Demonic Dragon: Harem System-Chapter 808: It was quick, and brutal.

The silence between the two lasted no more than a breath.

But in that breath, Edrik made a decision.

He would not allow that smile to remain.

White flames exploded around his body like a burning dawn. Unlike ordinary fire, they didn’t crackle—they silenced the air. The light didn’t flicker; it dominated. The sky above Athenion became a vast milky sea, and the artifacts orbiting the Monarch began to spin faster, tracing perfect geometric circles.

"Kneel." Edrik’s voice wasn’t a shout. It was a decree.

The impact came first as spiritual pressure. An invisible wave swept across the field before the gates. Stones vibrated. Dust rose in circular spirals. Soldiers on the walls clenched their teeth, feeling their very resolve being tested.

Strax didn’t move.

The ground beneath his feet sank a millimeter.

Just that.

Edrik descended completely.

When his feet touched the ground, there was no sound—there was annulment. The surrounding grass lost its color for an instant, as if deprived of will.

He advanced.

He didn’t run.

He walked.

Each step scattered white flames in concentric patterns, circles that burned conviction, drained courage, dissolved hostile intent.

Strax raised his hand.

And then the first real clash occurred.

The flames touched something that did not yield.

It wasn’t brute resistance.

It was firmness.

Like striking against a wall that doesn’t react, doesn’t tremble—it simply exists.

Edrik narrowed his eyes.

He moved his fingers slightly, and three of the artifacts orbiting his body shot out like comets. They were ancient blades, forged in forgotten eras, fueled by his fire. They left white trails in the air as they cut toward Strax.

The first impact was deafening.

Strax dodged the first blow with a minimal shoulder movement. The blade struck the ground behind him, carving a perfect twenty-meter furrow, stone melting under silent heat.

The second blade came from below.

Strax leaped.

The third descended like a celestial guillotine.

He blocked with his forearm.

The shock released a wave of pressure that shattered windows in the nearest houses. The ground cracked into deep webs.

But his arm didn’t break.

Edrik felt something different there.

It wasn’t simple physical strength.

It was density.

He lunged forward.

In the blink of an eye, he was facing Strax, his palm enveloped in pure white flame. He struck.

The impact was brutal.

Strax was thrown back like a projectile, crashing through the outer gate and colliding against an inner wall. The rock exploded around him.

Edrik didn’t wait.

He raised both hands, and the sky responded.

Columns of white fire plummeted like inverted lightning, striking the spot where Strax had been thrown. Each impact carved deep craters, evaporating debris before it even touched the ground.

The dust slowly dissipated.

Strax emerged from the rubble.

Blood trickled from his forehead.

He wiped it with his thumb.

And smiled.

The smile wasn’t defiance.

It was interest.

Edrik felt his chest tighten again.

He reached out, and the ground beneath Strax lit up with incandescent symbols. A containment circle formed instantly, sealing space and intention. The flames rose like translucent walls.

Anyone else would have been psychologically crushed before even trying to break through.

Strax placed his hand on the wall of fire.

The white flame tried to consume his intention.

Tried to extinguish his will.

Tried to dissolve his presence.

Nothing happened.

Then he closed his fingers.

The wall cracked.

It didn’t explode.

It cracked.

Like glass under gradual pressure.

And it shattered.

Edrik felt a real chill run down his spine.

He charged forward at full speed.

Now it was no longer a show of power.

It was combat.

The two collided in the center of the field, fist against fist, flame against brute force. The shockwave opened a fifty-meter circular crater. The ground was pushed outward like solid waves.

Edrik spun, enveloped Strax’s arm with concentrated white fire, and tried to burn the joint from the inside.

Strax responded with a direct elbow to the face.

The impact shattered the air.

Edrik took three steps back.

Blood trickled from his lip.

He touched his own face, almost in disbelief.

Decades.

Decades without anyone being able to physically force him to retreat.

He smiled—but now there was tension there.

The flames around him shifted.

They were no longer just vast.

They became sharp.

He launched a concentrated burst directly at Strax’s chest.

Unlike the previous ones, this one didn’t seek to burn conviction.

It sought to extinguish motor impulse.

Strax received the attack head-on.

