Starting out as a Dragon Slave
Chapter 173: Shadows Over the Middle Empire

Chapter 173: Chapter 173: Shadows Over the Middle Empire

The projectiles hunted him with mechanical, relentless obstinacy.

The howling of sonic bombs tore through the atmosphere, each whistling piercing the air like a vibratory blade slicing through the heavens’ entrails. Three warheads with obsidian hulls, engraved with technomagical glyphs that pulsed with malevolent light, converged toward him in a perfectly orchestrated choreography of death.

Mordred sensed the approach of the first, before even seeing it. His mana reacted through pure instinct, surging from his depths like an ancestral survival reflex.

[Active Skill: Intangibility]

A silent wave passed through him, transforming every fiber of his being. His flesh dissolved into ether. His bones became smoke. His very essence slipped between reality’s meshes.

The explosion ravaged the world around him.

A cataclysmic inferno engulfed the space, twisting the landscape into a sculpture of destruction. Trees disintegrated in a ballet of incandescent debris, the earth hollowed into gaping craters, the air itself seemed to consume. But at the heart of this hell, Mordred remained – a ghost suspended between existence and nothingness, intangible witness to the apocalypse surrounding him.

He continued his flight, crossing through flames like a dream crosses the mind.

Two more salvos approached, their trajectories carved in the superheated air.

Second detonation. Intangibility. Hell’s breath passed through him with no more resistance than through void. Below, human silhouettes were thrown like wisps of straw, their cries lost in the tumult while he, spectral equilibrist between two dimensions, maintained his trajectory with supernatural grace.

Third explosion. Intangibility.

His heart raced, but his mana reserves, now colossal, inspired no concern. He had become the eye of the cyclone, stillness at the center of chaos.

When silence finally fell, Mordred vanished into the heights, carried by wings of pure mana, his semi-transparent body melding into the leaden sky, saturated with acrid smoke, magical lightning, and human lamentations.

He cleaved through air currents with predatory fluidity, overflew several front lines without lingering, deliberately avoided bloody melees to drift toward the enemy’s rear guard.

He had seen enough. Learned enough.

Humans were merely pawns today. His true adversaries were the masters of the game.

A crystalline thought, cold as steel, took shape in his mind:

- "My enemies are those who orchestrate this symphony of death. The dragons."

Mordred breathed deeply, savoring the air charged with ashes and residual magic. Then, with artisan precision, he retracted his wings and began a calculated descent toward enemy lines.

On the ground, the spectacle awaiting him revealed the full extent of draconic military organization. A cohort of dragons in humanoid form, their command armor gleaming under magical glows, coordinated operations with formidable efficiency. Their voices carried the millennial authority of their race, each order cracking like a whip on their subordinates’ spines.

A dozen mobile command posts had just been deployed, each surrounded by concentric circles of hybrid soldiers, former slaves transformed into instruments of war, their bodies halfway between humanity and the reptilian nature of wyverns. Dragon officers, recognizable by the emblems of their noble houses engraved on their breastplates, supervised everything with aristocratic arrogance.

Mordred let the fog of war envelop him like a shroud. His transformation occurred in silence, every detail carefully orchestrated. His draconic form redeployed with hypnotic fluidity, scales of deep black, with obsidian reflections, covered his torso and arms, climbing along his neck like living armor. Two elegant horns emerged from his temples, short but perfectly sculpted, silently proclaiming his draconic ancestry.

His eyes metamorphosed, pupils sharpening into reptilian slits of incandescent gold, but he mastered their glow so they betrayed only calm determination.

He touched ground with a controlled step, the shock of his landing resonating with his race’s natural authority.

No one questioned his presence. No one dared.

He now advanced as one of their own, no, he was one of their own, at least in the eyes of those observing him. His imposing stature, confident gait, the battle traces staining his transformed body, everything conspired to create the perfect illusion of a veteran who had survived the hell of front lines.

Mordred slipped into the mass of dragon soldiers with chameleon-like ease, exploiting organized chaos to become a shadow among shadows. He had not come to sow death, not yet. He had come to learn, observe, dissect his enemies’ souls.

The main camp’s southern entrance opened before him, guarded by a circle of living barricades. Armed wyverns, their enchanted bone halberds gleaming with necromantic aura, formed a formidable rampart. Anti-stealth runes crackled at regular intervals, their complex patterns scrutinizing space for intruders.

