Chapter 966: The False Dragon
The false dragon struck the ground with such force that the organic surface of the chamber split open around its body, scattering plates, fibers, and a dark substance that contracted like exposed muscle. Strax did not release its neck. He kept one hand pressing the creature against the ground while using the other to hold the base of one of its newly formed wings. The network reacted immediately, thickening the vertebrae, enlarging the muscles around the neck, and creating a second layer of scales over the points where his fingers applied pressure. The body was trying to become too heavy to lift and too resistant to crush, but every alteration consumed matter that should still have been used to complete its growth.
Strax noticed that before the creature even tried to fight back. That body had not finished being born and now had to choose between completing its own formation or responding to the attacks. Every reinforced bone was a part of the wing that remained incomplete. Every plate created over the neck stole material from the muscles in its legs. The network could adapt everything, but it did not possess infinite resources inside that single organism.
"You are in a hurry," Strax said as he felt the body beneath his hands change again. "Trying to grow and fight at the same time."
The answer came through the tail. The still-deformed appendage lengthened all at once, developed cutting plates, and struck the side of Strax’s face with enough force to tear away several scales. His head turned with the impact, but he did not lose control of the neck. Instead, he pulled the wing he was holding and dislocated it before the body could reinforce the joint. The creature released a hoarse roar, contracted its muscles, and opened a fissure in its own shoulder, separating the damaged wing from the rest of its body so Strax could not use that area as leverage.
The abandoned limb did not even reach the ground. Filaments emerged from the chamber’s surface and seized the wing in midair, pulling it into the walls as though that entire place were a single organism recovering wasted matter. Strax followed the movement for an instant and understood that the creature was not fighting alone. The floor, cocoons, and surrounding channels supported its growth. As long as it remained inside that facility, any severed part could return to the system and be used again.
The false dragon used the distraction. The plates across its chest opened and released an explosion of Black Ice directly against the arm holding it down. The cold climbed over Strax’s scales, stiffened the joints, and created dark crystals between his fingers. Immediately afterward, the creature twisted its neck violently and managed to break free, leaving a layer of skin and scales inside his claws. It retreated on three limbs, as the fourth was still forming, and kept its head low while analyzing the true dragon’s reaction.
Strax shattered the ice gathered around his arm simply by contracting his muscles. The skin beneath the scales showed small cracks, but the damage was superficial. The Black Ice produced by the creature possessed the appearance, temperature, and some of the properties of his own, but it lacked something fundamental.
It did not carry the same authority.
It was a reproduction built from the observed effect, not from the true origin of the power.
"You can copy the temperature," he commented, opening and closing his hand until the movement fully returned. "But you do not know why it obeys."
The organism did not understand the words, but it reacted to his tone. Its throat expanded and White Fire appeared again, this time compressed into a small sphere before being launched. Strax moved his head aside, allowing the projectile to pass beside his horn and strike the cocoons behind him. The explosion consumed dozens of smaller structures, but the chamber itself absorbed the flames almost immediately, conducting the heat through the channels and into the false dragon’s body. Its pale plates became brighter, and the missing limb grew within seconds.
That confirmed another aspect of the network’s operation. The creature could recover energy from missed attacks, even when the damage struck its own cocoons. Attacking indiscriminately would only feed the system. Strax needed to destroy the connection between the body and the chamber before concentrating enough power to eliminate both.
He advanced without releasing any energy. The false dragon opened its wings imperfectly and jumped backward, using a stream of White Fire against the ground to gain distance. Strax followed the movement, struck one wing against a pillar, and used the lateral impulse to change direction in the middle of his leap. The network adjusted the creature’s eyes quickly enough to follow, but the body still had no experience with which to respond.
Seeing a movement did not mean knowing how to fight against it.
Strax struck the chest with his shoulder, carrying the creature through three organic columns before crushing it against a wall covered in cocoons. The false dragon tried to wrap its forelegs around his neck, but Strax lowered his center of gravity, trapped one beneath his own arm, and twisted until he felt the bone break. When the plates began reinforcing the joint, he had already changed the angle and driven his knee into the abdomen, crushing the incomplete structures protecting the core.
