CHAPTER 506: YOU SHOULDN’T BE HERE

The sky of hell was never meant to be beautiful. It was a crimson expanse, suffocated by black clouds that seemed to burn from within, illuminated by crimson lightning. Yet now, that immensity distorted before something impossible.

A deep roar rent the air.

The Blue Dragon spread its colossal wings, each membrane shimmering with an icy glow, so cold it seemed to tear apart the scorching atmosphere of hell. Its presence was an affront to the laws of this world, a creature of the heavens that should never have crossed the threshold of the abyss.

And before it, alone, with the winds raging, stood Stella.

Her heart pounded. There was no sign of Vergil. There was no sign of Roxanne. Only her, suspended amidst the air currents she desperately conjured, facing an enemy that seemed larger than the horizon itself.

"What the hell... you shouldn’t even exist here..." she muttered, her voice swallowed by the roar of the wind she summoned.

The dragon responded not with words, but with a breath. A blast of blue energy that tore through the sky like a blast of absolute ice. The heat of hell was swallowed by the icy wave, and Stella felt her bones tremble with cold—an impossible, anomalous cold that didn’t belong on this plane.

She raised her arms. The wind roared around her, creating a protective cyclone. The currents clashed with the freezing breath and deflected it, but not without cost: her arms ached, every muscle screamed from the pressure.

The dragon advanced.

A wing descended like a falling wall, and Stella barely had time to dive downward, the winds propelling her body. Even so, the impact of the wing against the air created a shockwave that threw her away, as if she were an insect.

She regained her composure in the air, gasping.

"Okay... if I miss a single move, I’m dead."

The Blue Dragon dove toward her. Each beat of its wings changed the air pressure, crushing Stella as if she were in an invisible whirlwind. She responded by circling her arms, summoning a storm that formed around her in seconds. Cutting gusts of wind took shape, sharp as invisible blades, and shot toward the monster.

The blades struck the dragon’s scaly body. The sound was like metal on metal. The blue scales, luminous as sapphires, withstood the impact. Only a few tiny cracks appeared.

The dragon roared in fury, and its tail reared up.

Stella saw only a blur before pain shot through her body. The colossal tail struck her sideways, launching her hundreds of meters into the sky. Her bones creaked. Blood exploded in her mouth.

"Gahhh!" Her scream was lost in the wind.

For an instant, her body spun out of control, her fall imminent. But instinct prevailed: her wind wings emerged, explosive, and steadied her before she plummeted.

The dragon was upon her again. One of its claws descended, larger than a tower, tearing through the sky. Stella concentrated everything in a single movement: she raised her hands, and a cyclonic wall rose, thick as a compressed hurricane.

The claw collided with the hurricane. The impact reverberated, and the wall of wind exploded in all directions. Stella was thrown back once more, but managed to escape death by inches.

Her body trembled. Her lungs burned. Each spell drained her energy faster than she could recover.

"I... can’t... win this alone," she thought desperately.

But the dragon didn’t give her time to think. He opened his mouth, and within it, a sphere of blue energy began to form. A heart of ice pulsing in fury.

"No..." Stella’s eyes widened. "This will destroy everything!"

She raised her arms and spun around. The wind responded in desperation, creating a gigantic vortex that expanded across the sky. A cyclonic wall that swallowed kilometers, ready to hold back the attack.

The dragon fired.

The blue lightning streaked through the air, tearing through the darkness. The impact with the vortex was apocalyptic. The entire sky trembled, the black clouds ripped apart, revealing for an instant a colorless void above hell. The clash of forces threw Stella into the very eye of the storm.

She screamed, blood pouring from her ears. Her nose bled, her eyes watered. The pressure was unbearable.

But she didn’t give up.

"I’M NOT... GOING... TO DIE HERE!"

The vortex exploded, redirecting part of the lightning upward. An explosion lit the hellish skies like a second sun.

Stella fell to her knees in midair, supported only by fragile, fluttering wings of wind. She could barely breathe. The dragon, on the other hand, merely shook its head, as if disturbed, not injured.

"Shit..." she spat blood. "This is useless..."

The Blue Dragon spread its wings again. A blast of energy coursed through its scales, which shone like crystals. It dove toward Stella, too fast, like a blue bolt of lightning piercing the night.

Stella focused everything she had. The air around her compressed so much that space itself seemed to distort. Blades of wind appeared in formation, dozens, hundreds, all pointed forward.

"DIE!"

The blades shot out in a devastating swarm, slicing through the sky in chaotic directions, all converging on the dragon.

