Dragon King's Harem Chapter 584. Venom II

Dragon King's Harem Chapter 584. Venom II

“Painful?” I asked mid-flight.

I twisted, dodging another spear by inches, then drove Nightmare downward.

The flaming blade carved through her shoulder.

Not cleanly.

Brutally.

Fire burst inside the wound, crawling under her bark-skin in dark veins. Her regeneration tried to close it immediately, but Nightmare’s corruption sank deeper, rotting the new growth before it fully formed.

Elowen staggered backward.

I didn’t let her breathe.

Dragon wings snapped again.

I vanished behind a sweep of roots, appeared above her, and kicked off one of her own branches to flip over her head. Nightmare came down in a diagonal arc.

[Critical Burn Inflicted]

The slash opened her chest from shoulder to ribs. Fire poured into the cut, blooming black-red through green poison sap. The smell hit instantly, burning wood, bitter venom, scorched flowers.

She chose this.

She had the clean option.

The less painful death.

The confession.

The crown removed.

Still better than this.

But no.

Royal pride walked into fire and then complained about heat.

Not my fault.

Elowen roared and slammed a massive root-arm toward me. I raised Nightmare with both hands and met it head-on.

Impact.

-BOOM!

The shockwave shattered the ice around us and cracked the throne platform again. My boots dragged backward across the frozen stone for one breath, then my wings flared, muscles locking.

I pushed back.

Her monstrous eyes widened.

Yeah.

There it is.

The exact second she remembered dragons were not just nobles with scales.

We were monsters who learned manners.

I grinned.

Then cut upward.

Nightmare tore through her arm from base to tip. Fire erupted along the split, turning her entire limb into a burning branch. She screamed and tried to tear it off before corruption spread, but I was already moving again.

[Shadow Walk Activated]

I stepped out of the darkness beneath her chin.

Too close.

Far too close.

Her eyes snapped down.

I punched her with my free hand.

Not magic.

Just dragon strength.

Her massive head jerked sideways, bark cracking across her jaw. The hall gasped. “Your mistake,” I said, voice low, “was thinking I needed fire to kill you.”

I lifted Nightmare again. “I only needed fire to make it hurt.”

Then I drove the blade into her side.

Fire exploded through her body. Black-red cracks spread across her wooden torso, corruption chewing through poison channels, burning away her control over the roots still writhing across the hall.

Seraphel’s flames cut off the escaping vines.

Marissa’s flowers kept releasing antidote.

Sela’s earth coffin crushed Seranaya tighter.

Al’s shadows held the soldiers down.

Evelina’s barrier shielded the witnesses.

Everything closed around Elowen like a trap finally showing its teeth.

She screamed one more time and raised every remaining root in a desperate attempt to impale me from all sides.

I spread my wings wide.

Nightmare burned brighter.

“Too late.”

Then I spun.

A ring of dragon fire tore outward.

The roots turned to ash before they touched me.

Black-red fire spun around me in a widening ring, hungry and brutal, eating through Elowen’s desperate attack like her ancient poison-wood was nothing but dry twigs thrown into a dragon’s breath. The hall lit up with the glow of burning mana. Shadows leapt across cracked pillars. Frost steamed under the heat.

Elowen staggered backward, her monstrous form shrinking just slightly where the fire had eaten into her roots. One of her massive wooden arms was gone from shoulder to fingertip, the wound blackened and glowing with Nightmare’s corruption. Another arm hung uselessly, half frozen, half burned, poison sap dripping from it like thick green blood. Her crown of living roots thrashed behind her, but even those movements were slower now. Less graceful. Less queenly.

Cornered.

Finally.

Wood was useless against fire.

Not just weak.

Useless.

Every time she tried to regenerate, my fire mana crawled into the fresh growth and corrupted it before it could harden. Every time she tried to grow new roots from the floor, Seraphel’s controlled flames cut them off from the sides, and Sela’s earth spells crushed the openings before they could spread. Every breath Elowen took came heavier. Every glare she gave me looked less like royal fury and more like survival panic wearing lipstick.

I landed in front of her, wings spread behind me, Nightmare resting low at my side, fire licking along its edge.

“You look tired,” I said.

Elowen snarled.

I stepped forward.

She backed away.

The first honest thing she had done all day.

Behind me, the hall was still chaos, but controlled chaos now.

Near the throne, Sela and Marissa still had Seranaya trapped.

Or so I thought.

A sharp crack split the air.

Stone burst apart.

Seranaya screamed, not in fear, but fury. Her bridal-turned-monster form twisted violently as the authority bracelet on her wrist flared. The dwarven runes pulsed in ugly unstable rhythm with her nymph mana, and for one second, the throne itself answered her.

Sela’s eyes widened. “Marissa!”

“I see it!”

Marissa slammed both hands down, flowers blooming wildly around Seranaya’s stone cage, but Seranaya’s poisoned vines burst from inside her own body with enough force to tear through the binding. Her thorned hair lashed outward like whips. One vine clipped Marissa’s shoulder, slicing her sleeve and drawing a thin line of blood.

My head snapped toward her immediately.

Marissa hissed, then smiled. “Don’t look away from your fight, husband.”

My chest tightened in that stupid way it always did when one of them got hurt but still smiled like I was the dramatic one.

Sela surged forward, earth mana rising around her arms like gauntlets, but Seranaya moved faster now. Desperation sharpened her. She tore free from the stone, shattered Marissa’s clean vines with a blast of black pollen, and leapt toward Elowen.

The loyal daughter.

The child running to protect the mother who taught her how to turn marriage into murder.

“Mother!” Seranaya cried.

She landed between me and Elowen just as I lifted Nightmare for the final blow.

And I stopped.

I actually stopped.

Not because I couldn’t cut through her.

I could.