Starting out as a Dragon Slave

The heavy silence that followed Lazarus’s words seemed to warp the air itself, stretching it like a thread ready to snap. Belgaroth slowly rose from his nonchalant position on the boss’s corpse, a predatory smile spreading across his lips. His glowing red eyes narrowed slightly, and a guttural laugh escaped his throat.

- "I see..." he murmured in a rumbling voice that resonated through the hall like rolling thunder. "So this is the human warrior I absolutely must kill? I must say... I’m pleasantly surprised and half disappointed by your weakness."

Lazare did not respond immediately, his sharp eyes fixed on the red dragon with icy intensity. A tense silence settled, each side measuring the other, calculating weaknesses, analyzing postures. Then, without a word, Lazare slightly spread his legs, one foot sliding backward, his hands rising slowly into a fluid, perfectly balanced position. Isaac noticed it immediately: he wasn’t taking a defensive stance, but an attacking posture, sharp, honed like a blade.

- "Ah... I see we want to take things seriously," Belgaroth mused, his aura suddenly intensifying. "Perfect... I was getting a bit restless."

His free arm rose lazily, the chain connected to Akane’s collar vibrating slightly. An imperceptible whisper, a silent command traversed the air. The collar illuminated with a reddish glow, and Akane, until then prostrate and silent, slowly raised her head. Her eyes were empty, completely devoid of free will. Isaac felt an icy shiver run down his spine. She was being controlled.

- "Amuse yourselves with my guard dogs," Belgaroth declared, his voice dripping with contempt. "Akane... kill them."

A simple word, a simple injunction, and Akane abruptly straightened, her gaze fixed, expressionless, but terribly dangerous. Her muscles tensed, her body reacted immediately, assuming a guard position, fists clenched, knees bent.

Naesha, still as silent as ever, slipped slightly back, her daggers gliding between her fingers with the suppleness of a snake. Isaac felt his heart beat painfully, his rage boiling again. She didn’t deserve this. Not her.

- "Naesha, cover me," he said coldly. freewёbnoνel.com

Naesha did not respond, but her gaze gleamed with understanding. The two launched forward simultaneously, moving in perfect balance. But the next instant, flames erupted throughout the room.

Meanwhile, Lazare remained motionless. His gaze was riveted on Belgaroth, his expression still impassive. The red dragon stepped forward, each footfall resonating like a hammer blow in the silent hall.

- "Let’s see what humanity has produced at its best," Belgaroth said with a predatory smile.

Lazare did not respond, but a subtle tremor ran through the air around him. An almost imperceptible vibration, a shift in the atmosphere. Belgaroth, noticing it, narrowed his eyes slightly.

- "Oh... interesting."

Without a word, Lazare vanished from sight.

A lightning-fast blow, invisible to the naked eye, struck Belgaroth full force at the jaw, propelling him several meters, tearing stone slabs in his wake. The red dragon immediately straightened, his eyes shining with a savage gleam.

- "Fast... but it won’t be enough."

Belgaroth exhaled suddenly, his lungs filling with burning air, before releasing a terrifying roar. His Ardent Breath burst from his throat, a torrent of incandescent flames, devouring the air and reducing everything in its path to ashes.

Lazare appeared behind him, like a mirage, untouchable. His movements were precise, measured to the millimeter, his fists charged with invisible energy that distorted the space around him.

- "Aerial Control," Lazare murmured, seeing Belgaroth propel himself in a leap, gliding several meters above the ground like a shadow of fire.

The dragon twirled in the air, his body ablaze with Incandescent Flames. His silhouette was a whirlwind of scarlet light, and when he descended in a dive, the ground split beneath the impact, projecting burning debris in all directions. Lazare dodged without a word, gliding around the flame shards with supernatural elegance.

- "You dance well," Belgaroth admitted, his smile widening as his fists charged with an intense black glow. "But is it enough?"

His hand came down, an arc of black flame bursting forth with unprecedented violence: Black Flames of Annihilation. The air warped, burned by pure energy, and the ground was literally disintegrated where the flame passed. Lazare raised a hand, and the wave crashed against an invisible barrier, cracking the air around him, but without reaching him.

- "Not bad," he conceded calmly.

Belgaroth burst into laughter.

- "I’m beginning to understand why you’re still alive. But it won’t last."

