I looked upon the Dragon made from half a dozen ethereal elements weaving into each other like chimeric threads of cloth. Krath, unfolding his wings for the first time, destruction emanating out from them like a tsunami rippling through the earth, turning all in its way into dust. And it was heading straight for me, and I found no way to escape it.

  So instead of dodging, I had the Queen fire a blade towards me, the attack redirecting the force of the wave. The wave disintegrated everything to the right of me, like nothing ever existed there. And even though most of the force was redirected, I was still blown back and disoriented.

  When I finally reoriented myself, I saw Krath flapping their wings, waves of force coming out of them, but none like the first. Instead, he was flying slightly above the ground, his giant body struggling to get up as he charged towards the Queen.

  Tackling her, mouth wide open to rip and tear, but the Queen wasn’t sitting idly. She opened her mandibles in challenge, a blade of energy forming. And the two collided with a titanic crash, the Queen being pushed back only slightly despite being half her opponent's size. But her attack blade was useless, being repelled by the elemental coating with an equal opposing force instead of being absorbed.

  The two in a stalemate as they tried to kill each other, Krath unable to break the Queen's carapace. And the Queen was unable to break through Krath’s elemental avatar. But the prize for breaking one of them was different; if the Queen's carapace caved in, she would just die. If Krath's avatar disappeared, he could keep on fighting.

  So I decided to keep my minions back so they wouldn’t be killed, waiting for whatever outcome would happen. Since I couldn’t think of anything to do since all of my minions would be vaporised the moment they got within the elemental avatar's range.

  But that ant colony did what ants did best, charging in and suicidally attacking whatever was in front of them. And I noticed something weird while they were attacking, Krath wasn’t absorbing any attacks; the avatar was just taking them.

  At first, I thought it was Krath just ignoring them, but then the Queen used an energy blade with enough time for Krath to absorb it, but they just didn’t. They dodged, and then the same thing happened again till I concluded that something about the avatar stopped Krath from absorbing energy. Which would’ve been helpful if I could only get past the thing.

  Wait a minute, something is itching in the back of my head. Something about energy absorption, but what? Energy absorption… Energy absorption… and something about getting past Krath's defences, Hm… OH MY GOD, THAT’S IT!

  I called upon one of the minions I had kept almost exclusively in the back line till now. The Solar Scale Butterflies, and I reluctantly sent them out, carefully placing them as close to Krath as I was willing to.

  And nothing happened, they weren’t close enough to activate their ability, to do that, they’d have to be directly inside of the avatar. Also, I wasn’t entirely sure they could absorb all of those elements, I knew they could take fire and lightning. But the grey blade energy was a mystery, and all the dozens of trace energies making the thing up.

  Ah, screw it, I die now, or I can make up for this later.

  And with a painful command, I plunge the butterflies into the cloak, almost not looking as I did it, but I forced myself to. The first good sign was that the waves the thing emanated didn’t kill them, and then I forced them down even deeper till I couldn’t see them within the depth of the sea of energy.

  I braced myself to hear the ding of the System telling me they were dead, but nothing came. And I tentatively rose them out of the avatar, the butterflies glowing like a red sun, a manic glee rising up from my chest with them.

  But I wasn’t the only one who noticed. Krath turned around, much to my dismay. But that was a mistake on his part, as the Queen did what I would describe as a bitch slap across the back of his head with her mandibles in a failed attempt to decapitate him.

  And this dance between the Queen, Krath, and the Butterflies went on. If Krath tried to target the Butterflies the Queen would make him pay, and if he was paying attention to the Queen the Butterflies would eat away at his defences. The avatar slowly shrinking, and to my glee, at one point, parts of him were exposed, starting with the tip tail and wings, and slowly growing bigger.

  And when those holes got big enough, I invited over Huginn the Nimbus Raven, the only good long range attacker, along with their murder to snipe at the gaps in Krath's armour. It wasn’t doing the most damage, but at this point, every little bit counted.

  This third annoyance, stacking on top of Krath, infuriating them even more in a way my heart found beautiful. And even if the Dragon got some damage on the distant opponents, the butterflies could just go and heal them. Which Krath tried to exploit this to get them off his back, but once again, the Queen punished him severely for this.

  But the Queen herself couldn’t keep this up for long either. I could see the cracks forming on her carapace. Starting out as hairline fractures here and there, but soon started growing in number and size. And one look at her status showed all her stats were in the Orange, some of them starting to turn red.

  But all I needed was for her to last just a little bit longer as the Butterflies devoured the last little bit of the avatar. The final stretch in sight, and I held on for as long as I possibly could, watching with bated breath as the final bit of energy disappeared. And Krath was once again exposed to the world, and I checked him with appraisal.

  Furnace Dragon: Krath Nixm

  HP: Orange

  Lv: 105

  MP: Orange

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  Lv: 91

  EP: Yellow

  Lv: 120

  Poison: Yellow

  He wasn’t affected as much as I wished, but anything at this point gave me a spark of hope. I pushed forward with my troops, the ants at this point having so low on colony members that they were starting to retreat. I helped the Queen as much as I could in the healing department, but even getting her back from the brink or Red took most of the power from the Butterflies.

  Krath fought back against the horde, still filled with enough MP to use their usual attacks, and regaining it now that they could absorb energy again. And at this point, I was just so tired of playing safe, I decided to take a risk.

