Beast Gacha System: All Mine-Chapter 29: Cool Trivia

He dug deeper, past his mana, into the very core of his being. His second howl wasn’t just wind, he added a sonic boom laced with his soul.

"GRRRAAAAAA—"

"—WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO—!"

The sound wave shattered the air, creating a concussive blast that punched into the flow. The cost was immediate and excruciating. Immediately, he felt something vital cracking inside him.

But it worked. The colossal wave shuddered, wobbled, and was violently shoved eastward, toward the desolate ice fields. The victory was instant, and catastrophic.

The concussive echo of his own power rippled through the unstable peak, triggering a secondary cataclysm. The mountainside itself began to vomit forth, a roaring avalanche of rock, ice, and now, the lava he’d successfully redirected, began tumbling directly toward him.

The ground under his paws splintered.

He grinned, a flash of fangs in the hellish light. So. This was how the great Arkai Dawnoro bought a few extra minutes for his people. Crushed by his own success. Poetic.

And this was how he would die.

Not in some petty political skirmish. Not old and grey in his bed. But here, on the shoulder of a furious mountain, having traded his life to shove a river of fire away from his people.

Of all the possible causes of death, this was... epic. A little unrealistic, perhaps, but he’d take it. He could almost see the history books, the bards’ songs, ’And Arkai Dawnoro, the Black Wolf King, met his end with a howl that challenged a volcano.’

A baller way to clock out.

Yes. This was exactly how he wanted to be remembered.

For his people.

Suddenly, the world went dark. A shadow, 200 feet wide, blotted out the hell-glow. Giant claws, impossibly strong and surprisingly gentle, closed around his torso and wrenched him into the sky. A single, thunderous flap of vast, white wings parted the pyroclastic flow like a curtain, the displaced air snuffing out the inferno around him.

He hung there, dangling in the grip of a creature whose scale defied belief. It was...

A white dragon.

"ROOAAAAAAAAARRRR!!!"

One roar of it was a fundamental command to the atmosphere. As it maneuvered in the sky, the very force of its cry pushed against the flow, the erupting rocks, and the suffocating ash, shoving the cataclysm incrementally away from the settlement far below.

Such a power that made Arkai’s own desperate, soul-shattering effort seem like a child’s tantrum.

But unlike his explosive, all-or-nothing blast, the dragon’s attempt was controlled. From its vantage point in the sky, it could apply precise, sustained pressure, shifting the disaster piece by piece.

"Are you alright, brave child?"

A deep, resonant, and gentle voice rumbled around Arkai, vibrating through the very bones the dragon’s claws were carefully avoiding.

Arkai, the formidable Black Wolf King, was speechless now. His own responding rumble was uncharacteristically meek. "I am... quite okay, sir. If I may, how do I address you?"

"I am Oathran. Quite reckless of you down there."

Arkai’s eyes faltered. Now, he was covered not only in soot but in shame. The Dragon Lord himself, a being of legend and absolute power, had just saved him, and was now gently chiding him like a foolish pup.

"COUGH!"

He couldn’t hold it back any longer. The superheated gas had seared his lungs, and the internal tear from his desperate power surge made itself known. He coughed, vomiting a spray of crimson staining the ash-covered fur of his chest. Perhaps he wasn’t alright after all.

Just as his consciousness faltered, the mountain gave another gargling heave, about to send a fresh wave of destruction downward. His stomach felt bitter.

Had his sacrifice been so puny it had changed nothing?

"You did well," Oathran said, cradling him as they circled high above. "If it were me in your place, I could not have done so much. I would have only created a worse disaster. Settle your heart. This flow will be handled."

...What?

Arkai’s gaze, sharpening through the pain, followed the dragon’s implied direction downward. There, on the ground where he had made his last stand, was a figure.

A woman in white, her long blonde hair glowing like a fallen star, floating around her. The second round of pyroclastic flow was about to engulf her, but she simply raised the cane in her hand.

A telekinetic surge, visible as a transparent golden barrier of light, erupted from her being. The height shot up to the sky and sliced the advancing doom in half, guiding the deadly gas, debris, and rock eastward.

This... selective precision...

