NOVEL NEXT CHAPTER 79 - “I underestimated myself.”
The forest didn't burn.
It didn't break.
It ceased.
Kael's breath tore across the earth like a blade dragging reality behind it. For a single impossible moment, there was no sound—only a line of pure, horrifying brightness carving through the world.
Where the beam touched down, the forest floor rippled.
Literally rippled.
The soil bulged upward like a wave struggling to flee before the inevitable—roots snapping, stone bending, earth convulsing as though trying to escape its own surface.
Then—
KRRRRRRSHHHHHH—
A silent implosion.
The beam sank into the land before erupting outward in a widening helix of annihilation.
Trees vanished as glittering ash caught in the spiral of force. Rocks disintegrated. Even the shadows screamed, then vanished.
Assassins—those who had spent their lives mastering stealth, surviving battlefields, crawling out of hell itself—
Never even had the chance to scream.
One moment, they were running.
The next—
Their bodies evaporated into nothing but drifting motes of black-white light, consumed so completely that their souls didn't even have time to register death.
Nearby beasts—massive tusked boars, crystal-furred wolves, mana-fed serpents—were erased in an instant, their forms dissolving into shimmering dust.
A dozen kilometers of forest became a widening, glowing scar.
And the scar only grew.
Bigger.
Wider.
Faster.
The land rippled again—expanding, cracking, rupturing—until the entire region looked like a titanic beast had clawed it apart.
Kael hovered above it all, wings spread, breath still pouring from his maw like the judgment of a sleeping god forced awake.
And then he realized—
It wasn't stopping.
His golden eyes narrowed.
'It's… still expanding?'
He strained his gaze from high above, and yet he couldn't see the end. The beam's aftershock ran past the horizon, devouring forest, hills, valleys—everything.
Mana surged violently around his body, sparks snapping across his horns.
'This is bad.'
The attack was too strong.
Stronger than he expected.
Stronger than he could immediately shut off.
Because a dragon's breath—especially one of a primordial dragon—was not a spell.
It was instinct.
An extension of the soul.
Once unleashed, it drained until a certain threshold of mana was exhausted.
And Kael…
Had used a lot of it without even realizing what it would do
He tried to stop it, but he couldn't.
He could only move it.
Redirect it.
'Damn.'
His wings flared once.
He turned his head skyward.
The beam shot upward.
Straight into the blue.
For half a second, it looked like salvation.
Then—
The sky turned black.
Pitch black.
Clouds ignited in silent bursts, expanding outward like molten ink. They superheated instantly, their cores turning into glowing slates of burning ash.
Kael's pupils shrank.
'No… that's worse.'
Because superheated clouds wouldn't just evaporate.
Kael could already imagine them falling toward the land.
And these clouds, charged with the redirected dragon breath's energy, would collapse into the atmosphere like a storm of meteors forming overhead.
Thousands of tiny blazing fragments would fall back toward the land.
If they landed—
The entire forest could be erased.
Not just a part of it.
Everything.
The town.
The people.
His girls.
Kael's wings trembled.
He had no choice.
Not anymore.
Because he could already see the barrier over the town trembling violently and cracking like fractured glass.
Kael clenched his jaw.
Hard.
Pain shot through his skull as he forcefully closed his maw—
SLAM.
The beam severed itself.
The world froze.
The black orb of compressed draconic fire lingering before his jaws flickered—weakening, shrinking, destabilizing like a dying star losing its shape.
It looked like things were going to be alright, but that wasn't the case for Kael.
Because he, for the first time, felt fear.
Not for himself.
But for what was about to happen.
'Brace.'
He crossed his massive arms before his head, scales shimmering—
BOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMM
The orb exploded.
A blast of annihilation engulfed him completely.
The explosion didn't spread outward—Kael held it in, choking it down, containing it with every shred of will and power he had left.
But the shockwave—
He couldn't stop that.
The entire sky rippled.
The entire world shook.
It even hit the barrier around the town.
Inside the town, people collapsed, clutching their ears as a muted roar washed through every alley, every home, every heartbeat.
And then—
Silence.
An unnatural silence.
A silence deeper than calm—
A silence born from everything outside being erased.
..............
From the town, all they saw were towering walls of white and black swallowing everything outside.
Then, in the blink of an eye—
BOOM.
The already-cracked barrier exploded outward in a shower of mana shards.
The shock hit them.
The heat of the outside world washed over them.
People screamed.
Children cried.
Soldiers fell to their knees, trembling.
The borders of the town glowed red-hot as the air seared—
And then—
Another barrier blossomed outward, shimmering green and silver.
Kael's second barrier.
Weaker.
But enough.
Enough to protect them.
Barely.
Evethra dropped to her knees, eyes wide.
Alenia could not breathe.
Selene nearly fainted.
Vaelen looked like his soul had left his body.
Even Darian—ever calm—looked unmistakably shaken.
