Chapter 202 - 201 : Hooked
Shadows rose from the wyverns’ corpses—thicker and darker than the natural darkness around them.
They peeled away from torn flesh and shattered bones like living ink, twisting and stretching until they took form: seven shadow wyverns, each shaped like the beasts they once were, but now composed entirely of blackness. Their eyes glowed with eerie, pale light, and wisps of dark mist curled off their bodies.
They raised their heads and roared toward the sky.
The sound was different from normal wyvern cries—deeper, hollow, like echoes from a cavern filled with ghosts.
Then, slowly, their attention shifted.
They looked toward Arthur, standing calmly before them.
One by one, all seven of them examined him, their glowing eyes focusing on his face, his aura, his presence.
Without a word spoken aloud, they understood.
They took a step forward.
All seven shadow wyverns lowered their heads at the same time, pressing their snouts and horns to the ground in front of Arthur—a gesture of submission.
Of acknowledgment.
Of loyalty.
Barbatos, watching from above, went speechless.
A chill ran down his spine.
"It can’t be..." Barbatos muttered. "What the hell is happening today? What kind of dark arts is that...?"
He narrowed his amethyst eyes.
"The boy isn’t even commanding the dead corpses," Barbatos said. "What are those things...?"
Arthur met Barbatos’s gaze.
He started laughing.
A low chuckle at first, then growing louder, echoing through the ruined cavern. It wasn’t the laugh of a desperate man—it was sharp, edged, almost villainous. A mad man’s laugh mixed with a strategist’s satisfaction.
He lifted a hand and pointed straight at Barbatos.
"Go and tear that bastard apart," Arthur said in a low, cold voice.
The moment the order was given, the shadow wyverns roared.
They launched themselves into the sky, wings of darkness beating silently but moving with incredible speed.
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Barbatos barely had time to brace himself.
All seven shadow wyverns surrounded him in mid‑air, weaving around his massive body in a tight formation. They flew faster than ordinary wyverns, their movements sharper, more coordinated.
Barbatos was at a loss for words.
Lower breeds were supposed to obey true dragons—especially ones with noble bloodlines. Hierarchy was buried deep in the blood of all draconic breeds.
Yet the creatures in front of him were not behaving like lower breeds anymore.
In the next second, all seven shadow wyverns opened their jaws.
They unleashed breath attacks—not bright flames, but compressed blasts of dark energy, laced with residual fire. Streams of shadow‑flames and corrupted air slammed toward Barbatos’s face, chest, wings, and tail.
Barbatos’s aura exploded outward.
"These lowly things...!" Barbatos roared.
His pressure alone extinguished most of the breath attacks mid‑air, crushing them under his sheer presence.
Then he inhaled, rage building.
He roared.
A massive torrent of dragonfire burst out of his maw—pure, destructive flame, obliterating the shadows in front of him. The shadow wyverns caught in the blast dissolved, bodies unraveling into mist and fading like smoke in a storm.
Barbatos laughed loudly as the shadows burned away.
"Hah! That’s all you could do?" Barbatos said.
But then—
Another shocking thing happened.
In the space where the shadow wyverns had dissolved, black mist gathered again.
Shapes formed.
Wings.
Heads.
Bodies.
They reconstituted.
The shadow wyverns roared at Barbatos once more, entirely restored.
Barbatos’s pupils shrank.
"What the hell have they become...?" Barbatos whispered.
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The fight that followed was brutal and relentless.
The shadow wyverns attacked as if they felt no pain, no fear, no hesitation. They dove at Barbatos’s wings, snapped at his tail, clawed at his scales, and synchronized their breath attacks to hit at his joints and weak points.
Barbatos responded with fury.
He whipped his tail, smashing one shadow wyvern out of the air, obliterating its body in a swirl of dark particles. Another he caught in his jaws, crushing its neck and then incinerating it with a point‑blank blast of fire.
Every time he destroyed them, their forms dissolved—
And then reformed again near Arthur.
They surged back into the air, returning to the assault.
Arthur watched from below.
The shadows moved in perfect synchronization, just as he had imagined them fighting. Their coordination was like a reflection of his own combat patterns—strikes, feints, harassment, forcing Barbatos to defend and react again and again.
Barbatos used various techniques—bursting into sudden speed, folding his wings to dive and then spreading them to throw off their aim, spinning his massive body to lash his tail in a full circle, creating whirlwinds of air that scattered their positions. He fired smaller, concentrated fireballs rather than full breath torrents, trying to conserve energy while targeting specific shadow wyverns.
But slowly—
Slowly—
He realized something.
