Chương 37: Garden

By the time the flaming claw closes in again, I have already stopped thinking like a person. Two steps back. Angle thirty degrees. Blade comes up as it passes—not to damage, just to register contact and maintain momentum. Stack preserved. The muscles along the dragon's tail tense, the shift subtle but distinct, mass redistributing in preparation for a sweep. I am already moving.

The tail scythes through the space I occupied a fraction of a second ago, displacing the air beneath me as I vault just high enough to clear it. No excess height. No wasted motion. I cut twice on the way over—quick, shallow arcs. Momentum increases. Fireballs blossom into existence while I'm still airborne, trajectories calculated to intersect where I should land, not where I will. Gravity spikes.

I drop hard, boots kissing the ground as the fireballs scream overhead, passing close enough to heat the stone but missing entirely. I surge forward into the gap, blade snapping out to rake the back of his leg as it resets. Another stack. He snaps his jaws shut where my head was going to be. I step inside the bite, cut across the exposed neck plating, and roll past before the follow-through can connect. The mana armor absorbs the strike completely. Expected.

I continue pressing, movement chaining seamlessly from strike to reposition to strike again, momentum stacks climbing as my speed and control sharpen further. The dragon does not disengage. No forced distance. No high-output spells. No retreat to the air. That option is gone. Mana armor drains constantly. Infernal Palisade drains constantly. Astral Burn drains constantly. Death Corruption drains constantly. His mana pool is no longer a resource to be spent freely—it is the only thing keeping him alive.

If he runs out, I win. And he knows it. So he holds his ground. So do I. The exchange continues, clean and brutal, numbers ticking down on both sides. The outcome remains unchanged. Even with my momentum stacks at their maximum, the mana armor does not yield. That result alone is sufficient. It confirms that neither increased execution speed nor repeated application of force alters the outcome. Quality attacks fail. Quantity attacks fail. Scaling within my current parameters is irrelevant.

Another tail sweep begins—muscle groups contracting in a predictable sequence. One leap back. My sword snaps up to my left shoulder as I realign mid-motion. Runes ignite. Starfire condenses along the edge, compressed and focused. Starline Thrust activates. The thrust is precise, linear, optimized for penetration rather than spread. The timing is exact. The vector is clean. It slides along the surface of the mana armor as the tail passes, redirected without resistance.

A faint metallic ping marks the point of contact. No loss of cohesion. No disruption of the armor's structure. Expected. The data set is now complete. Nothing in my current kit—speed, momentum, precision, or starfire output—is capable of breaching the mana armor. The exchange continues for another six seconds. No. That statement is incomplete. My current kit is not my full kit. The Starborn trait remains inactive. A modifier that increases both regeneration efficiency and offensive output.

A multiplicative factor, not an additive one. All prior calculations were conducted under a self-imposed constraint. I have been operating at a handicap since the start of the engagement. Activating the trait resolves two failure conditions simultaneously: survivability under accelerated attrition and insufficient damage throughput against mana armor. The solution is direct. Activation requires unobstructed stellar alignment. Current obstruction: the sun's position relative to the battlefield.

The obstruction must be removed. This is not a theoretical limitation. The dragon has already demonstrated that large-scale environmental occlusion is achievable through skill-based execution. Past testing also confirms that skill effects can be replicated through sufficiently precise elemental manipulation. The method exists. The only remaining variable is implementation. The dragon added. Added flame. Added containment. Added heat and pressure until the environment itself became a weapon.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. That is acceptable. Additive systems can be dismantled. So I will subtract. I will remove everything that is not me. I raise my hand, slowly, methodically, aligning position and intent without haste. I cannot achieve victory inside this environment. Therefore, the environment must be rewritten. Astral energy surges in response, briefly unstructured—charged, unstable, refusing alignment. The response is not emotional.

