Dragon's Awakening: The Duke's Son Is Changing The Plot
Chapter 199 - 198 - When dads go dragon mode.

Chapter 199: Chapter 198 - When dads go dragon mode.

The walls cracked.

Chunks of obsidian ceiling dropped like meteors as the sheer presence of power tore through the underground ruin.

The lava in the surroundings hissed in retreat, shadows evaporated, and for an instant, the entire chamber held its breath.

Then the fathers moved.

Crisaius was the first to change.

His bones didn’t crack—they sang.

It was like a chorus of something ancient and insane.

His already wild hair erupted backward like a crimson mane made of living fire. His wiry old frame pulsed with life as crimson-red scales bloomed across his limbs in fractal patterns.

His fingers elongated just enough to leave claw marks in the air as he flexed, and his eyes? Glowing red orbs—spinning, manic, focused.

He looked like someone who had decided bedtime stories were for cowards. (Image in comments.)

Argon, by contrast, transformed with a whisper—an exhale that crushed the ground beneath him.

Black scales spread like ink in water, coiling over muscle and tendon. His arms bulked up, but his posture remained unshaken, like a mountain decided to walk. (Image in comments.)

His sword floated into the air beside him, humming with latent space energy, and his gaze never left Veyron.

The demon generals reacted in kind.

Theon’s golden mask shattered. But instead of revealing a face, it revealed nothing.

It was like a void shaped like a man—a shell of divine heat.

Fire wreathed him, yes, but it wasn’t dancing.

It was alive. Breathing. Watching.

Inside the outline of his body, only more fire burned—his ribs visible like cracks in molten glass.

Veyron unfolded.

Not in the way wings open—but like a spider unsheathing legs.

His skeletal wings expanded—eight of them, now—each one laced with bones not his own.

A crown of ribs wove itself into horns above his head, and a dozen femurs extended into jagged blades around his arms.

The floor beneath him turned to bleached stone just from contact.

The chamber couldn’t take it.

A crack echoed through the ceiling, then another.

Then the whole world above them exploded.

A pillar of light, lava, bone, and fury shattered upward, sending Crisaius and Theon rocketing through the stone sky, followed closely by Argon and Veyron.

The children were left behind in a whirl of debris and a daydreaming corpse queen.

But up above?

Up above, hell had started relocating to the forest.

.......

The forest was no more.

Trees splintered like matchsticks as Crisaius and Theon collided midair, a storm of lightning and flame roaring out from their impact.

Time itself bent—seconds stretched and compressed as Crisaius wielded his twin blades like an artist with an impossible brush. They spun and sliced, orbiting him with blazing arcs as he danced between Theon’s firestorms.

"You ever fought someone with ADHD and fire powers, empty-head?" Crisaius cackled, slashing a flaming spiral of time-distorted air that sent Theon reeling.

Theon didn’t speak.

He just detonated.

An explosion of pressureless flame swallowed the area, but Crisaius appeared behind him, midair, upside down, and chewing what might’ve been a mana-peppermint.

"You’ll need more than heat. I drink lava smoothies for breakfast."

He snapped his fingers.

Lightning slammed down, not from the sky, but from the side. Like the laws of physics were just suggestions.

Then he vanished.

Time folded.

Crisaius reappeared on the ground, blades crossing in an X, catching Theon’s flaming punch an inch from his skull.

He was grinning.

"Hey, you ever wonder what happens when an immovable object gets insulted by a very sarcastic old man?"

Then the time around Theon slowed. And reversed.

Crisaius was using time magic.

For just a flicker, Theon’s own punch went back—rewound—then got intercepted by a lightning-charged slash.

BOOM.

.......

Meanwhile—

Argon was a walking apocalypse. 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝙚𝙬𝓮𝙗𝒏𝙤𝒗𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝒐𝓶

His fight with Veyron had already annihilated half the forest. Massive trees were now weaponized roots and flying bone constructs.

Argon didn’t bother dodging Veyron’s skeletal javelins. He let them pierce his scales, then moved—space flickered.

The bones shattered against a twist in gravity as he appeared beside Veyron and swung downward.

His sword hit with the weight of an entire mountain range.

KRA-KOOM.

A crater formed beneath them, and Veyron barely managed to block, his wings warping to absorb the blow—but the ground beneath still shattered.

