He braced his internal spirit against the impending execution, anchoring his mind to the fanatic loyalty he held for his supreme lord.

To him, his life was merely a expendable resource in service of the grand plan.

If he died here with his jaw locked tight, keeping the secrets of the hidden pocket dimensions and the macro-structure of the experiment network secure, his death would still be a victory for his race.

Yet, despite his sudden resolve to face death, what he was shocked about was still the dragon standing beside Noah.

His blank, pupilless eyes remained glued to the magnificent creature, unable to tear themselves away from the sheer physical presence of the beast.

The demon himself had never seen one before, having only parsed their structural data fields through the ancient archives preserved in the core sanctuaries of h the demon kingdom..

He certainly knew dragons were extinct, and were supposed to be nothing more than legendary myths, buried deep under millennia of global history.

’Besides... it’s an ancient dark dragon!’ he thought, his breath hitching in his throat.

The realization sent a violent jolt of adrenaline through his trembling muscles.

He was quite knowledgeable about dragons, especially dark dragons, since they used the same shadow and darkness element as demons.

In the ancient texts, dark dragons were described as the supreme sovereigns of the void, entities whose natural control over the shadow frequency was so absolute that they could blot out the sun and turn entire kingdoms into permanent domains of darkness.

Because his own demonic lineage was engineered to manipulate the exact same elemental spectrum, he could sense the sheer, terrifying purity of the shadow mana radiating from Kael’s form.

It was a flawless, divine density that made his own forced mutations look like a cheap, synthetic joke.

What he simply couldn’t understand was how Noah was able to get one.

Finding a living specimen of an extinct, sovereign race in the contemporary era was already a statistical anomaly that defied logic.

But to actually secure its presence, to bring it under his command, and to walk around with it anchored to his personal shadow pool was an entirely different level of absurdity.

Where on earth did one go to locate a dormant dark dragon? What kind of forbidden ritual or high-tier matric could possibly unearth a creature that the global registry had declared dead for thousands of years?

Besides, the dragon looked quite young, so he was sure Noah found him not too longer ago.

Furthermore, from what he could tell, the dragon was even obedient to him!

The supervisor watched with absolute bewilderment as Kael stepped forward, his massive charcoal wings folding tightly against his flanks in a fluid, controlled motion that perfectly matched Noah’s stationary posture.

There was no signs of struggle between the two entities, no hidden compliance collars, and no heavy signs of enslavement forcing the beast to cooperate.

The dragon was acting out of genuine, independent willingness, tracking Noah’s casual mental commands with a seamless alignment that signaled a deep, established bond. 𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺

From what he knew of dragons, they were very prideful creatures, so seeing one willingly submit to a human felt like watching a scene ripped out of a novel.

The historical logs were absolute on this point: dragons were the ultimate apex predators of creation, fiercely independent beings that recognized no authority above their own natural strength.

They would typically choose to tear their own cores apart or burn their surroundings to ash before they would ever allow a lesser species, especially a fragile human caster, to place a leash on their pride.

To see a sovereign dark dragon standing calmly at a human’s side, waiting patiently for permission to initiate an action, violated the fundamental behavioral laws of the magical world.

It was a visual contradiction that shattered his reality.

His gaze flicked back toward the silent, masked figure of the young arch magus, a profound, suffocating sense of existential dread completely replacing his previous fanatic confidence.

He thought to himself, his mind spinning into a chaotic vortex of unanswered questions: Just who the hell is this Mr. White...

The legendary designation that had circulated through the frontier reports as a mere independent anomaly was rapidly transforming into something far more terrifying.

The layers of mystery surrounding the man were too thick, too structured to belong to a simple rogue caster from the frontier. He didn’t fit into any known category of the global alliance or the underground syndicates.

The first strange thing was his strength, which was nothing short of overwhelming.

The demon recalled with a sickening shiver how his own high-tier shadow shroud—a conceptual-tier barrier that should have plunged any magus into absolute, weightless blindness—had been thoroughly deleted by a single, effortless expansion of Noah’s mana.

The arch magus hadn’t even used his arms or made and signs to execute his counter-offensive.

