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Ruler Vol 3 Chapter 21

 

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Author: Anit666

Editor: Weasalopes

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【Shiggurath’s POV】

 

“You will pay for this!”

Bahamut shouted, took some distance from me and then proceeded to turn into his dragon form. The same dragon form where he has three heads like a hydra and his might rivals a Lord of Hell. But…..

How slow.

I dashed from my place. Before he could even sense my approach, his throat was already being crushed by my right hand. Of course, this wasn’t enough to kill him, but a battle is not just about killing enemies.

“Kugh!”

He groaned as his transformation was cancelled.

“How many times have I told you that your transformation speed is very slow, and so you shouldn’t transform in the middle of the battle. You are as unruly as ever.”

This haughty little brother of mine who is so full of himself, I guess it’s time to teach him a lesson just like the old days.

“Just what do you know about me?!”

He roared in anger as he pushed back my arm.

Hmm, it seems that his physical strength has increased by a tiny bit since the last time.

“Oh I know everything about you. I raised you after all.”

I informed him of this fact.

“Don’t fuck with me, you disgrace!”

This time, he flew upwards to take some distance from me and transform properly. I could have easily caught up with him, but I decided to let him transform into a full dragon and then teach him just where he stands.

I cannot, and I must not let him interfere with Sam’s and Jack’s plans. God knows just what will happen to him if that happens.

So I’ll teach him a lesson to make him withdraw willingly.

When he reached a sufficient height and was confident that I won’t be able to reach him before his transformation finished, he started it. Different from before when a large raging tornado had surrounded him, this time, eight large pillars made of lightning descended from the heavens and surrounded him.

Soon, lightning arcs began coming out from the pillars and formed an octagram around him. The lightning arcs continued growing in number until he was completely surrounded and I couldn’t make out his figure. He was making sure that I couldn’t interfere with his transformation. He had probably invented this technique to make up for his slow transformation speed.

A dragon in its humanoid form is an excellent magician, but just like all magicians, it suffers from the problem of being physically weak. Although they are still a lot stronger than human magicians, but they are much weaker than their dragon forms. So in a fight, a dragon prefers to be in its dragon form.

A moment later, a sky-shattering roar entered my ears. With his transformation complete, the lightning arcs disappeared, but the pillars remained.

The giant three-headed dragon took one of the pillars, which transformed into a spear and then threw it at me with all of his might.

Did he think such an attack would work on me?

I manipulated the space in front of me and opened a large portal, which swallowed the lightning spear. I opened another portal behind Bahamut, and the lightning spear that he had thrown was sent back to him.

He realised my trick and turned around hastily and caught the spear with his hands, but I broke the space surrounding the pillar which caused it to explode.

A large explosion shook the skies, and Bahamut was caught in it. This caused a chain reaction and the remaining seven lightning pillars surrounding him also burst, thus causing a very large explosion.

The explosion was so huge and the shockwaves caused by it so devastating that I had to form numerous spatial barriers over the battlefield to protect the retreating soldiers and the fighting Samuel, lest the battlefield would have been obliterated completely.

The sheer force of the blast and its blast radius were enough to wipe out the entire Capital City of the Holy Kingdom, Gundia. It’s commendable how Bahamut was capable of creating lightning spears that could cause such destruction.

Too bad they were turned against him, but I knew that this wasn’t enough to make him lose his will to fight.

The moment I thought that, the clouds of smoke created by the explosions which had engulfed him were swept away, and there he was. His body was burned here and there, and he was visibly injured, but if this much was enough to defeat him, then he wouldn’t have been named as my successor.

He howled in pain and wrath, and flew towards me with the intention to kill me.

The sheer force of the flap of his wings caused thunderclaps and formed small hurricanes. The only reason they hadn’t rent the ground below was because I was protecting them by manipulating the space above them.

I formed a permanent barrier above the battlefield to protect them from the aftermath of our battle, and got ready to receive Bahamut.

“Shiggguuuuuraaaatttthhhh!”

He shouted my name in rage. His eyes clearly showed his intention to kill me.

And so, I decided to get into my true form as well.

The space around me slightly trembled, and time slowed down to a crawl. The bottomless reserves of power inside me resonated with my wishes, and mana poured out from my entire body. My surroundings were filled with red light, thus blocking my own vision as well.

The next moment, I had returned to my dragon form.

As a dragon, I was smaller than Bahamut, and fortunately, I had only one head. The colour of my scales was white.

Finally returning to my dragon form, I felt a sense of liberation after flying with my own wings. Meanwhile, Bahamut had sensed my transformation and was now speeding up towards me.

He opened his jaws, and mana started collecting there. All of his jaws were going to fire the Dragon’s Breath at me. A dragon’s breath is his signature and one of the most powerful moves, so Bahamut using it meant that he had decided to end this once and for all.

