dragon.
’Hey! That’s a damn dragon! You can’t possibly be thinking of eating it!’
No matter how loudly Silas protested, the Shadowheart ignored him. It ran across the collapsed rocks, passed directly over the dragon’s buried position, and continued forward without slowing.
Only then did Silas breathe a sigh of relief.
’At least you’re not suicidal...’
His relief lasted only a moment.
’Wait... who are they?’
As the Shadowheart emerged from the cloud of dust, a vast gathering appeared in the distance. Thousands of Enhancers stood waiting, dressed in uniforms and armour unlike anything from Frontier Academy.
The sudden collapse of the mountainside had clearly caught their attention. Every one of them had stopped to stare toward the source of the deafening crash.
Silas had no idea who they were, nor how the Shadowheart had known they would be here. But by now, he no longer believed in coincidences.
Looking back, every decision the Shadowheart had made since taking control of his body had been deliberate. What had seemed reckless or suicidal at first had always served a larger purpose, every step leading inevitably to this very moment.
Before Silas could form another theory, the mountain of rubble behind exploded apart. The dragon emerged once more, this time in its true draconic form. Its crimson scales glowed with a terrifying red hue as fury consumed every trace of reason.
Silas felt his heart sink. After everything that had happened, he was still the closest target. Then the Shadowheart did something completely unbelievable.
"I stole it, just as you ordered."
It retrieved the radiant flower from its backpack, held it high for the distant gathering to see, crushed another Mana Crystal, and accelerated forward.
"Now take it... and deal with the dragon yourselves."
Using the momentum of its dash and the enhancement of its Wind Element, the Shadowheart hurled the flower across the opening. It soared through the air before landing squarely among the gathered Enhancers.
Without waiting to see what happened next, it crushed another Mana Crystal, turned around and ran. Then crushed another crystal while sprinting back the way it had come, retracing the same path it had spent the last half hour racing through.
Behind it, only furious roars, violent tremors, and blood-curdling screams echoed across the valley, painting a vivid picture of the massacre unfolding beyond Silas’s sight.
"Kekeke..."
After nearly ten minutes of relentless running and burning Mana Crystals one after another, the Shadowheart finally slowed to a stop.
It arched its back and burst into savage laughter, as though it had just witnessed the greatest joke in the world. Then it turned toward Silas. As their eyes met, the Shadowheart stared silently for several seconds.
Then it winked.
The next instant, Silas regained full control over his body. He immediately clenched his fists, patted himself down, and confirmed that he had somehow survived the ordeal without losing so much as a limb.
He still couldn’t understand the Shadowheart. The first time it had appeared, it claimed to be hungry before slaughtering the assassins.
This time, it had toyed with a dragon, danced on the edge of death for nearly half an hour, deliberately lured it toward an unknown army, handed over the flower it had risked everything to steal, and vanished as though nothing had happened.
Silas couldn’t shake the feeling that there had to be another trick behind it. He even waited for the Shadowheart to seize control of his body once more.
A full minute passed, yet nothing happened.
"Dammit... you’re a complete lunatic."
Unable to make sense of anything that had just occurred, Silas turned and ran toward the mouth of the valley while the distant echoes of a brutal battle continued to rumble behind him.
While running, a realisation started to sink deeper into him. The Shadowheart wasn’t just here to make his life more complicated. For all the disasters the Shadowheart brought into his life, it had also revealed possibilities he would have otherwise overlooked.
The ability to absorb Mana Crystals was proof enough of that. If not for it, he would have spent years believing he could not absorb Mana Crystals.
And this was something he would spend a long time pondering upon.
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