His body was enveloped in absolute white.

For an instant, he disappeared into the light.

Edrik maintained the flow, amplifying the intensity until the ground began to give way beneath his own feet.

Then—

The light shattered.

Strax advanced through it.

Not unscathed—his clothes were charred, his chest marked by red burn lines—but advancing.

He grabbed Edrik’s wrist.

And squeezed.

The sound of bones tensing echoed in the field.

Edrik reacted instantly, releasing a radial explosion that violently separated them.

Both slid backward.

The field was now unrecognizable. Craters, fissures, white heat marks drawing chaotic patterns across the terrain.

Edrik breathed more heavily.

Not from physical exhaustion.

From calculation.

He raised both arms.

The remaining artifacts aligned above him, forming a complete circle. Ancient symbols shimmered in the air. The entire sky seemed to tilt.

"Then burn with me." His voice was low, but laden with absolute intent.

A gigantic sphere of white fire began to form above the city. It wasn’t an ordinary flame. It was compression of will, years of discipline, a promise transformed into a weapon.

Strax looked up.

Then he looked back at Edrik.

And began to walk towards him.

Not running.

Walking.

Each step seemed to weigh more than the last, but it didn’t lessen.

Edrik launched the sphere.

The impact was catastrophic.

The light engulfed everything.

The sound came a second later—a deep roar that made entire walls vibrate.

As the dust began to settle, the field was a smoking abyss.

In the center—

Strax was still standing.

The ground beneath him had been pressed down as if the world had tried to bury him.

But he was there.

Breathing.

Bleeding.

Moving forward.

Edrik felt something break inside him.

Not the power.

The narrative.

He had believed that sheer effort led to the inevitable top.

But that man—

That man seemed to exist outside of that logic.

Strax accelerated.

In an instant he was before him.

The punch struck Edrik’s abdomen like a meteor.

The air was ripped from his lungs.

The second blow came to the chin.

The third to the stomach again.

Edrik tried to summon defensive flames, but the physical pressure interrupted his focus.

Strax grabbed his cloak and threw him to the ground.

The crater that formed was deeper than all the previous ones.

Edrik tried to get up.

Strax was already on top of him.

Fist raised.

The impact sank the Monarch even further.

The entire field trembled.

Silence.

Dust rose slowly.

Strax took a step back.

Edrik was on his knees.

Blood mixed with the earth.

The flames around him still burned.

But less steady.

He looked up.

There was no more arrogance there.

There was painful understanding.

He had done everything to never be weak again.

But he had confused control with supremacy.

Strax stood before him, wounded, breathing heavily, but unwavering.

Edrik laughed.

Weak.

Short.

—So... that’s it.—He spat blood.—There’s always someone beyond.

Strax didn’t answer.

He just watched.

The white flames gradually diminished.

Not forcibly extinguished.

But ceased.

Edrik closed his eyes for a moment.

The snow.

The blood.

The promise.

He opened his eyes again.

And stood up.

Not to continue.

But to acknowledge.

Strax perceived it even before seeing it.

The air changed.

Not like before—it wasn’t reorganization, it wasn’t pressure.

It was consumption.

Edrik stood with difficulty, blood still trickling down his chin, mixed with the crater dust. The flames around him stopped flickering like blazes and began to contract, as if being pulled into his own body.

Into the bones.

Into the blood.

"If I am weak..." he repeated, his voice now hoarser, but strangely serene, "...then I just need to get stronger."

White flames climbed his arm like inverted roots. They didn’t burn his clothes first. They didn’t burn the air.

They burned him.

His skin began to crack in luminous lines, fissures that revealed a white glow beneath. There was no scream.

There was decision.

Strax narrowed his eyes.

"You’re killing yourself."

Edrik smiled, and this time the smile wasn’t arrogant. It was truthful.

"No." He spat out more blood, which evaporated before touching the ground. "I’m choosing."

The white flames had always consumed intention.

Now, the intention was absolute.

His life had become fuel.

The entire field began to vibrate with a deep, almost inaudible tone. The artifacts that still floated in the air began to melt, absorbed by the torrent of energy concentrating in the Monarch’s body. Ancient metal dissolved into white particles and was sucked into him.

