Chapter 897: Everything as Planned
The roar startled Max for an instant, a chill running down his spine, but he quickly realized the dragon’s body was trembling too much to move, its strength completely drained from the brutal battle and the devastating self-detonation of its beast core.
Max exhaled slowly, forcing himself to focus. Black flames erupted around his body like a shroud, twisting and writhing as his unique power surged. "Devour," he whispered, his voice low and calm. Immediately, waves of energy from the dying three-headed black dragon began to flow toward him, drawn into his body like streams feeding into a hungry abyss. The surge of power was immense, but Max didn’t stop to savor it, knowing there was no time.
He moved like lightning, the One Step Mile technique propelling him forward at astonishing speed. One moment, he was a hundred feet away from the Pure Yang Flower, and in the very next, he had halved the distance to fifty feet, his body nothing but a blur of black flames racing across the blood-soaked ground.
The roar, however, had another unintended effect—it snapped Kyle back to consciousness. Lying bruised and bloodied from the devastating beast core explosion, Kyle’s eyes fluttered open, and his blurred vision settled on Max’s figure speeding toward the pond. Disbelief and rage flooded Kyle’s gaze. He had seen battles before, seen opportunists try to take advantage of chaos, but this? This was beyond anything he could tolerate.
A person, someone so insignificant that he hadn’t even noticed during the fight, had been hiding nearby this entire time, waiting like a vulture for the right moment to swoop in and claim what so many had nearly died to obtain.
"You dare... Kill him!" Kyle’s roar rang with raw killing intent, his voice reverberating with enough force to make the others freeze momentarily. His aura flared slightly, though faint and unstable, and murderous intent poured off him like a suffocating tide.
But it was useless—Kyle had no spare strength left to personally stop Max. His body refused to move, pain shooting through him as his injuries screamed in protest.
Arnold and his two companions, however, reacted immediately. Rage twisted their expressions as they finally grasped what was happening. "Max! Stop right there!" Arnold shouted, his voice cracking with fury.
The young man named Devon and the young man named Rick didn’t hesitate, charging forward with every ounce of speed they could muster. Their mana surged, tearing cracks into the ground beneath their feet as they shot toward Max like arrows loosed from a bow.
They were livid—beyond livid. So many had fought tooth and nail, paying in blood and lives, and yet now, an outsider from the mere Master Rank—a rank they wouldn’t even glance at under normal circumstances—was taking advantage of their sacrifice. If word of this spread, they would become the laughingstock of the entire secret domain. Their reputations as proud geniuses would be shattered.