Chapter 93: Nothing Matters More Than Your Death
The world had become a heartbeat.No more thoughts. No more fear. Just... the dull thrum of a frenzied heart, the constant hum of an overloaded mana core spinning in Isaac’s chest like a turbine hungry for war.His blood boiled beneath his skin, a searing contrast to the frozen air, which crystallized every breath into fleeting clouds of mist.
The vast snow-covered plain stretched endlessly before him, a white ocean laced with blue veins where ancient ice emerged. Frost-born stalagmites rose from the ground like forgotten lances of a defeated army, and the sky if one could call the heavy gray vault above their heads that seemed frozen in eternal winter.
And in the very next instant, he launched.
Explosion.
His mana wings beat with such force that a shock cone detonated beneath his feet, sending a plume of powdery snow rocketing skyward like a white comet on the horizon. The air itself screamed under the violence of his takeoff. Isaac hadn’t even drawn his blade in preparation he was already in flight, katana torn from its sheath in a lightning arc, the steel singing with thirst for blood while the scabbard still vibrated from the absence of the blade.
His draconic body, now cloaked in black scales with shimmering blue highlights, sang with the wind. Each plate slid seamlessly across the next with a muffled rasp like the rustle of a raven’s wings. Filaments of mana hissed from between his scales, like steam rising from burning flesh plunged into ice. His face was calm, but his molten-orange pupils betrayed the storm raging inside a wildfire barely held back by the dam of his focus.
The dragon ahead turned slowly.
A suspended moment in which time itself seemed to hold its breath.
He, too, had felt the mana wave, that distortion in the fabric of reality itself. He, too, understood this was no longer the same opponent.The being rushing toward him was no longer the hesitant fighter from earlier — it was a force of nature unleashed.
But he didn’t move. He waited.Analysis before action. The cold calculation of a creature that had lived for millennia.Still, he drew his black blade and prepared for Isaac.
Isaac tore through the distance.