Demonic Dragon: Harem System-Chapter 810: See you around, sucker

[A few minutes before]

Strax’s death didn’t arrive like a final blow.

There wasn’t a decisive impact, nor a clear instant where everything simply ended.

It was... dissolution.

Slow.

Methodical.

Inevitable.

As his body began to disintegrate in the physical world, as his legs ceased to exist and his material form yielded to what wasn’t exactly destruction, Strax perceived something that disturbed him more than any pain could.

It wasn’t fire.

Not in the usual sense.

There was no heat burning flesh.

There was no pain tearing nerves.

There was no visible destruction.

The white flames consumed... something else.

He felt it clearly.

They weren’t burning his body.

They were burning his continuity.

As if every particle of him was being convinced that it no longer needed to exist.

A gentle, yet absolute denial.

"...So that’s it," he murmured internally, watching his own hand crumble to dust, his fingers disintegrating like ashes carried by a non-existent wind.

It was elegant.

Dangerous.

And extremely efficient.

He sighed.

A real sigh, even as his form no longer sustained something so physical.

"Seriously..." he thought, with an almost irritated humor. "I’m going to die because some idiot decided to blow himself up."

There was something genuinely comical about it.

After everything he had faced.

After everything he had built.

After everything he had endured...

To be extinguished by someone who decided to turn their own life into fuel. "What a stupid way to die..."

But there was no despair.

No panic.

Just... analysis.

Observation until the very last moment.

The white flames continued to burn.

Not as an attack.

But as a process.

They traversed what remained of him, consuming not only matter, but the link between his form and his existence.

It was like an erasure of presence.

And, at that moment— Strax realized.

"Ah..." The understanding came with an almost pleasant clarity.

"It’s not destruction..." It was... consumption of vital continuity.

Not of the body.

Not of the soul.

But of the bridge between the two.

A fire that burned the concept of "continuing to exist."

He laughed internally. "How interesting..."

And then—

The world ended.

Not with a bang.

But with silence.

One instant he was there.

In the destroyed field, his body disintegrating, his allies screaming in the distance.

The next instant—

White.

A vast space.

Without defined ground.

Without sky.

Without direction. Just... existence.

Strax blinked.

Or tried to.

It was strange.

He was still there.

But he felt no weight.

No pain.

No physical limits.

He looked at himself.

His body... was whole.

But it wasn’t physical.

It was... representation.

Form sustained by something that wasn’t matter.

"Hm..."

He slightly rotated his wrist, observing.

"So this is after?"

"Not exactly."

The voice came from in front of him.

Strax raised his gaze.

There.

A few meters away.

He was.

The Monarch of the White Flames.

Edrik.

Whole.

Imposing.

Smiling.

But there was no fire around him now.

No aura.

Just... presence.

A smug smile, laden with victory.

"Interesting..." said Edrik, crossing his arms. "So that’s how it ends."

Strax tilted his head slightly.

"Hm."

"I admit," continued Edrik, walking slowly through the white space, as if that place belonged to him, "I didn’t imagine you’d last this long."

He stopped in front of Strax.

"But... in the end..."

His smile widened.

"We died together."

Silence.

Strax looked at him for a few seconds.

Then—

He laughed.

It wasn’t loud.

But it was sincere.

Edrik frowned. "What’s so funny?"

Strax ran a hand over his face, still analyzing the surroundings. "You talk as if this is the end."

Edrik narrowed his eyes.

"And isn’t it?" Strax looked around.

The white.

The absence of everything.

"No," he replied calmly. "This is just a corridor."

Edrik raised an eyebrow.

"A... what?"

"Corridor of souls," Strax explained, as if it were obvious. "Or limbo. Or whatever name you want to give it."

He shrugged. "A place between ’still’ and ’over’."

Edrik chuckled softly. "Do you really think that changes anything?"

He took a step forward.

"You died."

"Not yet," Strax corrected.

Edrik tilted his head slightly.

