NOVEL NEXT Chapter 209: Mourn
Blood sprayed. Scales shattered. She recoiled, but he didn't stop. His tail looped around and stabbed through her shoulder. Another tail pierced through her belly. And then he yanked. Hard.
She screamed as she was torn in two mid-air, halves spinning in opposite directions.
Fluffy looked delighted.
"Ohhh, that felt amazing!"
Behind him, three red dragons howled and blasted him with converging beams—flame, gravity, sound.
The explosion looked final.
It wasn't.
Fluffy erupted from the core of the blast with a manic roar, his fur scorched, his fangs wide, and all nine tails flared like burning wings.
He hit the nearest red dragon like a wrecking ball of murder, driving his claws into the dragon's ribs and tearing them out mid-flight.
The dragon shrieked. Blood sprayed across the sky in molten arcs. Fluffy dragged the dragon downward like a meteor, smashing him through two floating rock islands. Then he spun and hurled the twitching corpse at another green dragon charging a wind cyclone.
CRAAACK!!
The impact shattered the dragon's jaw and broke her flight pattern. She tumbled, disoriented—and that was all Fluffy needed.
He teleported, yes teleported, right behind her and drove all nine tails straight through her skull.
She didn't even get to scream.
"Two down!" Fluffy howled in joy. "Wheeeee!"
He twirled mid-air like a ballerina covered in blood, the ground below him already scorched, shredded, and painted in dragon guts.
Above, ten red and green dragons hovered silently, their formation broken, their confidence shaking, their eyes wide.
General Hei Tian, watching from behind Damien, whispered with dry horror, "…he's enjoying this far too much."
The battlefield exploded.
Flames clashed with poisonous gales. Mana storms cracked the ground. Earthquakes thundered in response to every blow. Hills shattered, lakes boiled, the sky turned purple with clashing elemental fury.
Damien floated calmly above the carnage, observing with sharp, cold eyes.
Fluffy's strength was absurd. But the dragons were no slouches either. Their aerial maneuvers were precise, brutal, honed through centuries of bloodshed. They tore up the earth, screaming fury. But Fluffy danced among them like a mad god.
None of the others stayed to watch. The other dragon clans, humans, orcs, elves, beasts, all had long since vanished into the horizon, not bothering to watch them fight.
Only Damien stood alone, arms crossed.
"Don't hold back," he ordered lazily. "Kill them all."
General Hei Tian flinched. "Lord Damien… the red and green clans have always shared ties with our black dragon race. We cannot kill them…"
Damien turned to him slowly.
His eyes glowed with the fusion of death, time, and space. A wave of killing intent exploded from his body, thick, suffocating, colder than death, older than wrath. It shook the void itself.
General Hei Tian staggered. Not from fear. But from awe.
That was the killing intent of a tyrant who had slaughtered entire nations. Of a sovereign who had buried millions beneath his heel.
He shut his mouth and bowed his head. "Understood."
Meanwhile, Fluffy laughed as he burned through the air like a meteor, throwing one dragon into another. Their coordinated strikes fell apart. Red blood rained. Trees snapped and flew. Mountains shattered like clay pots.
But then—
The ground trembled.
Not gently. Not politely.
It convulsed like the world had just stubbed its toe on the edge of reality.
A pulse echoed through the battlefield. The kind of pulse that made birds drop dead and clouds go blind. Then a deep, guttural groan rose from beneath the crust. Not from magma. Not from tectonics. But from something alive and very, very unhappy.
Damien narrowed his eyes.
"There are still warriors alive?" he asked coldly.
Blackie's voice shrieked from his shoulder like a cursed kettle. "No! But this land… this land is cursed! Ancient beasts live off the corpses! Off the rot! The decay! They slumber beneath the bone pits and sometimes, they wake up!"
"Then we run—" General Hei Tian began.
KABOOOOOM!!!
The battlefield exploded.
Not figuratively. Literally.
The ground split open like it had been uppercut by a divine fist. Entire ridges flew into the sky. Craters formed midair. And then it emerged.
A worm-beast.
Colossal.
Grotesque.
Its body stretched like a serpent-shaped continent, wrapped in rusted metal, fused bone, and the writhing souls of whatever poor things it hadn't finished digesting. From its thousand circular mouths came the sound of the damned, screaming, hissing, begging, laughing, and its body writhed with the twitching, pained faces of the dead.
One of them looked like a barista Damien once knew.
"Kyaaaaaaaaaaaa!" someone screamed.
It might've been Blackie.
It might've been Hei Tian.
It might've been the sky.
Even Fluffy, the grand apocalyptic death chimera, stumbled backward midair.
"NOPE! Nope nope nope!" he shouted, ears flat, tails tucking like a puppy caught stealing a roast chicken.
He spun and bolted with the kind of speed that could only come from pure, existential terror.
The worm-beast's many eyes locked onto him immediately.
It gave chase.
And it was fast.
It tunneled, it leapt, it twisted through stone and sky alike—ripping through mountains like warm butter, devouring entire chunks of terrain, chasing after the biggest, brightest, fluffiest energy signature in the sky.
"Boss! SAVE MEEEEE!!" Fluffy howled.
"Don't run towards me! RUN TOWARD THE DRAGONS!" Damien roared and pointed at the red and green dragons..
"S-Sorry! Sorry!" Fluffy yelped, wheeling around midair like a fat comet with anxiety issues.
The worm swerved with him. It crashed through a dozen rock spires, soared into the sky, and then dived into the dragons.
The dragons, already scorched, limping, furious, and confused, looked up.
Too late.
The worm slammed into their midst.
It didn't stop.
It didn't slow.
It didn't care.
One dragon screamed as its wings were bitten off by a mouth within a mouth within a mouth.
Another tried to cast a spell, only to have his head removed by a jagged spinning wheel of bone lodged in the worm's spine.
It was not a battle anymore.
It was a banquet.
And Fluffy was still flying, zigzagging madly, squealing like a fox being chased by tax collectors.
That's when Rage Monkey appeared, standing on a rock outcropping, watching the scene with tragic stillness. His red eyes shimmered. His fists trembled.
He raised a tiny paw to the sky.
"Fluffyyyyyy… NOOOOOOO!!"
Fluffy didn't even hear him. He was too busy crying.
"BOSS IT'S TOUCHING MY BUTT I CAN FEEL ITS BREATH—ITS BREATH SMELLS LIKE WET SKELETONS—"
Rage Monkey fell to his knees, arms raised to the stormy heavens.
"You stupid, beautiful idiot!!"
Then he began to sing.
A sad monkey ballad. In screeches and howls and broken recorder sounds. Off-key. Discordant. Filled with raw, bananas-soaked emotion.
"Oh fluffy my brother… you flew too close to doom…"
General Hei Tian blinked. "What the hell…"
"Your tails were bright… but not so bright… as your stupid face of gloom!!"
The worm shrieked.
The dragons shrieked louder.
And Fluffy, still being chased, yelled, "Rage Monkey you piece of shit! Stop singing! You're making it worse!!"
"Let me mourn you in peace you doomed legend!" Rage Monkey sobbed. "YOU DIED AS YOU LIVED! LOUD, CHAOTIC, AND UTTERLY STUPID!!"
"I am still aliveee!!!" Fluffy shrieked, barely dodging a swipe of jagged bone teeth.
Damien sighed, slowly facepalming as explosions and screams echoed in every direction.