Chapter 57: 57. Dominus

The chamber trembled as the two titans faced each other across the ritual circle’s ruined remains.

Dominus stood stil, with four wings folded against his back.

The First Seat had stopped his boasting. His six arms still gripped his weapons tight, but uncertainty had crept into his expression.

“You should have stayed sealed,” the First Seat finally said, the layered voice trying to reclaim confidence. “I had you a trapped and Helpless And now you’re free, yes, but weakened. Starved. Diminished from your imprisonment. While I—” he gestured to his transformed body with two of his six arms, “—I have consumed power beyond mortal comprehension. I am—”

“Loud,” Dominus interrupted. “You are loud. And tedious. Shall we begin?”

The First Seat roared and attacked.

All six arms moved simultaneously with his weapons streaking through the air in a coordinated assault that would have overwhelmed any normal opponent.

But Dominus didn’t move his body.

Instead, he raised one hand, in a single and elegant gesture, and the temperature in the chamber spiked dramatically.

Fire erupted, a wall of flames that intercepted every weapon mid-flight.

The lances that struck the fire wall simply stopped. Didn’t shatter, didn’t deflect—stopped, as if they’d hit something infinitely dense. Then the flames wrapped around each weapon, consuming the dark energy and reducing it to nothing.

The First Seat staggered back, his six arms now suddenly empty with no weapons in hand.

Owen, still slumped against the chamber wall clutching his shoulder wound, watched with awe. This was mastery of power on a level that transcended mere strength to him.

Dominus took his first step forward, and then lightning manifested.

Arcs of electricity that appeared in the air around the Dragon King like a crown of crackling energy.

The First Seat summoned more shadowy constructs, he was desperate now. The shadowy serpent that had nearly defeated Owen materialized again, along with tentacles, barriers and weapons.

Dominus gestured again with his other hand, and the lightning around him responded.

Each arc split into dozens of smaller bolts, each one finding a construct with unerring accuracy. Where lightning met shadows, the constructs simply ceased to exist, destroyed and dispelled the magic of the Dragon king, Dominus.

Not a single bolt went astray. Not one missed its target.

“Damn it!” the First Seat screamed, his transformation beginning to destabilize. The black miasma around his body flickered and pulsed irregularly. “I should have had the power of the Outer-Divinity! I have consumed the essence! I should be beyond mortal limitation!”

“You consumed scraps,” Dominus corrected, walking forward with heavy steps. “Residue from whatever dead realm your poor attempt at a ritual connected with”

The First Seat’s purple-fire eyes widened in horror as the truth of those words penetrated his fanaticism.

“No… no, that’s not… I was chosen! I was—”

“That’s enough” Dominus finished.

He clapped his hands together, and fire and lightning merged.

The combination created something new—plasma, superheated matter in its fourth state, dancing with an electrical charge. It formed into a sphere between Dominus’s hands, growing larger with each passing second, the temperature climbing so high that the stone floor beneath him began to glow red.

The First Seat knew death was approaching.

His six arms moved in complex gestures, summoning every scrap of power he had absorbed. The black miasma coalesced around him, forming a barrier.

Then Dominus released the plasma sphere.

It crossed the distance between them in an instant. When it struck the barrier, the chamber filled with light so intense that everyone had to shield their eyes.

The collision of forces created a sound beyond hearing—a pressure wave that made bones vibrate. Owen’s draconic senses barely protected him from the worst of it; the human hunters collapsed even though their hands pressed to their ears.

When the light faded, the First Seat’s barrier had been completely vaporized. The cultist himself stood trembling, his transformed body smoking and charred, cracks spreading across his darkened skin like a broken porcelain doll.

“You cannot win this,” Dominus stated simply. “Surrender. Face judgment for your crimes. Or die fighting.”

For a moment, Owen thought the First Seat might actually surrender. The fight had been completely one-sided, a master casually dismantling an amateur despite the power differential the miasma supposedly provided.

Then the First Seat started laughing.

It was the laugh of someone whose sanity had finally shattered completely. All six arms spread wide, and the black miasma that had been holding his body together began to condense, compressing inward toward his core.

“If I cannot serve the Great One in this world…” the First Seat’s voice was barely recognizable now, distorted by whatever he was doing to himself, “…then I shall serve Him by taking you all with me into oblivion!”

Owen’s Mana Sense detected it immediately, the massive buildup of unstable energy. The First Seat was converting all the power he had absorbed into a single, catastrophic self-detonation. The yield would be enormous, easily enough to collapse the entire cave system and kill everyone within a mile radius.

“Everyone out!” Lyra screamed, already moving towards the exit passage. “RUN!”

But they would never make it in time. Owen could calculate the numbers, the energy was building too fast, it would reach critical mass in seconds.

Then Dominus moved.

