Reborn with a Necromancer System - Chapter 207

Chapter 207: The Necrotic Dragon

The chamber felt suffocating. Its domed ceiling loomed just a few feet above the massive creature’s head, leaving the air heavy with the scent of rot. The dragon’s scales, once obsidian-black, were dulled and cracked, patches of necrotic flesh hanging in strips between the plates. The faint glow of putrid green light oozed from the seams in its body, like veins filled with liquid poison.

Kai’s breath caught when it spoke, its deep voice resonating through the chamber like a tremor in the earth.

“You can talk?” he asked quietly, eyes narrowing as he scanned the beast. Up close, he could see where scales had flaked away entirely, revealing ribs slick with black ichor.

The dragon lowered its skeletal head, milky eyes boring into him. “My master provided me with the ability to communicate. His…”

It paused. Its massive skull tilted ever so slightly, as though something was scrambling in its decayed mind.

Kai’s pulse quickened. This was unusual. Dragons, undead or not, didn’t hesitate like this.

“His what?” Kai asked, his voice deceptively calm, masking the coil of tension in his gut. He leaned forward slightly, hoping the creature would slip and offer some insight into the ancient necromancer who’d built this place.

But after a long, eerie silence, the dragon let out a low, rattling growl. “No, human. I will not engage in conversation with you. My master’s orders were clear: slaughter any who make it this far.”

Kai sighed, his shoulders lowering slightly, not in relief, but resignation. “Worth a try.”

He shifted his stance, lowering his center of gravity and letting mana begin to pulse through his limbs. His shadow stretched faintly behind him, hungry, though still restrained by the interference of this cursed dungeon.

“Vepice,” he muttered, “it doesn’t have the space to take off in here. Dodge its breath, strike its heels, and keep it pinned down. Don’t aim for the torso; its flesh is too thick. We limit its movement first.”

Vepice swallowed audibly, her knuckles whitening around her enchanted knives. “And if it doesn’t go down?”

“Then we make it.”

The dragon’s chest heaved once before it expelled a torrent of virulent green flame that hissed and clung to the stone like acid. Kai yanked Vepice to the side, throwing up a barrier as the edge of the flame licked toward them. The heat seared his skin even through the shield, the smell of burning stone making his eyes water.

They moved in sync, weaving around the beast’s lunges. Kai tried to summon blades from his shadow space, but the dungeon rejected his attempt at access.

[The signal is still preventing any dimensional magic.]

‘Fists it is.’

He darted in close whenever its talons slammed into the ground, his fists surging with strengthening magic as he hammered blow after blow into its knees. Each strike cracked bone and jarred his arms to the shoulder, but he didn’t relent.

The dragon roared, swiping at him, only for Vepice to slash at its exposed tendons, her sigil-etched blades cutting through decayed flesh with sizzling precision.

Its tail swept through the air, smashing into the wall where they’d been a second earlier. Kai threw up another barrier, gritting his teeth as the impact spiderwebbed cracks across it. He dove beneath the arc of its swing, aiming another crushing punch at its joint.

Vepice darted in on the opposite side, her sigil-etched blades glowing faintly as she slashed at the thick tendons behind its right leg. The blades cut through necrotic tissue like hot wire through wax, sending a spray of black ichor across the stones.

The dragon staggered but retaliated in a blur, swinging one massive foreleg toward Vepice like a battering ram.

Kai didn’t think. His body moved before his mind caught up.

He threw himself into her path, barriers flaring around him in layered, hexagonal plates. The impact hit like a siege engine. The first barrier shattered on contact, shards of light dissolving into the air. The second buckled, cracks spiderwebbing outward before it shattered too.

The blow connected with Kai’s ribs, hurling him like a ragdoll into the far wall. Stone cracked where his back hit, pain detonating through his torso like a tidal wave. For a moment, his vision went white. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t feel his legs.

“Kai!” Vepice’s scream was shrill, panicked.

Through sheer will, he managed to suck in a ragged breath. His chest burned with each inhale. Blood welled between his teeth.

“I’m-” He coughed, tasting iron. “-fine. Keep moving. Don’t stop moving.”

Vepice’s hands were on him in the next instant, dragging him by his collar just as the dragon’s tail smashed down where he’d been lying. The stone floor splintered like glass.

