Demonic Dragon: Harem System - Chapter 537

Chapter 537: Dragon Slayer.

Strax watched the elders gasping, panting, their eyes wide with fear and disbelief. The hall, which had just been the scene of a clash of egos and old traditions, now looked more like a silent battlefield—not because of visible destruction, but because of the brutal breakdown of the hierarchy that the elders swore was eternal.

He walked slowly, his footsteps echoing louder than they should, weighing like hammers on sacred stone. His scarlet eyes lingered on each member of the council, one by one, without haste. The silence now was not tense—it was absolute. The kind of silence that precedes a sentence.

“You accused me of insolence,” he said, his voice as cold as Tiamat’s, but with a flaming core pulsing inside. “You threatened to attack me for asking for answers about the whereabouts of my mother’s body. You… dared to rise up against me for showing anger. Why, exactly?” He leaned forward slightly, looking directly at the oldest of them. “For breaking protocol?”

The elder swallowed hard but couldn’t respond. His eyes were watering. A vein throbbed in his temple as if he were trying to resist a magical aneurysm.

Strax straightened his body.

“Now I’m wondering…” He turned slightly, looking at Tiamat and Ouroboros. “If any of you are still useful… or if it’s best to clear this hall so that someone with a spine can occupy these thrones.”

One of the elders groaned in protest, trying to raise his hand in supplication. Another merely mumbled an ancient prayer, intertwining his fingers in instinctive runic gestures. But no energy obeyed. The runes of the hall were under too much pressure—the very foundations of magic resisted following any command that did not come from the two Divine Dragons who now dominated the space.

Ouroboros raised an eyebrow, a crooked smile appearing on his face like a subtle threat.

“You won’t see me stopping this, boy. Just say the word.”

Tiamat, in turn, tilted her head slightly. “I’d say we have five useful ones, three decorative ones… and two that deserve to be turned into arcane fertilizer.” She looked directly at one of the thrones. “You know which one.”

The old man in question cringed as if his own skin were trying to escape his body.

Strax walked to the center of the hall and turned to face the entire circle. The figure of the unconscious woman still lay on the floor, a reminder of what happened to those who underestimated his lineage.

“Last chance. Who’s going to talk?” He pointed at the group. “Who among you knows anything useful about Ignisar’s whereabouts, about Pyraeth, or about who touched Scathach’s tomb?”

Silence.

Ouroboros snapped his fingers, and a golden glow formed around his fist—not destructive, but with a palpable promise of ruin.

It was then that one of the elders—a figure with a hoarse voice, milky eyes, and a frayed amber cloak—finally raised his head. His aura was in tatters, but his voice still retained a tone that betrayed true antiquity, not just formal arrogance.

“You invade our nation, and you dare to make demands?” he asked.

Strax stared at the elder for a moment.

The old man could barely stand upright. The veils over his face trembled as if the fabric itself was aware of how close annihilation was. But still, he dared. He dared to raise what remained of his crumbling dignity and utter those words.

And then Strax laughed.

At first, it was a breath. A restrained laugh, as if born of absurd disbelief. But it quickly turned into something more. Much more.

The sound reverberated like thunder echoing through ancient valleys. A laugh that had no joy, no common scorn—it was the kind of laugh that should not exist in human throats. Something primitive, unnatural. A sound that seemed to come from forgotten ages and made even the arcane lights on the ceiling flicker, as if they felt fear.

Scarlet, always smiling, lost her smile. Her eyes widened.

Tiamat took a step back, her arms crossed, hugging her body as if she felt, for a second, cold.

Even Ouroboros, whose soul had become intertwined with the spine of eternal dragons, paled slightly. “This… this is not good,” he muttered, his voice lower than usual.

Strax continued laughing. A sound that made the thrones shake, the stones groan, and the runes fall silent in terror.

And then it stopped.

The laughter ceased as abruptly as it had begun, leaving a discordant echo hanging in the air. Strax raised his face, now expressionless, his eyes fixed like red blades piercing the old man.

The hall froze. Everything stopped.

“You are… curious,” he said, with a calmness more threatening than any scream. “You all are. Do you know why?”

He began to walk again, slowly, until he was facing the old man who had spoken. He got so close that the silver veils over the old man bristled, trying to move away involuntarily, as if the fabric were trying to escape Strax’s presence.

“Invade your nation? … Even after everything … everything that happened in my kingdom … you still think I’m here invading? Do you think you are… relevant enough for me to invade this place?”

A second of silence.

And then, without moving his hands, without uttering a syllable, without any gesture of activation, Strax fired.

