Re-Awakened :I Ascend as an SSS-Ranked Dragon Summoner - Chapter 457

Chapter 457: Strongest human

Arthur lay sprawled on the ground, his chest rising and falling in labored breaths. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth, and his once-immaculate clothing was torn and singed from Nyx’s relentless assault. But when Noah’s question hung in the air between them, Arthur’s response was the last thing anyone expected.

“I don’t know.”

Noah stared down at him, Excaliburn still crackling with residual void energy. “What do you mean you don’t know?”

Arthur struggled to prop himself up on his elbows, wincing as the movement aggravated his injuries. “I mean exactly what I said. I don’t know where Lucas Grey is.”

“Bullshit!” Noah stepped closer, his sword’s point hovering inches from Arthur’s throat. “I saw you. When the fight started, that shadow of yours swallowed him whole. You took him somewhere.”

Arthur’s laugh was bitter and strained. “Yes, I did. I put him in a shadow space, a pocket dimension that exists between light and darkness. Only the person who creates such a space can access it.” He gestured weakly at his hands, where shadows should have been gathering but weren’t. “Unfortunately, my shadow abilities appear to be… indisposed at the moment.”

Noah’s eyes narrowed. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that Lucas Grey is trapped in a space that I can no longer access. Which means, for all practical purposes, he might as well be dead.”

Before Noah could respond, the sound of running footsteps echoed from the fortress entrance. Lucy burst through the rubble-strewn doorway, her black hair wild and her face streaked with soot. Diana, Sophie, and Kelvin followed close behind, all of them looking exhausted and grim.

“Noah!” Lucy called out, scanning the battlefield until she spotted him. “We’ve searched every room, every corridor, every basement level we could find.”

Diana wiped blood from a cut on her forehead as she approached. “The family heads aren’t here. Whatever Arthur did with them, they’re not in this fortress.”

Sophie’s own composure had cracked, revealing the stress underneath. “We found prisoners. Dozens of them, maybe hundreds. Different species, different planets. Some of them have been there for years.”

Kelvin nodded, his expression dark. “The cells were full of people we didn’t recognize. Aliens, humans from colonies we’ve never heard of. But no sign of the og family heads.”

Lucy’s eyes darted around the courtyard, taking in the destruction, the defeated Ares soldiers, and the smoking remains of the fortress. Then her gaze settled on Arthur, still lying on the ground near Noah’s feet.

“So this is the Eight Ancestor. The one who kidnapped my father?” She said closing the distance between herself and Arthur.

“You two succeed on your own end. I’m pleased my baby brother left a piece of this man for me,” she began to gather lightning around her fist before Diana stepped in and held her. But it was at that moment she realized something.

“Where’s Lucas?” she asked, her voice tight with mounting panic.

Noah turned to face his friends, and Lucy could see the answer in his expression before he spoke.

“Arthur says he doesn’t know.”

“He doesn’t know?” Lucy’s voice rose to a near shout. “What the hell does that mean, he doesn’t know?”

Kelvin stepped closer, his hands clenched into fists. “You’re the one who took him, you bastard. Where is he?”

Arthur managed to sit up fully, though the effort clearly cost him. “As I explained to your friend here, my shadow abilities have… expired. Lucas is in a shadow space that I can no longer access.”

Diana crossed her arms, her mind already working on the problem. “So you’re saying he’s trapped?”

“I’m saying he’s effectively lost to us until my abilities return. Which, given current circumstances as you all have me cornered, may be never.”

Lucy’s face went white. “No. No, that’s not acceptable.” She spun toward Noah, her eyes blazing with desperate fury. “Make him fix it. Use that sword of yours, make him bring Lucas back.”

“Lucy, I don’t think—”

“I don’t care what you think!” she screamed, grabbing Noah by the shoulders and shaking him. “That’s my brother! You promised to watch out for him, you promised we’d bring everyone home!”

That was right, before the team split up, when Lucas had suggested they all separated, Lucy had pulled Noah to the side to make that promise.

Sophie moved to Lucy’s side, gently trying to pull her away from Noah. “Lucy, calm down. We’ll figure this out.”

