“Why hello, young fool. What brings you to my abode?”

“Hmm? Are you the one who sent Gaira to that cage?”

“Why are you wondering?”

“... Just ‘cuz?”

“Well, indeed I am. Why?”

“Want to fight now?”

“Oh, an unruly one alright. So, shall we have a crack at it?”

The dragon stood up on its hind legs and rose upwards after pushing itself off the chair. Its wings spread even though they didn’t work and it stretched upwards and then stretched its arm muscles.

Rune fully went through the portal and stepped on the dusty, rocky terrain. He put on his gauntlets and dropped a double barrel shotgun and bolt action rifle over his shoulders. At his waist, three knives, which consisted of one trench knife and two combat knives, a katana, and the railgun hand cannon.

He put his hand through the portal and indicated for the rest of them to step away from the area and to not enter. Then he moved up towards the dragon.

The dragon was bipedal and had no armor save for its scales. It looked down at Rune with its pupils which seemed to be pure darkness, as if the abyss was implanted there, and the four horns loomed above and pointed towards him.

Rune slowly drew his railgun and trained it on the dragon. The dragon had no idea what he was doing and watched in curiosity. Rune grinned in satisfaction and spoke.

“Shall we begin?”

He fired off the gun and it hit its mark. Well, barely. The dragon moved it of the blast of energy before it could get hit in the torso, but it still couldn’t fully evade as the beam hit its arm.

The scales on its body were scorched and a few fell off, but now the Black Dragon learned its lesson. Once it did so, it would do basically everything in its power to not recreate that mistake.

It bellowed in excitement as it had never faced an opponent that could damage it as much as Rune had in the first blow. From the gaping mouth of the dragon, a curtain of black fog covered the land and the rocks under it first dissolved into a liquid before evaporating into the air.

Rune leapt back and unhooked his rifle and holstered his railgun. Aiming at the dragon, still belching his acid, and fired off a bolt of energy and magic crystals.

It flew through the air at a speed faster than the railgun’s energy, but the dragon mostly dodged out of its way. The bullet landed in its useless wings as it tried to side step the bullet traveling towards its heart.

As soon as the bullet landed in the wing, the wing blew up and broke off several large chunks of its wings. Even though a single wing came off, the dragon spazzed for a moment due to the amount of pain it experienced before the wing reformed as a small nub.

It had never experienced such an immense amount of pain in its entire life and it hadn’t even felt a small pain in the past several centuries. This pain was one that the dragon had not felt for so long that he had forgotten the feeling one knows as pain.

Although it had the power to regenerate, it could only regenerate in an area that did not have [Dispel Magic] affecting it. If there was such a thing affecting the area, then the regeneration would heal him up to a certain extent. This also only affected his internal body and not his scales.

The dragon roared in pain and cut off its acidic breath short when Rune fires once more. This time. The Dragon was ready and it leapt out of the way. The bullet whizzed passed him and pulverized the backrest of the throne.

It landed on the ground and dust spewed about it to form a shallow crater. Then it rushed Rune as he fired with his rifle, missing all his shots.

Quickly, Rune shouldered his rifle and swung the shotgun about towards the dragon. He waited until it got closer before he fired off a blast which the dragon avoided by jumping above him.

Then, with the utmost precision and speed, Rune trainee he shotgun in the air where the dragon would end up in the next moment. He fired and every single piece of shrapnel entered its body.

The dragon continued with its momentum, but it couldn’t land on its feet and skidded face first on the rocks. It shakily stood up on all fours as Rune was running towards it.

The shotgun he held was one with ten chambers and could fire rapidly for ten shots before needing to be reloaded.

The dragon lashed out with its tail with enough force to instantly kill a rank 1 Hierarch Dragon. If Rune was in his human form, he would have been completely pulverized as he flew back into the throne.

It was just like that time where he was stuck in the wall before, but, this time, there was no sword to hold onto to get out. Instead, a cloud of black acid entered the new hole Rune found himself in.

“Nooo! Agh! It burns!!”

Then silence. The dragon cokced its head and then sighed. It wanted to battle him some more.

“Oh my. That was so much fun, but it is sad that I lost a wing in the process. I wish it could have lasted longer.”

He sat back onto his throne that was slightly melted and the backrest was completely annihilated due to a bullet. He sighed as he looked back and groaned as he was going to have to force some Dragonborn to work on another throne.

Then, he felt a searing pain in his thigh and he quickly stood up. He patted his thigh to notice a large hole in it and the regeneration only mended the inner sides of the hole. He staggered and looked at the new hole in his seat.

A little bit earlier, Rune had to quickly set up a large barrier about him and he desperately poured mana into it. Then, after a quick thought, he started to wail in fake pain to pretend that he was dying.

The dragon had not encountered the action of acting for several centuries and was easily felled by this trick. He truly believed that Rune was dead.

