Veyra trembled where she stood, her entire body responding instinctively to the primal presence above.

Dragons had existed in this world about four to five hundred years ago at most, and even then they were rare.

Elyon's legendary smithy in the Winter region had been built upon the foundation of ancient Dragon bones, their skeletal remains forming the structure itself, at least that was what the goddess had told her and she trusted her goddess.

The bones were so impossibly durable that mere mortal weapons couldn't dream of even scratching their surface, let alone penetrating.

But she grit her teeth hard, forcing down the fear.

"My goddess… please lend me some of your power." She whispered.

A euphoric, overwhelming feeling flooded her entire body as divinity poured into her from Kyone.

The divine energy completely replenished her depleted reserves, filling her to bursting. Her eyes took on an intense blue glow that radiated visible light, and she dismissed her bone sword before summoning her true weapon from her storage ring.

The bone sickle materialized in her hand, the curved blade felt like it was singing.

"I'm much more comfortable with this." She said, testing the weight with a few practice swings.

Then she looked over to Alvinus in the distance, who was still protecting Lillia.

"Alvinus! Construct a barrier around the house immediately!"

Alvinus immediately nodded with understanding and shot forward at speed, Lillia running behind him to keep up. "On it!"

Veyra immediately jumped across several wrecked buildings in long, powerful leaps, using divinity to enhance her legs.

She reached the area where soldiers and fleeing civilians that they'd been evacuating had frozen in place, paralyzed by fear as they stared at the dragon circling above.

"Get moving! Or do you want to die here?!" She shouted at them with commanding force.

The moment she said it with such authority, it seemed they were kicked out of their fear-induced paralysis.

They began running again, following the evacuation route. They were taking the correct path toward the Town's underground shelter, a reinforced bunker system designed specifically for situations like catastrophic monster attacks.

Veyra turned back to face the Dragon directly.

'I haven't tried fighting a dragon before…' She thought as the creature's predatory roar finally stopped echoing.

It looked down at the town below with its skeletal face, empty eye sockets somehow still conveying malevolent intelligence and hunger.

'My goddess… do you think I can actually win against something like this?'

Kyone's voice resonated in her mind shortly after, warm and reassuring like a mother consoling her frightened child.

[If victory is your will… then who would dare to stop you, my chosen?]

Veyra smiled fiercely as her sickle began glowing with concentrated divine power. 'I will not disappoint you, my goddess.'

The Dragon reared back its massive head and roared once more, the sound physically painful to hear.

An immense amount of destructive energy began condensing visibly in its gaping maw, the crimson light was just building and building.

The sheer raw mana packed into that single attack could probably split the entire town in half, vaporizing everything.

'Dragons truly live up to their terrifying reputation.' Veyra thought as she raised her weapon.

She waved her sickle through the air in a wide arc, and immediately the sky began responding to her divine authority.

The crimson atmosphere started swirling with new weather patterns. Additional dark clouds had begun forming along and above the blood-red sky, condensing from nothing.

Then snow began to fall.

It was slow at first, just a few gentle flakes drifting down. But within seconds it became a full blizzard, a raging storm of ice and wind raining down on the world below with supernatural intensity.

The dragon released its accumulated attack, the beam of concentrated destruction erupting from its mouth.

However, in that precise moment, a massive amount of packed snow and ice that Veyra had been secretly condensing slammed into the dragon's face from the side.

The impact violently pushed its head to the far right corner, completely redirecting its aim.

The target had shifted from Lepreun town to the distant ocean kilometers away and then the devastating beam fully released.

It was absolutely massive, a column of pure annihilation that threw all caution to the wind as it shot across the sky at incomprehensible speed. It parted the clouds apart in its wake, carving a tunnel through the atmosphere, before striking the ocean surface in the distance.

The beam left a gaping hole within the water itself, the ocean temporarily displaced by the sheer energy.

Then it spewed enormous waves in all directions onto the faraway shore, the tsunami wiping out absolutely anything within a five-kilometer radius of the impact point.

Veyra took the initiative immediately, not giving the dragon time to recover.

She closed the distance by jumping from building to building in rapid succession, each leap covering impossible distances.

