One Last System

\'Wait a second,\' I suddenly thought, nearly stopping myself from my dash. \'Why am I catching up to it now?\'

I wasn\'t using the same kind of forceful methods as before. And yet, the distance between the Dragon and me, albeit slowly, continued to decrease.

\'Is it trying to pull me away from the city or something?\' I thought, squinting my eyes as I attempted to see further into the distance to discern some more details of the Dragon.

And there it was.

Despite pretending to run away at its max possible speed, the Dragon gave itself the leisure of angling its head to the side so that he could throw a glance at me.

\'It\'s checking me out,\' I realized, burying my feet into the ground,

Not doing what the enemy wanted was the very basis of any tactical fight!

I stopped. Yet, the Dragon did not.

"Was I wrong?" I muttered to myself, staring at the figure of the Dragon in the sky that turned smaller and smaller with every passing moment.

And then, right as I was about to pick up the speed and use my engine to attempt catching up...

The Dragon swirled in the air and turned around. And before I knew it, it had already reached a spot right above my head, only to dive down with its mouth wide open!

\'A breath or a bite?\' I thought, curious to see how the Dragon hoped to overcome the abilities I had already showcased.

Yet, as its massive body inched closer and closer, as its perfectly white and perfectly sharp teeth reflected the sun...

\'Are you for real?\' I thought before clearing my thoughts.

"Disturb!" I shouted before dodging to the side.

BOOM!

The blob of violet antimana crashed right into the place where I stood just a moment ago.

\'So that was its plan,\' I thought, genuinely awed by the ingenuity of the attack.

It was now clear to me that during the change and right after it, this damned monster couldn\'t really attack me at all.

\'It\'s likely too busy adapting to its other form,\' I thought, watching how the Dragon once again attempted to shed all the anti-mana that covered him.

Since it couldn\'t attack but could not avoid the transformation my spell forced on it... Instead, it opted to use simple physical laws of momentum to strike me down!

"That was really smart," I commented out loud, not shying away from admitting to my opponent\'s strengths. "But it\'s nowhere near enough!" I shouted, finally accepting the cost that defeating the Dragon would incur on me.

And so, I lifted all the restrictions of the output of my engine, slamming all the antimana I had left in it.

WRYYYYYYYYYYY

A surge of mana nearly fried me alive when my mana engine went into full swing. And it was at this exact moment that I knew I fucked up.

\'Once I run out of the fuel, the engine\'s inertia will kill me,\' I thought, somehow capable of analyzing my coming death without any major emotions involved in it.

Yet, this was a problem for later. The problem of right now was currently gathering itself up from the ground in an attempt to become airborne again.

"Wait for a second," I muttered, watching how the Dragon slowly took to the skies again.

But my eyes weren\'t directed towards the Dragon itself, but to the luggage it left behind.

My lips curved up as I looked at the ownerless blob of violet anti-mana that the Dragon shed.

"DON\'T YOU DARE TO RUN!" I shouted, eager to chase it away, even if only for a little.

My shouts worked. Sensing my approach, the Dragon swung its wings, and by kicking the air down, it took to the skies.

I rushed ahead. There was no reason for me to wait. More than that, every second that I waited, the anti-mana continued to deteriorate, unable to withstand the mana etched into the very fabric of this world.

"ROAAAR!" The Dragon\'s cry shook the skies when it noticed what my true aim was.

But it was already too late for it to execute any attacks or to stop me in any other way.

Or so I thought.

Because right when I jumped inside the small pool of the violet, condensed anti-mana, the Dragon swung around its own axis in the sky before bolting away...

In one of the two directions, I really didn\'t want it to go.

"This fucker," I thought, soaking the fuel for my engine while ramping up its power.

Now that I was slowly getting used to the current output of my mana engine, I could somehow fathom the idea of reaching even greater speed than before.

And there was only one reason why I considered such a dangerous thing so lightly. It was the direction that the Dragon took.

A direction that would take it all the way back to where I left Mia!

"DON\'T YOU FUCKING DARE!" I shouted when I noticed my rate of absorbing the antimana decreased.

I then lowered myself to my knees before leaning my upper body forward. And right when I was about to lose stability and simply fall over, I stretched my legs out, putting all my newfound power into the leap!

BOOM!

The air turned into a seemingly impenetrable wall... the wall that I burst right through.

It felt like my skin was peeling off, my flesh was disintegrating, and the very cells that made up all of them burst from the sudden change in pressure.

This time, it took me only a second to catch up with the Dragon.

But there was no achievement of mine in it, and for a simple reason at that.

Because rather than rushing in the direction Mia was in, just like I was worried it would, the Dragon managed to do me in, turning around as soon as it escaped from my view.

And now, I could only powerlessly watch how it rushed right back in the direction of the city while I had no other choice but to let the momentum of my jump die out!