novelraw Chapter 174: A Loyal Sacrifice… For My Race, I Must Die.
Chapter 174: A Loyal Sacrifice… For My Race, I Must Die.
Percieval drove the massive nail forward. Upon impact, a massive pillar of black ice erupted from the point of contact, surging through the Giantess’s chest and erupting out of her back. The ice spread through her veins like a crystalline virus, silencing the lightning and turning her "True Form" into a towering, frozen statue.
The Giantess had just enough time for one final, shattered breath.
"So... cold..."
With a deafening crack, the ice expanded. The fifty meter titan fall and shattered. Massive shards of frozen bone and blue ice rained down around Percieval as he plummeted back toward the earth, landing heavily on all fours in the center of the wreckage.
The "Screaming Thundersky" finally fell silent. On the other side of the battlefield, a different kind of storm was brewing.
Shuna stood trembling, her skin beginning to crack as a blinding golden light seeped from her pores. She was forcing the ultimate transmutation, pushing her body past its human limits to reach the True Giant form. The air around her distorted with the sheer volume of mana she was pulling from her very soul.
"I will hold them here..." Shuna muttered, her voice vibrating with the power of the earth. "This... this is how the Princess escapes. This is my purpose."
She prepared for the final, violent expansion—a growth so rapid it would have leveled the nearby structures and created a massive, living shield for her mistress. Her body began to swell, her height increasing by meters in a heartbeat as she prepared to explode into her titan form.
Draculues stood just a few paces away, his expression unreadable. He didn’t move to strike her, nor did he look alarmed by the massive buildup of energy. He simply watched the golden light reaching its peak.
"A waste of a loyal soul," he murmured.
Suddenly, a tongue of Midnight Black Flame flickered from his palm. The fire acted like a void, rushing toward Shuna and latching onto the golden aura. Instead of burning her flesh, the black flames began to consume the magic itself. Every ounce of mana Shuna was channeling was sucked into the darkness of the fire, disappearing as if it had never existed.
The golden light sputtered and died. Shuna’s body, which had begun its massive growth, shriveled back down to its original size. The transformation was forcefully aborted, leaving her drained and gasping for air. She fell to her knees, staring up at Draculues in shock as the black flames flickered out, having eaten the very sacrifice she tried to make.
The sudden reversal of the transformation left her lungs burning and her spirit hollow. She looked up at Draculues, her eyes wide with a mixture of terror and utter confusion.
"Why? Why would you stop me? I was... I was ready! I was ready to die and save her!"
Draculues looked down at her, the midnight flames retreating into his palm. He didn’t move to strike her or continue the fight. He stood perfectly still, his silhouette cutting a sharp line against the smoke-filled sky.
"Because... I have never seen one so willing to spend their entire existence for the sake of another. To let you vanish into a burst of light and meat just to buy a few minutes..."
He paused.
"There is no need for you to be ash to prove your loyalty."
The weight of his words hit her harder. Shuna stared at him, her lips trembling. The realization that the prince—the very man she was prepared to die fighting—had validated her soul’s worth caused something to snap inside her. She collapsed completely, burying her face in her hands as she began to cry, her sobs echoing through the quieted courtyard.
But in Draculeus’ mind, unspoken and heavy, another truth stirred.
He was the one who had been struck harder...
"...So this is what it felt like.What my brother’s ashes carried... what my sister’s arms must have felt as they burned...Their lives... spent for me.So I could stand here... as a Dragonborn."
The weight of being a survivor pressed down on him, a debt paid in the screams of his kin. But the battlefield offered no further room for reflection.
A predatory sound broke the silence. Gin, who should have been a broken mess of severed nerves, forced her mangled body to move. In a desperate, feral act of survival, she bit down on the King’s mantis bone blade.
The effect was instantaneous and horrific. Her severed muscles knitted back together with a wet, grinding sound. Her skin didn’t simply heal—it hardened, calcifying into a white bone color that mirrored the indestructible hide of Drakovitch himself.
She was no longer just a warrior. She had forcibly evolved, twisting her own biology to mimic the resilience of a Dragonborn.
Gin rose from the mud, steam curling from her body as the foreign power surged violently through her veins.
Then she screamed, a sound no longer human, but something closer to a dragon’s roar and launched herself at Drakovitch, her hardened fist tearing through the air with enough force to shatter the ground beneath them.
Drakovitch didn’t flinch. He didn’t even widen his stance. While any other warrior would have been paralyzed by the sight of a dying woman rewriting her own biology through a mouthful of dragon bone, the King simply watched.
An unsettling, thin smile pulled at the corners of his mouth. He wasn’t scared. He wasn’t even shocked. He found the sight utterly amusing. In the desperate, feral glint in Gin’s eyes, he saw a reflection of something he hadn’t seen in awhile—the same mad, unyielding hunger for survival from... Maddy.
"How curious... to use my own foundation against me."
As her hardened fist made contact, Drakovitch raised his forearm in a casual, vertical block. The impact sent a shockwave through the courtyard that flattened the surrounding rain and sent a spray of mud flying in a perfect circle.
He felt it immediately—the familiar, near indestructible density of dragon bone vibrating against his own skin. She wasn’t just hitting him with strength; she was hitting him with his own essence. The force was enough to make his feet sink an inch into the stone, but he held her there, his eyes locked onto hers with a appreciative spark.
"It’s a crude imitation, Gin. But I must admit... I like the fire in your eyes. It’s been a long time since someone tried to kill me."