CH 19 - Finale of the Ruins

Cass

Draxon. A name combining dragon, the family that kobolds belong to, and demon, not to be confused with demonkin. They hail from the same ancestry, but demonkin refers to a sentient race, while demons are monsters, meaning the only emotions they can feel is rage, pride, and bloodlust. This is the main defining feature of monsters. Their IQs and appearance matter little. Dragons, for instance, can take humanoid forms and are highly intelligent, but are destructive by nature. They are incapable of mercy or compassion.

Anytime a monster with demon blood appears, it is usually ranked as an A-rank off the rip. A draxon is likely to be greater than that. I grip the hilt of my sword tightly feeling both fear and excitement. Fear because this is sure to be dangerous, more so than anything I've ever done before. Excitement because this is my chance.

I'll impress Dainn by killing this draxon all by myself! I rush in, flanking the monster in the blink of an eye, slashing at its achilles tendon.

Sparks fly, and my blade barely leaves a scratch. I look up, and it is scowling at me. "Pathetic." Its voice paralyzes me, making my limbs feel like they are buried in sand.

It opens its mouth, black flames beginning to crackle in its teeth. I move to jump out of the way, but my body refuses to move. It blasts out a torrent of flames so fast that I don't have time to even raise my blade. I'm dead.

I'm not? I feel the shockwave of the blast as the ground where I once stood is blown to smithereens, but I am not there.

"Wake up, master! It's not over yet. You have my magic to back you up!"

Dainn. He had used magic to move me out of the way. I take a breath and calm myself, though it's hard. Not because I'm afraid, but because I'm blushing after he calls me master. "You are right. I was panicking. Thanks."

I take my stance again, and this time I run in, waiting for it to attack. It raises its hand and fires a ball of dark fire at me. As soon as it does, I leap into the air, going for the neck. It casts another fireball at me with insane speed. I am expecting it, flicking my wrist to bring my blade up and deflect the spell away. I am unable to block the third spell that came right after.

I am blasted in the chest, fire engulfing me and sending me flying ten, twenty thirty yards, straight out of the courtyard and over the mountainside. The pain is immense, as if I can feel my very blood boiling.

There is darkness, then suddenly I am right next to Dainn, who holds a hand up and cascades me in healing light. Arrows fly at the draxon as it matches towards us, and I see what Dainn meant about non magic ranged attacks being useless. There is an aura of heat around the monster, turning the puny arrows to ash before they can ever reach him. Not that the arrows would have done much to any target other than his mouth and eyes.

"We need to coordinate," Dainn says, a clear edge of annoyance in his voice. "It is too strong to face alone."

He's right, I know, but I am disappointed I won't get the glory and his affection. "Okay, yeah. I'm sorry for being so reckless. So, any ideas?"

He nods. "I will speed boost you. While he rushes me, aim for the open scar wound."

"What? I think you left a few steps out."

He slashes with his sword, sending a blade of electrified, compacted air flying towards the draxon's scarred chest. He hits a wound located right where his heart should be at a perpendicular angle to the scar, cracking scales and gaping a small hole at the intersection, enough for the top of my blade. Blood begins pouring out rapidly, and fire begins trying to cauterize the wound, to weld the hole shut. But I saw small sparks surrounding it.

It is a tactic Dainn devised, finding that a constant source of damage can easily counteract most methods of healing. Purple magic was typically his go to.

He puts a hand on my shoulder even as the draxon roars, flapping its wings and unleashing a torrent of air so great it is hard to believe it isn't magic.

I feel electricity flow throw me, jolting me down to the nerves running through my entire body. It isn't unpainful. Everything becomes slower, and it takes me a moment to adjust. I take a step, nearly tripping by how fast my body did as I asked. A second step and it felt like I was walking on a floating log. The third step and I am used to it.

I perform a running long jump, closing thirty feet in an instant and aiming the tip of my sword for that one gaping wound. I put all my strength into one final blow.

My eyes go wide, the sword stopping less than an inch from its heart. It has clenched its pectoral, stopping my steel short and preventing me from removing it. So I push, putting all my power into finishing it.

It reaches for me slowly, but still, I feel its claws closing around my throat.

I am confused by the series of events that happens next. First, blood erupts from the wound, spraying me as, secondly, my blade slides in with ease. It is like his heart explodes just before I am able to destroy it.

It dies in a fiery explosion, so I am blasted away one last time, my speed returning to normal as I fly back. Dainn catches me, stronger than he looks. He is healing me immediately, and I feel my energy crashing as adrenaline fades. The draxon erupts in self destructive flames, the last of its life burning away quite literally.

"No! I was to be the next Demon King! Bested by children? Two years of work ended in less than an hour!"

The flames die away, revealing an ashen form. He blows away on the wind as he complains and whines, and I lean my head into Dainn's arm, exhausted. He is sweating, too, and I know he is at his limit, despite sticking mostly to support.

"We did it," he says, breathing kind of heavy. He puts me down, then looks down, up to my eyes, then away from me altogether. "Hey, uh, Cass?"

He is blushing, and I realize this is it! He is hot and bothered after such an amazing display of teamwork! I place my hands behind my back, lean forwards, puffing out my chest. Finally. I bat my eyes, answering, "Yes, Dainn? What is it?"

He glances from the side of his eyes, winces, and then physically covers them with his hands. "You might want to change. Your clothes got… burned."

I look down, seeing way too much skin for two people that haven't even held hands. I quickly cover myself, and my feelings turn to rage.

"How could you catch me when I'm like this! What? Trying to cop a feel?"

He turns and walks away, rather quickly, red as a tomato in the face.