It registers as excess. My hand traces a shallow arc through the air. My fingers meet resistance where there should be none. In this moment, the world feels thin. Not fragile. Insufficient. Stretched past what it was meant to contain. The starfire shell collapses without friction, vanishing as if it had never been instantiated. Gravity normalizes. Heat, light, and force detach simultaneously as all imposed concepts drain out of my astral energy.

What remains bleeds from my fingertips—attributeless, unlit, unweighted. Undeniably me. Not power. Not intent. Identity. I hook my fingers into the air. Ah. My eyes feel heavy. Heavier than they should be. Heavier than makes sense. I pull. Reality tears. It does not explode. It does not scream. It peels—like fabric drawn too far past its seam. Blackness opens beneath my nails, threaded with distant pinpricks of light. Tiny stars, cold and sharp, stretching as the tear widens. The sun vanishes.

Not eclipsed, or dimmed. Irrelevant. Midnight pours through the wound, and the world exhales like it's been holding its breath for centuries. The firmament settles into night—not the absence of light, but its replacement. Stars scatter across the heavens in impossible density, sharp and brilliant, while distant nebulas stretch in slow, luminous arcs toward infinity. No sun. No moons. Just endless depth. My truth. The ground splits. Stone fractures outward—no, not fractures. It blooms.

The ruined road splits into rich, dark soil as thorned vines made of starlight surge upward, spiraling with slow, patient inevitability. They don't lash or snap. They rise, coil, and spread with absolute certainty, every movement measured and deliberate. They don't attack. They claim. My will. Flowers open among the vines. Dahlias. Black so deep they drink the starlight, petals layered and perfect, impossibly pristine. They don't sway—there is no wind here.

They simply exist, watching, as if they were always meant to. My self. The dragon recoils. Not from me—from the wrongness of it. From a world that no longer agrees with his presence. His roar stutters, breaks apart as sound thins and dissolves into velvet dark. My tail sways, slow and satisfied. A grin curls across my face, arrogant and entirely unsubtle.

"Well," I mutter to myself, tilting my head.

"That was a bit more dramatic than expected, but if it works… you know?" I reach out with my left hand. The vines respond immediately, shifting and rising to meet me, coiling briefly around my arm before releasing me again like a fond cat brushing past. I trail a finger through the petals of one bloom. Black dahlias. Honestly, could it be any more on brand? I glance back at the dragon, who looks like he's reconsidering every life choice that led him here.

"Do you like my world?" I ask, pleasantly. The light from the stars above shifts slightly, radiance cascading across my silhouette in a dramatic and deeply unnecessary display. My dahlias react as well, dark petals rustling softly as several drift subtly closer around me, clustering near my legs like they unconsciously prefer my presence over literally anything else in existence. Reasonable.

Naturally, I adjust my posture slightly—hips angled back, shoulders relaxed, leaning forward just enough to maximize the visual composition. My hair spills over one shoulder. The flowers and vines frame the pose perfectly. This undoubtedly looks extremely cool. Even as my aura farming quota for the day is being thoroughly and enthusiastically fulfilled, my thoughts are already racing ahead, searching for the perfect name. I find it almost immediately.

"Or rather…" I say, smiling wider, "… my Garden of Eternal Midnight." The words echo outward, weighty and absolute—like a skill being etched into reality itself. A notification slides into view. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ You have gained the special skill [Arcana: Garden of Eternal Midnight] ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Above me, a surprised squawk erupts from my celestial peanut gallery, followed by frantic shushing and what sounds suspiciously like threats involving airborne popcorn. I ignore them.

Instead, I turn my full attention back to the dragon. He is about to have a very bad day.

"What the fuck did you just do?!" Oh. His voice is noticeably less confident than it was a few moments ago. Good. Naturally, I answer. It's finally my turn to do some true power monologuing, and I would rather die than let that opportunity pass unused.

"I have merely done what you did with your… Infernal Palisade technique," I say pleasantly, my tail kicking into hyperdrive as it flicks back and forth with unrestrained enthusiasm.

