Chapter 94: The Stellar Radiance of the Dragon Knight
(Continue)
Those few words sealed the pact. The voice of Elisa, the blade's ancient mistress, faded away, but her legacy remained. The excruciating pain consuming Damian's arm transmuted instantly into a vibrating warmth a raw power that no longer sought to destroy its vessel, but to adapt to it.
What followed surpassed the understanding of mortals and the chronicles of Britannia's most erudite mages.
An explosion of white and golden light, a purely spiritual deflagration, erupted from the circular chamber. The light was so dense it appeared solid, sweeping away debris, straightening shadows, and purifying the air of the battle's pollution. The luminous blast, too confined by the sanctuary walls, shattered what remained of the imperial palace ceiling in a silent crash. It soared into the capital's black sky as a celestial pillar so gigantic, so titanic, that it enveloped all of Dragonil beneath a dome of zenithal clarity. The storm clouds beginning to gather were instantly pierced and dissipated by this column of pure energy rising to the very edges of the atmosphere.
When Lancelot finally entered the circular hall, having fought against the blast of light that had repelled him, he stopped dead in his tracks. Out of breath, his throat dry, he felt his knees buckle under the weight of a reality he refused to accept. What he witnessed plunged him into total shock a stupor that shattered his arrogance.
Damian was standing.
He was no longer staggering. He was no longer crawling. His legs, which moments before had been broken and covered in gaping wounds, now supported him with perfect, unshakeable stability amidst the rubble. The Dragon Blade was firmly anchored in his right hand; its runic blade was no longer vibrating, but shining with a constant, silver-white clarity that repelled every shred of shadow for ten meters around.
A magnificent, almost divine aura emanated from his entire being, shrouding his silhouette in a garment of pure light. But the most terrifying aspect for Lancelot lay in the boy's physical transformations. Glowing, mystical markings geometric lines of sea-green and gold had traced their path along his scorched arm. These lines, resembling veins of pure mana, traveled up his neck to settle on the right side of his face, crossing his eye and stopping at his forehead. These stigmata of the pact stabilized his injuries at a prodigious speed, closing open flesh and solidifying broken bones in a whisper of sacred energy.
"Impossible... How can someone like you wield that blade?!" Lancelot roared, his voice distorted by a consuming jealousy that twisted his insides. "Don't tell me the legendary sword waited a hundred years just for this boy to carry it! Tell me I'm dreaming!"
Driven mad by emotional agony, refusing to see his lifelong ambition collapse before a boy he despised, Lancelot stopped thinking. Without waiting another second, tapping into the final reserves of his magic, he thrust his white spear in a straight line a deadly, precise, and lightning-fast assault aimed directly at Damian's heart. The strike was so rapid it crossed the space in a flash, leaving no chance for evasion.
But Damian did not move. He did not even raise his blade to parry.
Before the sharp tip of the runic spear could even brush the boy's chest, a millimeter from his tattered tunic, the attack was literally canceled. An invisible barrier, composed of millions of luminous particles resembling stardust, materialized instantly. Upon contact with this absolute shield, Lancelot's destructive energy was disintegrated, reduced to nothing in a gentle crackle.
Lancelot, his eyes bulging, stepped back. Terror had just replaced rage in his mind. He finally understood the unthinkable, brutal reality of the holy weapon: the sword was protecting Damian completely independently. The Dragon Blade acted as a living entity, a guardian forming a rampart around its wielder, separate from his will or physical strength. Damian was not using the sword; it was the sword offering itself to him.
"How... how is this possible? It's not you... It can't be you!"
Lancelot's voice was nothing more than a hysterical hiss. Lost in the depths of his own frustration, the hunter abandoned all dignity and lunged forward, unleashing a spectacular series of attacks a total deployment of brute force and technique. His white spear became an artistic blur, tracing intersecting trajectories and perfect arcs in the air at the speed of light, far exceeding the perception of the human eye.
Strikes rain down from the left, from the right, plummeted from the ceiling, targeting joints, eyes, and throat. The air in the room was sliced into thousands of shreds by the shockwaves of his assaults. Every movement Lancelot made released such immense pressure that the stones on the floor were pulverized into fine dust.
Yet, at the center of this vortex of destruction, Damian remained motionless. He walked slowly, one step after another, advancing toward his tormentor with a heavy but serene stride.
None of Lancelot's attacks could touch him. It was not a matter of dodging or parrying. Every assault, every spearhead that approached the sphere of light surrounding Damian was immediately repelled by an invisible force; its cause and effect were nullified and instantly reflected. The gravitational pressure emanating from the divine blade was so dense, so absolute, that it bent space around the young man, sending the energy of the blows directly back at Lancelot. The hunter found himself enduring the backlash of his own attacks, his arms vibrating under the violence of repeated collisions with empty space.
Then, Damian's movement stopped. The aura enveloping him changed frequency, shifting from a serene white to a blue-green brilliance of incredible purity. His entire body began to glow, every pore of his skin releasing streams of pure mana that rose into the sky like cold flames.
