Syléane's lifeless body still lay on the ground, bathed in a pool of scarlet blood. Mordred did not look away. He did not celebrate. He did not smile. He breathed slowly, deeply, as if his heart absorbed with each beat the accumulated hatred of an entire lifetime.

Before him, Belgaroth, massive, broader than any other dragon in their hybrid form, had frozen at the sight of the corpse. The red flames of his mane crackled under the effect of a muffled anger, but also... doubt.

- "You killed Syléane," he said in a calm, almost clinical tone. "You've just signed your death warrant, bastard."

Mordred stared at him. His gaze was that of a man who could no longer be stopped. Cold. Sharp. And burning, with a flame far more terrible than any draconic fire.

- "That's amusing..." he murmured, approaching slowly. "You say that, Belgaroth, but I've never felt more alive than when looking at you there, standing within reach of my blade."

Belgaroth smiled. Arrogant. Relaxed.

- "You think that because you beat a little princess you can touch me? You were already pitiful back in the Colosseum days. A dog that crawled. And Akane... Ah, Akane... A little tigress that needed taming. You want to talk about her, don't you? You know what I did to her, Mordred? Do you want to hear it?"

Mordred stopped dead.

His orange pupils contracted until they became two burning slits.

- "Choose your words carefully, Belgaroth."

The dragon spread his arms.

- "I don't choose. I speak the truth. You think she lasted so long in the arenas without paying the price? I took her. As many times as necessary. Sometimes in front of the other gladiators. She cried at first. Then... she stopped crying. That's slavery, Mordred. You know it better than anyone. She was nothing. Nothing but an object."

The silence was glacial. Dense. Inhuman.

Then Mordred moved.

It wasn't a leap.

It was an annihilation of distance.

In a fraction of a second, he was on Belgaroth, his mana wings deployed in a shockwave that cracked the already fragile walls. His blade fell with such force that it pulverized the sword the dragon had barely raised to defend himself.

Belgaroth grimaced, retreated under the impact, but too late: Mordred's knee crashed into his solar plexus, breaking several of his scales, followed by an uppercut wrapped in lightning that sent him through three pillars.

Mordred advanced without slowing.

- "You're going to talk to me about objects? You who have never felt fear, helplessness? You've never heard the screams of others at night, the silence after the blows, the broken bodies that no one mourned?"

Belgaroth got up spitting blood. His smile had disappeared.

- "You think your rage makes you a god, Mordred? You're just a man with a martyr complex."

He then partially transformed, letting his skin give way to ruby scales, his claws lengthening, his power skyrocketing. He lunged at Mordred with unexpected speed for his size, his claws slicing through the air, leaving a burning trail behind them.

But Mordred parried. And counterattacked.

Every movement of his body was surgical. Every strike was a sentence. He used Shidensen, then Narukami, deeply cutting Belgaroth's shoulders. The latter screamed, more from surprise than pain.

- "You fed on others' fear," Mordred continued, implacable. "You humiliated her, destroyed her, and now you come to play the dominant?"

Belgaroth tried to breathe fire, but Mordred disappeared in a wave of mana, reappeared behind him, and drove his fist into the dragon's ribs. The crack was sharp. Dry. Cruel.

Mordred tilted his head.

- "You should have kept quiet."

Belgaroth staggered, tried to recover, but Mordred was already back in front of him. He grabbed him by the neck and violently threw him to the ground, his face buried in the blackened stone slabs.

Mordred knelt on him, his breath ragged with rage.

- "And all this time... She who was full of hope for our people, despite what you think she never stopped believing in it, despite a pig like you defiling her."

And that's when the dragon, even dominated, even with his face covered in blood, dared to smile.

- "Yes. And I would do it again, if she were still here."

Mordred remained frozen.

His pupils trembled with a muffled emotion.

Then he slowly straightened, fury accumulating in his body, vibrating through his mana.

- "Then I'm going to give you a death that even your gods will fear to approach."

[Skill activated: Instinctive Reflexes]

His aura pulsed with a barely visible golden gleam, and Belgaroth's fist shot above his head, hitting only empty air.