Dainn

I had to use Heart Crush. The draxon was gathering mana, it was tracking Cass I even with her enhanced speed. It was planning to detonate a spell that would have turned the Ruins into a smoking crater.

I had entertained Cass' duel long enough, and so when I saw the massive amount of mana gathering, I had reached out and crushed his heart. I had no doubt Emilia, maybe even Eifa had recognized it. Cass, on the other hand, knew nothing about Black magic, and I want to keep it that way.

So now, as we sit around a campfire before the scales, I was telling a lie to Cass, explaining away what she saw. "Using so much physical strength must have been too much for its heart. Add to that its clear preparation of a powerful spell, it's safe to say it overexerted itself, and it was its downfall." She doesn't seem convinced.

"It doesn't matter!" Emilia exclaims as she throws some veggies into our pot of drake meat stew. "We won! We will officially be B-rank adventurers! Just like Eifa!"

I smile. It is true. Though, I wonder if Eifa plans to wait to reveal that this has also been a test for her. A final test.

She doesn't say anything. I guess she wants to make her time last just a few days more.

"Okay, sure. I just feel robbed of the win, the true win, you know?" She pouts, but then pulls out the spoils we got from the draxon and drake. "At least we struck big bank on this job!" The draxon's ruby, the ruby's bottom stretching and splitting, turning black as it forms the horns. It is humming with Red magic, and some Silver, but other than that, it is nothing more than a fancy rock. It will probably sell for a good penny, or might even be forged into a sword hilt… an interesting idea.

The drake scales are certainly worth some gold, though we were only able to pry out ten smaller ones and one giant one. Then there is the mound of treasure and coin on the scale. I had done a preliminary count using a sorting system I devised using the void of Silver magic, coming out to around fifty thousand gold after about an hour of counting.

If you're wondering about the conversion rate, I did the math based on purchasing goods in this world and comparing them to the prices I remembered, and discerned that one gold coin is worth about thirty five hundred dollars. So fifty thousand equates to about one hundred and seventy five million dollars. Split four ways, minus the Guild's forty-five percent treasure fees (a tax on recovered treasures that if goes unreported a sort of IRS agency comes after you), that came out to just north of twenty-four million per party member.

That fee should tell you, though, that prices in this world were inflated in some major places. For instance, gear for adventurers. With the amount we each get, we could get new weapons, maybe some armor, but nothing else, really. The rest would need to go to supplies and such.

I groan as I get up for dinner, my body exhausted. I ended up using quite a bit of mana today. Most of it came from the travel time, but the thing that drained me was the Heart Crush. I have already learned that the stronger the creature, the more it took to pull off my instakill spell. I probably wouldn't have been able to kill the dragon if it survived Emilia's assault.

I decide to go to sleep, passing on dinner until morning. I need rest.

***

My dreams are nightmares. There have been quite a lot recently. It's why I needed to release my pent up urges before we departed.

It's been the same every time. I've been dreaming of my parents. My real… no. My original parents. I dream of memories of my mother, who constantly stayed home in our trailer, getting drunk and high. I was there, too, watching and learning and hating.

I was there on the couch when she got fucked by men who paid her pennies on the dollar for her body. I was there when they hit her and beat her, all while she asked for more. I had feelings develop because of this, a rage I wanted to enact upon these strangers, but they were too big, or rather, I was too small.

So instead I turned my rage and frustration on our family dog, a stray my mother let me keep because she knew I was lonely.

I had beat that dog so brutally, so constantly, that it was never not limping. It shied away from everyone. I hadn't hated her, but after I went too far and accidentally killed her, I hated myself. A hate I still hold on to, to some degree. I can never fully let it go.

My mother had died slowly and painfully of AIDS, and I found that when she was gone, I felt nothing. No pain, no loss, no grief. I felt no anger or joy or relief. I just felt… broken.

I spent the rest of my youth in the foster care system, since my father couldn't be contacted, and my mother's boyfriend at the time was discovered to be a registered sex offender. After a while, my dreams turned to memories of my father.

My father… I knew so little of him. I knew I had been born during a hurricane, and so my father never made it to the hospital. Never made it to me. But I was sure he hadn't died. No, a part of me always knew he was alive.

Eventually the day came, as I was a young adult, when a man approached me at my job. I think it was a restaurant, maybe the department store, but it didn't matter. The man was my father.

I knew just from looking at him, since I was basically his clone. He was clean shaven and stood tall.

I let him say his peace, how he had been in a bad place when I was born, and in his madness he had fled the country. He had been living in Mexico for over two decades, and had come to see me after moving home.

I had attacked my father. It surprised even me. The rage, the hatred that had welled up inside. If I hadn't been pulled off, I would have killed him.

He didn't press charges, but I wonder what would have happened if he did. Would he have still tried to reconnect? Would that have saved me?

The nightmares weren't these memories, but rather how they differed. I watch my mother's eyes turn blue, glowing in the darkness as her veins follow suit and her skin begins turning gaunt and pallid. I watch my father be beaten bloody beneath my fists. I watch his life drain from his eyes as I hungrily begin to feast upon him, enacting cannibalism. It is a darkness I thought hadn't reached me, and yet, I feel a sense of homecoming as it happens.

I can't control myself, nor do I wish to. It all feels so right, even though I know it's wrong.

My mother is what wakes me, placing a hand on my shoulder and interrupting my dinner. I look at her, and she has tears on her glowing eyes. "Dainn… help me…"

I wake up drenched in my sweat, tears flowing down my face, sword in hand. I wake up standing over a sleeping Emilia.