  First, I coated my dozen remaining Rain Ravens in a weak but fast acting poison and had them Kamikaze the damn lizard, despite the loss of a murder significantly weakening Huginn. And having them swarm Krath's eyes in between cooldown time, the sacrificed clawing out Krath's other eye, and dig even deeper into the already injured eye. One of them nearly getting into Krath's brain, but were stopped by another heat wave, killing off all of my regular Rain Ravens.

  Despite cutting my numbers in half, it accomplished what I wanted. Krath’s poison status was in the red, their HP bar slowly turning crimson as well. But despite their almost certain fate, Krath kept on fighting like a cornered mouse.

  I originally intended to just let him die out slowly while I ran, so he wouldn’t panic and try to drag me down with him, but they were still doing that. Lashing out wildly with all their strength, trying to kill anything, and I tried to run, but whatever sense that let him track me through the forest let him track me, blinded.

  So I stood to fight, after waiting out the heatwaves for the cool down, I attacked with Huginn and Munnin, but he had gotten wise to that trick. And would start running away, attacking wildly in any direction he thought the Ravens were. But due to his blindness, he didn’t see me above or Guppy silently approaching from above and the front. Guppy shooting concrete spit at them, sealing up their nostrils and mouth, Krath trying to claw them away.

  But for the third time in a day, I dropped two Anteaters on top of a Dragon's head, shoving it down to the ground for Guppy to trap it to. Krath thrashing around, trying to break the concrete, but it just kept piling on as Krath just wasted their breath struggling.

  I landed on a nearby tree, relaxing as I saw the dragon stop moving, calling Zeus and Thor in to the Slip Away. Hearing the ding of the System in my ear.

  “You have killed contestant Krath Nixm, you shall be rewarded appropriately.”

  That notification catching my attention in the deluge of level ups that I just sort of ignored. Then, with no warning, Krath jerked again, more forceful than ever before, breaking free of the concrete prison, raising their head like when they had created the avatar.

  No, no, no, no!

  But instead, it did something much worse, he roared, he declared, he willed. The force like the first time I met the Queen or when Guppy came out of their cocoon as adragon. But it wasn’t for all to hear. It was only for me, all the force directed into a pinpoint and shoved into me.

  The words being “Hear my dying wish, Jacob Davidson. Follow me in death, where you belong!”

  It shoved into me, but I pushed back with my own will, with my own decree, but Royal Will was being pushed away like a leaf in the wind. And I reached out for the nearest help, my metaphysical arm straining as I had to let go part of the power also keeping away my death. But I eventually grasped onto one of my minions, Guppy, and he helped me push it back, but it wasn’t enough, so I searched, trying to ignore the pain of the power skewering my soul.

  But that just made me even more desperate to find some help. I tried with the Anteaters, but they couldn’t offer any of the strange power needed to push back Krath’s decree. I tried with the butterflies, anything close to me, but no one besides Guppy could help.

  So I reached out farther and farther, eventually reaching the Queen, and she could help, but she was so far away that her power was weakened. It stopped the progress of whatever was killing me, but stayed halfway embedded in my soul, begging for my death as it tried to wriggle deeper.

  My vision was faint, and my will was already weak from the past week of constant vigilance, and I felt myself falter. But my minions kept up the struggle as I fell unconscious, Krath’s death wish digging deeper into me by the moment, my mind flashing my entire life before me, searching for anything that could save me.

  It landed on my older brother Boe. I never even got the chance to destroy him at Uno again. And I sure as hell wasn’t going to let that happen, I started pushing against the death wish again, and it slowed down, eventually stopping. I felt the power behind it weaken as well, and I was finally able to gain back ground, pushing it fully out of me in an explosion of screams from it as it dissolved away.

  And I came to, lying down with my legs splayed out, shivering uncontrollably. I curled up into a ball as best I could with my moth anatomy, taking a moment to collect myself, or a minute… or half an hour.

  When I felt steady enough, I stood back up, checking my status, and…

  Holy hell!

  My HP was such a dark shade of Red that I thought it was black at first. A small heart attack later, I had my Butterflies come around and heal me up. As they were doing that at a painfully slow pace, I ignored the near-death experience and checked the notifications I got after fighting Krath. Allowing the dopamine to settle my nerves a bit, and remembered one of them that had caught my attention, finding it shortly after.

  “You have killed contestant Krath Nixm, you shall be rewarded appropriately.”

  Ok, so what’s that about?

  I looked over it for a few moments, trying to figure out what the reward was. Thankfully, another system notification popped up, saying.

  “Would you like to accept Reward now?”

  That’s strange. Why would it ask for my permission? It’s never done that before.

  But I couldn’t figure out why from just looking at it, hoping it would tell me more, so I did what I knew would work, and mentally pressed yes. The terrible sensation of teleporting taking me, an instant later I found myself floating in outer space, a planet beneath and stars surrounding me.

  No, I wasn’t floating. There was no movement, and I could feel gravity for some reason. I tried walking around and found an invisible floor. Then I looked at the planet beneath me, taking a moment to recognise it, the continents in a different perspective than I was used to. But it was unmistakable; Earth, my home, just beneath my feet.

  Then I heard the voice of Terra, “Hello, Jacob Davidson.”

  I looked up and saw the angel made of broken glass and vegetation from the third phase, but this time it looked more real. The former bits of stone now skin.

  And their mouth moved as they spoke, saying, “It is time for your Reward.”