It was just a beam of red energy—thin as a needle, silent as a whisper of death. It came from Strax’s eyes, not as a spell, but as a pure manifestation of will. The line cut through the air in a straight, relentless line, striking the center of the old man’s forehead.

There was no flash.

There was no scream.

There was no time to react.

The light in the old man’s eyes went out in an instant, as if someone had suffocated his soul with their fingers. A small cauterized hole appeared on his forehead, too precise to look natural. Then the body fell forward—weightless, lifeless, like a piece of old parchment torn from within. The dry sound of bones hitting marble echoed like a hammer of judgment.

Absolute slaughter.

No ceremony.

No mercy.

Strax didn’t even blink.

“Well… fuck it.” His voice was calm, but each word carried gunpowder. He took a step to the side, still watching the corpse with a mixture of contempt and disappointment. “We’ll kill every dragon on this damn continent until we find the culprit.”

His red eyes rose slowly, now fixed on other thrones. “I tried. I tried to be a mediator. I listened, I argued, I restrained myself. But now?” He raised his arms slightly, and a red aura began to sprout from his skin like hot smoke escaping from cracks in the fabric of reality.

“Now, I want this entire kingdom to go to hell.”

Some elders tried to stand up, but their legs trembled too much. One of them even vomited between the steps of the throne. The air in the hall was too heavy, too hot, too red.

“It’s better to be feared than disrespected by fucking decrepit old men like you,” Strax spat the words like blades. “The arrogance and pride of a dragon are unchangeable… I understand. I don’t judge. But your stupidity in not recognizing your positions? That, yes, is unforgivable.”

Then something changed.

“D-Dragon Slayer…” Elyssar murmured, his voice choked with dread. His eyes were wide, fixed on the aura around Strax, which now pulsed in crimson tones, with fragments of scales appearing on parts of his skin.

“Ah… so it took a while,” commented Ouroboros, with a smile on the corner of his mouth, almost resigned. “Consuming the flesh of a dragon killed in combat can cause mutations… but in this case, it was inevitable.”

Tiamat crossed her arms, her expression now more contemplative than tense. “He killed all the dragons that invaded Vorah. Alone. And he devoured their still-smoking bodies while he fought. The metamorphosis was only a matter of time.”

The words hung in the air like an ancient sentence.

And the elders… froze.

Mouths opened in silent horror. Eyes trembled. Minds wavered between disbelief and absolute panic.

Because at that moment, they no longer saw only Strax.

They saw the ultimate predator.

The Dragon Slayer.

The silence after Tiamat’s words lasted only a moment longer.

It was broken by a scream.

A cry of despair… or perhaps wounded pride. One of the elders—thin, angular-boned, eyes boiling with desperate hatred—rose with an archaic roar. His braided beard danced in the wind of his own dissonant aura as he advanced against Strax with surprising speed for someone so ancient.

His outstretched fingers vibrated with dark energy. Runes corroded by time and resentment lit up on his forearm, forming a vital harvesting spell, forbidden for centuries — a last resort for those who have nothing left to lose.

But Strax did not move.

He merely turned his head slightly, as if detecting an inconvenient insect.

The old man’s arm stretched out to grab him. The tip of his hand touched the edge of Strax’s crimson aura.

And then everything stopped.

Strax calmly raised his own arm, his fingers closing like claws around the old man’s wrist with supernatural strength. The crack of breaking bones echoed through the hall like a final sentence.

The old man screamed.

For a fraction of a second.

Because, immediately afterwards, Strax pulled him close—very close—until their eyes almost touched. The old man’s skin began to burn just from the proximity, his wrinkles opening into scarlet cracks, like old paper on fire.

“You had your chance,” Strax whispered, his voice low as thunder muffled by lava.

And then he blew.

It wasn’t a gust.

It was an elemental roar.

A breath of ancient fire, not conjured, but spat from the core of something that was no longer entirely human.

The flames poured from his mouth like a steady stream of draconic plasma, incinerating the elder’s face in milliseconds. Skin evaporated. Bones exploded. And where once there had been a countenance of pride and despair, there remained only a charred skull still ablaze, dragged backward by its own falling body.

The smoke rose in twisted spirals.

The smell of burnt flesh and doomed magic permeated the air.

Strax spat to the side, wiping his lips with the back of his hand—not because of dirt, but out of contempt.

“Tsk, I don’t use that much because it hurts my throat,” he commented, after killing the elder… “Like I said, I’m just going to kill everyone until I find the culprit. Isn’t that what they did in my kingdom?” Strax questioned as his body grew…

Scarlet looked at that, and at Ouroboros and Tiamat… “Here we go again…”