Chapter 328: Waste no Time!

Queen Sharika—or rather, the one who was using her body—did as she promised.

Without missing a beat, she extended her hand forward, as if catching something out of mid-air. The figure at the end of her sight was none other than Divron.

Thump!

The next moment, the old dragon suddenly felt his body weaken, as if struck by a powerful curse, or as if his Dragon Heart had been torn straight out of his chest.

His vision flickered, but he was completely confused. He had no idea why he’d suddenly lost power.

The only explanation he could come up with was the woman staring at him from below, her hand now clutched tight, a thin smile across her lips.

[When this is all over, call for me, new master of my vessel. Whisper my name to the wind, to the powerful sun, and I shall respond.]

The woman spoke in a gentle tone, as if there were no danger left at all.

[I, and the Powerful One, Sekhmet.]

Right as she spoke her name, Queen Sharika suddenly fell backward, losing consciousness. Fortunately, Beatrix was right behind her, catching her in an embrace, ensuring she wasn’t hurt by the fall.

Axel sighed in relief.

But of course, he hadn’t forgotten that they still had business to attend to.

Divron still couldn’t believe his current state—as though he were a water bucket with a fist-sized hole punched clean through it, his strength draining out with nothing to stop it.

Using everything at his disposal, he tried to figure out what had been done to him, or at least slow the drain, if not stop it outright. But he came up empty.

He was confused, angry, and scared, all at once.

After all, he hadn’t even caught the name of the one who’d done this to him. Only Axel had heard that last bit, whispered as gently as a kiss goodbye.

"Fafnir! Bellachrona!"

Without a hint of hesitation, Axel called forth the next strongest after Fenrir and himself.

With Divron’s strength continuing to fall, he was now reduced to roughly the same level as the two captured dragons. The great dragon who’d once boasted of his strength, of being the Avatar of Lightning, now found himself at a steep disadvantage!

"We’ll finish this in one go!" Axel didn’t let him catch a breath either.

Fenrir opened a portal. Axel jumped through it and swung his shield, bashing it against the dragon’s face. Behind him, Fenrir followed through the rift, stabbing Gram into its eye socket.

Blood spurted like a fountain as a pained wail echoed out, almost enough to earn pity from anyone who heard it.

But the assailants didn’t stop there.

Bellachrona, in her dragon form, quickly stopped Divron’s time.

Against someone of roughly the same power level, however, she wouldn’t be able to hold him for long.

But the brief opening was enough for her partner, Fafnir, to make his move. He opened his maw wide and let out a powerful breath—closer to a concentrated laser blast than to flames.

A beam of pure, focused energy.

Divron, temporally locked, couldn’t dodge even if he wanted to. At the last moment, he managed to cloak himself in powerful arcs of lightning, triggering a violent explosion as the two forces collided.

The blast offset some of the damage, but as expected of the dragon who’d once razed an entire dwarven capital, his attacks were no joke.

A portion of Divron’s back was shaved off completely. He wasn’t sure anymore whether to cry over the wound in his eye or the one on his back.

But that wasn’t all, either.

[T-This is...?!]

Divron gasped, watching the wound Fafnir had inflicted begin to fester, oozing thick, gooey green pus. The surrounding skin, scales, and flesh turned mottled purple and green, pain assaulting his senses as though his nerves were being pulled out one by one.

At that point, Divron wanted only one thing.

To run away and escape with his life intact.

But now that he was weakened, a new problem reared its head. Fafnir’s curse of greed had started taking hold of him!

The greed to bring back two of his kin and bask in praise for it.

The greed to take everything in Axevaria for himself.

And the greed for that strange tree he could see in the background, large and powerful enough to shield the entire kingdom from stray attacks by literal god-level beings.

The sapling of the World Tree.

With the curse of greed setting his desires loose, the idea of running away slipped further and further out of reach—like someone caught in a bog, where every struggle only dragged them deeper, until they were swallowed whole.

And of course, even if he did try to escape, Fenrir would make sure he couldn’t.

Even traveling at light speed, as long as his direction remained linear, Fenrir could capture him no matter how far he went.

"HAAAAP!"

Without giving him time to think, Fenrir moved.

She swung Gram in a vertical strike, aiming to take the dragon’s head clean off.

But at the last moment, Divron’s body burst with sparks, sending her reeling from the shock.

[You maggots...!] He growled, his voice like the rumble of thunder itself. [You think you can kill me, Divron, the Avatar of Lightning?! Not in a million years...!]

The sparks around his body grew brighter, crackled louder, growing more menacing by the second. Seeing this, Axel quickly realized what Divron was planning.

"Shit! He’s trying to self-destruct!"

Axel never thought he’d see someone actually try to self-destruct and drag everyone else down with them.

At most, he could imagine terrorists strapping bombs to themselves, or the weird scouters and exploding planets from a certain anime about dragon balls. But faced with the real thing, he couldn’t help but shudder.

The energy packed into Divron’s body, if detonated, would probably be enough to evaporate half the planet. And that was bad.

Of course, Axel wouldn’t allow it!

"Fenrir, Bella!" He called, signaling the two.

And without him needing to say what to do, they moved perfectly to his tune.

Bellachrona rushed to Axel’s side, letting him pour his mana into her. The dragon of time used it immediately to bind Divron once more—this time, for much longer.

Next, Fenrir moved.

Similar to Bella, but different—she placed a hand on Axel’s shoulder, drawing on his mana for herself.

Then, without delay, she tore open a large rift directly beneath Divron’s body. A rift large enough to swallow not just the dragon’s massive frame, but the energy roiling around it.

"GRAAAH!"

As a finishing touch, Fafnir floated above Divron and fired another powerful breath down at him. This time, Bella didn’t release the time-stop until the figure had fully vanished into the rift.

"Hiss...!"

Fenrir released the rift and sealed it shut, her nose bleeding freely from the strain.

A few beats passed in silence.

Then, suddenly—

A second sun appeared in the sky.