In the shadows of the S Ranked Main character
Chapter 53: No way out(7)

Chapter 53: No way out(7)

Years passed.

Decades, maybe. June stopped counting. Time blurred when you served an eternal master.

Under Veldax, the world had been reshaped entirely. The dragons ruled not just the skies, but the lands, the seas, the forests, the underworlds. The demons knelt. The elves, humbled and stripped of their old pride, sent tributes yearly. The dwarves forged weapons only for dragon-approved armies. The fairies, delicate and once defiant, had been broken, their ancient groves reduced to mere ceremonial gardens under the watchful eye of the Dragon Court.

Veldax had spawned eggs.

Huge, pulsing, shimmering orbs of purple and gold magic, nested deep in the central sanctum of the dragon’s stronghold. None of the mortals — not even June — knew how the process worked. Dragon procreation wasn’t something mortals were meant to understand. But June knew one thing: the eggs were precious. Even the faintest rumor of a threat to them was met with overwhelming force.

June had been standing near the throne that day.

A casual audience, overseeing the tribute brought in by a parade of conquered realms. June had been half-listening, his eyes sharp but his mind restless, already bored of the endless line of groveling emissaries.

Then the attack came.

It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t a siege.

It was worse.

A distortion — a tear in space —

and then she appeared.

A woman, if you could call her that.

Tall, once graceful in form, but ruined.

Her skin was split by jagged cracks, oozing pus and black rot. Her limbs were elongated unnaturally, bones straining against skin. Her hair, once perhaps golden or flame-red, hung in greasy, matted clumps. Her eyes burned with a fevered, mad light — not the fire of a warrior, but the sick, desperate blaze of something that should never have survived its own birth.

Half-human.

Half-fairy.

And entirely wrong.

When she moved, the court’s floor hissed and blackened under her touch. Flames that should have roared with heat instead dripped with rot, hissing with a corruption that defied natural magic. Rank 8 strength — June could feel it the moment she lashed out, her hand shattering stone, her voice screaming like a thousand broken bells.

The first line of guards died instantly.

The second fell moments later.

June leapt forward, drawing his black-forged blade, barking sharp orders to the draconic honor guard. He saw another general — the hulking demon-lord hybrid — slam into her from the side, only to be hurled back, his armor crumpling under the force of her blow.

But none of it mattered.

Because the second Veldax stirred, the battle was over.

The dragon’s vast head shifted, one eye narrowing, the faintest flicker of cosmic power dancing through his scales. His clawed hand swept outward, and space itself bent, shattering the abomination’s corrupted flames, twisting her limbs, pinning her mid-air.

June drove his blade through her chest before she could scream again.

The demon-lord general slammed a warhammer through her skull.

The shadow-archmage incinerated what remained.

The body fell, twitching, hissing.

And even then, it took three more direct blasts from Veldax to truly end her, burning her very soul out of existence.

June stood there after, his chest heaving, his blade slick with blackened ichor, his sharp grin tightened into something colder, harder.

Whatever that thing was...

Whatever it had tried to become...

It had failed.

But deep down, under the adrenaline, under the iron weight of victory, June felt a thin thread of unease twist in his gut.

Because that wasn’t just a fairy hybrid gone wrong.

That thing had been after the eggs.

And for the first time in a very, very long while...

June wondered what Veldax feared enough to keep sealed so tightly inside those unborn heirs.

The aftermath of the battle should have been triumph.

The generals — June among them — had stood shoulder to shoulder beneath the towering shadow of Veldax, their master’s vast wings curling half-folded around the heart of the court. The abomination was dead, annihilated, burned to ash and dissolved from the fabric of the world itself.

But Veldax didn’t relax.

His golden and purple eyes stayed narrowed, not in satisfaction, but in sharp, almost surgical calculation. The air around him trembled faintly, the way it only did when dragon magic twisted the very weave of existence.

June, still gripping his blackened blade, flicked the last of the rot-tinged ichor from its edge, his sharp grin settling into a thin, suspicious line. He stepped forward cautiously, boots crunching against the cracked floor.

"Master?"

Veldax didn’t answer.

Instead, the massive dragon inhaled.

Not with lungs. Not with breath.

With magic.

The air warped.

