The colossal obsidian skull of the Celestial Dragon did not merely rise; it tore itself from the dais with a sound like tectonic plates grinding together.
CRRR-RACK!
Dust and centuries of debris cascaded from the massive, sweeping ribs as the undead monstrosity hauled its terrifying bulk upward. The two pinpricks of purple fire deep within its eye sockets flared, expanding into roaring infernos of pure, concentrated resentment.
Alden stood at the base of the dais, looking up at a creature whose very toe claws were larger than his entire body.
'Well,' Alden thought, his grip tightening around the dark, jagged hilt of Vajra. 'If I wanted a quiet life, I really shouldn't have jumped down a bottomless pit.'
The dragon did not roar with sound. It roared with psychic pressure.
A shockwave of sheer, suffocating malice exploded outward from the beast. It hit Alden like a physical wall of moving concrete.
BAM!
Alden was thrown backward, his boots skidding wildly across the smooth, glass-like floor of the ruined cathedral. He dug his heels in, grinding to a halt twenty yards away. The matte-black mask forged by Herman Blackwood hummed warmly against his face, its runic matrix shielding his mind from the brunt of the psychic assault, but his body still felt the kinetic impact.
[Warning: Hostile Entity has locked onto the Host.]
[Analyzing Threat: Primordial Resentment Manifestation.]
[Physical Attacks will suffer a 90% damage reduction against Obsidian Dragon Bone.]
"Ninety percent," Alden muttered beneath his mask.
"Fantastic. So punching it is off the table."
The dragon didn't give him time to strategize.
The colossal beast whipped its massive, skeletal tail. The appendage, lined with jagged obsidian spikes, cleaved through the air, instantly shattering three towering white stone pillars as if they were made of dry chalk. The tail was sweeping horizontally, aimed directly at Alden's torso.
SWISH!
Alden's physical instincts fired. He didn't try to block—blocking something the size of a train car was suicide.
He dropped flat onto his stomach. The skeletal tail roared over his head, the wind pressure alone violently ripping the heavy black trench coat around his legs. Chunks of shattered white stone rained down around him like deadly shrapnel.
Alden pushed off the floor, springing back to his feet in a fluid, continuous motion.
'I can dodge,' Alden analyzed, his single crimson eye tracking the beast's sluggish but overwhelmingly massive movements.
'But I can't win a battle of attrition. My stamina isn't infinite. Its resentment is.'
He looked up at the massive skull. Pinned directly between the glowing purple eyes was the Blade of Starlight. It pulsed with a volatile, silver energy, acting as a sealing nail that had kept the beast tethered to the dais for millennia.
To kill the dragon, he needed that blade. To complete Vajra, he needed that blade.
The dragon reared its massive skull back. The purple fire in its eyes pooled into its open, jagged jaws, condensing into a swirling sphere of ghostly, necrotic flame.
'Uh oh,' Alden thought.
FWOOSH!
A torrent of purple ghost-fire erupted from the dragon's maw, washing over the cathedral floor like a tidal wave.
Alden bolted. He sprinted with every ounce of his speed, his boots blurring against the stone. He dove behind the remaining base of a massive, shattered pillar just as the purple flames washed over the area.
The heat was absolute zero. It didn't burn flesh; it froze the very concept of life. The edges of the pillar instantly withered and decayed into fine, grey ash.
Alden pressed his back against the rapidly degrading stone. A sliver of the purple fire licked the edge of his right arm.
Hiss!
The sleeve of his trench coat withered, and the skin beneath instantly turned a dead, necrotic black. The pain was sharp and nauseating, like a localized frostbite that dug straight into his soul.
But seconds later, the dark-gold Chaos energy within him violently reacted devouring the necrotic decay and aggressively replacing it with fresh, pale skin.
'I can heal through grazes,' Alden grimaced, clutching his stinging arm. 'But if I take a direct hit from that breath, my cells will be erased faster than the bloodline can rebuild them.'
He peeked out from behind the crumbling pillar.
The dragon was preparing another breath, its massive jaws unhinging.
'I need a distraction. I need an opening.'
Alden closed his eye, dipping into his Chaos core. It was still a swirling, uncooperative abyss of dark-gold energy. It hated him. It hated being controlled.
"Listen to me, you stubborn parasite," Alden hissed internally.
"If I die, you die. So work!"
He didn't try to form a spell. He just grabbed a raw, jagged chunk of Chaos mana and forcefully shoved it down his left arm, aiming it at a pile of ruined rubble across the cathedral.
He forcefully ejected the mana from his palm.
BOOM!