The creature bit into his shoulder. Its teeth pierced two layers of scales and began releasing a dark substance into the wound, probably the same filaments found inside the animals fleeing the desert. Strax felt the organism trying to spread through his flesh, searching for nerves, mana channels, and any structure it could use to transmit information to the network.
He did not push the creature away.
Instead, he held its head with both hands and allowed the filaments to advance several more centimeters.
The network responded immediately. The walls pulsed, the channels lit up, and hundreds of small vibrations converged on the point of contact. The creature was trying to read him directly. Not merely his techniques or elements, but the internal workings of his body. If it completed the process, it would probably learn how to reinforce the imitation far more precisely.
Strax closed his eyes and allowed the network to find his draconic energy.
Then he released everything at once.
The pressure traveled backward through the filaments and entered the false dragon’s head like an avalanche. The organism tried to sever the connection, but Strax held its jaws closed around his own shoulder, preventing it from retreating. White Fire traveled through the invasive channels while Black Ice froze the external branches, trapping the network inside the connection it had created.
The effect spread beyond the creature. Several cocoons exploded at the same time, the veins in the walls turned white and black in alternating sections, and a wave of convulsions crossed the entire chamber. The false dragon released the bite only when part of its jaw dissolved from within. Strax seized what remained of its head and threw it toward the center of the facility.
The creature passed through a thick membrane and fell inside one of the main channels carrying matter toward the core. It immediately began absorbing the contents around it to repair the damage. Its legs thickened, a second row of teeth appeared, and additional plates grew over its chest. The network had understood that the original body was insufficient and began pouring everything it possessed into that one unit.
Thousands of cocoons attached to the walls withered at the same instant. Organisms that were still incomplete dissolved before being born, and their matter flowed through the channels toward the false dragon. The creature increased in size, lengthened its neck, and finally completed both wings. The pressure it released was now much closer to Strax’s, although it remained artificial and irregular.
Above them, new explosions crossed the desert. Another outpost had been destroyed.
Then another.
With every severed connection, part of the energy sent toward the false dragon fluctuated, but the central facility compensated by consuming its own cocoons. The network was sacrificing the entire army to complete that weapon.
The crystal attached near Strax’s neck vibrated through heavy interference. Monica’s voice arrived fragmented but still understandable.
"Seven outposts destroyed. Two groups found heavy resistance. The remaining channels are transferring everything toward you."
"I noticed."
"Do not try to face all the accumulated energy at once. Destroy the distribution before the body."
Strax watched the channels converging on the creature.
"That was my intention."
The false dragon opened its wings and launched itself at him. This time, its speed approached his own. The impact between their bodies destroyed part of the wall and carried them through an entire area of cocoons. The creature tried to repeat the technique Strax had used at the beginning of the fight, grabbing his neck to throw him against the ground, but the imitation was too perfect. It reproduced the position of the hands, the movement of the hips, and the distribution of weight exactly as it had observed.
Strax knew his own technique better than anything created from it.
He allowed his body to follow the movement through the first half, reduced his resistance at the correct instant, and rotated in the same direction as the throw. The false dragon lost its support when the expected weight disappeared. Strax landed behind it, caught the tail with one claw, and used the momentum of the copied technique to throw the creature into the feeding channels.
The creature passed through four structures, but the walls immediately began repairing the connections.
Strax did not allow it.
Black Ice spread through the ruptures, freezing the liquid matter before the channels could close. He then used his claws to tear the frozen structures from the wall, creating an opening between the main body and part of the facility.
The false dragon rose and produced new channels directly from its back, connecting itself to the ceiling. The network corrected every loss by changing the feeding method. Strax destroyed the upper connections with a sound wave, but others grew from the legs. He burned those with White Fire, and the creature opened small mouths across its skin to consume the matter already present in the floor.
The network was too efficient to depend on a single route.
Strax stopped attacking for several seconds.
The creature also slowed, interpreting the pause as hesitation. Its eyes widened, new membranes covered the pupils, and the wings repositioned themselves for a direct advance. It was waiting to discover which technique he would use next.
Strax looked around, analyzing the entire structure. The channels, cocoons, membranes, and enormous central mass were not independent parts. Everything contracted at the same rhythm, but there was a brief delay between the core and the extremities. Information left the center, traveled through the network, and returned after every adaptation. The false dragon seemed to make quick decisions, but it still depended on that circulation.
He did not need to destroy every channel.
