A spray of thick and burning blood immediately spurted from the wound, splashing Mordred from head to toe. The draconic vital fluid was warmer than human blood, almost boiling, and it gave off an acrid metallic odor mixed with a spicy fragrance characteristic of elemental magic.

Mordred firmly maintained his grip on the sword, supporting Peter's trembling and dying body whose legs no longer carried him. The dragon slowly collapsed against him, his dead weight pressing against his executioner's chest.

Peter's gaze, once so proud and dominating, was now veiled by the proximity of death. His eyes stared into emptiness with an expression of absolute terror mixed with incomprehension. How had he come to this? How could a simple human have...?

Mordred's sadistic smile widened until it distorted his features into a demonic mask. He leaned toward the dying dragon's ear, his voice now nothing more than an icy whisper charged with unhealthy enjoyment:

- "Feel now what we humans have felt since your arrival," he breathed with terrifying gentleness. - - - "Feel the pain that gnaws at us every day. Feel this fear that wakes us every night. Feel this despair that poisons each of our breaths."

He paused, savoring the death spasms that ran through Peter's body.

- "In this world... or in another, it doesn't matter. The suffering you're experiencing now is what you've inflicted on us for years in your world and months in this one. And it's only beginning."

Without warning, Mordred began slowly turning his blade in Peter's chest. The enchanted metal pivoted in the flesh with an atrocious sound, that of bones breaking, cartilage cracking, muscular tissues tearing and blood vessels exploding under pressure.

Blood now spurted in jolts, following the erratic beats of the perforated heart. The hot splashes covered Mordred's face, painting his cheeks and lips with a dark red and sticky liquid that slowly dripped down his chin.

Peter opened his mouth wide in what should have been a scream of pain, but only a stifled rattle escaped from his throat. His vocal cords were probably severed by the blade, or perhaps it was simply that the suffering exceeded his capacity to express it.

His eyes rolled back, showing only the pearly white of his eyeballs. His massive body was shaken by violent and desperate spasms, his limbs contracting in all directions as if he was still trying to escape this infernal torture.

But Mordred held firm, maintaining his victim against him with superhuman force. Each convulsion of the dying dragon only made the blade more mobile in his chest, further aggravating the internal damage and prolonging the agony.

Peter's claws desperately clawed at the air, seeking something, anything to cling to, a way to escape this unspeakable suffering. His hind legs beat at emptiness, his wings folded and unfolded in uncontrolled spasms.

Mordred meticulously continued his work of destruction, insensitive to the bloody splashes that covered him entirely. Every movement of his blade was calculated, precise, designed to maximize pain without accelerating death. He wanted Peter to feel everything, every second of this absolute suffering, every nuance of this agony he orchestrated with diabolical patience.

The noble dragon, once so arrogant, so sure of his superiority, was now nothing more than a mass of trembling flesh clinging to his executioner's sword. His breathing became increasingly labored, his lungs slowly drowning in his own blood.

Pink bubbles now escaped from his mouth with each exhalation, an obscene mixture of saliva and hemoglobin. His nostrils also let a continuous red stream flow, proof that the internal hemorrhage was massive and irreversible.

- "Look at me," Mordred suddenly ordered in a cutting voice.

Peter, in a surge of dying lucidity, managed to fix his dying gaze on his assassin's orange eyes.

- "I want you to understand this well," Mordred continued with icy intensity. "What you feel right now, this terror, this powerlessness, this pain that consumes your being... it's exactly what every human has lived through because of you. Every child you devoured, every woman you raped, every man you tortured... they all knew this same agony."

He turned his blade once more, extracting a new gurgle of suffering from his victim.

- "The difference is that they were innocent. You're only receiving what you deserve."

Silence gradually fell around them, disturbed only by Peter's increasingly weak rattles and the ignoble sounds of blood flowing drop by drop on the broken cobblestones. In the distance, the alarm cries of the fleeing dragons faded, replaced by the dull crackling of flames that still licked certain ruins.

The last draconic witnesses to the scene remained frozen with horror before such a demonstration of methodical brutality. Several of them had vomited, unable to bear the spectacle of their hierarchical superior being slowly tortured to death.

But Mordred hardly cared. For him, this was nothing but pure justice, a long-awaited retribution. Each drop of draconic blood spilled was a debt repaid, each cry of pain a prayer answered.

The blade buried to the hilt, Mordred leaned even closer to Peter's ear. The dragon was now only a few breaths from death, his strength rapidly abandoning him.

- "Now," he whispered with deep satisfaction, "now you finally know what it means to be prey. You know what it feels like to be hunted, tracked, tortured by someone stronger than yourself. You know what it feels like to be human facing dragons."

Peter slowly exhaled his last breaths in a prolonged rattle, his eyes definitively losing their golden gleam to be veiled by the grayish film of death. His massive body suddenly grew heavy, becoming dead weight in Mordred's arms.

Mordred slowly withdrew his sword from the lifeless body, observing with morbid satisfaction the noble dragon slide to the ground in a dull and wet sound. The corpse collapsed on its side, revealing the gaping wound that entirely traversed its chest, the edges of shredded flesh still smoking with residual magic.