Once she reached the tallest intact building in the area, she coiled her legs and leapt upward with everything she had.

She tore directly through the air toward the dragon's position.

The dragon had fully turned to face her now, tracking her movement.

Its massive bony tail whipped in her direction with frightening speed, the movement creating a compressed wind cutter that sliced through the air like an invisible blade.

However, Veyra raised her scythe with perfect timing and the wind attack was dispelled harmlessly, the divine energy disrupting its formation.

[Divinity alone is not sufficient to defeat a dragon…] Kyone's voice sounded in her mind. [Your mortal vessel cannot handle unlimited divine power. You must use it wisely and strategically.]

After dispelling the wind cutter, Veyra reached out and grabbed ahold of the dragon's spiky tail mid-swing.

The appendage was quite massive, easily the size of a large tree trunk, but not so huge that she seemed insignificant in comparison.

With one decisive slice of her divinely-empowered sickle, the entire bone tail separated cleanly from the dragon's body.

She dropped through the air with her arms spread wide as the severed tail fell after her, blood spraying from the stump.

The Dragon let out a powerful, agonized shriek that shook the air itself as the bleeding stub of its tail jerked wildly.

Veyra raised her scythe into a defensive position as the Dragon immediately opened its mouth once more, already converging another beam of concentrated mana right there in its throat.

The crimson light was building fast.

She was ready to bounce off the falling tail to reach a nearby building, or to use a burst of divinity to redirect the incoming strike away from populated areas.

However, what she absolutely did not expect was Feng suddenly shooting through the air at impossible speed and scooping her up like a princess just as the dragon was about to fire.

Feng landed on a nearby building's side and immediately focused mana into his feet, preparing to move.

However, Veyra kicked off from his grip forcefully, making him stagger backward just as the dragon released the beam.

The attack obliterated the falling tail completely, vaporizing it to ash.

Then it continued downward, destroying the ground below as well, carving through the building's base and several other structures behind it. All of them were simply gone in that instant, reduced to nothing.

The building they'd been standing on began tilting dangerously as its foundation collapsed.

They started running at full speed alongside the side of the falling building, using the shifting surface as a temporary platform before leaping ahead to the next structure.

"Thank you for saving me." Veyra said as she glanced at Feng while they ran.

Something was very different about him now. He was giving off intensely murderous vibes that made her skin crawl, an aura of killing intent that felt wrong somehow but she wasn't disgusted.

"But I'd prefer if you do not carry me like that again. I am married to your Master after all."

Feng ran alongside her as they went straight ahead, the building behind them beginning to tilt even more severely.

The Dragon was actively descending toward them now, following their movement.

"I understand completely." Feng said.

While he was physically near her and everyone else he cared about, he felt like he couldn't bring himself to hurt them, just like Azel had told him… even if he felt the intense urge to murder that dragon, he could not feel the same for Veyra.

"Thank you…" He added quietly.

Once again, he was saying something cryptic that she couldn't fully understand the meaning of.

However, the strange energy visibly seeped out of Feng's eyes moments later like black smoke, and his hand around his spear shaft tightened until his knuckles went white.

"Let's do it together… Jumping the dragon I mean." He said with renewed focus.

Veyra nodded firmly. They reached the edge of the collapsing building and she reached out her hand toward him.

He grabbed it without hesitation, and she immediately filled her entire body with divine power.

She momentarily dismissed her scythe to free both hands, then spun Feng in a wide circle using both arms before releasing him.

She sent him shooting through the air with a singular explosive burst of divinity.

Feng shot through the sky like a bullet, a visible shockwave forming around him from the acceleration.

The building beneath Veyra's feet collapsed completely under the force of her divinity, but she merely willed that same power into her legs and shot upward as well, resummoning her scythe mid-flight.

'I have to let loose completely…' Feng thought, making a decision.

He released whatever internal restraints he'd been maintaining.

The energy seeped out of him even more intensely, and his forward momentum increased dramatically as a pitch-black aura covered his entire body like flames.

He focused everything on the monster ahead.

'Kill…'

'Kill…'

'Kill…'

'Killlllll…'

The words repeated in his mind, drowning out everything else.