"You will not break me," Veyron hissed, launching a volley of spectral rib-spikes.

"Good," Argon said, deadpan. "I’d rather crush you."

The spikes curved in midair.

Space twisted again.

Argon vanished.

He was using space magic and his mountainous swordsmanship.

Veyron, however, screamed—because the earth beneath him had erupted into hundreds of hands made of compressed stone, grabbing his legs.

That was Argon’s earth elemental power.

Argon reappeared above, sword in a crushing arc.

CRUNCH.

Bones exploded everywhere. Veyron’s wings cracked, and his body flew across the battlefield, slicing through mountains of bark and roots like paper.

He rose again, reforming his wings, snarling.

"You dare mock the Bone Architect?!" 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎

Argon cracked his neck.

"I don’t mock. I disappoint. It’s what I do best. Ask my son."

...That was the truth.

.......

Back in Crisaius’s warzone, the tempo had increased.

Theon had finally adjusted—no longer reacting, but predicting. Flames moved like thoughts—burning before Crisaius even arrived.

But the old man was smiling wider now.

"Good, good," Crisaius laughed, flipping off a cliffside and catching both blades in his hands as he landed with dancer’s grace. "You’re getting the hang of it. Now..."

He raised both swords high.

Lightning arced to the left.

Fire to the right.

Time magic beneath.

"...try this combo, you flaming pothole!"

ZAP-FWOOOSH-WARP.

A spiral of light and fury erupted from his swords—a slash that tore through Theon’s side and left a gouge in the air itself.

Theon shrieked—but not in pain.

In rage.

He expanded.

No longer man-shaped—just a being of fire with arms and legs that flickered in and out of existence. His voice echoed in all directions now.

"YOU WILL NOT LEAVE THIS PLACE ALIVE!"

Crisaius wiped soot off his face.

"...Bro, you’re yelling like my ex-wife. But just so you know, she’s dead, and you will follow her steps."

.......

Meanwhile, Veyron had launched his counteroffensive.

Spiked bone towers shot up like jagged spires, enclosing Argon in a maze of skeletal death.

Mana-infused marrow webs formed traps and explosive runes—each one primed to distort space and shred intruders.

Argon didn’t stop walking.

He simply lifted a hand.

The entire maze was inverted with that action.

The towers turned inward, folding in on themselves, like someone pressed rewind on a building made of nightmares.

Then—

BOOM.

He emerged, blade dragging behind him, glowing with space magic.

Veyron caught sight of him and cursed.

Argon looked straight at him and said, "Boned yet?"

Dead silence.

Even the trees stopped burning.

"Sir," Veyron growled, "that was unspeakably bad."

Argon’s face didn’t move.

But his sword? It did.

It soared forward on its own, slamming into Veyron’s chest mid-complaint and sending the demon sailing through another cliff.

A muffled thud followed.

Argon just cracked his knuckles.

"You brought that one on yourself."

.......

So, in a broken forest where reality no longer functioned quite right, two humans in dragonic form clashed with monsters born of hellfire and bone.

Each strike warped the land.

Each spell shifted the sky.

Each joke somehow made it worse.

The time, however, had barely passed for Group Raven and Mala.

It had been less than a few seconds, and Mala was still merely staring at them, imagining how she would eat them.

One could even see drool dripping down her lips, which she licked before it fell to the ground.

The kids, on the other hand, were watching the ceiling, which now had a giant hole in it.

"...I think your dad just broke a continent," Jessy said, shielding her eyes from the magical glow above.

"Yup," Raven muttered.

"And the other dad, who is technically your great-grandfather, is yelling lightning-based one-liners."

"Yup."

"...Is this why you’re so messed up?" Siris asked.

Raven just patted her head and walked forward.

"No time for therapy. We got a corpse queen to disassemble."

"But," Rufus raised his hand as his nanoparticle helmet’s hatch opened with a mechanical whirr, revealing his scrunched-up face. "Doesn’t she look a bit too disgusting?"

He asked, pointing at the pus and goo leaking out of the stitched portions of the demon’s body.

Raven wanted to say that it was nothing much, but as soon as he saw Mala licking the pus that leaked out of her stitched cheek, he recoiled. "...We need to be brave. After all, she is the weakest of the demon generals—"

Before he could complete his words, Mala snarled, breaking out of her imagination.

"Did you just call me weak?"