POV of the Dark Dragon, Reise Among dragons, I occupy a rather unusual position.
It's not just that my abilities were designed with gods in mind—my fighting style is fundamentally different from other dragons as well.
The thing is, my body is humanoid by nature.
Other dragons can take on humanoid forms, of course, but for them it's merely borrowed shape. Their true essence remains that of a dragon.
No one else has a true dragon form that is humanoid like mine.
And because of that, no other dragon fights hand-to-hand like I do.
I thrust my palm forward to unleash a Heresy Attack.
Dodged effortlessly.
Not a single one of my attacks has so much as grazed the target since this started.
The gap in base stats is simply too vast.
With that spider-like lower body, the target would seem to present a large profile—an easy mark. But that very lower body allows it to slide forward, backward, left, and right with fluid ease, making its movements devilishly hard to read.
Just as I fight hand-to-hand—an aberration among dragons—my opponent moves in ways dictated by its own unusual spider physiology.
I can't get the hang of it.
Meanwhile, the opponent is gradually adapting to my movements.
At first, it was dodging my attacks with wide, comfortable margins. Now it's luring me in until the last possible instant before slipping away.
It's starting to read me.
In this short span of time.
What terrifying battle intuition.
This isn't just about superior base stats—the level of sheer combat sense is off the charts.
Defeat is only a matter of time…
I already knew that.
My abilities may have been conceived with gods in mind, but they were only ever conceived that way. That doesn't mean I can actually fight one.
My existence was nothing more than a last resort—a desperate gamble left over in case my Lord fell.
In the slim hope that, maybe, just maybe.
That faint, fragile hope.
Ideally, I should have maneuvered so that my Lord never had to fight at all.
In principle, the very idea of my Lord having to take the field was never supposed to happen.
Let alone losing.
I honed this mind of mine solely for that one-in-a-million chance of a one-in-a-million chance.
Even though the probability of it making any difference was vanishingly small.
Defeat was the predetermined outcome.
Against an enemy my Lord couldn't overcome, I had no reason to believe my power would fare any better.
There was no chance of winning.
So what!
If I can't prove myself here, then what meaning has my life?
Am I to believe I sharpened these powers solely to be defeated?
No!
Absolutely not!
The White God turns its palm toward me.
Dark energy churns and swirls within it.
If that gets launched, it will be an attack far surpassing even the Queen's breath.
The playtime is over. That's what this means.
It had sensed my Heresy Attacks and been playing it safe—going out of its way to dodge rather than risk exposure. But now it's deemed me no real threat and moved to finish things quickly.
That judgment is correct.
Between the White God and me lies an immense wall that cannot be crossed.
At the end of the day, a being lesser than a god simply cannot contend with a god.
We fight using borrowed power from the System—a power lent to us by the gods themselves.
There's no way borrowed divine power could ever stand against the divine.
But even I have my pride.
A torrent of energy erupts from the White God's palm.
There's no time to dodge something hurtling at me with that kind of speed.
And it's not something I could block and endure even if I tried.
So I'll do neither.
I press forward.
The energy blast tears my lower body away.
So thoroughly, so completely—there's nothing left.
But my upper body, spared a direct hit, remains intact.
The energy was so powerful that it punched clean through the lower half where it struck. Had the force been even slightly less, the resulting shockwave would have scattered my upper body as well.
Following the law of inertia, my upper body continues hurtling forward.
With no lower body left to speak of, there's planting my feet out of the question.
A punch thrown from here wouldn't carry much force.
But this is my last act of defiance.
One shot to settle the score.
Seeing me fly forward with only my upper body, the White God's one remaining eye opens wide.
From its other hand—not the one that fired the energy—it conjures a shimmering barrier and launches white threads in a radial spread.
If those threads catch me, this advance stops dead.
Only a single fist's width can pass through the gaps in the net.
I tear off my right hand.
I hurl it straight through the gap in the web.
My upper body is ensnared by the threads.
But the hand I threw slips through the net and flies straight toward the White God's face.
The White God jerks its head aside in alarm.
Even so, it can't fully dodge—the severed hand grazes the area just above its remaining eye, slicing a shallow cut across where its eyebrow would be.
That's all.
All the risk I staked my life on amounted to nothing more than that.
Ah.
How frustrating.
The crystallization of my entire life could do no more than leave that trivial wound.
But perhaps that was still better than withering away to rot without ever having used these powers at all.
Clutching my frustration alongside a faint sliver of satisfaction, my consciousness sank into darkness.