Chapter 353: Chapter 353 : Alicia von crestvale (4)

As the barrier fell and the destruction began, Alicia’s rage burned hotter than the flames devouring Avaloria.

Her sword glowed with an ominous light, its edge humming as if it sensed what was coming. Her breath was steady—too steady. Beneath her skin, her physique of Eternal Ruin stirred, an unnatural force coiling within her veins, responding to danger like a predator awakening.

The first dragon dove to unleash destruction upon the city.

Alicia vanished.

The ground exploded where she had been standing, but she was already in the air, her body moving faster than sound. Her blade carved upward in a single, merciless arc—

The dragon’s neck separated cleanly.

Its massive corpse crashed into the streets below, crushing stone and steel alike.

For a heartbeat, there was silence.

Then came the screams.

Then came the rage.

The dragons turned toward her as one.

Flames engulfed the sky. Claws tore through the air. Magic and heat collided into a storm meant to erase her from existence.

Alicia walked through it.

Her mana surged, the heat bending around her body, scales of light forming briefly along her forearms before fading.

Each step she took shattered the ground or cracked the air beneath her feet. Each swing of her sword birthed a crescent of annihilation that tore holes through the skies.

A dragon lunged from her left—

She split it in half.

Another coiled around her from behind, jaws gaping—

She ripped through its spine and used its falling body as a springboard, leaping even higher into the sky.

Three more attacked at once.

Alicia’s blood‑soaked smile did not fade.

She blurred.

Heads fell. Wings were severed mid‑flight. Roars turned into choking gurgles as, one by one, the sky began to rain dragon corpses.

With every kill, something inside her shifted.

Her heartbeat pounded louder in her ears.

Her vision sharpened.

The world slowed.

Power flooded her limbs—intoxicating and cruel. Her strikes grew heavier. Her movements sharper. Where moments ago she had fought to stop an invasion, now she carved simply to kill.

A dragon tried to flee in horror, wings beating frantically to escape.

She cut it down without hesitation.

Cold. Efficient. Unrelenting.

Blood rained across the empire.

The surviving dragons retreated, circling in fear—until the sky itself seemed to darken.

A presence descended.

Vrakkas.

Their leader.

He hovered above them, wings blotting out the sun, crimson scales harder than fortress walls, eyes glowing with ruthless intelligence. He had conquered worlds. Burned civilizations. Left continents in ruins.

He stared at Alicia.

And for the first time in centuries, Vrakkas felt fear that made him shiver.

Zara was not far behind.

The sky cracked with her magic as she raised her hands. Lightning speared down from the clouds in blinding bolts, turning dragons into blackened crisps mid‑flight. Their charred bodies tumbled from the sky like burning meteors, smashing into the ruined streets below.

All around them, the battle raged on.

Alicia’s bloodlust, however, only grew.

Her attacks became more brutal, more savage, as she relished the blood she spilled, laughter ringing across the battlefield.

“How dare you make me lose face in front of him!” she shouted, eyes wild. “He entrusted me with protecting this empire—and because of you, he’ll start hating me… hating me!”

Vrakkas narrowed his eyes.

He saw the opening.

In his dragon‑kin form, he flashed behind her with terrifying speed, hammer raised high. With one vicious strike, he brought it down.

Alicia’s arm was severed at the shoulder.

It spun through the air, blood arcing in a red trail before the limb fell toward the distant ground.

Vrakkas laughed. “I’ll take my time killing you.”

Alicia slowly turned her head toward him.

Despite the blood pouring from her wound, she smiled.

It was not human.

“Drain,” she whispered.

In the next instant, dragons within her range screamed.

Their roars twisted into shrill, agonized cries as their life force was ripped from their bodies. Flesh withered. Scales dulled. Eyes hollowed. Streams of invisible energy rushed toward Alicia, sinking into her like rivers into an abyss.

One after another, they dropped from the sky as empty husks, dead before they hit the ground.

Vrakkas stared, horrified.

“What… what the hell are you?” he rasped.

Draining life force wasn’t some simple spell. In all his long life, he had only seen it a handful of times—from beings who stood near the pinnacle of existence.

Yet here she was, a human girl, doing it as casually as breathing.

Worse, he could feel it now.

Even at this distance, his own vitality was being gnawed away—slowly, relentlessly.

Before his eyes, muscle and skin knitted over Alicia’s shoulder.

Her arm grew back in seconds, whole and flawless, fingers flexing experimentally.

Then she moved.

Without even relying on her sword, she closed the gap and started pummeling him, her blows too fast for him to follow. Fists, knees, and kicks hammered into his body, cracking scales and bone, sending shockwaves through his frame.

’She’s getting stronger the more she fights…’ Vrakkas thought, terror seeping into his bones.

The realization horrified him.

He beat his wings hard and pulled back, fleeing upward, desperate to get away from her reach.

From a distance, he watched as Alicia sliced through the remaining dragons in the sky. They fell without even having time to scream, as if their famed durability and scales meant nothing at all.

A voice echoed in his mind.

“Vrakkas. If you come back in failure, your head will roll.”

“My King,” Vrakkas answered mentally, “there is an anomaly here—”

Before he could continue, the connection snapped.

The Dragon King’s presence vanished, leaving only cold anger in its wake.

’He’s furious…’ Vrakkas realized. ’It’s do or die now.’

He gathered what strength he had left, ready to dive toward Alicia once more.

But before he could move—

The atmosphere shifted.

The wind stilled.

The sky darkened, not with smoke or wings, but with something deeper. Stars became visible through the fading daylight, shimmering above the battlefield.

A colossal, tree‑like silhouette formed in the heavens, its branches stretching wide like roots descending from the stars themselves.

Everywhere, dragons and humans alike froze.

Zara looked up and smiled faintly as her body began to glow, resonating with the distant presence.

’Alex,’ she thought, ’you broke another one of the curses, didn’t you?’

Meanwhile, far away on the new continent, within a vast obsidian palace, Zarvok watched the scene through a scrying projection—his draconic gaze following the slaughtered legions and the astral tree blooming above Avaloria.

“It seems,” the Dragon King murmured, rising from his throne, “that I will have to go there myself.”

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