Chapter 98 - Dragon's Duel of Dominance

“Now then, if you will excuse me, I have some things I must attend to.” Navra smiled, instantly transforming into the male form he was in the first time I had met him.

“Wait. I thought you were going to oversee the duel?”

“Ah, no need to worry about that. I have sent in a substitute.”

Then Navra disappeared into thin air, before I even had the time to ask another question—Who?

Seeing this, Aqua finally came out of hiding from behind my back. She had been silent the whole time. She flew a little to the side of me, and I noticed her shaking, almost as if she was fearful of something. Of someone...

“Is he a god?” Aqua asked in a quivering voice.

“A god? No, I do not think so. He is a dragon just like me.”

Aqua turned silent. More than ten seconds passed by before she spoke up again. “How can you stay so calm in his presence...I would have already ran away in fear, if not for you beside me.”

Strange. I had not sense any threats from Navra. Was Aqua truly afraid of him? Could she perhaps sense something I could not?

It was a thought worth making known.

“What is it about him that makes you so afraid?”

“I felt as if I was being strangled...as if I was dancing in his palms. Each step I took, I felt more and more suffocated,” Aqua said with a tiny voice. She spoke those words of fear in the language of her Asrai race.

Aqua's answer told me nothing.

I could only attribute her fear to something like a prey in the presence of a large and powerful predator. It seemed right, and Navra himself had told me was just a dragon. Or it could be that he was just lying. But, if so, why would Navra, my so called father, tell me such a lie?

My thoughts were cut off when the sun above became blocked off, and I was inside a shadow. The shadows of two dragons.

I looked up and saw a white dragon and a green dragon quickly descending toward the section of the amphitheater I stood upon. They came to a halt and landed with a loud noise, as if a hammer the size of a house had struck the ground.

“Aaah!” Aqua screamed out loud, surprised by the two dragons suddenly choosing to land beside me.

The two dragons were enormous compared to Aqua and I. They overshadowed me completely by more than sixty feet. As for Aqua, the two dragons must have seemed bigger to her. Then they transformed into two females.

Both females were fully-naked, their bodies displayed majestically before the world without a care.

Truly, dragons were notorious streakers.

At least, that is what I would have said were I trying to make a joke. But on a serious note, dragons just had no compunction about nudity. Though some dragons did indeed like to wear clothing, as I could see from the other spectators sitting in the amphitheater.

There were very few spectators in the amphitheater today. Most of the dragons were simply not interested in a fight between two young dragons who had not even passed their third tribulation yet.

“Jester, I see you arrived earlier than I expected,” Eden said with a small laugh. Her appearance was that of a delicately tanned woman with long, blonde hair, and mocking eyes of dark green.

To the right of me, Kiara greeted, “Good afternoon, Verath. I have not seen you in a while.” She let out a dazzling smile, and her eyes shone with the color of the purest gold, flecked by white and red. They matched her snow-white skin, which looked even more graceful when framed with her long-black hair.

“Likewise, Kiara. You too, Eden,” I replied to the both of them.

“Both of you should most likely hurry to the ring now. There is a very powerful glare aimed at us right now,” Kiara said with just a light touch of amusement in her voice. “You should not keep Elder Kronos waiting.”

Eden and I both looked toward the amphitheater ring. The blood from the previous fight had been cleared up and the ring looked perfect, most likely having some earth magic done to it. In the middle of the ring, Elder Kronos was standing impatiently, glaring at the both of us.

“Stay with Kiara,” I said toward Aqua, who looked scared at those words. The aquatic fairy was most likely beginning to regret her words of accompanying me as my caretaker.

I did not even wait for Aqua to reply.

Forced by the look Elder Kronos was directing at us, Eden and I quickly flew toward the amphitheater ring.

With dark brown hair, and an even darker brown and lightly sparse beard covering his chin and upper lips, I could not even being to guess how old Elder Kronos was. Most dragons, the eldest had explained to me, would not grow facial hair, or any other type of hair except the hair on their head, even if they became more than three centuries old.

But Elder Kronos, however, had facial hair. It was a clear sign of his age as a dragon. It was also a good thing that he was wearing a pair of raggedy hempcloth pants. And though I say that, even if Elder Kronos had been naked, neither I nor Eden would have been distracted.

“Let us get this over with,” Elder Kronos impatiently said, almost growling his words out.

It was extremely obvious that Elder Kornos was annoyed by the task the Eldest of our Arkanan clan, my father, had assigned to him. His look clearly told the both of us that he could be spending his time doing better things than babysitting two young dragons.

