SS.3: The Sealed Dragon

"It destroyed another city. Soon, we won't have much of a country left. We need to stop it before it destroys one of our houses!" One of the gathered nobles shouted.

"The weapons didn't work! What should we do?"

"Hire Hunters! Or maybe a group of Daemons could kill it!"

"It's a dragon, you idiot!"

"No normal Hunter can kill a dragon."

"I've heard of a Hunter that can."

The nobles all piled onto the one who made that comment, barraging him with questions.

...

"I want my money." In the streets of a city in the Western Imperial Nation Jadal, a thug was shaking down a man for money. In this area, this was a common sight, but today...

"Get away from that man!" A large man with horns and a tail shouted at the thug. This man was a Daemon, which was a title for those recognized by the Demon Lord for having incredible strength and a great sense of justice. A normal thug like this guy wouldn't stand a chance against him and he knew it.

"Are you okay?" The Daemon asked the man who had been being mugged. The man didn't respond, so the Daemon grabbed his shoulder. The reaction was instantaneous.

"BOOM!"

...

When I'd heard about the dragon destroying cities in the Western Imperial Nation, I'd immediately gone to their most populated city to determine if the dragon had a reason for targeting them. In order to do so, I'd walked into the worst part of town, gone into a generic, unmarked out of the way alley, and started using my detection skills to gather information.

While I was gathering information, some rando had entered the alley to try to mug me, but I'd ignored him in favor of efficiency, since he was far too worthless to do anything that could possibly affect me.

After a few minutes of me being 'mugged,' the sole Daemon in the city had been fortunate enough to stumble upon the scenario, and he'd chased the mugger away just as I'd finished up gathering information. The moment that I'd finished was the same moment that the Daemon touched my shoulder.

In that moment, I blasted the Daemon through a rift made by high level [Spatial Magic]. I didn't want to get him caught up in what was going to come next. After all, he was the only person in the whole country with any moral compass at all.

"Hello, Dragon."

"I am RavannnnnAAAAAAA!" Streams of fire flowed around Ravana like rivers at a moments' notice. When Ravana announced herself, she shot them all at me, but I easily flew around to dodge them. They slammed into the terrain behind me instead with a bone shattering boom, permanently altering the terrain.

This Ravana was a true monster. I'd killed dragons before, but Ravana was roughly five times stronger than the strongest dragon I'd seen prior to her. That made her over twice as strong as me, but that didn't mean that I didn't stand a chance against her.

Every spell she cast altered the landscape. Every time she moved, it was a work of art. Every time she hit me, it knocked me so far away that I needed to use [Spatial Magic] to peel myself out of a hole several miles deep, but on we fought. I dodged rivers of fire, batted away balls of crushing gravity, and dodged thousands of large spears made of diamond at the same time.

Ravana, on the other hand, ignored cutting, burning, rending, and stabbing threads with little effort. Electricity wasn't strong enough to do anything, and using [Light Magic] to burn her wing off was useless, because it instantly regenerated.

Our fight wore on late into the night, rending the landscape around us into a barren wasteland, but eventually one of us gave in.

"Do what you want with me. You are more powerful." Ravana didn't have the power left to move a muscle, so she laid her head at my feet in surrender.

I raised my hand and placed it on the top of her head. She closed her eyes, waiting for me to deliver the final blow. If I wanted to, I could destroy her brain in an instant from this position.

"[Unseal]." A power flowed into Ravana's body from my hand, empowering her. Surprised, she gazed up at me.

"Why would you do that?" She asked.

"They sealed your breath, right? That's why you were so angry?"

Clearly, just thinking about it enraged Ravana, because an immense amount of mana flared up from her body. With how powerful she was, her mana had already recovered a tremendous amount. "They did." Ravana sighed. She told me the whole story, something that I'd already partially figured out from my information gathering in the city.

...

Ravana had been hired by the Western Imperial Empire to assist in research and development. She had developed things for daily use for several months when it happened.

She thought that an experiment had gone wrong, and her assistant had been trapped inside a magical circle. She managed to use her incredible strength to save him, but her mana was weakened by breaking a circle that she had created, so he activated another circle that had been dormant in her research station for months.

The circle's primary function was to seal strength, and it had been powered by the mana that she had expended in that room. Using her incredible power, she managed to resist most of its effects, but her [Breath Arts] and a few other things had been sealed.

[Breath Arts] were the most important thing to a dragon, it was like the culmination of all their efforts up to that point in their lives, and as the strongest dragon on the planet, Ravana's [Breath Arts] were a wonder to behold.

Despite the trap, Ravana wasn't a normal dragon. She tried to convince her assistant to unseal her strength, but he refused. Next, she tried to leave her lab, but she was arrested and brought before the emperor instead.

The children that she had once hired to taste test her original candy bars now jeered at her in the streets, throwing rocks at her. The man who worked at the food stand that she visited whenever she felt like eating, who had always served her with a smile before, now spit at her as she passed by.

When they brought her before the emperor, the dragon had learnt the cruel truth. The entire country had been in on it. They'd been conspiring since before she had even started working there to weaken her, then eliminate her. Even the children.

Ravana had been heartbroken. They'd even used her own research and mana to build weapons, which she had been adamantly against. As the sword dropped towards her head, something had snapped inside her.

In the next moment, everything was blown away. The entire Imperial Capitol, simply eradicated by Ravana's power. Unfortunately, the device that powered her [Seals] hadn't been in the Capitol.

According to the information that she had gathered, Ravana's [Seal] had been powered by five separate magic circles situated all around the country. She'd destroyed three major cities so far, including the Capitol, and each one had contained a circle. She expected to find the last two circles in the two largest cities left, which weren't actually that large.

"But thanks to you, I don't need to look for the circles. Thank you so much for [Unsealing] my [Breath Arts]." Some time during her story, Ravana had transformed into her human form, a young looking girl with green eyes and blonde hair. Now, she grew wings on her back, bowing to me in thanks.

"Don't worry about it."

She flew off, satisfied with how things turned out. Most Dragons would not have rested until after they destroyed the entire country, but even after all of this, I could tell that Ravana had no anger towards humankind, or even the Western Imperial Nation.

...

Unfortunately, I did.