“Calm down? My brother is lost in some shadow dimension and you want me to calm down?”

The sound of Arthur’s laughter cut through Lucy’s rising hysteria. Not the bitter laugh from before, but something genuinely amused, as if he’d just heard the punchline to a joke nobody else understood.

Everyone turned to stare at him as he struggled to his feet, using a piece of broken masonry for support.

“You know,” he said, brushing dust from his torn jacket, “I was right after all.”

Noah raised Excaliburn defensively. “Right about what?”

“Caution is never cowardice. It is born out of wisdom.” Arthur stood straighter now, some of his old confidence returning despite his battered appearance. “When my intelligence network told me that the Ares family, the Greys, and young EDF soldiers from the vanguard force were on my tail, I knew better than to underestimate you.”

Kelvin frowned. “What are you talking about?”

“Especially given your immense progress in tracking me down so far. Which is why I took measures.”

Arthur spread his arms and continued to laugh.

Throughout the courtyard, the remaining shadow soldiers began to move in unison. One by one, they reached up and removed their masks, revealing faces that made Noah’s blood run cold.

Every single one of them looked exactly like Arthur.

“A good test run,” Arthur continued conversationally, as if discussing the weather rather than revealing a massive deception. “Unfortunately, I have more pending matters to attend to.”

The Arthur copies moved with coordinated precision. Several rushed toward King Aurelius, who had been tending to his wounded soldiers near the fortress walls. Flames erupted from the king’s hands as he defended himself, incinerating two of the copies before the others overwhelmed him.

“Aurelius!” one of his wives screamed from across the courtyard.

The king managed to take down three more copies with concentrated fire blasts, but there were simply too many. One grabbed him from behind while another opened a portal of pure shadow beneath their feet.

“No!” Noah started forward, but he was too far away.

King Aurelius and his captor disappeared into the shadow portal, which snapped shut behind them like a closing mouth.

All around the courtyard, the remaining Arthur copies were following the same pattern. Each one opened their own shadow portal and began descending into the darkness below.

Another copy materialized beside the original Arthur, reaching out to escort him to safety.

That’s when Nyx moved.

The Red Death Dragon’s tail whipped forward like a red spear, impaling both Arthurs through the chest in a single devastating strike. The copies dissolved into shadow and smoke, their forms unable to maintain cohesion after taking fatal damage.

But it was too late. The other copies had already vanished, taking King Aurelius with them into whatever dark dimension they called home.

The courtyard fell silent except for the sound of sobbing. Aurelius’s wives knelt in the rubble where their husband had been taken, their grief echoing off the broken walls of the fortress. The surviving Ares soldiers dropped to one knee in unison, a gesture of mourning for their captured king.

Lucy grabbed Noah by the front of his armor, her fingers digging into the metal plates. “Where is he?” she demanded, tears streaming down her face. “Where is my brother? Where did they take everyone?”

Noah stared at her, seeing his own helplessness reflected in her desperate eyes. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? You fought him, you had him beaten, and you don’t know?”

“Lucy, please—”

“Don’t you ‘Lucy please’ me!” She shoved him backward, her strength surprising everyone. “This is your fault! If you hadn’t charged in here like some kind of hero, if you’d waited for a plan, if you’d been smarter about this—”

“That’s enough,” Diana said firmly, stepping between them. “Fighting each other isn’t going to bring Lucas back.”

“Then what is?” Lucy’s voice cracked. “Tell me what’s going to bring my brother back, because I’m out of ideas.”

Sophie wrapped her arms around Lucy from behind, holding her as she broke down completely. “We’ll figure it out,” she whispered. “I promise, we’ll figure it out.”

—

Four hours later, the area around the fortress looked like the aftermath of a natural disaster. EDF medical shuttles had arrived along with support ships, their crews working to treat the wounded and document the scene. Military personnel in hazmat suits moved through the rubble, cataloging evidence and searching for survivors.

Diana and Sophie sat on a piece of fallen masonry near one of the medical stations, still trying to comfort Lucy. The Grey family heir had cried herself into exhaustion, but she refused to leave or rest until someone could give her answers about Lucas’s fate.