He charged again, his fists striking with the force of a divine hammer, flames erupting from his hands, the air burning around him. Their exchanges were lightning-fast, each blow releasing a shockwave that made the dungeon walls tremble. The flames exploded against Lazare’s invisible parries, while the guild master’s fists collided with Belgaroth’s fiery scales, creating sparks of pure mana.

They moved so quickly that their silhouettes seemed to fade at times, reappearing in different places without one truly being able to perceive their movement.

The ground cracked beneath their feet with each impact, the walls shook as if they would collapse under the titanic pressure of the exchanges. Belgaroth, standing at the center of the arena, a predatory gleam in his scarlet eyes, propelled himself at a lightning speed, leaving a trail of glowing flames behind him. His fists pierced the air with the violence of a meteor, each blow projecting a heat wave so intense that the ground cracked under the mere blast of his passage.

Lazare, facing him, glided with millimeter precision, his movements as fluid as water, avoiding each strike with disconcerting ease. His steps made no sound, his breathing was calm, controlled, his eyes shining with absolute concentration. Around him, the air seemed to vibrate slightly, as if he were sculpting it at will.

Belgaroth chuckled, his claws igniting with incandescent embers. He raised a hand, and the atmosphere charged with suffocating heat. A flaming circle appeared on the ground, burning with a bright red, and the ground itself seemed to liquefy under the heat. From this opening erupted columns of flame, twisting and contorting like fire serpents, shooting straight toward Lazarus.

He didn’t move. His gaze remained fixed on Belgaroth, impassive. When the flames reached the spot where he stood, they were brutally deflected, bursting around him in a whirlwind of sparks. The space around Lazare seemed to ripple slightly, distorting light itself.

Belgaroth, surprised for a brief moment, finally erupted in a guttural laugh.

- "Now that’s interesting... That’s not a simple shield, it’s something else, isn’t it?"

Lazare did not respond, merely raising a hand. The air vibrated again, and Belgaroth instinctively stepped back, his eyes narrowed with sudden interest. A burst of pure mana surged from Lazare’s palm, spreading like an invisible thread, tearing the air between them. Belgaroth made a prodigious leap backward, his feet no longer touching the ground, stabilizing in the air as if gravity itself bent to his will.

- "Tsk... not bad," whispered the dragon, a flame dancing on his lips.

With a sharp movement, he snapped his fingers. The air became heavy, the atmosphere charging with dense, burning mana. The ground ignited in a perfect circle around Lazare, chains of flame emerging from the floor to entrap him. Each link of fire pulsed with black energy, leaving trails of shadows in the air.

Lazare exhaled calmly and extended his hand toward the chains. The moment his fingers made contact with the flames, they seemed to dissipate, sucked in by an invisible force. The mana dispersed in the air, as if it had been devoured.

Belgaroth raised an eyebrow.

- "You absorb energy... Interesting, but... what do you do with what you take?" he asked with a sadistic gleam in his eyes.

Lazare did not respond. He took a simple step forward, and the air around Belgaroth violently exploded, propelling him backward, his feet carving furrows in the burned stone. The dragon roared, his eyes blazing with rage, and an intense aura covered him, thickened with incandescent scales. His body now seemed covered with reddish plates, vibrant, oozing with liquid lava. A natural shield, signature of his noble lineage.

- "Enough playing," Belgaroth murmured as he straightened.

The ground began to vibrate slightly. Isaac, in the midst of combat with Akane further away, noticed it instantly. A deep rumble rose from the floor, and around Belgaroth, black flames, almost liquid, slowly rose, undulating like burning tentacles. They coiled around his arms, his torso, forming a crackling armor, impregnated with devastating energy. This was an ability unique to draconic nobility, a mastery of flames directly tied to their lineage: the Furnace of Ancient Blood.

Belgaroth slightly turned his wrist, and a runic circle appeared beneath his feet, draconic symbols engraved in the ardent light. He struck the ground with his fist, and a devastating shockwave burst forth, extending in a burning cone toward Lazarus.

This time, Lazare did not move. The shockwave hit him head-on, or at least that’s what Isaac thought he saw. For at the same moment, Lazare’s image dissipated like a mirage, reforming three meters to the right, intact, impassive.

- "That won’t work," Lazare calmly retorted.

- "Really?" replied Belgaroth with a predatory smile.

His fist closed in a brutal gesture, and the runic circle reactivated. The air distorted around Lazare, a deep rumble filling the room. Space itself seemed compressed, crushed under an invisible, gravitational force, warping the walls, breaking the stones.