A Golden light enveloped his form as his body began to change, to grow. The half-dragon transformation reversed, his humanoid features elongating and expanding into something far more magnificent.

His Wings erupted outward, growing from twelve feet to thirty, then sixty, then a hundred. His neck extended, his face shifting into a noble draconic visage. black scales spread across every inch of his expanding form, each one gleaming like polished metal.

Within three seconds, Dominus had transformed into his true dragon form.

One massive claw shot forward and grabbed the First Seat—still laughing maniacally, still building toward detonation—and then he lifted him like a child’s toy.

Then Dominus’s wings flared open, and he launched himself upward.

The chamber ceiling exploded in debris.

Stone and earth vaporized as the Dragon King’s body crashed through it with an unstoppable momentum, carving a tunnel straight up through dozens of feet of rock and soil.

Then Daylight appeared above, a distant circle growing rapidly closer as Dominus ascended fast, carrying the First Seat in his grip.

Owen watched through the newly-created hole as the Dominus burst into the open sky, climbing higher and higher until he was just a distant glimmer against the clouds.

“DUCK!” Owen shouted to the hunters, and everyone dove for whatever protection they could find.

The explosion came seconds later.

Even from miles below, even through all that earth and stone, the detonation was visible—a sphere of purple-black energy that expanded against the sky like a miniature sun of entropy. The shockwave followed moments later, rattling the cave system and sending small avalanches of debris raining down.

But the damage was contained to the upper atmosphere. No casualties. No destruction beyond the First Seat himself, atomized in the blast he Had created.

When the light faded and the rumbling stopped, silence fell over the chamber.

Owen let his head fall back against the wall as he breathed out hard. His shoulder still burned with corruption, but he was alive.

They were all alive.

“Is it…” Felicity’s voice was barely a whisper. “Is it over?”

“I think it is, Felicity” Lyra confirmed, checking the ruined circle. She looked at Owen. “Yeah. It’s really over.”

The dungeon itself seemed to recognize the story’s completion. A familiar notification appeared in everyone’s vision:

[Dungeon: CLEARED]

[Calculating individual contributions…]

[Exit portal manifesting…]

At the far end of the chamber, where the entrance passage met the ritual room, a swirling portal of blue light materialized. The exit. The return to the real world.

—

Miinutes later, almost all the hunters that had come to the ShadowGraves had proceeded into the Portal.

Odessa’s party strutted towards the portal now, the silver-haired woman limping slightly but grinning with the satisfaction of survival. Her Azure Sky Dragon coiled protectively around her as Alfred fussed over her injuries.

Yuki stood near the portal, Uru sat on her head, pulsing contentedly. But she made no move to step through.

Odessa noticed and limped back over. “Yuki? You coming? The portal won’t stay open forever, you know”

Yuki glanced at the hole in the ceiling. Into the sky. “I have something to do first. You go ahead.”

Odessa followed her gaze upward but saw only empty sky. Then She shrugged. “Alright. Don’t take too long, I want details about that gorgeous dragon-man of yours!” She winked and stepped through the portal, Alfred and the rest of her party following.

One by one, the remaining hunters passed through. Lyra gave Yuki a questioning look, but when Yuki shook her head slightly, the A-rank hunter nodded in understanding and stepped through with Isaac and Felicity.

Soon, Yuki stood alone by the portal, the only person remaining in what had been a gathering of fifty-plus hunters.

She looked up at the sky.

And way up there, so high that the human eye shouldn’t be able to reach, was them.

Three figures suspended in the sky as if standing on invisible ground.

Dominus, still in his full dragon form, his scales catching sunlight and scattering it like diamonds.

Chronara, the Greater Dragon, her true dragon form smaller but no less magnificent, her crystalline scales creating rainbow refractions.

And Owen, tiny between the two ancient dragons, his humanoid form dwarfed by their presence.

Even from this impossible distance, even with her enhanced vision barely making out details, Yuki could see, no, feel Owen’s expression.

His face was dark. Not angry. Way beyond anger. The expression of someone who’d just learned a truth so terrible, so world-shattering, that it had fundamentally changed how they saw reality.

Whatever Dominus and Chronara had told him up there, suspended between earth and sky where no one else could hear, it had broken something in Owen’s mind.

Or awakened something.

Yuki’s hand tightened on her katana, and despite the warm sunlight on her face, she felt suddenly, terribly cold.

What did they tell you? she thought, sending it hrough their telepathic bond at this distance. What could possibly make you look like that?

But no reply came.

The three figures remained suspended in the sky, still talking, still revealing whatever terrible truth had put that expression on Owen’s face.

And Yuki stood below, alone with Uru and her growing dread, waiting for Owen to return as the portal behind her started pulsing faster, a reminder that it wouldn’t remain open indefinitely.

But Yuki didn’t move.

She just watched the sky, and waited, and tried very hard not to imagine what could make her dragon look so haunted.

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