Chapter 279: Clash In Mythal (Part 2)
Smoke still hung over Mythal as the dragons recovered, their wounds slowly closing.
Kai noticed something shift almost immediately. "They’re changing."
Not physically. Strategically.
Instead of attacking randomly, they started probing. One dragon tested the North District. Another hung back, circling. A third struck a relay tower directly instead of any hunter nearby.
Elden watched the pattern unfold. "They’re looking for weaknesses."
Gabriel’s expression hardened. "They’ve started learning."
Exactly what every Disaster Record had warned about. The dragons weren’t just trying to destroy the city anymore.
They were studying it.
One dragon attacked the same relay tower three separate ways in quick succession, fire first, then lightning, then a direct physical strike. Each time, the relay answered differently, refusing to repeat itself.
Lily smiled, watching the pattern shift on her console. "It learned too."
Two adaptive systems, testing each other in real time.
Then a dragon tore straight through a relay tower.
CRAAAASH!!
Golden light vanished from an entire district at once.
Everyone froze. Mayor Ko whispered, "No."
Deep underground, another line of gold ignited. Then another. Then a third, the mana flow rerouting automatically through a chain nobody watching from the surface could see. Destroyed relay, fed into a reserve relay, fed into a secondary conduit, fed into a hidden backup tower.
Golden light vanished. The North District went dark.
Barrier. Gone. Healing. Gone. Artillery. Gone. Every relay tower connected to that section died at once.
The change was immediate. A dragon saw it, its crimson eyes flashing, and it folded its wings. Then dove.
BOOOOOOM!!
Its claws ripped through three buildings before smashing into the powerless district. Flames exploded across the streets. Stone shattered. One relay tower collapsed completely, and hunters nearby were thrown backwards by the shockwave.
"Barrier’s down!"
"The network collapsed!"
"It’s broken!"
For the first time since the battle began, fear spread. Even Mayor Ko’s face paled. "No"
Above them, the dragon roared triumphantly. It had found the weakness, and it immediately attacked again, fire erupting down the avenue, buildings disappearing beneath crimson flames. The relay towers remained dark.
One second. Two. Three.
Kai never moved. He simply watched. "Wait."
Deep beneath Mythal, something awakened. A forgotten relay hidden beneath the oldest foundations of the city suddenly ignited, one line of gold, then another, then another, mana surging through tunnels no one on the surface even knew existed. The damaged pathway sealed itself off automatically, and the flow redirected. North Reserve Line. Secondary Relay. Emergency Conduit. Underground Nexus. Golden light raced beneath the streets faster than lightning, one relay tower reigniting, then two, then ten, then the entire district.
The barriers exploded back into existence.
BOOOOOOM!!
The dragon’s second breath smashed directly into fresh golden walls, the attack scattering harmlessly across the skyline. Every artillery battery came online simultaneously.
THOOOOOOOM!!
Hundreds of mana beams erupted upward, and the dragon barely managed to twist aside before dozens struck its wings. It screamed, forced back into the air.
Hunters throughout the district stared. "It came back."
The ruined relay tower still lay in pieces, yet another tower, buried beneath an ordinary warehouse three streets away, unfolded from beneath the ground. Stone split apart. Hidden mechanisms activated. Ancient pillars climbed into the sky. A relay nobody even knew existed replaced the destroyed one, golden veins spreading through it. The network never slowed.
Lily smiled without taking her eyes off the console. "Reserve pathway activated."
More windows appeared.
[Primary Relay Destroyed.] [Backup Route Selected.] [Synchronization Restored.] [Network Integrity: 99.94%]
The Astral Church members simply stared. One researcher whispered, "Impossible"
Another frantically compared the numbers. "No interruption Not even a measurable delay."
Gabriel laughed, a genuine laugh, relief, disbelief, pride. "They fixed it."
Everyone looked toward her. "The Heavenly Chains. Our greatest failure." She shook her head. "The original network collapsed whenever one major node was destroyed." She pointed toward the glowing city. "But this keeps thinking."
The reserve pathways continued shifting beneath Mythal even while nobody attacked, mana constantly searching for faster routes, shorter routes, safer routes. The network wasn’t simply reconnecting. It was improving itself.
Elden watched thousands of calculations update in real time. "It’s optimizing." He adjusted his glasses. "No. It’s evolving."
The realization hit everyone. This wasn’t a machine anymore. It was becoming something alive. Every attack taught it something, and every destroyed tower made the remaining network stronger.
Lily finally looked up, a small smile spreading across her face. "Version Two."
Gabriel slowly nodded. "So this is the city humanity was always supposed to build."
Mayor Ko looked across Mythal. Golden light pulsed beneath every street. Citizens had fled. Buildings were damaged. Smoke covered the skyline. Yet despite all of it, the city still stood. It refused to stop fighting. A smile finally appeared on his face, the first since the battle began. "Good."
Kai watched the dragons closely as the fight continued, and something clicked into place. They’d stopped flying certain streets entirely. Avoided specific plazas. Steered wide around open intersections that should have offered better maneuvering room.
Kai smiled. "They’ve noticed."
Sera glanced over. "What?"
"The kill zones."
Silence held for a second. The dragons had worked out, on their own, that some parts of the city were far deadlier than others.
Lily nodded, scanning her readouts. "They’re avoiding my strongest relay clusters."
Kai laughed. "So we stop chasing them."
Everyone looked toward him.
"We herd them instead."