The sky lost its shape.

The white clouds were pulled to a single point above Edrik’s head. 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

The ground beneath his feet began to sink not from impact, but from structural absence. As if the world itself were being drained of what held it together.

Strax felt the difference.

Until that moment, Edrik had fought to win.

Now he fought to finish.

The luminous fissures in the Monarch’s body spread across his neck, face, and chest. His silhouette began to lose definition, as if being sculpted from within by too much light.

"I’ll never again feel snow mixed with blood," Edrik said, almost reflectively. "Even if it costs me everything."

He opened his arms.

White flames erupted.

But not outwards.

Inwards.

His body began to become translucent. Bones visible as incandescent structures. His heart, a pulsating white core, beating beyond human rhythm.

Strax took a step forward.

The ground cracked beneath him.

"You won’t take this city with you," he said, his voice now humorless, without irony.

Edrik inclined his head slightly.

"No." A flash of respect crossed his eyes. "Only you."

Then he disappeared.

He didn’t move quickly.

He collapsed the space between them.

Strax raised his arm at the last instant.

The impact wasn’t an explosion.

It was an implosion.

The air around them was violently sucked into the center of the shockwave. The compression wave crushed everything within a radius of hundreds of meters. The already existing crater became an abyss.

Edrik had become a condensed white star.

His body was no longer flesh.

It was concentrated combustion.

He struck not with fists, but with fragments of himself, each impact tearing pieces from his own vital core to increase the force of the next attack.

Strax blocked the first advance, but was thrown kilometers back, crashing through already destroyed structures, ricocheting between walls and towers until colliding with the ground again.

Before he could fully rise, Edrik was already upon him.

The white hand pierced Strax’s shoulder, not piercing flesh, but attempting to consume his very capacity to resist.

Strax roared—not from pain, but from exertion—and gripped the incandescent arm.

The skin on his hands began to burn.

Smoke rose.

The smell of burning flesh filled the air.

Edrik pressed harder.

His face was disintegrating, human features replaced by cracked light.

"I admit it," he said, each word echoing like two overlapping voices. "I’m going to die."

He lifted Strax by the neck with absurd force.

The ground beneath them crumbled even further.

"But you... are coming with me."

He pulled all the remaining energy into the core in his own chest.

The white heart grew larger.

Brighter.

Unstable.

The entire sky began to spin.

Stones levitated.

Remnants of walls were sucked toward the center.

Strax realized.

This was no longer combat.

It was detonation.

He struck Edrik’s arm with everything he had.

The impact ripped half of the luminous structure away.

White fragments flew like meteors, each one creating craters upon impact.

Edrik staggered.

But he didn’t stop.

The core in his chest expanded even further.

Fissures ran through his entire body.

He was smiling.

There was no more fear there.

There was relief.

"I wasn’t ignored," he whispered. "I wasn’t disposable."

Strax advanced.

He grasped the Monarch’s incandescent face with both hands.

The skin on his palms charred instantly.

He ignored it.

He pressed.

"You chose this," he said, his voice deep and firm. "So endure it to the end."

Edrik laughed. A broken sound, echoing like cracking glass.

"I always endured it."

The core reached its tipping point.

The light became unbearable.

For an instant, the world turned absolute white.

Formless.

Soundless.

Directionless.

Then—

Collapse.

The explosion rose like a column that tore through the sky, pushing the clouds away in a perfect circle that stretched for miles. The ground was pressed down as if a divine fist had struck the world.

As the light began to fade, the field was a smoldering void.

In the center of the colossal crater, only a fragment remained.

A figure on its knees.

Strax.

His breathing was heavy.

The skin on his arms was burned, his clothes almost completely destroyed, his body covered in deep cuts and scars.

Before him, scattered like luminous dust carried by the wind, were the last particles of white flames.

There was no body.

No bones.

No ashes.

Edrik Vale had consumed everything.

Even the last fragment of himself.

The wind swept through the crater.

The glowing particles slowly dispersed.

Strax remained silent.

He didn’t smile.

There was no provocation.

Just a long look at the point where the core had existed.

"What a disgusting son of a bitch," he muttered.