However, that rule doesn’t apply to the First Dragon.

“Swath of the Death God.”

I chanted the name of one of my most powerful destructive spells. I remember that the last time I used this magic spell, I blasted a hole through a planet. What I don’t remember is why I named this as ‘Swath’.

A large multi-coloured magic areia appeared before me, and it started to collect the mana from both my body and the surroundings.

Before Bahamut could understand just what was happening and dodge the incoming attack, my magic spell was completed and I fired it at him.

A large rainbow coloured death ray assaulted him. He hurriedly fired his Dragon Breaths: the Breath of Destruction. A breath that could annihilate anything and everything in its path versus my death ray whose sole purpose was obliteration. The Breaths of Bahamut struggled for a bit against my Swath of the Death God, but they were easily pushed back. The death ray hit and covered and passed through Bahamut’s entire body.

He belatedly realised just what was happening, but his escape routes had already been cut off by that time.

The space around the ray trembled due to its sheer might. A moment later, the ray vanished. The black clouds had been parted revealing a clear blue sky, and the next moment torrent of strong winds assaulted me.

And in front of me was Bahamut. His body had almost been blasted to smithereens. He was missing two of his heads along with the right part of his body. The remaining part didn’t really look good either.

But he was still alive.

“Haaah… haaah..”

He was panting heavily after receiving such an attack and almost dying.

“Ready to give up now?”

I asked.

“Haaah…., I’ll admit this. You are strong, very strong. You haven’t changed at all.”

Mana started overflowing from his body.

“But I have changed! I’m stronger now! Because I am the Dragon Emperor Bahamut!”

The muscles and skin from where his body had been severed started squirming, and from there grew a grotesque mass of meat.

“What?!”

His entire body was being regenerated!

“Just what have you done to your body?!”

This shouldn’t have been possible. Ancient dragons like us can recover from wounds like these, but the recovery is never so fast. It’s as if-

“Hah.” He snorted. “A small price to pay to have the power to defeat you.”

“You fucking idiot! Why would you go so far just to defeat me?!”

“Just to defeat you?! You’d never understand, Shiggurath!”

He shouted in rage and flew towards me once again, though this time his speed was much higher.

“Ugh!”

I was a bit weaker than him in close combats, so I tried to fly back to take some distance.

“Where are you going huh?!”

He shouted mockingly as his speed increased even further. He wasn’t supposed to be this fast! I used magic to augment my physical capabilities and flew even further, while also creating a barrage of spells to slow Bahamut and fire another Swath of the Death God at him.

Several magic areias appeared around Bahamut, and all of them exploded at once, covering Bahamut in one large explosion.

But as I prepared to use the Swath of the Death God once again, I received a signal. A signal from the small spell I had cast on Sam. The spell had been triggered, which meant-

I looked over to where Sam was supposed to be fighting Regina. And there he was: defeated, and on the verge of death.

“SAM!”

My body moved before I could even think and I was flying towards him.

“Not yet!”

But Bahamut came out from that torrent of explosions and stood in my path.

“Get out of my way BAHAMUT!”

I screamed as attacked him. I bit his middle neck using my jaw, but his other two jaws attacked my neck. Using my augmented strength, I ripped apart his throat and threw it, and proceeded to do the same with the other two as well.

“Aaaagh!”

He cried in agony but didn’t let go of my neck. In fact, he twisted his body and somersaulted to come behind me, never letting go of my throat in the process. His own two throats had been twisted in the opposite direction, but they were quickly healed. His head that I had bitten off had also regenerated.

“You…!”

I supplied mana to the scales on my back. They rapidly grew and stabbed into Bahamut’s body. He squirmed in pain, but his hold on me didn’t loosen. Just then-

A wind of death blew, and a shiver ran down my spine. The same probably happened to Bahamut as well as his jaws suddenly slackened and let go of me.

“W-What is this…?”

“You also sensed that?”

Something was coming on this battlefield. Something which was worse than death had already descended on this battlefield.

Our eyes flew over to the place where this aura of death had originated, and there he was: perfectly fine and standing on his own two legs, Samuel Hayden.

But the overwhelming aura exuding from him belonged to an absolute sovereign before which all would bow.

It was the aura of a-

“Hell Guard……..”

I murmured the name of the only being that shall never be named, and a vicious feeling assaulted my mind: fear.

I was one of those very few unlucky ones who had been near a Hell Guard and survived. Bahamut had not been created back then, so I was the only one who had witnessed it. I had witnessed that personification of death as it had passed judgement on the dwellers of the dark realm.

It had been a long time ago so I don’t really remember much of it, but one thing still remained in my memories: the absolute terror that had been deeply etched in my heart still lived to this day. I could not even move or speak.

 

An Adjudicator and a Hell Guard. Just what are you, Samuel Hayden?

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