Blade Over Magic

Deadly Assault VII

Dragons are immensely proud creatures. However, contrary to popular belief, that pride didn’t show up in the form of utterly despising any form of disrespect. In fact, it was the opposite.

Dragons view themselves as beings near, if not at the apex. So the notion that looking at them wrong, saying something insulting, or trying to fight them as a weaker or lesser being would make them react in anger and vaporize the wrongdoer was incorrect.

Rather, that immense pride came in the form of near absolute self confidence. If someone looked at them, they wouldn’t be surprised. After all, who wouldn’t want to take in their glorious visage? If someone insulted them, why should they care? Would someone get angry when they are insulted by an ant? If someone tried to fight them, well, they were welcome to try, but they would probably lose anyway. So what’s the point of getting angry?

That is how Dragons operated. Their pride wasn’t fickle or fragile, but rather was a form of such steadfast self-belief that it was honestly harder to get one truly angry than anything else.

But it wasn’t impossible.

While the methods to enrage a dragon were few and far between, they did exist. And one of these ways was to legitimately trample of what they held sacred.

Dragons held their superiority in high regard. So naturally, any creature that managed to obtain a similar or same level of superiority was a being worthy of respect. Where even in death, they would be respected.

But something that well and truly enraged dragons was anyone who dared to desecrate such a creature and their corpse. It was viewed as one of the highest levels of disrespect one could convey, finding the corpse of a creature that had reached an incredible level and disrespecting it.

And right now, Keir was feeling this way towards the titanic skeleton of the Behemoth he fought.

Through the ancestral knowledge he had, he knew that Behemoths were creatures on par with Dragons. They were just as mythical and conceptually relevant. And killing one was damn near impossible due to the sheer durability and obscene regeneration.

But as rare as it was, they did still die. And typically, at the point of their deaths, their constantly regenerating flesh would serve to nourish wherever they fell, allowing for life to flourish and thrive, acting almost like ancient guardians to nature even in death.

And yet... And yet!

To see such a magnificent creature reduced to this? A lifeless husk of its former self, used as nothing but a mindless weapon by beings who weren’t even remotely qualified to be near it, let alone control it.

Keir rarely reacted to things, even when Xander and co did strange things. But this?

This could not slide. He would not allow it.

The Behemoth swung one of its massive limbs at Mary, her massive visage barely avoiding the devastating strike that blew holes in space wherever they struck. It wasn’t just space, either, as the surrounding concepts were violently displaced from the sheer physicality alone.

In response, Mary spread her wings wide, and above her, an intricate green gate appeared, encompassing a great deal of the sky as it began to open, and the surrounding wind became increasingly turbulent.

The Behemoth saw this, the flames in its three eye sockets flaring as it prepared to jump and destroy the gate, yet before it could, Keir’s voice sounded, and yet it wasn’t ordinary in any way.

”Attract”

The word seemed to resonate with the world itself, and it seemed to go even deeper than authority as the Behemoth found itself go still, only to start getting pulled towards Keir uncontrollably.

But Keir wasn’t done.

”Repel”

The Behemoth’s skeleton suddenly halted as a force smashed into its front. The attractive force from behind and the repelling force from the front held it in place tightly, the sheer potency of both enough to grind things into nonexistence as Keir uttered one more word.

”Collapse”

The repelling and attribute forces seemed to become volatile as both fused, a union that could never stand due to their inherently opposing natures, causing the already brittle reality to collapse violently, a concentrated release of destructive energies and concepts devastating everything in the area.

What Keir had done was utilize another innate ability of dragons called ”Draconic Tongue”.

Unlike Authority which most beings needed to grow to a certain level to utilize, as beings innately connected to reality, Dragons could use this from the get go. Moreover, their version was typically far more potent, forcing the world around them to bend to their desires.

Under normal circumstances, Keir’s words shouldn’t have even worked. A Behemoth’s defenses were equally as conceptual as they were physical, and an attack on that scale would have just bounced off it. After all, Keir is still a very young dragon.