The charred remains of the woman — what little was left of her — crumpled in on itself, folding like scorched paper. The last wisps of rot magic spiraled upward, drawn irresistibly toward the dragon lord’s chest, vanishing into the ridges of his armor-like scales.

June’s eyes narrowed.

His instincts, honed over decades, snapped to high alert.

"Master, wait —"

And then the scream tore through the world.

It wasn’t Veldax’s voice.

It wasn’t human.

It wasn’t even the half-fairy woman’s voice.

It was something else.

June staggered back a half-step as the entire throne room pulsed, black and purple veins tearing across the air itself. Cracks spread through the walls, the pillars, the distant arches, as if the world was fracturing under invisible claws.

And then —

With a sick, wet pulse —

a bloom of rotting magic burst outward from Veldax’s chest.

Golden and purple scales darkened.

Massive, ancient wings quivered.

Fangs that could shear through mountains twisted, splintering slightly at the edges.

June’s stomach turned sharply.

He knew what was happening.

He just didn’t understand how.

Veldax had been infected.

Somehow — by some impossible, blasphemous act — the woman had left a fragment of herself inside the dragon lord.

A piece of rot, buried deep, fused to his heart.

June snarled, spinning sharply on his heel.

"Ward! Seal! Barrier — NOW!" he bellowed at the gathered archmages.

But it was too late.

The rot erupted outward in a massive, blinding wave.

June’s last clear image was of entire sections of the palace disintegrating into black sludge. The walls, the floor, the ceiling — even the air itself — began to unravel, eaten away by a corruption that defied natural order.

Veldax roared.

Not in rage.

Not in pain.

But in decision.

His great clawed hand swept outward, summoning a pulse of magic so vast, so dense, it flattened every general, every soldier, every lesser being in the chamber.

June hit the ground hard, teeth rattling, his chest heaving as he struggled to look up.

And then —

He felt it.

The Crown.

The Slave’s Crown, the artifact Veldax himself had gifted him decades ago — a circlet bound in dark silver, engraved with jagged runes that allowed one, and only one, to shoulder the burdens of others. To pull their suffering, their injuries, their curses onto themselves.

June gasped as the weight of it ignited across his skull, burning with raw magic.

He realized, in a sick rush, what Veldax was doing.

The dragon lord was pouring the corruption — the rot, the infection, the blasphemous curse left behind by the abomination — directly into the Slave’s Crown.

Directly into June.

"BASTARD —!" June choked out, voice cracking, his knees buckling as the weight slammed into him, pulsing like molten iron through his veins. His bones screamed. His skin blistered. His vision twisted wildly, black spots racing across his sight.

Veldax’s magic surged again.

June wasn’t the only one bearing the cost.

He felt it, deep in the weave of the world: the dragon lord had bound his own lifespan, his own power, to that of his closest generals. June, the demon-lord, the shadow-mage, the serpent-sisters all of them, linked together, pulling the weight, anchoring the burden to stop the rot from escaping the court and devouring the world.

The cost was immense.

Centuries.

Thousands of years of dragon-lord vitality burned.

Decades of general lifespans burned.

Flesh, magic, essence sacrificed.

June hit the ground, gasping, convulsing as the Crown blazed on his head, its runes pulsing white-hot.

And then

The flowers bloomed.

Where the rot should have spread

where black sludge should have devoured stone, earth, sky

instead, vivid blossoms unfurled.

Gold.

Purple.

Blue.

They spread in an instant, covering the stone, the ruins, the broken arches. They twisted upward, bursting through shattered windows, curling around fallen statues, blanketing every surface like a living, shimmering tapestry.

The court was saved.

The dragon’s heart was stabilized.

The curse was sealed.

But June

June lay motionless on the cracked floor, the Slave’s Crown still glowing faintly on his head, his body wracked with tremors, his breath thin and ragged.

He didn’t die.

But something inside him had been ripped out, reshaped, burned down to the bare bones of his existence.

As the flowers pulsed softly around him, the once-arrogant general, the self-proclaimed god-king of slaves, now lay broken, his heartbeat faint, his world a haze of light and color and sound.

Veldax loomed above, his vast form casting an unearthly shadow across the ruined court, his golden eyes flickering faintly with exhaustion, with quiet triumph and, perhaps, with something dangerously close to regret.

Because victory always had a price.

And this time, Veldax had made sure the price was shared.