“As requested by Eden, there shall be a Dragon's Duel of Dominance held between the two of you to determine your superiority. And let me warn you, there shall be no killing blows. You may, however, tear each other arms out or even rip each other eyes out, so long as the injury does not result in death, and so long as your opponent has not given up. There is also no need to worry about life-threatening injuries. We have employed Driads to serve as healers.”

Saying that, Elder Kronos suddenly flew up into the sky even without transforming. He was most likely using some form of magic, but I could not even sense the elder use it.

“Start.”

“Virdus Incentia!” Eden yelled out as soon as the duel began. With those Ancient words, a vortex of flames more than twenty feet tall surrounded her. When the vortex cleared after barely a second, Eden's appearance had transformed into a living conflagration of flames.

And she was no longer naked.

She now wore an armor that covered her entirely. The full-bodied armor was scarlet-orange just like her fiery hair and her hands that were covered in red-orange flames. The armor was strange in its nature—it looked metallic, yet at the same time, was alive with flames moving every few seconds.

From beneath her back, leathery green wings that were covered spanned more than eight feet. They were also covered in a scarlet-orange fire.

“Ever since that day, three months ago, when I became trapped in that condemnable water prison made from the human mages, I have been training extensively. I need not even transform into my dragon form to defeat you,” Eden declared in a fiery, dragon voice. “We shall fight on the same level, since you also cannot transform into your dragon form!”

I didn't bother to reply to her declaration. A dragon's human form, especially a dragon that could also use magic, was only a little bit weaker than the dragon form. There were advantages the human form had that the dragon form did not have—speed, mobility, turning speed, better reactions, and less consumption of magic.

And I was far stronger than I was before.

The soul of Demon Lord Codrixas, along with his personality, was beginning to integrate with my own soul and magic. Codrixas was still somewhat sealed along with the Deathwalker soul, but I could not afford to go near the boundaries of death, else he would take over through that weakness. I almost shuddered to even think of what would happen if he did. The seal would perhaps hold, but Navra had told me that Codrixas would only become stronger with the passage of time. The seals on his memories and on my stomach would not last forever.

Thus, I would need to win without any heavy injuries.

My actions would convince her of my strength.

“Virdus Vict Sangius,” I casually said.

Dragon Living Blood Armor.

This Ancient magic was one of the fruits of my three months training with Navra. It had been a hard slope to climb, especially since there were no previous examples of blood magic. But in the end, I had learned this Ancient magic, even though there were some setbacks since I did not have a dragon soul. My human soul, however, was still compatible with this black dragon body.

So in the end, I was truly like a dragon. It was as if I had never been a human, ironically.

Magic poured out from inside me and the threads of magic, mixed with my blood, instantly gathered to form a whirlpool of blood around me. The blood quickly crystallized into a living blood armor and covered me from neck to toe.

With three blood spikes of the deepest color of red that protruded outward from each of my armored shoulders, and various other spikes protruding outward from some of the armor joints, I had a frightening appearance. It would have certainly fit the appearance of a Demon Lord. My other soul, Demon Lord Codrixas, would have been proud to see it.

Looking down at the ground, Eden began to silently tremble to herself. Then she suddenly looked toward me and laughed. She had only been trembling in excitement!

“And here I thought you would not be able to last against me even for a brief minute. I am glad you will be able to put up a fight!”

A blast of fire was emitted from her wings and Eden came flying toward me. From her hands, she threw out two huge fireballs, each of them much larger than me.

I dodged, jumping upward more than twenty feet, and at the same time, formed two leathery, black wings that spanned a little more than eleven feet. The pair of black wings were surrounded with drops of liquid blood and an aura of black colored magic.

Having dodged the two fireballs, I shot spikes of hardened blood from my wings at the charging Eden on the ground. Hundreds of hardened blood spikes, each about only four to six inches long and as thin as a finger's width, came shooting out from my pair of wings.

Eden stopped her charge, looking upward at the sky with a grin aimed toward me. She planted both of her feet to the earthen ground of the arena and held out her fiery hands high against the storm of blood spikes. From those raised hands, a tornado of scarlet-orange flames quickly shot toward me, its length more than ten feet long and as wide as two feet.

The tornado of fire quickly batted aside and devoured most of the hardened blood spikes, swallowing them up in a burning spiral of fiery rage. Dust formed on the ground below as the fierceness of our magic raged against each other.

I quickly formed a shield of fire that was about as tall and wide as I was. Then behind that shield of fire, I formed a half spherical shield made entirely out of blood.

The tornado of fire collided with my first shield. But the shield did not last long. The tornado of fire easily broke through it in just a few seconds, before colliding with my second line of defense.

I battled with the tornado of fire as I poured more magic into the hardened blood shield.

Crack.