What Rune did was he shifted ever so carefully into a position where he could shoot upwards and, as soon as he shot, escaped the hole. He heard a noise and a rumbling voice above him and he shot.

Then he used [gravity Control] on his gun to launch himself out. The bullet pierced straight through the dragon’s thigh and it fell over as soon as it stood up. Then it got onto all fours, or what it could manage, and glared at Rune.

It slightly galloped towards the seat and covered it in acid. It hadn’t realized that Rune had easily left the hole and was actually hiding next to the portal.

Rune quietly and quickly stuck his head into the portal and spoke to the rest of the group.

“Leave. Get off this temple until I come back out. Now.”

He hissed in his somewhat muffled speakers. The rest of the group looked startled before they hurried to pack their things and run down the stairs towards the tied up innocents.

Rune removed his head, but not due to his own movement, but due to the dragon swiping him away with its claws. He flew far, far back until the dragon looked like a small insect from how far away he was.

He skidded along the ground and, when he touched the ground with his face, he tumbled further into the air. As soon as he stopped, he slowly moved his arms to correct his limbs once they were bent at the knees and elbows at strange angles.

At the point when he had realigned his head, the dragon was making a ruckus on his way over to him. The ground rumbled and dust flew into the sky as it hobbled over with immense speed on its last three good legs.

Rune held up his rifle and trained it on the incoming dragon. Then, once the dragon reached him, he did the unexpected and leapt upwards while pointing the rifle straight downwards and firing.

The blast forced him into the air and he went straight above the dragon and it looked at him in perfect timing as its eyes searched for him in the air. In a rage, for, even though it had fun, it was furious that he made an unhealable hole in his thigh, the dragon leapt up underneath Rune.

As it did so and, without its wings, it couldn’t maneuver well in the air, Rune aimed down his scope knowing that he wouldn’t miss. His finger tugged the trigger a little bit and the blast force knocked him further into the sky while the bullet rained on the dragon from above.

The bullet flew down with immense speed and drove itself straight through its arm and the dragon seemed to slow down and it started to fall to the ground. Rune did so as well once he reached his maximum height and he soon fell downwards.

The dragon landed first and steadied itself on its left side, because the right side was damaged beyond repair, and it opened its maw towards Rune. And, for the reason being that it was easier to kill something when you are inside it than it is when you are outside of it, he drew his shotgun and straightened himself up like he was going to do a pencil dive.

He dove into the dragon’s gullet and slid in easily as he started using all of the defense barriers and skills he could use. The acidic effect starting acting immediately when he touched the dragon’s saliva. It was an acid strong enough to evaporate a pond of water with just a single drop.

While he was still in the throat, he cast [Light] and looked for the passage to go into the lungs. Before, the lungs were in different places than a humanoid’s body and not large enough for a person of his stature to fit through, but Rune believed that this dragon might be more anatomically similar to a humanoid.

There was a small hatch and he struggled to pry it open while he was slipping on the burning liquid all around him. Eventually, he managed to get out his scythe and explode areas around the passage entrance, but the mucus and saliva kept putting out the fires and explosions.

To keep his footing in the area, he drove knives into the fleshy walls and cast [Dispel Magic] all around him. Even if the [Dispel Magic] actually dispelled magic, it only worked on active, passive, and conjuration spells. It had no effect on enchantments which was a huge bonus for him as he was covered in them.

The esophagus was, to his surprise, quite spacious and uncomfortably warm. Also, if he could smell, he would have passed out due to the strange mixtures all around him. The passage that he had opened up was to the lungs and he was carving out a careful strategy. Literally.

He stored his scythe and hopped down the shaft into the right lung. The drop was actually high enough that a normal person would die if they fell from that height. Apparently, the dragon was standing upwards for him to fall into its lungs.

The dragon had been hobbling over, back to its throne, and was leaning on it. It found that it was becoming harder to breath for some reason and felt like there was something in his throat that he was choking on.

By the time he reached his throne, he felt pains in his throat and believed that Rune was still alive and kicking. To try and kill him off, the dragon held its good hand up, over its open maw, and acid gushed forth from a magic circle that appeared on its palms.

It guzzled down the dark green and partially black fluid and sighed as if it just chugged a pint of beer. The fluid traveled down its throat and went straight to its stomach, but not before some of it ended up in its lungs. The hole that Rune had made was good for him to go in and out from, but it also let in a lot of unwanted things, such as the acid.

Rune was slightly humming through his speakers in his helm as he worked. He was quite busy planting his explosives. Since he didn’t make explosives that used [Dispel Magic] and the mechanism to set them off was using magic, he made hundreds of caltrops with [Dispel Magic] in them that were made of the metal the sand guards had for their armor and weapons.

He made piles of them and placed remote explosives in the center of each pile to fire them everywhere. The only problem was that, if he was touched by even one of the caltrops, as in they went through his armor, he would likely pass out like the time before in the lab.

