The Quake Explosion was an event that occurred around 2 years after Quakes first started appearing. Humanity alone couldn't fight against all of them, and so Quakes just kept piling up, more and more. And eventually, there were too many to maintain control of. That lead to the mana-beasts that crawled out of them taking control. Apparently, the state of chaos was so bad that, if the elves and dwarves didn't appear, Earth would've been completely lost.

Anyway, what I originally intended to say was that, there are three races on Kyra, and each one of these races has their own culture. In each of these cultures are unique conspiracies and hoaxes, like Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster. However, hundreds of years ago, a strange phenomenon occurred.

Across all three races, the same consipracy creature appeared - the Dragon.

More recently, only around one-hundred years ago, a certain Hunter by the title of Sir Jaylin Ilian noticed the phenomenon and wanted to see if there was any correlation between the origins of the conspiracy in each race. After questioning many people, the results came up inconsistent. It seemed that nobody actually knew where the conspiracy truly originated.

However, this didn't demotivate Ilian, instead it only helped further push his curiosity. After around 20 years of research with still no answer, he decided to do something rash. There was only one area that he hadn't scrounged for information yet - the Lost Region. He said his goodbyes to loved ones, knowing there was a near 100% chance of death, and ventured deep into hell.

And finally, he found his answer.

The Dragon was never a simple myth.

It was 100% real.

Ilian detailed his first encounter with the beast in a journal he had taken with him. He then sent that journal off to safety out of the Lost Region, so that even if he didn't make it back, his theory would finally have some solid evidence.

Ilian died. He never made it out of the Lost Region, and the journal was all that remained of him. In the entry detailing the encounter with the Dragon, he not only included a picture of the beast's face, but also a detailed sketch of it's entire body.

As such, the Dragon was finally accepted as a real creature, and added to all existing mana-beast encyclopedias. Due to the still little information known about it, it was difficult to determine it's true power or give it a rank. And so, they decided that they just needed to trust Ilian's descriptions of it's power, which, if true, made it the single strongest mana-beast ever discovered.

To enforce it's power, they also often referred to it by the nickname Ilian had given it in the entry - Doomsday Killer. 

And so that is how the Dragon came to be known as every Doomsday-tier's worst nightmare.

And right now, every Doomsday-tier's worst nightmare was staring down at me from the sky, drool dripping from it's retch-inducing mug, like it was looking at a freshly cooked Night hound steak.

<Keizo's Perspective  -  Lost Region  -  01:14>

"Wh- What the fuck is that thing?!" Screamed the princess, terror seemingly overtaking her for a second.

"A Dragon. It's a Dragon."

The princess squinted at the beast for a second, before finally recognising it from a picture she must've seen before.

"Goddamnit. It just had to be the Doomsday Killer, didn't it?!"

"Well, they do only live in the Lost Region. Even if they are still rare, we were bound to run into one eventually. I just didn't think it'd be this soon."

I stared at it for a second while contemplating what to do. At full strength, I might just be able to beat one solo, but there's a high likelihood that I would also die in the process, and then who'd look after the princess and prince? Plus, that definitely wasn't an option right now, as I wasn't at full strength. I still only had about 97% of my full mana, and I couldn't beat a Dragon with 3% missing.

Right now, the best course of action would be to just flee, and sacrifice the other 9 as bait to slow it down. However, that wasn't my call, instead we had to wake everyone and get the prince's opinion on what to do.

"Alright, go wake up everyone, I'll hold it off for now! Come back after the prince has said what to do!"

The princess looked at me with slight hesitation, before she steeled her resolve, "Okay! Don't you dare die while I'm gone!"

She sped off and I met the Dragon's gaze once again. I activated [Counter] to try to find some kind of opening. I didn't need to kill it, I just needed to hold it off. I just needed one opening to exploit.

Dragon (x1)

Strengths

- Durability (scales provide damage absorption)

- Mana proficiency

- Speed

- Agility

- Brutality

Weaknesses

- Unintelligent

- Arrogance

- Wing joints (weak spot)

- Lightning (scales can't absorb all damage)

Perfect - a weak spot.

I relaxed my body one last time.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

[Anomaly] activated.

The blue lightning engulfed my body once more. This time, I concentrated the lightning onto my hands and legs, making the power of those limbs increase exponentially from the regular power of [Anomaly]. The reason I usually let it spread across my whole body was because it also increased my durability, but that didn't matter in this fight.

If I got hit once even with [Anomaly], I was dead.

An azure hue once again emitted from my eyes, lighting up anything directly in front of me.

I launched from my position, hearing a distinct rumble, as the ground previously beneath me cracked. I needed to aim for the wing joints. The Dragon's head followed me, but due to it's lack of intelligence, it couldn't predict what I was aiming for.