Without hesitating a second, Mordred extended his free hand above Peter's body and activated the system's absorption power. Immediately, filaments of pure energy began rising from the corpse, serpentining in the air like spectral flames before rushing into Mordred's open palm.

A sensation of pure ecstasy and colossal energy flooded every fiber of his body. It was as if a thousand suns exploded simultaneously in his veins, as if lightning itself flowed in his arteries. His muscles swelled slightly, his bones densified, his organs strengthened, and his magical capacity literally exploded.

[Successful absorption: +350 in Strength, +320 in Agility, +300 in Endurance, +400 in Mana.] [Draconic skills assimilated: Elemental Breath - Level 3, Magic Resistance - Level 2, Draconic Flight - Level 4] [New ability unlocked: Draconic Regeneration - Level 1]

The system notifications scrolled through his mind like an intoxicating litany of acquired power. Mordred literally felt his strength increase in real time, every cell of his body transforming to accommodate this new draconic essence.

His orange eyes blazed with new intensity, almost blinding. Spectral flames now danced in his irises, reflecting the brutal and excessive power he had just acquired.

When the absorption was complete, Mordred slowly straightened, savoring this sensation of omnipotence that coursed through his veins. He then turned his incandescent gaze toward the dragons that still remained in the vicinity, still frozen with terror by what they had just witnessed.

There were about ten of them, a mix of soldiers, warriors, and a captain with blood-red scales. All trembled visibly, their primitive instincts screaming at them to flee at full speed, but the paralysis of terror nailed them in place.

- "Your turn," murmured Mordred in an icy voice that nevertheless carried to them despite the distance.

An unhealthy smile drew itself on his lips stained with Peter's blood, revealing teeth that now seemed sharper, more predatory than before.

Without waiting for any reaction from them, Mordred suddenly launched himself, his body amplified by the power he had just acquired propelling itself toward his new prey with the speed of an artillery projectile.

The first dragon, a soldier with green scales, didn't even have time to understand what was happening to him. Mordred's blade sliced his throat with such force that his head completely detached from his body, spinning in the air before falling with a dull sound several meters away.

The decapitated body remained standing for a few seconds, blood spurting in geysers from the severed artery, before collapsing in convulsions. The scarlet jets splashed the surrounding dragons, covering them with their fellow's still warm hemoglobin.

Mordred didn't stop. Carried by his momentum, his blade whirled and came down on a second dragon, opening his belly from side to side. Intestines spilled on the ground in an ignoble tangle of pink flesh and greenish digestive fluids. The creature let out an atrocious cry while vainly trying to keep its organs inside its disemboweled body.

The surviving dragons finally tried to react, but they were too slow, too shocked, too terrorized to offer effective resistance. Mordred literally danced among them, his blade tracing deadly arcs that severed limbs and torsos with terrifying ease.

A warrior dragon with gray scales tried to take flight to escape the massacre, but Mordred leaped with superhuman agility and grabbed him by the hind paw. With a brutal gesture, he brought him back to the ground and smashed his skull against the cobblestones. The impact exploded the cranial box like a nut, spreading brains and bone fragments over several meters around.

Mordred's mana wings deployed on his back, radiating malefic orange light. They propelled him from one victim to another with macabre precision, allowing him to strike from every possible angle.

He grabbed a dragon by the horns and violently twisted his neck until the vertebrae gave way in a sinister crack. The creature collapsed, its head now hanging at an impossible angle, its purplish tongue escaping from its open maw.

Another dragon tried to retaliate by spitting a jet of acid, but Mordred dodged with fluid grace and counter-attacked by perforating his torso from side to side. His blade emerged from the dragon's back, dripping with blood and lung fragments. He kept his victim impaled for a few seconds, savoring its death convulsions, before brutally withdrawing his weapon.

The captain dragon with red scales, understanding that all resistance was useless, attempted a desperate flight. But Mordred caught up with him in a few strides and cleanly severed both his hind legs with a double blade movement. The creature collapsed screaming, leaving behind a bloody trail.

Mordred then took all his time to finish off the captain, methodically breaking each bone, perforating each vital organ, ensuring that death was as long and painful as possible. The dragon's screams resonated throughout the ruined city, atrocious testimony to Mordred's systematic cruelty.

Each execution procured him deep, almost euphoric satisfaction. It was more than simple vengeance - it was a purification, a bloody ritual that washed away years of humiliation and human suffering.

The system continuously resonated in his mind, confirming his growing power gains:

[Dragon soldier eliminated: +15 in Strength, +12 in Agility, +10 in Endurance, +20 in Mana.] [Dragon warrior eliminated: +30 in Strength, +25 in Agility, +22 in Endurance, +35 in Mana.] [Dragon captain eliminated: +45 in Strength, +40 in Agility, +35 in Endurance, +50 in Mana.]

Each notification was like a caress on his oversized ego, a confirmation that his path was the right one, that absolute violence was the only appropriate response to decades of draconic oppression.