When he was testing some bullets with [Dispel Magic], he accidently shot his foot after a ricochet and he became unconscious for several moments. Apparently, his armor guarded him from the effects, but, if penetrated, his form would become unstable for a few moments before it would be absorbed into his body.

He set up four of these piles and tested out an enchantment, magnetic, on the bombs and, surprisingly, the caltrops stuck to the bombs quickly. Then he moved onto the next lung, but, by then, it was too late. Thee acid started to pour into the lung and the bombs were soon going to be melted.

He had no choice. He whipped out his rifle and used [Gravity Control] to slingshot him out of the dragon via mouth. At the moment where he was right next to the teeth, he pressed the button for the bombs to explode and they did so.

Even though he had made it out of the dragon, he had not come out unscathed as he was partially melted in most of his body. The internal fluids were slowly corroding him while the acid the dragon drank was disintegrating parts of his body.

He crashed to the ground as soon as he got out of the dragon’s mouth. His limbs were falling everywhere and he was now just a chest and a head with scrap metal surrounding him. He quickly used [Gravity Control] to gather everything to place into his storage. Then he laid out the random pieces of metal that used to be his limbs and he used his magic eye to heal himself.

At least, that’s what should have happened. The magic eye, unbeknownst to him, was not able to heal inanimate objects and he quickly put away the pieces of metal. Then he changed into the form that he looked forward to the most.

It was the Majin form which, in theory, should be the most powerful due to him being the Demon King. He quickly placed the rest of his armor away as soon as he transformed and lay over him a new set of clothes.

His clothes were the ones that he normally wore out to teach and such, his black and grey clothes with two knives in their sheathes. His jacket was slightly worn out, but it wasn’t torn or shredded like the armor he wore before.

His white hair was slightly stiff, but white as snow and his left eye was pure red with one black slit while his right eye had red irises and a black pentagram with white runes around it. His canines grew sharper and deadlier and, without his knowledge, had the ability to drain the life force of those that he bit. His ears became more pointed and his skin turned from a pale color to a deathly pale color, as if he was a fresh corpse.

He now had two horns protruding from both sides of his head, like a ram’s, and they had white runic symbols on the dark brown material making it up. On his backside he grew a tail that was thick at the base and grew thinner the farther it got from the base. It had no spikes nor barbs on it, but seemed to be made out of a harder material than the other Majin’s tails.

On his back, it looked like wings from afar, but, if one were to look at them closely, they would see that the wings were made of the same material as his horns. It looked like vines wrapping around each other and stretched leather to create wings that looked like a bat’s.

Above his head was a strange glowing fire that changed due to his mood. Red would mean that he is angry, blue is sad, yellow for excitement, etc. However, it always kept the form of the front part of a crown with three prongs that were connected a the base by a slightly curved line.This fire was proof that one is Demon King.

He gained some new abilities that could only be used in his Demon King form. One was that his defensive skills and magics became more potent by at least ten fold. He also had the ability to steal the life force of others by biting them and adding their life force to his to heal himself. His physical and magical abilities also gained quite a large boost and he was now more agile than ever, especially with the addition of [Breakneck].

A Demon King’s form would be based off of one of the Seven Deadly Sins. However, in his case, they were based off of his ideals, beliefs, and personality. In this case, he would be more representing of Satan, but, in this case, it would be more accurate to name him something else. Something far more sinister than the Seven Deadly Sins or even the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Something like the Apocalypse in a tangible form.

Although he had gained more muscle, it did not show and he appeared to be as thin as before. The dragon would have scoffed at his appearance if it could, but it was quite busy drooling blood. There were four holes in its body and was still bleeding from the other two. It could not speak as the airways were cut off and it was lying on the ground.

Suddenly, it grinned slightly and it became shrouded in darkness. It was as if the darkness came from within and swallowed up the dragon. The darkness formed a large sphere around the dragon and it soon clung to the dragon and its form could be seen. Then a roar followed.

“I… Am… Nightmare… This… Catalyst… Is… Ready… To… Die… And… Now… I… Shall… Use… It!!!”

It shifted its weight as the dragon covered in shadows seemed to have healed all of its wounds. Then it pounced on Rune with tremendous speed and, since Rune couldn’t control his newfound power, he was stuck in place after trying to kick off the ground. Instead of jumping, he dug a huge crater in the ground underneath him and the dragon slammed into him.

He tumbled away, still using all his defensive skills and magics, and landed back first on the ground. He tried to put one hand on the ground to his right, but ended up sending himself flying several stories in the air. He tumbled once more in the sky and, when he landed, he was half buried in the rocky terrain.

Rune slowly raised one hand and looked at it. He felt as if he was brimming with power, but was completely unable to use it, even with [Physical Enhancement] to speed up his reaction speed. His reaction speed stayed the same while most other things, including his senses, became better.