There were fewer shadow wyverns in the sky now.
Seven became six.
Six became five.
Five became four.
Three of them were gone.
’How could I be so foolish...?’ Barbatos thought.
Mana.
These constructs had to be costing the boy enormous amounts of mana to maintain and revive over and over.
He narrowed his eyes.
If he continued destroying them, eventually Arthur’s mana reserves would drain completely.
Barbatos inhaled deeply.
He gathered power and unleashed one full dragon breath—aimed not at Arthur, but at the shadow wyverns.
The torrent of flame engulfed them all.
The four shadow wyverns dissolved again under the intensity of the attack, scattered into pieces of night.
They revived.
But this time, only two formed anew.
Barbatos laughed.
"Your cheap trick has been exposed, boy," Barbatos said. "I admit—you’re not to be taken lightly."
He spread his wings, hovering steady.
"Now come out," Barbatos continued. "I know you have no energy left. Soon, these two lowly imitations will also be gone."
He smirked.
"If you want to beg," Barbatos said, "now is the right time."
He looked around.
The cave.
The ruined lab.
The sky.
But he did not see Arthur.
His brows furrowed.
"Where is he...?" Barbatos muttered.
Then—
BAM.
Suddenly, pain exploded along his side.
His left wing was severed.
It tore away from his massive body, scales and flesh shredding in a clean, brutal cut. The severed wing spun through the air, trailing blood, before plummeting downward.
Barbatos’s body lurched, balance thrown off.
He realized what had hit him a moment too late.
’An anti‑magic bullet... no... that was demonic energy...’ Barbatos thought.
Three more bullets streaked through the air in the next instant.
Not random shots—each one targeting the same points the shadow wyverns had been battering earlier. Weak spots in his armor. Slightly cracked scales. Joints stressed by the previous attacks.
The bullets pierced through his body.
One slammed into his shoulder joint.
Another tore through a weakened patch of scales on his side.
The third ripped through his lower chest.
Barbatos’s massive body spasmed.
He was in utter disbelief.
’A... Trap...?’ Barbatos thought. ’From a measly boy...and i fell for it ?’
His grip over his own flight failed.
His body plummeted.
He fell toward the ground.
Toward the World Tree.
As he descended, his shadow overtook the tree’s canopy.
He was about to collide with its massive trunk—
BAM.
Instead of the tree, he slammed into a huge barrier.
A barrier made of pure darkness.
The shield curved around the World Tree, protecting it like a dome. Barbatos hit it with full force. Energy rippled across its surface, the darkness absorbing and deflecting the impact.
Barbatos’s body bounced off the barrier and rolled, crashing into the earth below.
BAM.
Dust flew.
Stone cracked.
His blood spilled from multiple wounds, staining the ground in dark red pools.
His dragon form shuddered.
Breath ragged.
Pain biting into his nerves.
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High above, on one of the thick upper branches of the World Tree, Arthur sat.
A massive rifle rested against his shoulder—far larger than the desert eagle, fitted with a long barrel, reinforced stock, and etched with faint runes along its surface. The weapon looked like a fusion of modern sniper rifle and magical artifact, built for power and precision.
Arthur’s breathing was ragged.
Sweat trickled down his temple.
Notifications flickered in his mind.
[ Remaining Mana: 4,000 ]
[ Remaining Mana: 5,000 ]
He was spent.
"Wow..." Arthur muttered, exhaling slowly. "That was my last gamble."
He looked down at Barbatos’s fallen form.
"It was impossible to pierce that bastard’s scales normally," Arthur said quietly.
His gaze shifted to where the shadow wyverns had fought.
"The shadow wyverns did their work splendidly," Arthur continued. "They gave me the opening I needed."
He let the rifle rest across his lap, fingers still trembling slightly from the strain of maintaining so many constructs and firing high‑powered shots.
A low voice came from behind him.
"You," the voice said. "What the hell... were those things?"
Arthur turned his head.
Astarte stood on the branch behind him.
Her face wasn’t smiling.
But her eyes—
Her pure black eyes were shining.
They were beaming with desire to know, to understand, to unravel everything she had just seen.
Right now, the boy named Arthur Celestian was the most curious specimen in the world to her.
Something new.
Something impossible.
Something she very much wanted to dissect—
Or protect—
Or simply watch longer.
"Those shadows..." Astarte said quietly. "Explain them."
Arthur looked at her.
He smirked faintly, despite his exhaustion.
’She’s hooked’ Arthur thought.
He shifted the rifle slightly and met her gaze, crimson eyes locking with bottomless black.