Arad’s body sunk into the shadows and he gasped, looking at the endless darkness surrounding him. He could still sense the drakaina’s presence floating around him, this wasn’t the cavern they were in before, it’s a whole other realm, a realm of shadows.

“So, you’ve got an elemental expansion…how interesting, not many achieve such a refined level of magic control.” Arad was enjoying his time playing with another dragon. Albeit he was already married and was fairly used to speaking with women, drakaina’s were another matter. He almost never had a chance to speak with one, and this was quite an interesting interaction, albeit she’s a bit insane. He told himself, ^I can fix her.^

She glared at him from a distance, growling as the shadows of her realm started moving. As Arad floated, he got slashed across the chest as if hit with a blade. He gasped and instantly healed, unable to understand how her attack managed to harm him, she couldn’t get through his scales just a few moments ago.

As Arad was wondering if her expansion buffed her attack power, he used his void eyes to scan the mana of her expansion, and it came back negative. She doesn’t get any personal buffs from the expansion; this thing only extends the range of the shadows she can control.

Suddenly, his eyes got slashed, followed by his throat getting cut open. Countless stabs pierced Arad’s body and his guts would’ve been pulled out if he hadn’t stored them in his void. He covered his body with a multilayered barrier, but the attacks kept coming at the same rate without the barrier being touched.

^Her expansion is bad news…she’ll kill me at this rate. I must get out, but without harming her too much. This is a shadow realm, an expansion that hates light.^ Arad opened his jaw, “Cover your eyes…” He roared as a Ho-white Nova dripped from his jaw.

The pure light that almost killed Korah and shattered Jordan’s dreams, the star that illuminated Arad’s void. A god-shattering star flashed in the midst of the drakaina’s shadow expansion, illuminating all of the shadows and blasting her away.

As the shadows rumbled and danced from Arad’s flash of light, the drakaina got ejected out of them, followed by Arad who was still bleeding. She smacked on the wall and stood in place, slowly healing and admiring what he had just done. Even though he was already too exhausted and starving from the day’s training, he could still completely shut down a drakaina’s expansion.

Such a feat didn’t go unnoticed, even the drakaina whose mind already sank into madness, could feel it, fear. She no longer charged forth blindly with confidence but silently watched him from where she landed, observing and trying to find a way to attack. The being before her wasn’t something she could win against, one wrong move, and she’d end up getting beaten.

“What’s up? Is that all you got?” Arad looked at her with glowing eyes, “I doubt you can understand my words, but I know you’ll understand the meaning at least.” He took a step forward and she backed away.

“If I was seeking to mate, I would’ve already pushed you down. You know well enough that I have the strength for that. If I wanted to kill you, you wouldn’t be listening to me now.” He stopped and pointed at the ground, “I want to move you from here into my lair, and have you wait patiently there until I find a way to restore your sanity.”

ZON! He disappeared and appeared above her back, pushing her down to the ground and restraining her using his heavyweight. She tried to struggle, but couldn’t move a muscle against his will. “See?”

She growled and opened her expansion once more, but they didn’t sink into the shadows. She looked around with a confused face, they should be sinking to the ground.

“Gravity magic, we aren’t falling anywhere.” He started floating with her, “Care to give up?” He grabbed her by the neck and smacked her on the wall before throwing her back to the ground.

She finally stopped moving and sat on the ground, panting for air. He was too much for her to handle, and so she stopped resisting at last. Arad approached her, she seemed awfully obedient. As he nudged her, she changed her seat and was ready to mate.

Arad snorted as he knocked her on the head. “Not like this, stand up. You’re staying in my lair until I find a cure for your sanity.” She didn’t seem to understand words, but if he pushed her in a direction, she’d walk in it. Like a kid being guided by hand.

Arad smiled, turning toward the cursed metal mine. “Stay put for a while. I’ll teleport after I clear the mine, it’ll only take a second.” Hearing his words and feeling the tap of his massive tail on her back, she sat down as he walked toward the mind.

The moment the tip of his tail passed her head and she was completely behind him, her body started to move again. She slipped into the shadows as Arad rapidly turned back to catch her. His claw barely missed, hitting the thin air.

In the next moment as Arad’s eyes stared everywhere trying to find her as he could still sense her presence, his arm got slashed in multiple places. He didn’t see the attack coming, and that had him worried.

She appeared from the shadows, swinging her claw at his side.

With a large smile on his face, he blocked her attack, “You still got a will to fight? I like those who don’t go down easily.” His left arm was suddenly slashed again. Even though he blocked the attack.

She swung at his leg, but even though he dodged, his neck got slashed and then his back.

As she jumped and flew from one darkness into another, she kept attacking Arad from left and right. All of her attacks were blocked or deflected, yet all had still managed to wound Arad.

The forest on the surface started shaking as if hit by an earthquake as the two dragons fought, and Mora who was doing his squats looked at the ground with a passive face. “Probably I shouldn’t bother them.”

After one minute of getting brutally slashed by the drakaina, Arad finally realized one thing. Instead of blocking the drakaina’s attack, he let her hit him and focused on her other limbs. As he expected, she was attacked the ground beside him, causing him to get wounded.

The whole cavern was dark so Arad didn’t have any way of noticing if he didn’t look close enough, the way she was bypassing his defenses wasn’t something natural, she was using her shadow magic. If she attacked his shadow, she could wound him. This is how she managed to brutalize him in the expansion and how she is now cutting him up.

Now that he noticed her trick, he attempted to prevent her from attacking his shadow. It was quite hard to pinpoint his own shadow in this dark cavern, but he could generally guess where it was. After blocking servals of her attempts, he started to feel confident in his ability to fend

her off.

But then, he suddenly froze, unable to move. His whole body remained as still as a statue as she approached him, and slashed his shadow, cutting him. Arad’s eyes moved around as he looked for the reason, noticing that her tail was aligned with his tail.

Arad immediately switched his void eyes to see mana. If he can’t see the shadows, he’ll try to attune himself to her mana wavelengths and track her spells. He could then see it, her shadow linked to his shadow, which stunned him. ^Is this shadow-binding magic?^ This was the first time that Arad had seen such strange magic.

The drakaina lunged forward, going for the killing blow with all of her power concentrated into her claw. Her goal is one thing, to divorce Arad’s skull from his neck.

CRACK! Arad punched her in the face so hard she fell to the ground, twitching as she pissed

herself from how the impact shocked her brain and spine, almost turning them into mush. She tried to stand, but her legs couldn’t gather enough strength. She was suffering from clear

nerve damage, that punch had messed up her brain.

“Sorry,” Arad laid his claw on her chest, pushing her down. “I couldn’t control my strength

well. Even if you paralyzed me with magic, I can use gravity magic to pull my fist toward your face.” He approached and stared straight into her eyes, “What do you think? Is it time for you to become obedient?”

As he stared at her eyes, her body suddenly melted into a puff of black smoke. He stared at the smoke with a confused face, turning his head left and right, unable to find her presence anywhere. “Wait…what is this?” He inspected the area where she was lying, nothing was left there. The ground was even dry.

Arad sighed as he turned and walked toward the cursed metal mine to eat it. “Damn it,

drakaina. But you won’t run for long.” What he fought at the end was nothing more than a shadow clone, he couldn’t even tell when did she switch with that clone. But now she was well out of his 40km range and he couldn’t find her.

As Arad absorbed the cursed metal mine into his stomach, he looked back at the drakaina’s blood left on the ground, “I’ll catch you soon. And next time you won’t run away.”