Lifting the Dragon Blade with both hands above his head, his eyes fixed on Lancelot's terrified face, Damian spoke in a voice that no longer carried mockery or anger, but the solemnity of a judge. It was a voice that resonated in every corner of the palace, piercing through walls and shaking the very foundations of the continent:
"For everyone who believes in me... I will not falter! For those who have suffered in the shadows, for my mother, for Arthur, for Seth... I will be their blade!"
And at that exact moment... the sword struck.
It was not a rapid movement, but an inexorable descent. As the Dragon Blade came down in a perfect axis, the world held its breath. A brute, frightening magical power an energy that did not belong to the mortal realm was unleashed from the silver blade. The arc of pure energy that flashed from the weapon did not merely slice through the room; it severed the very fabric of reality.
"Stellar Radiance of the Dragon Knight!"
The shockwave was so monumental, so titanic, that it split space along its path. A line of silver light cut through the palace, breached the capital's ramparts, and stretched in a straight line for thousands of kilometers across the dragon continent. The earth opened up in a tectonic groan. A bottomless canyon, a perfect and gaping scar several meters wide, was carved into the earth's crust a rift so immense it was now visible from the void of space, literally cutting the landmasses in two. It was insane.
Lancelot, whose survival instincts as a legendary warrior had activated at the absolute last millisecond, had not tried to parry. His instinct had screamed that upon contact with this attack, his very soul would be erased. In a gesture of pure panic, he had thrown himself sideways, crashing miserably onto the dusty floor.
The stellar shockwave grazed his hair, tearing away a few strands and reducing them to atoms. By a matter of mere millimeters, Lancelot escaped ceasing to exist; his body and soul would have vanished in a single second.
Silence returned, heavier than before, broken only by the distant rumbling of the earth stabilizing after the passage of the blade. Overwhelmed by retrospective terror—a visceral panic at what that blow would have done to him had it struck head-on—he remained on the ground. His spear, once so brilliant, was covered in soot; his body trembled in every limb, and his gaze was locked onto the perfect canyon that had just opened inches away from him. His spirit was broken.
Damian advanced slowly through the smoke. His steps were heavy, as the power of the blade began to weigh on his physical strength. Arriving beside the fallen hunter, he bent down, extended his left hand, and grabbed Lancelot by the collar of his outfit. With a fluid movement, sustained by the final remnants of divine energy, he lifted him effortlessly, forcing him to look into eyes marked by the runes.
"Stop this," Damian told him in a low, tired voice, devoid of any hatred. "That's enough. Enough blood has been spilled."
At that moment, as if the sky were responding to the end of this wrath, heavy black clouds of impenetrable density invaded the entirety of the Dragonil sky. In seconds, a driving rain a freezing, saving downpour began to fall over the entire kingdom. The drops of water crashed onto the palace ruins, washing away dried blood, marble dust, and the soot of explosions, soothing the battered earth.
This water streamed down Damian's face, mingling with traces of sweat and the silent tears flowing along his runic markings. Lancelot, suspended at the end of his arm, no longer even tried to defend himself. His white spear lay on the ground, useless, stripped of its magical glow. The great dragon hunter, usually so proud, lowered his eyes, unable to hold the gaze of a boy he had called a failure just minutes earlier.
Damian slowly raised his left fist. The tension in his muscles was palpable, every fiber of his being demanding justice for Kana. It was the ideal moment to deliver the fatal blow. Lancelot closed his eyes, bracing for the impact and accepting the inescapable sentence of the victor.
But the blow never came.
Barely a centimeter from the pale skin, Damian's fist froze dead. The shockwave of the halted movement sent Lancelot's hair flying and swept the rain away from around their faces. Damian slowly loosened his fingers, his hand trembling under the physical effort and the weight of the emotions assailing him.
"I understand you, Lancelot..." Damian whispered, his broken voice echoing softly through the curtain of rain. "I know what it feels like to lose a loved one. I know what it's like to carry that guilt that gnaws at your insides every day, the one that drives you to commit the worst acts just to fill the void... that you have."
With those words, the blue light coursing through Damian's body flickered. The mystical markings on his face rapidly faded, returning to the earth. The superhuman effort required by the Dragon Blade had just drained the entirety of his remaining life force. His fingers lost their grip, and Damian collapsed heavily onto the drenched marble, unconscious, sliding right beside the sword, which instantly reclaimed its dormant form a simple, dull steel blade beneath the downpour.
Lancelot remained kneeling in the mud and water for a long time, his breath short. He placed his hand on his own throat where Damian's grip had anchored, then turned his gaze toward the young man's inert body. Tears mingled with the rain on his cheeks, washing away the soot and arrogance that masked his humanity.
"I take back what I said..." Lancelot gasped, his voice broken by a new and painful respect. "You are... you are truly amazing... Damian."
To be continued...