The first impacts opened shallow gashes in its wings. The monster’s roar echoed, but it did not stop. Its colossal body pierced the swarm like an indestructible wall. Each blade that collided shattered into scattered streams.

The dragon approached.

Stella felt her heart stop.

The impact came like thunder. The dragon’s mouth opened, and before she could react, its jaws closed around her.

For a second, all was darkness.

But Stella exploded. Her body vanished, transformed into pure storm, escaping from between the monster’s teeth. She reappeared behind him, panting, her hair plastered to her sweaty, bloodied face.

"I... won’t... fall," she murmured, even as she couldn’t believe her own words.

The Blue Dragon slowly turned, its eyes glittering like raging oceans. It roared, and the sound tore through hell like a decree of death.

The roar echoed so deeply that the distant mountains trembled. Even hell itself seemed to shudder at the creature’s presence. The air froze around the Blue Dragon, each beat of its wings bringing a wave of unnatural cold that devoured the burning heat of the plane.

Stella, panting, almost powerless, felt the wind she summoned begin to fail, as if even the heavens betrayed her before this aberration. But she didn’t back down.

"If I fall here... they’ll never find me," she whispered, tasting the metallic taste of blood in her mouth. "Vergil... Roxanne... I can’t... disappear!"

The dragon dove again. This time, the air around it exploded into sharp crystals, shards of ethereal ice that scattered in all directions like a shower of daggers.

Stella screamed and sent her winds circling, creating whirlwinds that attempted to repel the icy storm. The blades of air and ice clashed, each collision a miniature explosion. Even so, dozens pierced her defenses. Cuts opened on her arms, legs, and face, spraying blood into the sky.

She gritted her teeth, ignoring the pain, and thrust her body upward, escaping the dragon’s bite by a split second.

However, its tail was already waiting.

The impact came like a mountain crumbling. Stella was crushed against an invisible wall of air by the force of the blow, and the world around her blurred. Her scream echoed along with the crash of the collision. Her wind wings nearly dissipated, and for a moment she felt as if she would plummet forever into that endless abyss.

"NO!" she roared, forcing every ounce of energy. Wind exploded from within her, pushing her back and steadying her fall. Her eyes blazed with fury, even as her body lay in pieces.

The Blue Dragon, unmoved, opened its mouth again. But this time, it wasn’t a single bolt. Three icy spheres appeared between its fangs, spinning like blue satellites.

Stella’s blood ran cold.

"He’s... going to fire them all at once..."

And she did.

The three blue blasts intersected in the air, forming a triangle of pure destruction. Where they collided, space seemed to unravel, imploding silently.

Stella didn’t think. She screamed.

Her body dissolved into wind, becoming a human cyclone. The projectiles tore through her, exploding behind her, tearing continents of floating rock into the inferno. The flash blinded everything for seconds.

She reappeared atop the dragon’s head, her eyes fixed, maddened.

"NOW!"

All the winds responded. A monstrous whirlwind was born, a miles-long hurricane that collapsed upon the creature. The crimson clouds were swallowed, lightning split the air, and Stella threw all her power against it in a single attack.

The dragon roared in defiance. Its wings flapped once, and the hurricane cracked in half. The air currents disintegrated, shattered like glass. Stella’s eyes widened in shock as she felt her own power crushed.

A claw struck her head-on.

The impact ripped through her body like a seismic wave. She was spitting downward, crashing through layers of black clouds, free-falling through the hellish sky. Blood scattered around her like red petals dancing in the wind.

The world spun. Her body screamed for surrender.

But within her mind, a flame burned.

"No matter how much I break... I will fight to the end."

The Blue Dragon dove after her, opening its mouth to devour her in midair.

And it was in that instant that Stella summoned the last shred of power.

She spread her arms, and the wind responded not just to her command, but to her desperation. A whirlwind formed around her, growing too quickly, compressing into a sphere. Within it, the sound was deafening—and then, silence.

"Disappear!" she screamed, and the sphere exploded.

A sheer cyclone engulfed everything, shooting at the dragon like a compressed air bullet. The crushing force struck the monster squarely, and for the first time, it was knocked back. Its wings beat furiously, but visible cracks appeared in its shimmering scales.

The roar of pain echoed through the inferno.

Stella, however, was already falling again. Her body was limp, almost out of control. Her wind wings fluttered, about to dissipate. Her chest heaved in agony, each breath a torment.

She looked up to see the Blue Dragon staggering through the sky, enraged, wounded, but far from defeated.

And yet, a tired smile played across her broken lips.

— I managed to... hurt... you.