Everyone shifted approach at once. Kai cut off escape routes rather than chasing directly.
Sera shield-bashed dragons toward specific streets instead of trying to land a killing blow.
Mira blocked alleyways with Iron Fortress, her hammer collapsing entire buildings into makeshift barriers.
Raze swung Blood Waves not to hit anything, but to erase entire directions of retreat, every slash closing off another option.
Elden manipulated gravity across whole streets, turning them into no-fly zones with floating debris acting as invisible walls. Lily’s Spirit Archers multiplied by the hundreds, then thousands, occupying every rooftop, firing not to kill but to redirect, closing routes one volley at a time.
Nobody was trying to win the fight outright anymore. They were playing something closer to chess, every move already accounted for three steps ahead.
Raze laughed, driving a dragon sideways with a Blood Wave. "I’ve never bullied dragons before!"
Mira grinned, boxing another one into a collapsed alley. "Feels surprisingly satisfying."
All four dragons finally realized too late that they’d been pushed into the Central District. Exactly where Lily had wanted them from the start.
She exhaled slowly. "Now."
Kai raised the Fractured Blade. "Phase Two."
Every relay activated at once, not randomly, but in perfect sequence. Barrier Conversion into Suppression into Gravity into Mana Compression into Artillery into Terrain Lock into Construct Formation, one after another without a single gap.
The streets themselves shifted. Golden walls rose out of the ground. Gravity spiked hard enough that all four dragons staggered mid-flight.
One tried climbing higher to escape. Gravity doubled instantly, pinning it in place. Another dove for the ground, trying to burrow beneath the city. Terrain sealed shut before it could break through. A third charged straight at Kai, and a barrier redirected it sideways into the waiting formation instead.
Everything funneled toward the same point.
Lily said quietly, "Checkmate."
Every artillery relic across Mythal fired at once, not a single beam, but four, one aimed at each dragon. Golden pillars erupted skyward, and the dragons fought, struggled, tried desperately to break free.
Too late.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!
The beams swallowed them whole.
The city shook violently, windows shattering, mountains far beyond Mythal echoing with the impact, and for a moment nobody could see anything, only light, only the roar, only the overwhelming pressure.
Seconds crawled past. Then the beams faded, smoke drifting slowly across the city.
Silence.
Something crashed. Then another.
The first dragon hit the street, already dissolving, its body breaking apart into crimson particles before touching the ground. The second had no head, its enormous corpse collapsing lifelessly across an avenue. The third remained standing, for exactly two seconds, before its neck slid apart, the body falling one direction, its head another.
The fourth dragon staggered through the smoke, half its wings gone, its chest opened completely.
It tried roaring.
Nothing came out.
The light in its eyes faded, and its body dissolved.
The sky above Mythal, dark since the moment Disaster had begun, slowly turned blue again.
Sunlight reached the city for the first time since it all started.
Nobody spoke for a long moment.
Raze lowered his sword slowly. "We—"
Mira whispered, "We actually did it."
Mayor Ko sat down right where he stood, unable to fully process it.
Gabriel smiled, tears gathering at the corners of her eyes. "We finally reached this point again."
One Astral Church member dropped to their knees. Another simply covered their face with both hands.
Centuries of preserved knowledge. Entire civilizations that had never made it this far. All of it converging into this single moment.
Mayor Ko looked toward Gabriel. "Has anyone ever reached this point before?"
She nodded slowly. "A few."
A pause. "But I can count them on one hand."
Silence held.
She looked out at the clear sky above them. "And none of them reached it this quickly."
The celebration lasted exactly three seconds.
The sky darkened again, not from returning clouds, but from the ocean itself reappearing overhead. A gigantic whirlpool formed directly above Tiamat, not summoned instantly this time, but growing steadily, wider and wider, until it stretched across the entire city.
Lily’s smile vanished. "That’s—"
"Her actually beginning to use her full power," Elden finished quietly.
Tiamat raised one hand, unhurried, and the whirlpool began its descent, an entire ocean spinning and compressing overhead. Buildings shook before it had even touched down.
Kai understood immediately. "It’s targeting everything." Not the hunters specifically. "The entire relay network."
Mayor Ko shouted, "Brace!"
The ocean crashed down.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!
Entire city blocks vanished beneath the water. Relay towers disappeared under the flood. Hunters were thrown through buildings by the force of it. Kai smashed through three walls before finally stopping. Raze crashed straight into the side of a skyscraper. Mira skipped across the flooded street like a thrown stone. Lily barely saved herself with a last-second Position Swap. Elden lost his staff entirely somewhere in the chaos.
Silence held. Water slowly drained away through cracked streets. Dust rose in its place.
For a moment, it looked like it might all be over.
Then Kai stood up, laughing.
Raze burst out of the rubble grinning ear to ear. Mira lifted her hammer, unbothered. Sera climbed free of collapsed debris. Lily wiped blood from her split lip and kept moving. Elden adjusted his cracked glasses, already scanning for his staff.
All six of them were smiling.
Because the relay towers, battered and half-submerged, were still glowing.
Kai raised his sword and pointed it directly at Tiamat.
"Now."
"No more dragons."
"Just you."
Tiamat lowered her hand slowly, looking at the six of them, then at the city still glowing steadily around her despite everything she’d just thrown at it.
For the first time since stepping through the gate, she took another deliberate step forward.
No dragons left to shield her. No Domain to retreat into. No distractions remaining.
Only Tiamat.
Against humanity.