The Chaos mana didn't shoot out like a beam. It misfired terribly, violently exploding the moment it left his hand.
The recoil shattered Alden's left wrist instantly.
CRACK!
Alden bit back a groan as the Nephalem bloodline immediately went to work fusing the pulverized bones. But the explosion had worked. The deafening blast of dark-gold energy echoed through the hall, tearing a crater into the far wall.
The Celestial Dragon's skull snapped toward the source of the noise, its purple eyes locking onto the residual Chaos energy.
'Now!'
Alden exploded from behind his cover. He sprinted directly toward the beast, weaving through the falling debris.
He didn't run toward the tail or the legs. He ran straight up the massive, sloped obsidian spine that was currently lowered as the dragon investigated the blast.
His boots found purchase on the jagged ridges of the colossal vertebrae. He sprinted up the spine, treating the skeletal dragon like a steeply inclined staircase.
The beast realized its mistake instantly. It thrashed, violently bucking its massive frame to throw the tiny, annoying insect off its back.
Alden lost his footing. He was thrown into the air, completely untethered, thirty feet above the cathedral floor.
The dragon snapped its jaws upward, aiming to swallow him whole mid-air.
'Not today,' Alden thought.
He twisted his body, spotting a massive, suspended chandelier hanging precariously from the ruined ceiling. He reached out with his newly healed left hand, grabbed the rusted iron chain, and swung his body with a terrifying amount of physical momentum.
He released the chain, launching himself directly at the dragon's massive skull.
He landed heavily on the beast's snout, his boots skidding against the polished, frictionless obsidian. He fell forward, slamming his chest against the bone, but his right hand shot out, desperately grabbing the hilt of the Blade of Starlight pinned into the skull.
BZZZZT!
The moment Alden touched the silver blade, a shockwave of starlight and purple necrotic fire violently clashed, electrocuting his arm.
The dragon shrieked—a soundless, psychic wail of absolute fury. It began to violently thrash its head side to side, smashing its skull against the remaining pillars of the cathedral, trying to crush Alden against the stone.
Alden held on for dear life. His left hand gripped the cursed hilt of Vajra. His right hand gripped the pinned Blade of Starlight.
He pulled. He planted his boots against the dragon's skull and pulled with all his A-Rank physical strength.
The blade didn't budge. It was anchored by millennia of resentment.
"Get off!" Alden roared, his muscles bulging, tearing under the strain and instantly healing.
The dragon's purple eyes swiveled upward, locking onto the human pinned to its snout. The purple fire flared, crawling up the bone, directly aiming to incinerate him at point-blank range.
Alden had a fraction of a second. He was out of options. His physical strength wasn't enough, and his mana was a broken, uncooperative mess.
If he couldn't control the bomb... he would just have to become one.
"You want me dead?" Alden whispered, his single crimson eye blazing with an unhinged, feral madness beneath his mask.
"Let's see who breaks first."
Alden didn't try to channel the Chaos mana out of his hands. He didn't try to aim it.
He deliberately, forcefully ripped the safety locks off his own Chaos core. He intentionally caused a catastrophic, internal misfire. He dragged every single drop of the volatile, dark-gold energy into his chest, blocking the natural escape pathways, compressing the highly destructive element until it reached critical, impossible mass.
His veins turned pitch black. His skin cracked, glowing with blinding, searing dark-gold light.
The dragon's purple fire washed over him.
But it was too late.
"Eat this," Alden snarled.
He detonated his own core.
KABOOOOOOOOOM!
The explosion was biblical.
A perfectly spherical shockwave of pure, unadulterated Chaos energy violently erupted from Alden's very center. It didn't just explode; it devoured. The dark-gold blast acted like a localized black hole, aggressively tearing apart the fundamental laws of reality within a twenty-foot radius.
The point-blank explosion shredded Alden's own body. His chest was blown open, his sternum shattered into dust. His arms were mangled, the flesh ripped from the bone. The sheer agony was beyond mortal comprehension, a white-hot erasure of existence.
But the explosion also hit the dragon.
The Chaos blast completely engulfed the skull. It aggressively devoured the purple, necrotic fire, nullifying the ancient resentment in a matter of microseconds. The blast wave shattered the obsidian bone around the sealing nail, physically violently ripping the Blade of Starlight free from its millennial prison.
The force of the blast sent Alden flying backward like a broken ragdoll.
As he sailed through the air, blinded by pain and his own blood, his mangled hands instinctively brought the two pieces together.
CLINK!
The Blade of Starlight slid perfectly into the cursed hilt of Vajra.