Mordred pivoted on his back foot, his blackened scales creaking with each movement, and retaliated with a scaly uppercut directly into the dragon's jaw. The impact was sharp, resonating like a mace blow on a gong.

Belgaroth wavered. Mordred followed.

His left fist crashed into Belgaroth's ribs, who retreated spitting a spray of parasitic fire. He tried to retaliate with a circular hook, but Mordred slipped under the arm, accelerated with a two-handed strike to the solar plexus.

The dragon fell to his knees, suffocating. Mordred approached calmly, his breathing perfectly controlled.

- "You're getting winded, Belgaroth," he murmured. "You were more impressive when you were screaming at a tied-up woman, weren't you?"

Belgaroth roared, his eyes bloodshot with rage. He got up in a bestial effort and swung both arms like hammers, seeking to crush Mordred from above.

But once again, [Instinctive Reflexes] guided Mordred's body like a dance.

He stepped back half a step, then pivoted on himself, his elbow sinking into Belgaroth's back upon landing. Before the dragon could even react, Mordred grabbed his skull with both hands and smashed his face against his knee.

A sound of broken bone rang out.

Blood flowed.

Belgaroth fell heavily.

Mordred gave him no respite.

He fell upon him, fists forward, both arms become weapons of justice. He struck. Again. And again. The dragon's fangs flew under the violence of the blows, his scales gave way, his gaze grew troubled.

The last left hook, charged with a mana impulse, sank into Belgaroth's orbit with a sickening crack, making him scream in pain.

Belgaroth lay kneeling, panting, short of breath, his torso lacerated, bones broken in several places. He tried to gather his strength, to ignore the pain that pierced him with each breath, but his muscles no longer responded. His legs trembled, his arms hung limply on either side of his massive body. His incandescent breath had been extinguished.

Mordred advanced slowly, his step heavy, his orange eyes burning with an infernal glow. He no longer had anything of a man. He had become something else. An entity shaped by pain, vengeance, and hatred. A cold, sovereign hatred. An absolute hatred.

- "Do you feel that, Belgaroth?" he said softly, almost tenderly. "That paralysis creeping along your spine. Your nerves contracting. Your muscles no longer obeying you."

The dragon opened his mouth to respond, but no words came out. Just a trickle of blood-tinted saliva.

- "It's the skill I absorbed from the mutated jellyfish of the colosseum. Do you remember them? The ones you threw into the arena to test us? Well... I thanked them. And I kept a souvenir."

Belgaroth tried to get up. His body convulsed. In vain.

Around them, about twenty dragons, officers, sentinels, war veterans, watched the scene in silence. None dared to move. None even dared to breathe too loudly. What they saw before them was not a duel. It was no longer a fight. It was an execution.

And it wasn't over yet.

Mordred slowly turned his head toward a metal beam twisted by the confrontations. He approached it, placed his hand on it, and tore off with a sharp blow a steel bar, still hot, partially melted at the end.

He raised it to eye level.

- "You told me you took her. Humiliated her. Reduced her to nothing. You made her scream. Cry. You made her suffer until she stopped crying. Isn't that what you said, Belgaroth?"

The dragon, pupils dilated, felt terror slowly seep into his bones.

- "So now," Mordred said in a venomous whisper, "you're going to scream."

With a measured, precise, almost medical gesture, Mordred slowly circled the kneeling dragon's body, and drove the red-hot steel bar into his anus entrance with one blow, without trembling, without slowing.

Belgaroth's scream was superhuman. A primitive, painful, unstoppable cry. Flames burst from his maw, uncontrolled, projected in a spasm of unbearable agony.

Around them, several dragons pressed their hands to their mouths, others looked away. One of them stepped back, pupils dilated.

- "By all the Gods..." he swore in a breath.

- "It's not possible..." murmured another, pale.

But Mordred didn't stop.

He pressed slowly, centimeter by centimeter, driving the bar deep into Belgaroth's body. The red-hot metal burned the flesh from within, producing atrocious hissing sounds, blood bubbles, incoherent spasms.

Belgaroth convulsed, vomited on the ground, cried without being able to scream anymore.

Mordred, crouched behind him, his gaze cold, finally pronounced:

- "And that... is just the beginning."