And above them—
The sky remained a swirling abyss of black cloud and burning stars.
"What… what happened…?" Selene whispered.
"The sky… it's black…" Vaelen murmured, his voice trembling.
"It's like the heavens themselves… burned," Alenia whispered.
But none of them had seen the destruction outside—the forest beyond the walls was hidden by massive stone structures.
Only those stationed at the boundary walls had seen a horizon of white-black obliteration.
And they were speechless.
Evethra looked upward, eyes trembling. "My lord… please be safe…"
The air around them shivered.
Someone gasped.
Selene's eyes widened.
"He's coming."
As if responding to her words, Kael appeared.
A burst of mana—weak, flickering—crackled before them.
And there he was.
A moment ago, he was divine.
A titan.
A primordial force of nature.
Now—
He looked broken.
His colossal dragon body was scorched black and white, scales torn away to reveal bleeding muscle and crackling mana fissures beneath.
His arms—
Shattered.
Bone and shattered golden fragments jut out.
His chest—
Cracked.
His wings—
Torn and smoking.
His horns—
Dim.
His eyes—
Still golden.
Still calm.
But pained.
And everyone froze.
Even the world seemed to stop.
Alenia's quill fell from her trembling hand.
Vaelen fell to his knees.
Selene's book dropped.
Darian's breath hitched.
Evethra—
Evethra broke.
"MY LORD!!"
She sprinted.
Alenia followed.
Selene and Vaelen stumbled toward him.
Darian lost his composure, running with raw panic.
Kael lifted a single clawed hand—thin, trembling, severely damaged—
And they all froze mid-stride.
Suspended in the air by soft telekinesis.
His voice shook the roots beneath them.
"Stop."
Evethra struggled against the invisible grip, tears streaming. "But—But you're—you're—"
"I'm fine."
"You—YOU ARE NOT FINE!!" Evethra screamed.
Kael managed a faint, lazy smile despite the blood dripping from his jaws.
"I'm a dragon," he said softly. "We heal."
Before their eyes, wounds began to knit. Scales regenerated in shimmering pulses. Broken pieces reformed.
Slowly.
Painfully.
But undeniably.
Evethra sobbed harder.
Alenia pressed a trembling hand to her lips.
Selene's legs nearly gave out.
Darian bowed deeply, trembling.
Vaelen merely whispered, "A monster… a god…"
Kael's voice lowered, tired but steady.
"There's still residual breath energy on my body. It'll hurt you if you get close."
Evethra's tears fell harder.
"But why… why did this happen? This was just a test…"
Selene choked, "Why is the sky like that…?"
Alenia's voice cracked, "… W-What went wrong?"
Kael exhaled a low, rumbling breath.
The forest still burned far behind him.
The sky still boiled above.
And he answered them—
With a weary, dangerous smile.
"I underestimated myself."
...............
Meanwhile, in Arren Baneron's chamber.
The room felt colder now.
Not because of the draft slipping past the velvet curtains—but because dread itself had settled into the chamber like frost.
Arren Baneron sat in his high-backed chair, fingers steepled, blue eyes reflecting the floating projection hovering before him.
Beside him stood the assassin leader—the hooded figure who commanded the most feared organization in the kingdom.
Neither spoke.
Neither breathed.
The projection before them, the one that one of the assassins they had sent for Vaelen's head was showing them, trembled, one final echo of the last assassin's sight.
A dragon.
A colossal, obsidian-and-gold dragon was tearing the forest apart as though the world were made of paper.
Then came the breath.
That impossible, twisting beam.
That catastrophic helix of annihilation.
The forest was buckling.
The earth was screaming.
Reality itself was shredding like cloth.
The projection shook violently—
And then they saw it.
The assassin's arms were dissolving.
His legs were turning to motes of white-black ash.
His vision collapsing inward as his skull evaporated—
Then nothing.
Only darkness.
Only death.
The projection shattered with a sound like breaking glass.
Silence.
The assassin leader swallowed, face pale beneath his hood.
"…Lord Arren," he said carefully, "should we… warn your father? He is heading straight for that place. If he encounters… that monster…"
Arren leaned back slowly.
Calmly.
Thoughtfully.
His blue eyes lowered.
And then he smiled.
A small, elegant thing.
Cold.
Refined.
Cruel.
"No."
The assassin blinked. "My lord—?"
Arren's smile widened by a fraction, voice smooth as silk dipped in poison.
"Let my father charge into the jaws of that dragon. If fate is kind, it will swallow my brother with him."
He lifted his teacup, utterly composed, as if discussing the weather.
"And when both of them are gone…" A soft chuckle. "Everything will belong to me."
The assassin shivered—not from cold this time.
But from knowing that the true monster was sitting right beside him.
Because the assassin was sure that even the dragon he saw in the projection wouldn't plan his family's death, yet this human was doing it.