However, this Behemoth was merely a shadow of its former self. As such, the attack was... definitely effective.

By the time the collapse ended, the Behemoth was still standing, which was a testament to its durability even in death. However, the numerous cracks that ran along its massive bones showed just how devastating the attack truly was.

Moreover, it gave Mary time to finish her preparations.

The gate in the sky fully opened, and a stifling aura erupted from it as the surroundings were tinged green as the concept of wind and liberation seemed to envelop everything.

Especially the latter, considering what happened next.

The strict system the concepts in the surroundings followed gave way, and suddenly, there was chaos.

Concepts follow certain laws in order for Order to exist. Otherwise, they just exist in a chaotic mass where they do not adhere to anything and do whatever they want, which usually translates to expanding as much as they can.

And using Liberation, Mary had temporarily upended the laws, causing this exact chaos to happen.

Describing the scene... wasn’t even fully possible. Gravity and direction clashed, space and time shuddered and became unstable, other concepts like heat, vibrations, friction, energy, all trued to expand violently, and so on.

The result was complete and utter chaos where nothing made sense and everything made it worse.

And in the center of all of this was the Behemoth which had curled into itself, becoming a huge skeletal ball as it withstood the rampaging concepts, intending to wait out the attack, as something like this, spending the laws that governed concepts, wasn’t easy to maintain, even for an Elemental Spirit like Mary.

However, Keir did not just stand by and watch this happen as he, too, moved.

Flapping his wings and soaring high above the area of Mary’s attack, he spread his wings, exhaled through his nose, and began to inhale.

But it wasn’t any ordinary inhale, as not only did it go on for far longer than was physically possible, the surroundings warped unnaturally as ambient mana and concepts were sucked in and broken down, becoming obscenely potent and dense before transforming into Keir’s core concept. Invalidation.

Keir was, naturally, preparing to use his Dragon’s Breath, probably the most recognizable move the creatures possessed.

Sensing the incoming attack. The Behemoth suddenly looked up and let out a silent bellow, its hind legs digging into the earth as it prepared to retreat.

But Mary wasn’t going to let that happen.

While the localized concepts were still going haywire, the massive eagle had been flying in a circle at blinding speeds, generating a hurricane that would put anything on earth to shame. Then...

| Condense! |

The hurricane suddenly condensed into a large green ring that shot down and surrounded the Behemoth before promptly shrinking and binding it, holding it in place while actively grinding at it. After all, the winds hadn’t stopped spinning.

The Behemoth tried to rip the ring off, and it was succeeding, but it wasn’t fast enough as Keir finished his inhale, his aura causing the area to tremble as he stared at the struggled figure, tensed his body, and exhaled.

For a brief moment, darkness overtook the world.

But it wasn’t due to elemental darkness. No.

The sheer potency of Keir’s breath, filled with the concept of Invalidation, briefly caused every other concept to... cease.

After all, Invalidation simply boiled down to ensuring something did not happen or stopped happening, and for a brief moment, everything indeed just... stopped.

However, a Dragon’s breath wasn’t as simple as just packing its Core Concept and making it as potent as possible, though, that certainly was part of it.

But, the bigger part of it was this.

The ability to impose that Core Concept.

Usually if someone made use of a concept and affected their surroundings, if it was potent enough, the concept and any construct made from it would persist for a long time even after the caster stopped supplying it with energy, as shown by the Wyvern when it fought Xander.

But a True Dragon’s breath didn’t just persist. It legislated. When a Dragon exhaled, it wasn’t simply launching an attack. Rather, it was declaring a localized absolute law. If a Fire Dragon’s breathed upon a mountain, the stone didn’t just burn. Instead, it was stripped of the very concept of ”solidarity” or ”rigidness” and forced it to accept ”combustion” or ”heat” as its new, permanent state of being. This couldn’t be healed or reverted naturally because as far as reality was now concerned, that mountain had always been meant to burn.

And such an attack now barreled towards the Behemoth.