"Denial is a common mechanism..."

"It’s not denial."

Strax finally looked directly at him.

His eyes were calm.

Firm. "It’s a statement."

Silence.

Edrik smiled again.

"It doesn’t matter what you call it. The result is the same." He opened his arms slowly, almost ceremonially, like someone presenting an inevitable fact to which there is no possible answer. 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

That white space, empty of form and direction, seemed to respond to his presence, as if it recognized a natural authority there. His eyes, previously heavy with tension during the battle, were now calm—and that made everything even more unbearable.

There was a smug serenity in his gaze, a cold certainty that needed no display of power.

"You are here..." he said, his voice echoing strangely in that wall-less void, as if the space itself amplified his conviction. "I am too."

The smile that followed wasn’t just satisfaction. It was conclusion. A final line written with absolute conviction.

"I won."

Strax remained silent for a few moments, observing him.

There was no irritation in his gaze, no denial, no sign of someone struggling to accept their own death. On the contrary, there was analysis. The same cold analysis he had maintained throughout the battle. His eyes scanned the space, then returned to Edrik, as if he were piecing together fragments that no one else could see.

And then, without any hurry, he began to laugh.

It wasn’t an explosive laugh, nor a sarcastic one. It was light. Natural. Almost... amused. This, more than anything else, made Edrik’s smile falter. Not completely, but enough for a crack to appear in his certainty.

"Dude..." said Strax, shaking his head slightly, as if dealing with something almost childish. "You overthink it."

The silence that followed was dense. Edrik narrowed his eyes, the security in his posture faltering slightly, not from a lack of power, but from a lack of understanding. That reaction made no sense. None of this should be possible in that state.

"What are you talking about?" he questioned, and now there was something more in his voice than superiority. There was doubt.

Strax didn’t answer immediately. He simply raised his hand, calmly, almost lazily, like someone who had already reached a conclusion and saw no need to rush to explain it. The gesture was simple. Effortless. Drama-free.

And then... something appeared.

A small flame formed in the palm of his hand.

White.

Silent.

Stable.

It didn’t flicker like a regular fire. It didn’t produce visible heat. It didn’t distort the surrounding air. It was a flame that existed without needing to prove it existed—exactly like Edrik’s. And yet, there was something different about it. Something subtle, but profoundly wrong in the eyes of those who knew it.

Edrik froze.

His eyes widened, and for a moment all the composure he had built up over years simply vanished. This wasn’t a surprise. It was a rupture. It was something that didn’t fit into any logic he knew.

"This... no..." he took a step back, almost unconsciously. "This is impossible."

Strax twirled his fingers slightly, observing the flame as one examines an interesting object, not as someone who had just accomplished something extraordinary. His expression carried no pride, nor any need to prove anything. It was pure curiosity.

"I observed carefully," he said naturally, as if explaining something trivial. "You explained quite a lot during the fight."

Edrik’s jaw clenched, and disbelief began to mix with something more dangerous.

"You can’t just—"

"Learn?" Strax interrupted, raising his gaze with a slight smile.

The word fell between them as something inevitable.

Silence.

The white flame danced gently in his hand, but now it was not merely a manifestation of power. It was understanding. It was mastery. It was something that had not been inherited, nor taught, but deciphered.

Strax observed the flame for another instant, and then his expression shifted slightly, like someone finally putting into words something they had already fully understood.

"It’s not fire," he murmured, more to himself than to the other. "It never was."

He raised his hand slightly, and the flame responded to the gesture with absolute precision, as if directly connected to his will.

"This here..."

His eyes gleamed with profound understanding, something that went beyond the simple use of power.

— It’s life.

The word wasn’t spoken forcefully. It was spoken with certainty.

Edrik felt a chill run through him. It wasn’t fear yet—not completely—but it was the beginning of it. It was the realization that something had slipped out of his control in a way he couldn’t correct.

— You don’t understand what you’re doing—he said, now more serious, like someone trying to impose limits on something that had already crossed them.