I was finally above the Dragon while in the air, after what felt like an eternity. I scrambled to point my body at the beast's back, and began falling down once again.

I was nearly there, but the creature seemed to finally notice my intentions and swiftly moved it's lower body out of the way. Unfortunately for it, it was too late, and I just about managed to hook onto the very end of it's snake-like form.

I summoned all of my upper body strength to climb up it and gain footing despite the beast's incessant wriggling and squirming in a futile attempt of knocking me off.

Once I had made my way onto it's lower back, I focused all of my strength and energy on finding balance. It was unreasonably difficult to stand up straight on a moving creature, but after a few seconds, I had about gotten the hang of it.

I then charged forward, and in just a few milliseconds, I was next to the target.

My body lunged forward and I stretched out my leg, landing a perfectly placed, full power [Anomaly] kick.

"RAAAAARGH!"

The creature screamed in pain, but I felt no remorse. I regained my balance once more, and I lunged in for another hit.

Out of nowhere, flames began shooting up, out of the small spaces in between it's scales. I instantly jumped up, avoiding being incinerated, but leaving myself vulnerable in the air.

The Dragon attempted to take advantage of this by slamming into me with it's tail. However, I managed to quickly maneuver my way out of the attack by grabbing onto the tail and throwing myself above it.

After about a second in the air, I once again began falling down. Luckily, with this much height between the Dragon and I, I had time to aim my body in a way that would land directly on the wing joints.

Luckily, the Dragon didn't move out of the way, as it had lost sight of me, and so didn't know I had such an easy opportunity. I spread [Anomaly] across my whole body once again, as if my durability was that of a normal human, I wouldn't survive the fall.

A loud squelch sound rang out alongside a familiar "RAAGHRRA" as the blow landed, sending the full force of a human body moving at Mach 40 into the creature. It was unfortunate I could only use around half of my full speed, as more speed obviously means more strength, but my durability was more important in this situation.

After the initial impact, I bounced once, and landed extremely rockily, due to the scales feeling like concrete to the skin.

A small stream of blood slid down my face from my forehead. I had expected this. While [Anomaly]'s durability enhancement was great, there was still only so much damage my body could take.

I stood straight back up and instantly sped backwards towards the end of the tail, avoiding the flames that spewed out from the scale spaces once again.

"Kei! Here!"

I turned my head to the side and found the princess and prince standing there; the princess with a look of determination, while the prince looked dumbfounded. I suppose seeing a single person facing a Dragon was probably a rather shocking experience for a person who had lived peacefully until yesterday.

I leaped off of the tail, and found my way to the two.

"Alright, come on! Quick! Lance said we should just run apparently!" The princess hurriedly shouted to me.

Good. If he had decided to try and fight that thing, I don't think any of us would've survived.

"Okay." I responded.

The three of us began sprinting in the opposite direction, away from the Dragon. But I guess we should've known it wouldn't let us go that easy. It began pursuit and we were very obviously outmatched.

"Hey, Keizo! Can you use your [Time Freeze] ability?!" The prince questioned, panicked.

I contemplated for a second. [Time Freeze] took 70% of my mana, and I just so happened to have exactly 70% left. If I did, it would be greatly beneficial to the two of them. However, if I did, I would also suffer from a mana-drought due to having absolutely no mana in my body.

Mana-droughts are unbelievably dangerous. They can be cured with a certain procedure, but we obviously don't have the equipment for that in the Lost Region, and anybody who goes untreated has a 100% chance of death. Since you use all the mana in your ability-core and body in general, your ability-core first becomes unstable from the lack of mana, which can cause stomach-aches and tremendous pains in the chest. This is the stage where people have to recieve the treatment. If no treatment occurs, the second stage begins, and you are now impossible to save. The ability-core cracks, causing immense pain, described in the past as completely unbearable. It is said that everybody who has received this pain has gone instantly insane due to it. After that, the ability-core continues cracking, slowly ramping up the already indescribable pain. And finally, the ability-core explodes. It explodes due to it rapidly pulling in mana in it's final moments, then shattering, unleashing the pure mana into the body. This is the most painful part. The pain from this is literally believed to be the most pain anything can cause on the entire planet.

However, if I did, they'd be able to escape the Dragon. It was the only way I could think of. I couldn't use [Anomaly] to get them away, because their body's would completely fold under the speed. So, in all reality, [Time Freeze] was all I could do. I had to. I had to do it. Their lives mean infinitely more than mine.

"Don't you dare even think about doing that!" Commanded the princess, knocking me out of my momentary trance.

"I... I have to. It's the only way."

"No, it's not! Remember, you're not the only Doomsday-tier here!" The princess reminded me.

That's right. I had completely forgotten... the princess's ability is amazing for this type of situation.