Agnia's pleading eyes could not pierce the madness consuming Max. With every passing second, the grip around her neck tightened until her vision began to blur and darken at the edges. In a way, she had already accepted her death, though not without curses, regret, and bitterness clawing through her chest. Most of all, she knew that now, she would never be able to fulfill her late father's wishes.
Consumed by rage at the image of his mother, Max was ready to tighten his grip and snap Agnia's neck, but in that same moment, system screens burst into existence around him in a circle, flashing red and black like warning lights in the dark.
[Bloodline Protection Skill Triggered...]
[Fire Dragon Bloodline has been acknowledged as critical to the user... restricting killing intent... initiating Mind Cleanse skill...]
All of a sudden, the grip around Agnia's throat loosened slightly. Air rushed violently into her lungs, making her chest heave, but even though she could breathe again, all of her strength was gone, as if some unseen force had sucked it straight out of her body.
Max, on the other hand, was locked in battle with his own demons. His mother's face kept twisting in front of him, shifting from madness to fear, from fear to tears, from tears to love, over and over like a possessed ghost refusing to leave him. Thinking it was her, Max hurled Agnia away and clutched his head, the splitting pain inside his skull so violent it felt as though his head might burst apart.
"Shit! Get out! Leave me alone!" Max roared, and the sound forced Agnia's eyes open. She saw him writhing on the ground in pain. For a moment, the urge to kill him rose inside her, hot and venomous, but his screams and his order to leave made her legs drag her backward instead.
"Crazy lunatic!" she shouted with what little strength she had left.
She rushed toward the direction her clan members had fled, her wings barely keeping her an inch above the ground, but anything was better than remaining near some unstable beast calling itself a man. Still, something about Max felt deeply wrong.
She had sensed it the moment he looked at her. That kind of anger and disdain was not something a man should show a person he was meeting for the first time. It was as if he had not been looking at her at all, but at someone he had known and hated for years.
Max's eyes slowly faded back to their normal color, the pitch black retreating until only brown remained. The shadows disappeared with it, leaving him standing under nothing but the sun's quiet warmth.
The chirping of birds reached his ears, and a soft wind brushed across his skin. The nightmare from before had vanished, but so had everyone else. Not a single living soul remained. Only the corpses of many Fire Dragon Clan members lay scattered across the ground, while the Ice Dragon Clan had left behind only a handful.
He knew those faces. They were some of the few who had helped ignite the altar's runes for him, the same runes now resting on his skin like a cruel remembrance.
He stood up slowly, the weight of the battle still clinging to his body. His mind remained hazy, and he could not remember what had happened after Agnia slammed him into one of the houses. When he turned his head, all he saw were burning homes and blackened remains. The same hut he had once recovered in had been reduced to cinders. No life remained here.
"I did this... didn't I?" he sighed, remembering all the days he used to mess things up around the house and earn his mother's anger for it. Even the system screen had vanished without welcoming him back, like a loyal servant who knew better than to disturb its master.
"Once again, I messed up..." For some reason, an overwhelming loneliness washed over him. His life had never been easy, and it made him wonder why he was always the one left to suffer. "At least I can try to change that." Determination lit up his eyes as he forced his feet to carry him toward the burning village.
His fingers moved toward the burned buildings, as if trying to touch the destruction his recklessness had left behind. Then he extended his hand and felt the magical power inside him stir as void energy rushed out and swallowed the flames.
At first, the building he tried to save crumbled apart like a sandcastle, but on the fifth attempt, he finally managed to absorb only the fire and leave the structure standing. In that way, he put out the last of the flames while learning, little by little, how to control the power now living inside him.
"Got it!" A faint smile lit up his face, but it did not last long before the thought of never seeing Rosalia again pushed it away. Even so, he forced himself to shake it off and continued testing his powers.
From small absorptions to repelling attacks, he kept experimenting without restraint. The village was already gone, and the people in it were gone as well, so he no longer cared if he ended up destroying even the few buildings that had somehow remained untouched.
A strange thought suddenly surfaced in his mind. What if he could push the energy he sucked in back into the world? Would that mana return to what it once was? He could already taste how thin the mana in the air had become because of him, almost nonexistent.
So he tried to release only the mana without the repelling effect. Push and pull were the most basic abilities of void that he understood, but this was different. This was something he had only imagined in theory until now.
The moment the mana burst out from his body, the yellow grass turned green again. Somehow, Max could even tell that it was richer than before, as if the world had been freshly painted by a careful human hand.
The taste of mana in the air turned sweet beyond anything he could understand, and no matter how much he poured out, his mana container barely seemed to empty. It felt as though he could continue for an entire hour and still have more left inside him.
A wide smile finally spread across his face, lighting up even his eyes. "I can fix it all! I can bring this place back to life and make it even stronger!" he shouted as mana flooded the area, spreading rapidly and breathing life back into the wounded land.
Meanwhile, the majestic figure of an ice dragon moved in slow circles above its territory, until its attention was caught by something so pure that saliva began to gather in its mouth. Its purple eyes locked onto Max from high above, watching him from several kilometers away.
Then, with one powerful beat of its wings, it ripped through the air and shot toward him, excitement blazing in its eyes.