He needed to interrupt the rhythm.
Strax opened his wings and struck the air once, producing a pressure wave that did not directly hit the creature. The impact traveled through the walls and made the entire chamber vibrate. The network responded by contracting the channels to protect the structure. Before they relaxed, he struck again, this time at a different interval. The network tried to adjust the rhythm, but Strax changed both the force and timing with the third strike.
The false dragon advanced to stop him. Strax received the creature with both hands, seized its newly formed horns, and held the body away while continuing to beat his wings. Each wave crossed the chamber at an irregular interval. The central organism tried to respond, but the contractions began overlapping. Some channels closed when they should have opened. Others sent matter in the wrong direction. The remaining cocoons inflated until they ruptured, while entire veins collapsed under excessive pressure.
The creature recognized the failure and tried to produce the same vibration with its own wings. Strax changed the rhythm again before it completed the first movement. The false dragon possessed strength, speed, and the ability to copy, but it did not understand intent. It was forced to respond to what had already happened.
Strax decided what would happen next.
"That is the problem with learning only by observing," he said while the creature pressed its horns against his hands. "You are always late."
He slammed its head against the ground and pinned the body beneath one foot. The network tried to pour matter through the nearest channels, but Strax maintained the irregular waves until the entire circulation collapsed. The false dragon began losing volume. Newly formed plates cracked, muscles stopped receiving energy, and one wing collapsed under its own weight.
Monica’s voice came through the crystal again.
"Ten outposts destroyed. The last is being evacuated before detonation."
Strax looked toward the central core. The mass remained alive, but now pulsed without order. When the final outpost was severed, all remaining energy would become trapped there.
"Tell me when it is finished."
The creature beneath his foot opened its chest and revealed a core divided between White Fire and Black Ice. It no longer possessed enough matter to adapt, so it began compressing all accumulated energy into a single point. It was no longer trying to survive or win.
It was preparing to explode and destroy the chamber with Strax inside it.
He felt the temperature rise and fall simultaneously. The walls began melting while the floor froze, and cracks spread across the imitation’s entire body. The network had learned one final thing from him: when opposite extremes were compressed together, the resulting energy could surpass both.
However, it had copied only the result.
Not the control.
Strax drove his claws around the core and tore the structure from the creature’s chest before it completed the fusion. White Fire burned his arm down to the bone while Black Ice froze the flesh and prevented regeneration. Even so, he squeezed the core between both hands, using his own authority over the elements to separate the energies trying to merge uncontrollably.
The false dragon struggled beneath his foot. Without the core, its body began dissolving, but it still tried to create filaments to recover the structure. Strax raised the object above his head and waited.
The final explosion appeared on the horizon.
The eleventh outpost disappeared.
Every feeding line was severed at the same time, and the facility’s central core completely lost its rhythm. Strax compressed the extracted object until the two energies stopped fighting against his hands and began to obey. Then, instead of allowing them to explode, he directed them downward.
The attack passed through the false dragon, pierced the chamber floor, and reached the central mass buried beneath the facility. White Fire consumed the accumulated energy while Black Ice prevented any part from escaping through the remaining veins. The fusion advanced through the entire isolated network, destroying connections, cocoons, and storage structures from the inside out.
The entire chamber began collapsing.
Strax kept one foot over the false dragon until its final movement disappeared. The body lost the white scales, black crystals, and every resemblance to him. Only a pale, incomplete mass without any form of its own remained.
Before the ceiling collapsed, Strax lowered his head closer to the creature.
"You copied everything you saw."
He pressed the body against the ground while energy passed through what remained of the facility.
"But you never understood what you were looking at."
The central mass ruptured beneath them, and a column of White Fire surrounded by Black Ice crossed the desert and reached the sky. The dunes were pushed away for kilometers, revealing for several seconds the colossal extent of the network beneath the sand. Veins, chambers, and thousands of cocoons appeared under the light before being consumed by Strax’s energy.
The counterattack had destroyed all twelve outposts.
Now the heart of the network was beginning to die.
But as Strax opened his wings to escape the collapsing facility, he felt a new pulse far beneath the destroyed core. It was not a response from the network or the movement of another cocoon.
It was something slower.
Older.
And large enough to make the entire desert sink several centimeters when it moved for the first time.