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The slippery, serpentine tail gave the Black Emperor no second chance to grab hold. The shattered scales had already regenerated, and the blood that had stained them quickly slid off, sizzling into dryness on the red-hot black iron floor.
A thick scent of blood filled the air.
The Thunderstorm Dragon's body was built for speed—for soaring through the skies—but without the ability to manipulate gravity at will, even that one advantage had now vanished.
Harry's immense strength was constrained by a body ill-suited to fully channel it. Now that Tom had grown accustomed to operating the Black Emperor, the battle that had once been barely even had turned against Harry. For the first time in a physical confrontation, he found himself overpowered—but there was nothing he could do about it.
Even if a wizard dumped all his stat points into strength and constitution, he still wouldn't match a warrior of similar level in a fistfight. One clumsy combo from the warrior, and the muscle-bound spellcaster would be left barely holding his ground. Let alone the Black Emperor—its defense and durability were monstrous. This was the biggest and most heavily invested "toy" among all those constructed. The one who originally created these war machines had poured the most effort into this particular one.
Compared to the Black Emperor, the rest of the black iron armors were like fragile toys—shatter-on-contact kind of fragile.
Thankfully, Tom had only the authority to control the armor, not to own it. He couldn't take the Black Emperor away from this place. Harry, on the other hand, could do something Tom couldn't—move it. But even he couldn't eject Tom from within it. None of the giant toys in this place had locks; anyone who discovered the correct method could operate them.
Tom wasn't eager to stay entangled with Harry. He wanted to leave—but to do that, he first had to deal with this persistent, infernal nuisance. Harry's rapid growth in strength had shocked him. Tom knew full well that, at Harry's age, he himself hadn't reached this level. Sure, by sixteen he'd learned how to create Horcruxes, committed murder, and framed others—but in terms of raw power, there was now a significant gap between them.
Back when he was Harry's age, Tom wouldn't have stood a chance in a physical fight. Now, Harry could go head-to-head with him even at full strength. Without the aid of the Black Emperor, facing this power-dragon—whose tail could trigger dozens of sonic booms with a single swipe—would be a nightmare. The phrase "brute force trumps all" wasn't just poetic exaggeration. This wasn't mere physical might—it bypassed magical defenses with terrifying efficiency.
It was like being hammered by Hagrid's fists—nothing short of agonizing. Bones cracked, muscles tore. Keep in mind, many of the magical creatures unable to withstand Hagrid's punches could survive a direct hit from a 300mm railgun. In the world of magic, physical attacks usually had limited effect on magical beings. Only magic could truly fight magic—a truth that had held for centuries.
An Animagus transformation might be physical, but it remained an advanced and potent form of Transfiguration magic.
The two giants stood locked in a tense standoff for a brief moment before the clash resumed once more. With its elongated form, the Thunderstorm Dragon had only two somewhat limited options to exert maximum power: explosive tail strikes or serpentine constriction.
After paying the price of a shattered wing, smashed by a blow from the Black Emperor's iron fist, the howling Thunderstorm Dragon wrapped its powerful body around the upper half of the giant armor. Muscles bulged and scales strained as the dragon coiled tighter and tighter!
The stranglehold was in place. Even for the Black Emperor, breaking free of this constriction was no easy task. Yet, its solid armor showed no signs of deformation under the crushing pressure. The black flames engulfing it surged even fiercer as the dwindling power within the suit poured forth more destructive strength.
The dragon's fanged maw opened wide, unleashing a devastating torrent of blinding silver lightning after a brief charge. Like a flood bursting through a dam, the plasma breath roared forth, filling the massive underground space with blinding light. Within the cockpit, Tom lost nearly all visibility. The massive black iron titan was swallowed whole in the surge of thunder and lightning.
But even a plasma breath capable of melting iron mountains could not pierce or melt the armor of the Black Emperor—fortified as it was by powerful alchemical enchantments.
Harry quickly realized the situation, and so the blinding, brilliant plasma breath began to dim. The once-blazing light faded into a dull glow as an iron-grey magical radiance replaced the silver shine. The black lightning that once dazzled with intensity now crackled ominously, its destructive power spiking to an entirely new level.
Beneath the Black Emperor's feet, the black iron floor had already melted into a pool of glowing red metal. Its legs, now submerged in molten iron, made the armored titan seem as though it were sinking into a mire. The once-impervious armor gradually began to warp and soften under the assault of the iron-grey plasma breath. Pits and twisted scars began forming across its upper body as the corrosive energy took effect.
This kind of hyper-speed, high-consumption breath couldn't be sustained for long. Although just a few deep breaths would allow the secondary magic lung to instantly draw in the ambient magic and refill the "mana bar," there was still a hard cap to how much mana that bar could actually hold.
The moment the breath ceased, black flames on the Black Emperor's body suddenly surged upward. The terrifying power that erupted in that instant forced the armored body to expand, breaking free of the coiled constriction wrapped around it. Both of its massive hands, now pulsing with overwhelming strength, shot forward and clutched onto one of the few available grip points on the Thunderstorm Dragon's body—the base of the two sets of winged scales on its back. Scales shattered and embedded themselves into walls and floor as muscle and skin were torn by sheer brute force. A gut-wrenching scream echoed from the dragon's throat, its cry laced with agony that seemed to reach into the soul itself.
Yet even that bone-shattering scream didn't stop the Black Emperor. If anything, its grip only tightened, its tearing force increasing.
"If you like them so much—!!!"
An unintelligible dragon's roar echoed like thunder. Harry, eyes glowing blood-red, glared at the warped and melted iron head twisted by the plasma, his fangs bared in a savage grimace.
"—Then take them!!!"
At the very moment the scaled wings were torn from his body in a bloody mess, Harry's nearly depleted mana surged back to full, brimming to the point of overflowing. The wild magical energy immediately began a new cycle of transformation.
Magic, at its core, was always a product of will. In a wizard's words: magic did not originally exist in the world, but because wizards had desire, had intention—because they wanted to do something—magic responded and fulfilled that want. Thus, magic was born.
In the very beginning, whether wizard or magical creature, when they first cast magic, there were no techniques, no methods, no incantations.
There was only the will—the desire to make it so.
If flight was no longer possible, then wings were no longer needed.
New bones began to form. New muscles took shape. New armor-like scales wrapped themselves over fresh flesh.
The previously slender body thickened, becoming more powerful and solid. And the parts that had long since devolved in the dragon lineage—limbs, hands, feet—began to emerge once more. When claws laced with frost-like sheen and crackling with lightning burst forth from newly formed fingers, everything changed.
In that moment, the balance between offense and defense shifted completely.
(End of Chapter)