Kai gritted his teeth and focused inward. His life essence surged, threads of invisible energy knitting bone and sealing ruptured vessels. The pain dulled, though it left his muscles trembling from the rapid drain.

“Keep me moving,” he rasped. “Just… thirty more seconds.”

“Thirty seconds?!” Vepice ducked under a snapping jaw, her knives flashing as she slashed across the dragon’s exposed gumline. The creature roared, ichor bubbling from the wound, but it didn’t relent. Its breath weapon began to gather again, the air filling with the acrid stench of rotting ozone.

Just as the dragon’s head reared back, Kai shot his hand out, conjuring a thick, dome-shaped barrier around both of them.

“Brace!”

The dragon’s bile-green fire struck like a tidal wave.

The barrier screamed under the heat, fractures racing across its surface. Kai poured more life essence into his body just to keep his muscles moving, every nerve screaming as the shield began to fail.

At the last second, Vepice surged forward, diving beneath the dragon’s exposed neck and driving both blades into the thinner flesh there. The sigils ignited, releasing a flare of concentrated force that ripped open the tissue like paper.

The dragon’s scream shook the walls, the sound low and guttural enough to make Kai’s bones vibrate. It staggered, its breath attack faltering.

Kai felt his legs recover enough to pull himself to his feet, and he was back in the game.

Minutes bled into what felt like hours. Every roar echoed like thunder in the confined space, every near-miss scraping against their nerves. Vepice’s arm bled from a glancing strike, and Kai’s ribs screamed with every breath, but still they moved, striking and retreating in relentless rhythm.

Finally, with one last wet crack, the dragon’s forelegs buckled. Its massive body collapsed onto its belly, its shattered knees and shredded heels unable to hold its weight. It let out a ragged, rattling hiss as it sank, the glow from its veins dimming.

“I… yield,” it rumbled, its breath coming in broken rasps. “Defeat has come. My orders dictate that those who best me may pass through the gate… behind me.”

Kai straightened, sweat and soot streaking his face. He studied the dragon’s enormous skull, watching its jaw slacken. His gut tightened.

‘A surrender. Or a trap?’

Slowly, he climbed onto the creature’s head, his boots pressing into the pitted, decaying scales.

“What are you-?” The dragon asked before realising Kai’s intentions.

His shadow writhed faintly at Kai’s feet, itching for release, but the dungeon’s interference kept it at bay. He didn’t trust the dragon, or anything from Ebonbrand, not for a second.

“Sorry, big guy,” he muttered. “But I’m not taking chances in this place.”

He gathered his strength into his fists, mana surging through his bones and muscles until they hummed with tension. Then, with a savage downward strike, he drove his fist into the top of its skull.

The first blow cracked bone.

“Stop!” The dragon called out.

It’s voice shook the room.

The second caved it in.

It spoke no longer.

By the fourth, the dragon’s head had collapsed inward, ichor spilling like tar.

One last punch silenced the faint twitching of its jaw, obliterating what was left of its brain.

Vepice flinched at the wet sound.

“Did you have to? It was going to let us go…”

“I won’t trust the undead minion of a necromancer that died centuries ago. Every trap. Every puzzle. Every game. Everything we have seen in this dungeon points to the maker of this place trying to either kill us, or fuck with us.”

“That’s… A fair point.”

She wiped her knives clean and glanced toward the massive, rune-etched gate now revealed behind the corpse. Its glyphs pulsed faintly, like a heartbeat.

Kai stepped down from the dragon’s remains, his face as blank as his voice. “Let’s go before the dungeon tries to throw something else at us.”

He felt the last of his injuries heal up, and he sighed with relief at the lack of pain.

Vepice nodded, casting one last wary glance at the headless dragon before following him toward the gate.

He looked at his tattered clothes, damaged from the fights throughout the dungeon so far.

‘I’ll need to work on my sigils on some new armour when we get to the next town with a decent armourer. I should have come prepared.’

As they left through the gate, it slammed shut, and a presence heavier than the dragon, or Demeris, or Elerin, or Cladeus caused Kai to throw up what little food he’d been consuming on their journey.

“Are you okay?” Vepice asked.

“There’s… Something… We’re… Going to die…” Kai said.

Vepice had never seen him scared. Not against a vessel for a goddess. Not against a dragon. Not against the mutated creatures waiting for them to leave the dungeon. Not even against an entire city.

She didn’t dare allow herself to think about what could possibly scare him.