Chapter 143: Chaos Expansion
Adonis transformed back into his human form and looked at the two survivors.
That particular red dragon instantly caught his eyes.
"Raza, what were you doing here? Should you not have been at the training camp?"
Raza’s tears flowed freely. "You remember me, Your Majesty? I am very glad. Sima and I came here quickly to protect our family. But we failed."
He cried, letting his massive hot teardrops fall onto the ground.
"Not only did I fail them, I failed you as well, my King. I am unworthy of the Chaos Order. Forgive me!"
He finally went down on his knees, his dragon head touching the grassland.
Adonis sighed, then walked over.
"SLAP!"
Contrary to anyone’s expectations, he delivered a firm slap across the dragon’s face.
The slap was so loud and powerful that the sound alone shattered the eardrums of ordinary animals nearby.
Raza touched his swollen cheek, stunned.
Sima was so shocked her eyes were about to pop out of her head.
"Your Majesty! Why did you hit him?"
Adonis remained calm. For a second he wondered if he had used too much strength. Fortunately he had not.
He clicked his tongue.
"Tsk. What else should I do with this fool? Does he think he is some kind of hero who can save everyone, even if it meant going against thousands of Sky Serpents alone? That was nothing but suicide."
"But my grandmother is gone," Raza said, quivering. "And Sima’s brothers are missing. Are you telling me we should not have even tried to save them? That we should be selfish and only care about ourselves?"
Raza looked at Adonis with undisguised disappointment.
"My King, I had better expectations from you."
Adonis looked at Raza’s angry face, and for a brief moment saw his own shadow reflected there.
Raza was just as resolute and fiercely protective of his loved ones as he himself had always been.
But unfortunately, what was lost was already unrecoverable.
Adonis met Raza’s hateful eyes with sympathy. "I am not saying you should not have tried. But you should have brought someone along with you. A captain, or other friends. That way, you could have easily saved them and yourselves."
"With all respect, Your Highness, the captains are so busy. Why would they care to help us kids?" Sima asked doubtfully.
"Because everyone matters in the Order. Whether you are a small soldier or an old captain. If you had asked Millia or Rai, they would have surely sent you help even if they could not come personally. Do you understand your mistake now?"
Strangely, Adonis felt like a father teaching his children. And this feeling was not so bad.
Raza finally softened his gaze and looked at King Adonis with guilt.
"Forgive me, my King. I was young and ignorant. I acted on my heart rather than my logic. But can you tell me one thing? Why do you never require assistance from your allies or your Queens? You always fight alone and always come out victorious. Why can we not do the same?"
Raza asked with pure curiosity, voicing the question many had wanted to ask.
Adonis smiled. "Haha. What kind of question is that? The answer is simple. I am stronger than them all."
The simple answer sounded so domineering and so effortlessly confident that the blood within both Raza and Sima began to boil.
This was it. This was the power they had always wanted.
If they had that kind of power, they would never have to watch their loved ones get trampled under their enemies again.
Raza’s claws started shaking. "My King, I know this is too much to ask. But can you somehow grant me a part of your power? I want to feel what it is like to hold that kind of strength. I want to see what that world looks like."
Raza’s eyes glazed with a fanatical fervor that even made Adonis raise his eyebrows.
However, in response to his request, Adonis shook his head.
"I understand your burning enthusiasm, kid. But your vessel would not be able to contain my power. You would break before you could cast a single Art. But—"
His rejection disappointed Raza deeply. However, that single word, "But," felt like the only candle burning in the dark.
"I can show you," Adonis continued. "I can show you exactly what you need to quench your thirst."
His fingers snapped and a small twig appeared in between.
"A twig? What is he going to do with that?"
Both of them had the exact same question.
"Watch carefully," Adonis said.
He activated [ Chaos Expansion ].
Nothing dramatic happened in the first second.
The twig simply began to grow, quietly and without announcement, the way a shadow grows when the sun moves, steadily and in every direction simultaneously.
By the second second, it was the size of a sword.
By the fifth, it was wider than Adonis was tall.
Wide-eyed, Raza took one step back.
By the tenth second, it was the size of a house, and the ground beneath it had begun to crack under the weight of wood that had not existed thirty seconds ago.
By the twentieth second, Sima grabbed Raza’s arm and pulled him back several hundred meters without discussing it.
Because the twig was now the size of a small mountain and still growing.
The sound arrived next.
"QUUAAAAK!"
The horrifying groan of wood for expanding beyond any natural capacity, splitting and reforming and splitting again as the mass increased faster than the structural integrity could accommodate, sent shockwaves through the ground beneath them with each passing second.
"Screech! CAWWW!"
Birds scattered from the surrounding trees in panicked clouds.
"Craaaaak!"
The ground fractured in concentric rings outward from the base.
The clouds that had been sitting comfortably at their usual altitude began to drift aside as the upper reaches of the expanding twig climbed into them and kept climbing.
At 3,000 meters, Adonis stopped the expansion.
It now stood against the sky like a second mountain range had appeared from nowhere. Its uppermost point was lost somewhere above the cloud line, and its base displaced a significant portion of the surrounding earth simply by existing at this scale in this space.
"????"
Not just Sima and Raza, but those sky serpents paused their attack in mid-air, mouths agape in sheer disbelief.