“The medics want to run some tests,” Diana said gently. “Just to make sure you’re not suffering from any lingering effects of whatever Arthur did.”

Lucy shook her head without looking up. “I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine,” Sophie replied. “None of us are fine. But we need to take care of ourselves if we’re going to help Lucas.”

“Help him how? He’s trapped in some shadow dimension that doesn’t exist anymore.”

Noah sat by himself on a hillside overlooking the rescue operation, Nyx lying beside him like a massive guardian. The dragon’s presence should have been comforting, but Noah felt nothing except the weight of his failures.

Kelvin approached from the direction of the medical stations, his footsteps crunching on debris and scattered equipment. He lowered himself to the ground next to Noah, wincing as his bruised ribs protested the movement.

“How are you holding up?” Kelvin asked.

Noah didn’t answer immediately. He stared down at the chaos below, watching EDF personnel treat wounded Ares soldiers while investigators poked through the ruins of Arthur’s fortress.

“I screwed up,” Noah said finally.

“How do you figure?”

“I went in there thinking I could handle him. Thinking that my abilities, my sword, Nyx… thinking it would be enough.” Noah’s hands clenched into fists. “But it wasn’t Arthur I was fighting.”

Kelvin raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

“I mean I spent everything I had battling a copy. A test run, like he said.” Noah turned to look at his friend, exhaustion clear in his voice. “The real Arthur was never there.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Don’t I? Think about it, Kelvin. Arthur has been alive for centuries. He’s survived wars, assassinations, the rise and fall of governments. You think he’d risk a direct confrontation with people who had tracked him down?”

Kelvin considered this. “So you think the Arthur you fought was…”

“A copy. A duplicate with all his abilities and memories, sent to test our capabilities while the real Arthur stayed safely hidden somewhere else.”

“But his abilities were failing. You said so yourself.”

Noah nodded. “Time limit. The copies can only maintain Arthur’s power levels for so long before they start to degrade. That’s why his shadow abilities stopped working at the end.”

Kelvin was quiet for a moment, processing the implications. “If you’re right, then the real Arthur is still out there.”

“The real Arthur is still out there,” Noah confirmed. “And he has Lucas, King Aurelius, and probably all the other family heads trapped in dimensions only he can access.”

“So what do we do?”

Noah looked back toward the medical stations, where Lucy was still refusing treatment while Sophie and Diana tried to convince her to rest.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Arthur’s abilities span seven different bloodlines. He can manipulate shadows, control blood, forge metal, command lightning, create fire, and apparently tame beasts. When I hit him with my strongest attacks, he absorbed the damage and kept fighting. My Null Strike, which should have unmade him at the molecular level, barely slowed him down.”

“There has to be something—”

“There is something,” Noah interrupted. “But it’s not good news.”

Kelvin waited for him to continue.

“Arthur’s power comes from somewhere. The way he stacked abilities, the way he could use multiple bloodline techniques simultaneously… that’s not natural. Nobody should be able to do what he did.”

“So how was he doing it?”

“I don’t know. But I think finding out is our only chance of stopping him.” Noah stood up, brushing dust from his clothes. “And I think we’re going to need help. A lot more help than just the six of us.”

Kelvin got to his feet as well, following Noah’s gaze toward the EDF ships. “You think they’ll believe us?”

“They’ll have to. Because if Arthur can do to other planets what he did here, nowhere in human space is safe.”

They stood together in silence, watching the sun set over the ruins of Arthur’s fortress while rescue crews continued their work below. In the distance, Lucy’s quiet sobs carried on the wind, a reminder of how much they’d already lost and how much more they stood to lose if they couldn’t find a way to stop the most dangerous man in the galaxy.

Nyx raised his massive head and nudged Noah’s shoulder with his snout, a gesture of comfort. But even that connection, strong as it was, couldn’t fill the emptiness left by their failure to save the people they’d come to rescue.

The war against Arthur had begun in earnest, and they’d already lost the first battle.

Check out my latest pervert leveling up and taming beauties