A blinding, purifying silver light exploded through the cathedral, banishing the shadows and the purple fire entirely.
Alden crashed into the far wall of the cathedral, sliding down the cracked white stone, leaving a horrific trail of blood behind him. He hit the floor, completely immobilized, barely clinging to consciousness.
Across the room, the colossal obsidian skeleton of the Celestial Dragon collapsed. Without the animating force of its resentment—which had been devoured by Alden's chaotic self-destruct—the bones became nothing more than dead weight. They crashed onto the dais, sending up a massive cloud of dust.
Silence reclaimed the tomb.
Alden lay slumped against the wall, a gargling, wet cough escaping his lips.
Sizzle… snap… pop…
His body was a ruin, but the Nephalem bloodline was already fighting a desperate war to keep him alive. Dark-gold energy writhed over his shattered chest, forcibly dragging his pulverized ribs back into alignment, reconstructing his lungs, and sealing his shredded arteries.
It was a slow, excruciatingly painful process. Alden couldn't move a single muscle. He just sat there, breathing shallowly, enduring the torment of his own resurrection.
His right hand was loosely curled around his prize.
Vajra was whole. The dark, porous hilt was now seamlessly fused with a blade of pure, solidified starlight. The weapon hummed with a calm, terrifying majesty. It didn't try to drain his soul anymore; it recognized the dominant, chaotic force that had just blasted its captor into oblivion.
[DING!]
The pristine chime echoed in his mind, cutting through the haze of pain.
Hovering in his blurred vision, the dark, gold-laced interface materialized.
[Target Eliminated: Primordial Resentment Manifestation.]
[Vajra has consumed the residual energy. Vajra's base sharpness and mana-conductivity have permanently increased.]
[Quest Completed: Claim the Blade of Starlight.]
[Reward: 'Vajra' is now soul-bound to the Host. It can be summoned and dismissed at will.]
[Bonus Reward: The System acknowledges the Host's suicidal, utterly unhinged combat tactics. Chaos Mana Core proficiency has slightly increased.]
"Slightly increased," Alden wheezed, a bloody, breathless laugh escaping him.
"You stingy bastard."
It took an entire hour for his body to mend enough for him to stand. When he finally pushed himself up, his legs were shaking, and his clothes were absolutely ruined. The sleek black trench coat was shredded, soaked in his own blood.
He leaned heavily on the newly formed blade of Vajra, using it as a cane.
He limped toward the center of the room, stopping at the base of the dais.
The colossal, obsidian skeleton of the Celestial Dragon lay perfectly still. It was a mountain of priceless, indestructible crafting materials.
Alden reached out with his left hand, tapping the dark iron band of his repaired storage ring. Herman had expanded the spatial capacity exponentially when he re-anchored it.
"Store," Alden commanded.
VWOOM!
Space distorted wildly. The massive, house-sized skull and the sweeping, towering ribs were enveloped in a blue light, shrinking rapidly before being sucked entirely into the ring's pocket dimension.
Alden stared at the empty dais, his single crimson eye blinking thoughtfully.
'An entire, perfectly preserved skeleton of an ancient, terrifying monster,' Alden mused, wiping a streak of dried blood from his matte-black mask.
Suddenly, a very specific, deeply buried memory from his past life surfaced.
He remembered sitting in his dark apartment, watching an anime about a guy in a dark coat who wandered around dungeons. Whenever that guy killed something big, he would stand over the corpse, say a single, edgy word, and the monster's shadow would rise to fight for him.
'Arise,' Alden thought, a faint, genuinely amused smirk touching his lips.
He looked down at his own dark, shredded coat.
'Necromancy,' Alden pondered.
'I don't have the element for it. My Chaos mana just destroys things. But… if the Lucky Draw Wheel can pull bloodlines from the multiverse, maybe, just maybe, I can pull a shadow monarch skill tree one day.'
It was a complete pipe dream for the current him. But the idea of raising an undead Celestial Dragon to fight the Human High Council was just too incredibly appealing to ignore. He would keep the skeleton safely tucked away. Just in case.
Alden willed Vajra to dissipate. The starlight blade and the dark hilt shattered into motes of silver light, vanishing into his soul.
He looked up at the massive, ruined hole in the ceiling of the cavern, the long, dark climb back to the surface waiting for him.
He was broken, bloody, and his coat was ruined. But he had a god-killing sword bound to his soul, a massive dragon skeleton in his pocket, and an SSS+ Rank system that had just acknowledged his insanity.
Alden let out a quiet sigh, cracking his newly healed neck.
"Alright," Alden murmured into the dark.
"Let's find a way out of this pit."