Chapter 177: Return to Shadow
The battlefield stretched behind Mordred like a titanic sea of flames, an apocalyptic symphony of muffled explosions and unleashed magic. The heavens themselves seemed to weep tears of fire, streaked with magical lightning that tore through the nascent darkness. The air was saturated with energy so dense it crackled against his skin, each breath burning his lungs with the acrid bite of gunpowder and blood.
The pain in his side still tormented him, throbbing like an ember that refused to die, but he could distinctly feel the new powers acquired from Patriarch Ignivara miraculously accelerating his regeneration. This wasn’t simply healing - it was transformation. Each beat of his heart diffused renewed power through his aching muscles, a supernatural vigor that gradually strengthened his wounded body, repairing not only flesh but fortifying his very essence.
- "The patriarch’s power..." he thought with dark satisfaction. "I feel his knowledge intertwining with my essence, his combat techniques inscribing themselves into my muscle memory. Every dragon I’ve killed has made me stronger, but Ignivara... he was a treasure of condensed power."
Mordred propelled himself into the air with controlled violence, deploying his mana wings to their maximum span. The translucent membranes pulsed with pure energy, each beat creating visible ripples in the magic-charged air. He now flew at a speed that defied ordinary physical laws, become a black comet cutting through the blazing horizon.
Behind him, he already perceived the first signs of reorganization. Syléane Ignivara - that terrifying woman he had been wise to avoid - would soon gather her scattered forces. When she had done so, when her rage had taken form in coherent strategy, it would be too late for anyone still on her territory. All of China risked burning under her fury.
He had to leave this continent. Immediately.
Crossing the firmament blazing with blood red and incandescent orange, Mordred quickly breached the multiple Chinese defense lines in complete chaos. The soldiers on the ground were merely tiny silhouettes scurrying in all directions, invisible to his piercing eyes as he had become a simple shadow streaking among the clouds of black smoke and toxic vapors. Their panicked cries and contradictory orders were lost in the ambient din, creating a pathetic cacophony that contrasted with the deadly silence of his flight.
The cities he flew over bore the stigmata of war: collapsed roofs, streets gutted by destructive spells, ancestral gardens transformed into smoking craters. The millennial beauty of this land was dying under the blows of this interdimensional war, and Mordred couldn’t help but feel a pang of melancholy. So much culture, so much history, reduced to ashes by the dragons’ excessive ambition.
In less than an hour of intensive flight, he found the exact point where he had initially arrived. The dimensional portal still pulsed, faithful sentinel in the middle of a plain that had once been verdant but was now charred and silent. The magical structure itself was a marvel of arcane engineering: a ring of worked metal fifteen meters in diameter, engraved with draconic runes that illuminated in hypnotic sequences, creating a vortex of pure energy at the center.
The portal was guarded by a unit of elite humanoid dragons, their scaled armor glinting under the magical glow of the vortex. Mordred halted discreetly several hundred meters away, melding into the shadow of a carbonized rock, taking all the time necessary to precisely assess the forces present. His sharpened senses analyzed every detail: postures, equipment, movement patterns, potential weak points.