The clearing was dead silent, save for the hum of ambient mana and the heavy, ragged breathing of a man who believed he had outsmarted a god.
Luke stood amidst the trembling foliage, his fingers twitching against the hilt of his weapon. A few meters away, Draken stood perfectly still. His presence was a heavy, suffocating weight on the atmosphere, yet his expression wasn't one of malice or anticipation. He simply looked unbothered. Worse, he looked slightly pissed, as if he had been pulled away from a far more important task to deal with an irritating chore.
"You are less than a fly, yet you dare to challenge my master," Draken said. His voice didn't carry the theatrical boom of a typical tyrant; it was flat, cold, and dripping with absolute certainty.
Luke's lips twitched upward into a rigid, defiant smile. He swallowed the lump of fear rising in his throat, drawing strength from the absolute authority of his own magic. "You might be the Dragon King, Draken, but even you aren't all-powerful. Every creature has a limit. Every myth has a weakness."
"My master is all-powerful," Draken replied, his golden slit-pupils locking onto Luke with terrifying focus. "But this isn't about him."
With a slow, deliberate stride, Draken began walking toward Luke. Each step felt like a drumbeat of impending doom, the grass beneath his boots curling and blackening from the sheer, passive intensity of his hidden heat.
Luke's smile widened, though a bead of sweat rolled down his temple as Draken drew closer. He channeled his mana to its absolute peak, fueling the conceptual gravity of his Innate Skill. "Even for a monster like yourself, you should know that knowledge is power... and that's how I win."
Draken ignored the silly bravado. He didn't care about Luke's rank, his title, or the desperate philosophy of a mortal. He simply continued walking, closing the distance with the unhurried grace of an apex predator.
Suddenly, Luke dropped his hands, releasing the full, unrestrained weight of his temporal magic. He dropped the concept of motion itself onto the ground.
Crack.
The moment his spell struck the earth, a shockwave of absolute silence rippled outward. The wind died instantly. A falling leaf, caught mid-descent between them, stopped dead in the air. The rustling of the trees ceased, and the very color of the world bled into a muted, monochromatic grey. Time had frozen. Through the raw dominion of his own ability, Luke had brought the entire local universe to a grinding, absolute halt.
Luke let out a breath, the sound unnaturally crisp in the dead world. He erupted into a breathless, ecstatic laughter, his shoulders shaking as he looked at the frozen clearing. "I told you!" he shouted, his voice echoing off the static air. "This claims all things! My magic doesn't care about your scales or your lineage! Even a monster like yourself is a slave to time!"
He threw his head back, savoring the intoxicating rush of having brought a Legendary disaster to its knees with his own two hands.
Thud.
The laughter died in Luke's throat. His eyes snapped open, his posture instantly freezing.
Thud.
It was the distinct, heavy sound of a boot pressing into the dirt.
Luke slowly lowered his gaze, his mind fiercely rejecting the sensory data it was receiving. It was impossible. His ability had severed the local flow of reality. Nothing could move. Nothing *should* move within the boundaries of his spell.
But Draken was moving.
The Dragon King continued his slow, methodical march across the frozen landscape. His grey cloak brushed past the suspended leaf, shattering it into static dust. He walked with the exact same unbothered, slightly pissed expression he had worn before the world stopped.
Wait... what's happening? Luke's mind screamed in frantic, unadulterated panic. He struggled to understand what his eyes were seeing. His magic was perfect. The domain was absolute. It was a rule of the universe that time governed all living things, and yet his own skill was sliding off the monster like water off a stone.
"Do you think stopping time would stop me?" Draken asked, his voice cutting through the frozen void without a hint of distortion. He casually adjusted his collar as he closed the remaining distance.
"How..." Luke choked out, his legs giving way beneath him. He hit the ground on his rear, scrambling backward like a frantic insect, his boots digging uselessly into the dirt as his own frozen domain began to shatter under the pressure of Draken's mere presence. "How are you moving?!"
"I wouldn't be a world-class disaster if I could be stopped by merely stopping time," Draken said, looking down at the crawling man with a glance of pure disdain.
Draken reached the epicentre where Luke's mana linked to the earth. He didn't pause. He brought his boot down directly onto the localized focal point of the spell, shattering the remaining ambient temporal energy by merely walking on it.
SHATTER.
The monochromatic grey snapped back into vibrant color. The wind roared back to life with a violent gust, the trees groaning as the natural flow of the world reasserted itself. But before Luke could even breathe, before he could take a single synchronized breath in the newly restored timeline, the space in front of him collapsed.
Draken vanished from the spot.
A split second later, a shadow fell over Luke. Draken stood directly in front of him, his imposing figure blocking out the sun. His head was tilted down at a sharp, terrifying angle, his golden eyes staring straight into Luke's soul from mere inches away.