Chapter 681: Despairing Defeat

The Dragon King couldn’t help but feel arrogant.

Three hundred years of experience. Thousands of matches. Grandmasters from a dozen realms who had walked away humbled.

And now a human boy, barely more than a child, who had probably never even seen a Dragon’s Mountain board before tonight.

Vorathor couldn’t help but glance at the women gathered around the room.

His wife, who hadn’t looked at him with warmth in decades. His daughter, who was currently glaring at him like he was an inconvenience she had to tolerate. The Battle Angel daughters, who treated him like furniture.

Even the human girl who hadn’t spared him a single glance.

But they were all watching now and soon they would see exactly who was worthy of their attention.

’I’ll play with him a little.’ Vorathar thought, a cruel smile tugging at the corner of his lips. ’Give him just enough hope to think he has a chance. And then—’

He would crush him thoroughly! Until every woman in this room understood that the dragon king was not someone to be ignored.

—

But one hour later, that did not happen.

Instead, Vorathar looked like a man who had aged a thousand years.

He lay slumped against his chair like a man who had lost everything—his kingdom, his fortune, his very reason for existing.

His magnificent mane of dark hair hung limp and sweaty around a face that had aged a thousand years. His crimson eyes, once pools of molten power, had sunk into hollow pits of despair.

And his mouth hung open, working soundlessly, like a fish gasping on a dock.

’Impossible...Impossible...Impossible.’

The words looped through his skull on an endless, agonizing cycle.

’How? How is this possible? How can this brat be so powerful?!’

Because Mika had not merely beaten him. Mika had annihilated him!

The game had started well enough. Mika had made competent opening moves—nothing flashy, nothing unexpected.

Vorathar had nodded approvingly, thinking that the boy had at least some basic understanding of strategy. Raised by the Battle Angels, after all. He would have picked up a few things.

Then the smile had begun to fade.

Move by move, Mika had shifted from competent to dangerous.

His archers advanced in formations Vorathar had never seen. His sorcerers cast spells that countered everything Vorathar tried.

When Vorathar pushed forward, Mika’s forces melted away, only to reappear at his flanks.

When Vorathar retreated, Mika’s armies were already there, waiting.

And then came the moves that Vorathar couldn’t even recognize.

"What—what was that?" Vorathar had sputtered, watching Mika’s shadow-knight phase through three of his fortifications and capture his crown-mage in a single turn.

"Shadow-Walker’s Gambit." Mika had said casually. "Page four hundred and twelve of the Ancient Codex of Dragon’s Mountain. You’re familiar with it, I assume?"

Vorathar had never heard of it. He had pulled up the reference mid-game, certain Mika was cheating—

And there it was. Page four hundred and twelve. A move that required such precise positioning that it was considered more theoretical than practical.

Mika had executed it perfectly.

And it hadn’t stopped there. Spell combinations that shouldn’t have worked together somehow synergized in Mika’s hands.

Pieces that Vorathar had considered weak became devastating. And the part that genuinely made Vorathar want to scream was that Mika occasionally gave him hope.

A small opening would appear in Mika’s defenses. A glimmer of possibility. Vorathar would push forward, certain he was about to turn the tide—

And then Mika would chuckle softly and crush that hope with merciless momentum.

By the halfway point, Vorathar had lost his crown, his territory, and most of his mages.

By the three-quarter mark, Mika had somehow converted several of Vorathar’s own soldiers to his side, citing an ancient rule about "captured loyalty" that Vorathar had to look up—and yes, it was real, yes, it was legal, and yes, Mika had used it to perfectly devastating effect.

Now, at the end, Vorathar’s side of the board was a graveyard.

A few pathetic soldiers huddled in the corner, surrounded on all sides. Mika’s army, by contrast, looked like a force that could conquer the world.

The pieces radiated an aura as Dragon’s Mountain boards were enchanted to reflect the strength of each player’s position—and right now, Mika’s side was blazing so brightly that Vorathar had to squint.

But the killing blow. The part that truly drove a stake through the dragon king’s heart was—

"I did it! Mika, I did it!"

The voice was not Mika’s.

Vorathar’s head snapped up and his blood ran cold.

Sitting across from him, in the chair where Mika had been was Nuri!

His own daughter who was currently bouncing in her seat with the bubbly enthusiasm of someone who had just won a carnival game.

"I actually beat my loser father!" Nuri cheered, her wings fluttering with excitement. "I can’t believe it was so easy! Everyone always said Dragon’s Mountain was supposed to be super complicated and difficult, but it was actually really simple! Even I could do it!"