The dragon reared back its massive skeletal fist, crimson destructive energy swirling around the appendage like liquid fire.

It flapped its enormous wings powerfully, positioning itself to meet Feng mid-air with a devastating punch.

And that collision was exactly what happened.

The dragon's fist met the edge of Feng's spear in a catastrophic impact that covered the sky in a kaleidoscope of colors.

Crimson, black, and white energies exploded outward in beautiful, terrible patterns.

As a direct result, the dragon's entire hand shattered.

Bone fragments exploded outward as the skeletal structure couldn't withstand the concentrated force.

Feng landed on the dragon's wrist stump and immediately burst forward in a sprint, running up the creature's arm toward its face.

The dragon's remaining eye widened with something that might have been fear.

Feng jumped off the shoulder and blurred completely, moving faster than the eye could track. He appeared meters behind the dragon's head in what seemed like an instant.

He had focused absolutely all of his magical energy into that single movement technique.

Several deep, catastrophic gashes carved themselves along the Dragon's face and neck simultaneously, the delayed cuts appearing like they'd always been there.

The strikes took out the dragon's remaining eye and left massive bloody wounds that went down to the bone.

The dragon screamed out in agony and confusion, now completely blind.

Feng continued shooting upward into the sky, riding his momentum. However, all the murderous intent and corrupted energy began converging on his spear, concentrating into the weapon itself.

To him, everything else around seemed to vanish into irrelevance. The snow hitting his face, the screams below, the whole massacre happening around them… none of it registered.

All he wanted, all he NEEDED was to kill.

And then his eyes seemed to see something impossible.

A thread.

A thin line connecting to a specific point on the Dragon's back, visible only to him. This thread was deep crimson in color, slick with the concept of blood itself.

It pulsed and writhed as though it was alive.

It was a thread meant specifically for killing, a weak point in fate itself.

Feng threw his spear downward with all his remaining strength, and another massive shockwave exploded from the release.

The weapon shot through the air like a meteor, trailing black and red energy.

However, at the very last moment before impact, the spear veered off slightly from the perfect killing thread.

It landed on the dragon's back just inches away from the ideal point, but still struck with devastating force.

The explosion of energy made the dragon's wings completely stop working, the bones shattering and the membrane tearing.

The flight muscles were destroyed.

Now the dragon was free-falling directly onto Veyra's position below, and she had a vicious grin spreading across her lips.

"Ten…"

She began counting, her sickle glowing brighter with each number.

"Hundred…"

The divine energy began building and building.

"Thousand…"

While she had been playing housewife in the Empire, she definitely wasn't holding back on her combat training either.

And as of late, she had gotten Azel to personally guide her technique, teaching her secrets.

The secret of hitting exactly one thousand cuts in a single second.

The dragon's massive body was carved open repeatedly in the next instant, divine slashes appearing faster than perception.

Flesh separated, bones cracked, and blood erupted. She shot past through some of the falling chunks of meat, crimson blood slicking her skin and hair.

Its head was still wailing in agony even though the body was effectively destroyed, reduced to falling chunks.

However, Feng extended his hand toward Veyra as they passed each other in the air.

That gesture made her smile genuinely.

She reached out and took his hand firmly, and he used the contact to spin her once before redirecting her momentum.

He shot her down toward the ground at immense speed, aimed directly at the dragon's falling head.

She brought out her scythe and held it in a finishing position against the head right before it would hit the ground.

Divine energy flooded the blade one final time.

The dragon's head froze solid instantly, ice forming from the inside out. Then it shattered into a thousand pieces like glass, fragments scattering.

Veyra landed on the ground with tremendous impact, creating a crater from the force. Feng followed shortly after, touching down more gently beside her.

Both of them stood looking at the scattered remains of the dragon, breathing heavily.

"Nice power." She said simply, extending her knuckle toward him for a fist bump.

Feng felt the corrupted killing feeling finally recede like a tide going out, and the dragon's residual power and mana flooded into his meridians and veins.

There were no more monsters raining from the crimson sky above.

He gave her a fist bump in return, their knuckles connecting.

Right then and there, Feng and Veyra became the first humans to successfully slaughter a dragon since the last one had died centuries ago.

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