"The... the lava...!" Arkai rasped, seeing the molten rock follow the path.

"She’ll be fine," Oathran stated.

And indeed, as if an invisible shield surrounded her, the lava itself parted, refusing to even touch the hem of her robe.

Ah.

Delayed recognition from pain and awe finally dawned. That woman... she was the same heartless woman he had seen by the river.

"Thanks to your explosive power earlier, the path was opened eastward," the white dragon explained. "She just needed to guide the flow. You carved the channel. She is merely directing the river."

SSSSSSSHHHHHHH!

RUMBLE—RUMBLE—

The world fell into a ringing, unnatural silence, broken only by the crackle of cooling rock and the distant, fading roar of the eruption.

The immediate, suffocating threat was gone. The pyroclastic flow now carved a new, desolate path through the eastern ice fields, a scar upon the land but no longer a threat to the living.

Oathran descended, his vast wings beating a final rhythm as he landed on a stable, rocky plain a safe distance from the devastation.

The air shimmered around his colossal form, and in a flash of light, he shifted. The majestic dragon was gone, replaced by his humanoid visage, tall, powerful, and naked amidst the ashen wasteland.

With a prim gesture, he used his wings now folded behind his back to preserve his modesty, wrapping around his waist.

Before him, Arkai lay in his giant wolf form. The black fur on his chest was matted with soot and dark, coagulating blood. Each breath was a struggle, the sound of a bellows with a fatal tear.

The noble beast was dying.

Oathran knelt beside him, frowning. "Your mana is nearly extinguished. Would a direct transfer of my mana help to stabilize you?" he asked.

He reached out, placing a hand on the great wolf’s furry head, intending to channel a trickle of his immense power. But the moment his fingers made contact, his eyes widened slightly. The damage was far worse than he had anticipated.

Ah, a catastrophic burnout of the beast’s life force... huh? His core had fractured from the reckless magnitude of the power Arkai had unleashed himself. Then, giving him his mana now would be like trying to pour water into a shattered vase.

Arkai managed a weak, gurgling chuckle that dissolved into a pained whine. "Your Majesty," he rasped, "thank you for coming to save us."

"It was my wife who insisted," Oathran replied, his tone matter-of-fact.

Wife.

The word hit Arkai’s fading consciousness. His black eyes with shards of crimson light in it, clouded with pain, widened in shock. The formidable, heartless woman by the river... was the Dragon Lord’s wife?!

Oho... hoo. That was... so cool...

Her unnerving calm, her missing heartbeat, the sheer, terrifying aura of something other that clung to her... it all made a kind of sense now. Of course she was. It was the only thing that could make sense.

He coughed again, a fresh spray of crimson staining the rock beneath his muzzle.

Well, what a nice, cool fact. Being challenged to a trivia battle in heaven wouldn’t scare him now that he knew such a world-changing piece of information.

This was truly the end. He had bought his people’s survival with his own soul, and now he wou—

FWOOSH!

A sudden, violent rush of air from behind them shattered the moment’s solemnity.

They turned in unison, Oathran’s wings twitching in surprise, Arkai managing a weak lift of his head.

Cecilia was flying toward them, but not with the graceful arc of a bird they’d imagined, but with the frantic, linear speed of a loosed arrow, propelled by her own telekinetic power.

Her feet didn’t touch the ground, her white robes and long blonde hair streaming behind her like banners in a hurricane. And she was... yelling.

"TEN ROLLS, COME ON! AH! TEN ROLLS! TEN ROLLS, YOU GLITCHY PIECE OF—MIRACLE ELIXIR, PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF EVERYTHING, JUST COME OUT!"

Her voice was a desperate, furious chant, completely unhinged from the apocalyptic scenery around her. Her eyes were locked on some invisible point in space before her, her face a mask of frantic, determined prayer.

Oathran and the dying Arkai blinked...

Two formidable men, their shared moment of mortal gravity completely derailed by the sight of the Saintess hurtling toward them, screaming what sounded like absolute nonsense at the top of her lungs.

The Dragon Lord and the Black Wolf King, two of the most powerful beings in the world, could only stare in... confusion.