Chapter 97: The Inversion of Causes
(Continue)
Obliranca beat her wings at a frantic pace above that ocean of gleaming metal. Each stroke kicked up waves of silvery reflections, but her mind was plunged into absolute darkness. She was desperately trying to calculate, decrypt, and predict Abraham's next assault.
Suddenly, her vertical pupils dilated under the shock of a visceral panic.
"What... My precognition... My precognition doesn't work on him! I can't anticipate his trajectories!"* she cried out mentally, her heart pounding wildly.
For the Sacred Dragon, vision of the immediate future wasn't mere intuition; it was a literal reading of timelines and potential alternate futures. But face-to-face with Abraham, her gift remained totally blind. The reason was clear: the tyrant did not evolve within the same system of causality as she did. In the world of mortals and standard gods, every action engenders a logical reaction—a step forward displaces air, a physical impulse creates a straight or curved trajectory. Abraham, however, shattered this logic. His existence obeyed an irregular sequence, a series of disconnected moments that escaped the logical perceptions of cause and effect. To Obliranca's precognition, it was like trying to read a book whose pages were written backward, or where the effect sometimes preceded the cause. He wasn't simply fast; he existed completely outside the temporal flow and their system, operating on an entirely different plane. Obliranca realized this, and it chilled her blood.
Having no other choice, cornered by the invisible menace, Obliranca drew from her deepest reserves. Once more, she concentrated the entirety of her draconic mana in the hollow of her wide-open maw. The air began to howl. A sphere of diamond-white energy, pure and blinding, materialized, crackling with furious and unstable lines of force. This was her ultimate arcane technique, her last resort—a power designed to generate an absolute collision between matter and anti-matter. It was a technique capable of disintegrating any element, dissolving physical barriers, and erasing souls themselves at a subatomic level. She intended to erase Abraham physically and spiritually, reducing him to absolute nothingness.
"Spiritual Collapse!" she roared.
The beam violently surged forward in a doomsday roar, cleaving through space to strike Abraham dead-center in the chest. The impact was of unmitigated violence. The ensuing explosion enveloped the Ancient Dragon in a dome of pitch-black and white destruction—a sphere of absolute vacuum where nothing was meant to survive. The very laws of physics cowered in terror.
Yet, the white dome began to fluctuate, then pale. To Obliranca's horrified eyes, the anti-matter energy was instantly absorbed, digested by the surrounding golden matter. The beam snuffed out with a faint crackle, like a candle blown out by the wind. Abraham stepped forward through the final residues of the explosion. He was completely unharmed. Not a scratch, not a speck of dust on his armor of flesh. Only his hands glowed with a golden aura of an almost divine density.
"You have grown strong, Obliranca…" Abraham said in a calm, almost disappointing voice.
He paused, his golden gaze plunging into the terrified eyes of the dragoness.
"Since you dared to attack me, I will share a secret with you. Something your mind struggles to conceive. Know that... I exist as the very concept of Gold. And I am entirely serious. As long as this metal exists in the greedy minds of mortals or within the deepest bowels of the universe, I cannot die. My existence is entirely locked to this concept of absolute purity and unalterability."
He sketched a cruel smile, a sweep of his hand encompassing the metallic world around them.
"You tried to destroy my soul and my body, but how can you destroy a living concept? Tell me... that which constitutes the very foundations of this world's matter and value? Don't you think, Obliranca, that your rebellion was doomed from the start?"
And in the blink of an eye;
Abraham left her no respite. In a movement of unprecedented brutality, his golden hand clamped shut over Obliranca's head. The shock was so violent that the metallic ground instantly fractured beneath the impact. Without giving her time to process, he began to drag her at a phenomenal speed, crossing hundreds of kilometers in a mere matter of seconds. Behind them, the ocean of metal tore open, carving a devastating trench that spat blinding showers of sparks.
While hurtling forward at this insane pace, Abraham began his work of destruction. Punches rained down mercilessly, each generating a shockwave that made the air tremble and distorted the space around them.
"I fully intend to kill every last Sacred Dragon," he declared in a frigid voice, punctuated by the dull thuds of the impacts. "And reclaim my place as the King of this world. My 'Only Dragon' project has never changed: the extermination of humanity. In fact, I was one of the primary architects behind the last Great War against the humans."
Her face bloodied, her jaw shattered by the sheer velocity and violence of the blows, Obliranca fought against blacking out. Rallying her final reserves of strength, she spat a mixture of saliva and blood with pure rage:
"Humans… are no longer the same! They've changed, you fossil! They collaborate with us now! We have found a balance in this world... don't come and ruin everything...!"
Abraham stopped dead in his tracks, planting his feet into the shrieking metal, but he did not loosen his grip. He merely laughed
a cold, hollow laugh, entirely devoid of humanity.
"A balance? You call that peace? That is submission, hatchling. You have lowered yourselves to their level."
"You understand nothing..." she whispered in a breath, her eyes bloodshot. "They possess a strength you will never have."
"Then let them come and prove it to me..."
In a final, desperate effort, Obliranca refused to abdicate. She opened her maw wide, focusing a colossal amount of spiritual energy. A turquoise, destructive light illuminated the battlefield before releasing itself as a blindingly intense laser beam, slicing through the air at point-blank range.
The beam struck Abraham head-on, enveloping the tyrant in an explosion of light. For a split second, Obliranca believed she had succeeded. But a moment later, the beam of pure energy began to freeze, losing its transparency and instantly transmuting into liquid gold heavy and malleable.
Abraham, himself cloaked in an impenetrable golden aura, absorbed the attack as if it had never existed. His gaze gleamed with a divine and cruel brilliance.
"Your power is nothing but a toy before mine, Obliranca…," he breathed.
With a casual backhand flick, he redirected the corrupted, transmuted energy. Obliranca was hit full-force by her own attack, now a volatile and devastating mass of gold. She unleashed a agonizing, blood-curdling shriek as the golden matter scorched her scales, before collapsing heavily onto the ground. Her gigantic silhouette wavered, then shrunk in a flash of light to revert to her human form broken and bleeding profusely.
She attempted to raise an arm, a final reflex of survival, but her strength abandoned her.
"You... you must stop this monster... Alexander..." she managed to articulate in a final sigh.
A final, sharp, precise, and implacable blow from Abraham struck her temple, plunging her instantly into a coma. Knocked out for good.
Without so much as a backward glance at the defeated dragoness, Abraham slowly rose into the air. His golden aura pulsed one last time before he flew off at high speed toward the city of Dragonil, determined to eliminate Flora and finalize his masterwork.
To be continued...