— I do understand—Strax replied calmly.

He closed his fingers around the white flame, not to extinguish it, but to contain it.

— You just never thought of it this way.

The flame trembled.

Not like something unstable.

But like something being... rewritten.

For a brief instant, its light lost its purity. It didn’t go out—it was invaded. Something inside it began to invert, as if its own nature were being folded inside out.

Edrik took another step back, now without any attempt to hide his reaction.

"No..."

The white light was being consumed from the inside out. There was no explosion, no abrupt transformation—there was controlled corruption. A fundamental, profound, irreversible alteration.

Until only... black remained.

A black flame appeared in Strax’s hand.

Dense.

Silent.

And completely opposite to the previous one.

If the white flame affirmed existence, this one denied it. If one sustained, the other ended. There was no heat in it. There was no light that illuminated. On the contrary—it seemed to absorb the space around it, as if everything around it became smaller in its presence.

The white void around them seemed to shrink slightly.

Edrik felt it.

For the first time since he had awakened his flames, since he had built his identity upon that power... he felt fear.

"What... did you do?" he asked, and now his voice no longer carried superiority.

Strax gazed at the black flame with the same interest he had shown at the white one.

"I reversed it."

He opened his fingers, allowing the black flame to slowly swirl above his palm, obeying every micro-movement of his will.

"If the white flame consumes the continuity of life..."

His eyes returned to Edrik, steady, clear, understanding more than he had ever understood before.

"Then this one consumes the end."

The silence that followed was heavy. Dense. As if the very concept of existence was being questioned in that space.

"Life... and death..." murmured Strax, almost thoughtfully. "Two faces of the same thing."

Edrik shook his head, rejecting it not out of pride, but out of an inability to accept it.

"No... it doesn’t work like that..."

"It works now."

The answer was simple. Direct. Final.

Strax brought his hand to his own chest, and then a second flame appeared—white, pure, intact. Now there were two forces in his hands, spinning slowly, opposite and complementary.

"Body and soul are distinct..." he said calmly.

He brought the two flames closer. White and black swirled around each other, without canceling each other out, without colliding, as if they had always been made to coexist.

"But they do coexist."

He closed his eyes for a moment.

"And I... am just a soul now."

When he opened his eyes again, something had changed. It wasn’t just power. It was understanding. It was something Edrik had never achieved—not because he couldn’t, but because he had never considered it necessary.

"But that doesn’t mean I have to stay like this."

Strax brought both flames to his chest. There was no impact. There was no resistance. Only acceptance. As if this were the next natural step.

The flames disappeared within him.

And then... space reacted.

The white around them trembled, not as matter, but as concept. As if something there was being forced beyond what that place could bear.

Edrik recoiled, now without any attempt to maintain his posture.

"What are you doing?!"

Strax didn’t answer.

His body began to change. First, lines of light appeared beneath his skin, drawing complex patterns that didn’t belong to any human form. Then, these lines became dense, deep, structural. His form began to lengthen, grow, expand in a way that no longer obeyed physical logic.

What was once human became insufficient to contain him.

The space around him distorted, as if something too large was being created inside something too small to support it. The sound came soon after—the cracking of bones being recreated, the expansion of structures that didn’t exist before, the birth of something larger. Much larger.

Edrik took another step back, unable to stop.

"Stop..."

Strax opened his eyes.

They were no longer human.

There was depth to them. Something ancient. Something complete. Something that no longer needed to prove anything to anyone.

"Too late."

His voice echoed differently. Deeper. Broader. More... truthful.

His form was no longer human. Shadows of wings began to emerge behind him, immense, impossible, and the silhouette that formed was not merely physical—it was conceptual. Something between life and death, between beginning and end, between existence and absence.

Edrik felt it.

It wasn’t just power.

It was evolution.

It was what came after the limit.

"You..." he tried to speak, but couldn’t finish.

Strax looked at him one last time.

And smiled.

"See you around, sucker."