"Only executed with greater refinement." The stars above subtly shift across the endless dark, rearranging themselves into a configuration that is objectively more aesthetically pleasing, as if reacting to my smugness. He snarls, and a Flame Lance blossoms into existence above his shoulder before launching toward me—fast, aggressive, and with the same energy as an especially motivated pigeon divebombing a slice of pizza that had the misfortune of existing in public. I point at it. Purely for dramatic effect.

"Shear." The response is immediate. A dozen starlight vines surge up from the ground, blazing with starfire as they intersect the lance in a precise, intersecting lattice. The spell is dissected mid-flight, carved cleanly into sputtering embers that rain harmlessly to the ground. The dragon freezes. He looks… concerned. I'm not sure why. This is very clearly not the final act yet. He shouldn't be giving up already. That would ruin my fun.

And now that I am no longer constantly developing second-degree burns simply for existing, I am having a lot of fun. I lift my sword and settle into Guiding Star for the first time since this fight began, the stance smooth and familiar as it clicks into place.

"Again." My Starborn trait hums quietly at the edges of my awareness, slowing the Death Corruption to something merely inconvenient. Around us, my Garden smothers the Infernal Palisade so completely it might as well never have existed. Which means time is, once again, on my side. So let's see you dance until the end, dragon. The ground trembles as he charges, soft soil compressing and tearing beneath his weight.

He closes the distance in a heartbeat, committing fully to violence by way of enthusiastic disembowelment. His claws extend— —and pass straight through what he thought was me. I suppress a very dignified giggle from my actual position, about five meters to the side.

"My Garden rarely tells the truth without embellishment." He whips around instantly, tail snapping out toward me like a scaly freight train packed to the brim with bad decisions. I angle my blade. Dozens of vines surge up from the soil, tangling and coiling around the tail in layered wraps. Every single one is snapped apart almost immediately—but not before they bleed off just enough force.

I deflect the tail as it passes, despite it being considerably larger than my entire body, and it sails uselessly overhead in a rush of displaced air. He presses the attack, lunging with a claw. Above him, fireballs and lances bloom into existence by the dozen, launching toward me with lethal enthusiasm. I twirl backward out of reach of the claw as nearly half the projectiles are intercepted mid-flight, sliced apart by starfire-infused vines that rise and fall in precise arcs. The rest I handle myself. A step.

A turn. A flick of the wrist. Dodged. Split. Deflected. A perfect illusory clone peels away from me, continuing the retreat in a convincing imitation of panic, while the real me slips forward instead—light and gravity bending together alongside Silent Star, my position erased as thoroughly as if I were never there at all. He barrels past me, fixated on the fleeing illusion. Naturally, I drive Starline Thrust straight into his exposed belly. Predictably, it slides off the mana armor with a dull metallic ping.

Whatever. Dealing damage wasn't the point anyway. I withdraw the blade smoothly, already transitioning into the next step of the dance— —and then he does something baffling. Something inelegant. Something efficient. He tries to sit on me. Absolutely not. Of all the ways I have imagined my extremely cinematic demise, being flattened by an overweight lizard does not even begin to crack the top ten thousand. It lacks drama. It lacks gravitas. It lacks emotional devastation for any hypothetical onlookers.

And, worst of all, it lacks at least three ominous organ solos. A Dash chained straight into an Astral Step clears me from the descending bulk just before it can convert me into decorative garden soup. The impact hits a moment later, the ground shuddering as his weight slams down hard enough to leave a fresh crater in my otherwise immaculate Garden. Rude. I Dash again to widen the distance, then twirl once—purely for flair—before settling back into position, blade low, stance relaxed. That's when I notice it.

I frown slightly as he hauls himself out of the indentation he just made. He still hasn't used it. Which is strange. Because everyone knows what a dragon's signature attack is. And the massive crater I found earlier in this zone makes it painfully obvious that he has it. So why hasn't he pulled it out yet? My tail swishes, slow and thoughtful. Ah. Yeah. That tracks. This dance hasn't reached the finale yet. And judging by the way he's bracing himself— —it's about to get loud.