Vorthar’s face went the color of old ash. His hair, if possible, grew greyer.

Because what had happened was this: about eighty percent of the way through the match, Nuri had declared that she wanted to play too.

Mika, with infinite patience, had simply stood up, guided Nuri into his seat, and walked back to the sofa, where he had proceeded to have an intimate, laughing conversation with Vorathar’s wife while occasionally tossing out instructions to Nuri without even looking at the board.

"Move the siege-dragon to the upper board, Nuri. Yes, right there. Now have the specter-mage cast binding on his last fortress."

And Nuri who had never played Dragon’s Mountain before had executed every move Mika suggested.

And those moves, somehow, had been even more devastating than the ones Mika had made himself.

He wasn’t even paying attention. He was talking to Korra. Making her laugh. Making her blush—Vorathar had seen it, seen the way his wife’s cheeks colored when Mika leaned close to whisper something in her ear.

And all the while, he was dismantling Vorathar’s entire existence through his daughter’s hands.

"I—you—this is—" Vorathar couldn’t form words.

The three Battle Angel daughters were not being subtle about their amusement.

"Well." Charlotte said, leaning back with a smirk. "That’s what happens when you challenge Mika to a game. How foolish do you have to be?"

"His ego was his downfall." Anya added, her smile serene but her eyes glittering with cold satisfaction. "A classic tragedy."

Astrid was practically preening.

"My little brother has played against all five of our mothers at the same time when he was literally a child and he won." She looked at Vorathar with something approaching pity. "Did he really think he had a chance?"

Nuri hopped off the chair and bounded over to her mother.

"See, Mama? See? This is why I told you Mika is smart!"

She threw her arms around Korra’s waist. "If I marry Mika, he’ll definitely bring our clan to the next level!"

Two pairs of eyes—Charlotte’s and Anya’s snapped toward her with the cold precision of hunting hawks.

Nuri squeaked, ducked behind her mother, and stuck out her tongue.

—

Korra, meanwhile, had been staring at the scene in a state of genuine shock.

She’d believed the sisters when they’d told her Mika would handle it. She’d nodded along, smiled, and played along.

But she hadn’t truly believed. Instead she’d been ready to throw herself onto the board and shriek about an accident to save Mika’s dignity when her husband crushed him.

But that had not been necessary.

Her husband had been reduced to a twitching, hollow shell by a human boy who looked like he’d just finished a pleasant afternoon stroll.

Korra turned to Mika, who was playing with a strand of her hair with careless familiarity.

"Who...are you, Mika?" She whispered. "Just who exactly are you? What don’t I know about you?"

Because the truth was, she had never seen this side of him. In all their time together, Mika had never shown her his power.

Not his intelligence. Not his capabilities. He had never used any of the things that other men might use to impress her.

He had simply...charmed her.

Made her laugh. Made her smile. Made her feel genuinely, truly loved.

And that had been more than enough to win her heart.

This was the first time she had glimpsed his true nature and it was terrifying.

Mika leaned closer, his lips brushing her ear.

"I never hid anything from you, Korra."

"You absolutely did!" She hissed back, keeping her voice low so the others wouldn’t hear. "You never showed me any of this."

"Didn’t I?" His voice was a warm murmur. "I use one hundred percent of my mind to unlock every single one of your pleasure points. The fact that I can make you moan, tremble, whimper, gush and squirt within seconds—do you think that’s just luck? Do you think anyone else could do what I do to you?"

Korra’s face went scarlet.

"That’s me using my brain at maximum capacity." Mika continued. "Every touch. Every kiss. Every time I find a spot on your body you didn’t even know existed. That’s all me. That’s all my intelligence, focused entirely on you."

Korra wanted to pinch him. She wanted to kiss him. She wanted to do both at the same time.

He was being insufferably cheeky—and he was also completely right. The way Mika played her body was something she had never experienced before.

He knew her inside and out, every nerve, every sensitive spot, every secret place that made her fall apart.

So she pinched him under the cushion on his thigh.

Mika’s response was immediate: he pinched her ass in return.

"Mmm—!" Korra jolted but managed to keep her face composed. Barely.

’This boy. This impossible, infuriating, magnificent boy.’

But beneath her fluster, she felt something else. Pride. Her man—yes, her man, even if she couldn’t say it aloud was someone this powerful.

This brilliant. This utterly unstoppable. This—

"CHILDISH!"