Mordred circumvented them with hunter’s patience, briefly activating [Instinctive Awakening] to harmonize his presence with the ambient magical environment, leaving no abnormal trace in his wake, no distortion that might betray his true nature.

Once inside, the spectacle revealed the full scope of the draconic war machine.

Everything breathed millennial planning. Dimensional weapon silos aligned with geometric precision, their metallic surfaces reflecting magical lightning streaking the sky. Above, squadrons of flying transports stationed in perfect formation over a crater recently solidified by earth magic. A mana field generator, a seven-concentric-ring structure, pulsed with cosmic heart regularity, feeding a semi-permeable protective dome crowning the entire complex.

But what truly captivated Mordred’s attention was the mothership.

A titanic monument of black steel, its ovoid form bristling with magical anchor points dominated the camp like a war cathedral. Tall as a siege tower, it reigned at the device’s center, surrounded by a complex network of takeoff platforms, observation towers with streamlined silhouettes, and astral communication beacons humming with interdimensional energy.

Noble silhouettes moved between its external walkways, their movements betraying the importance of their functions.

- "That’s where they are," Mordred thought, his draconic pupils contracting imperceptibly. "The high-ranking officers. The heirs of great houses. The architects of this invasion."

Perhaps even... the brains behind this entire conquest campaign.

Mordred delved deeper into the camp, each step calculated, each glance measured. He methodically absorbed every conversation fragment, every whispered name, every tactical detail mentioned, every guard rotation observed. His draconic memory recorded everything with photographic precision.

"— House Ignivara will deploy its legions against the second defensive belt in the next two hours. Their pyromancers are already in position."

"— Human defenses show more resistance than expected, but nothing our strategists haven’t anticipated."

Each word was a spark in his vengeance arsenal. Each piece of information, a weapon forged in shadow for the coming assault.

Mordred memorized every detail: patrol patterns, security protocols, command hierarchies, communication frequencies used by superior officers. But while accomplishing this espionage mission with predatory patience, savage tension mounted within him.

His muscles contracted despite himself. His dragon blood roared in his veins. The destruction instinct, the primitive call of the hunt, the devouring urge to unleash his fury on these genocide organizers all this boiled within him like a volcano on the verge of eruption.

He forced himself to breathe deeply, to channel this rage into an even sharper blade.

- "Patience," he repeated to himself. "Revenge is a dish best served cold."

While the sky above continued resonating with distant battle echoes, Mordred melted again into the camp’s shadows, invisible among his own kind, a ghost at the enemy empire’s heart.

But his orange eyes remained fixed on the mothership, on those decks where the leaders of this extermination war moved.

Another Point of View:

Varnor Ignivara, standing in his long obsidian cape bordered with gold, arms crossed behind his back, observed the battlefield with absolute calm. His face expressed neither anger, nor pride, nor impatience. Only a form of glacial concentration, proper to beings who had nothing left to prove to anyone.

To his left, his daughter, Syléane Ignivara, bowed slightly, a crystalline tablet in hand, runes scrolling through the air.

- "The outer lines still hold, Father. But their lightning mages on the northern belt are beginning to weaken. Our projections indicate complete collapse in... forty-seven hours, maximum."

The patriarch didn’t respond immediately.

His slit pupils followed a Chinese squad that had just fallen under the claws of two red dragons, projected in flames onto their position. Cries rose, then died in the roar of an incinerating breath.

Finally, Varnor spoke.

- "They are valorous. Strategic. Much better organized than the Europeans."

He made a short pause, his words suspended in the burning air.

- "And yet, they will fall. Like all the others."

Syléane nodded, her hand tightening on the crystal.

- "Should I transmit to High Command that China won’t last the week?"

- "Tell them it won’t last two days. And that House Ignivara will keep its promise."

They fell silent. Below, the war continued. And in the eye of the cyclone, father and daughter contemplated the agony of a millennial empire, like watching a fireplace fire.

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Hi everyone !

Just to let you know that my new story, which is much better constructed than this one, comes out tonight! Don’t hesitate to check it out, 12,000 words have already been published.

Sorry for the disappointed but there will be no system in this one, only character development.

thanks !