His casting speed was completely instantaneous, deploying a catastrophic dual-element domain of ice and lightning that had rewritten the environmental physics of the pocket dimension within a single second.

He was a monster operating with an absolute dominance that rendered his centuries of combat modifications entirely useless, and the true extent of his parameters remained completely hidden behind that motionless, black cat mask.

As a three-horned demon, he was sure he could stand against arch magi, but Noah was able to easily overwhelm him like he was nothing but a child.

In the internal hierarchy of his race, the presence of three jagged horns on his head indicated a biological and magical adaptation designed specifically to combat the advanced ranks of human magi.

He had been engineered with dense mana channels and an accelerated reaction framework precisely to withstand the massive elemental outputs of the kingdom’s most powerful magi. .l

Yet, the moment the confrontation had initiated, his advanced modifications had provided absolutely no leverage.

Noah had systematically dismantled his defense arrays, and suppressed his shadow element without showing a single shred of physical exertion.

This was shocking to him, and he realized Noah was far stronger than the average arch magus.

An ordinary arch magus, regardless of their elemental affinity, still operated within the recognizable boundaries of contemporary magical theory, and a measurable transit time to deploy high-tier spells.

Noah, however, moved with an absolute, terrifying omniscience.

His instantaneous casting of a dual-affinity domain had completely rewritten the physical laws of the pocket dimension within a single second, proving that his underlying processing power existed on an entirely different plane of existence.

There was also the fact that he had a dark dragon at his command, which was the biggest shock of all.

Before his fractured mind could formulate a new defensive calculation, the absolute mechanics of the domain shifted once more.

The lightning spikes stabbing into him and holding up his body suddenly disintegrated, and he dropped to the ground.

He grunted, a sharp, ragged gasp of pure pain tearing from his throat as his raw flesh collided with the freezing frost.

Despite the immense thermal damage coiling through his internal organs, his primitive survival parameters overrode his agony for a fraction of a heartbeat.

He saw the sudden absence of the lightning restraints as a final, desperate window of opportunity.

He quickly stretched his hand at Noah, his long, scaled fingers trembling violently as he pointed his black claws directly at the throat of the matte-black cat mask, thinking to himself with a surge of fanatical adrenaline: ’This is my chance to attack! At this close range, if I can just ignite the remaining reserves of my core—’

Before he could properly channel his mana, a deep chilling voice echoed in his head, saying ’don’t move.’

The voice was saturated with an ancient, supreme majesty that carried the absolute authority of the void itself, striking at the very root of his demonic lineage.

His entire body suddenly froze at the sound of that voice, his muscles locking into rigid, unyielding lines before a single thread of his corrupted shadow energy could reach his extended fingertips.

His heart sunk in terror, a profound, paralyzing wave of biological dread completely extinguishing the final spark of his fanatical aggression.

His body refused to obey his intellect, completely paralyzed by the sheer weight of the command.

Kael hovered in front of him with his eyes scanning him.

The ancient dark dragon hung perfectly suspended in the freezing air just inches from the demon’s face, his massive, elegant wings unfurled to their full extension, blotting out the ambient light of the remaining lightning flowers.

His flawless scales shimmered with a brilliant, predatory luster, and the deep golden fire burning behind his slit-pupil eyes cast a terrifying glare across the demon’s bloodless, porcelain skin.

The demon hadn’t even realized when he appeared before him, making it all the more terrifying.

There had been no rush of wind, no sound of flapping wings, and no sudden displacement of atmospheric pressure to signal the beast’s transit across the bone-strewn floor blocks.

The dragon had simply bypassed the physical distance separating their positions entirely, materializing in front of his face as if he had stepped directly out of the supervisor’s own panicked thoughts.

It was a display of absolute shadow manipulation that rendered all of the demon’s advanced spatial tracking systems completely useless.

Kael leaned his massive, reptilian head forward, the low rumble vibrating within his chest causing the deep blue ice sheet beneath their feet to crack and hiss with a high-frequency resonance.

"Your element’s inferior... pathetic... weak," Kael said, his voice sounding directly in the demon’s head, instead of his mouth moving.

The dragon’s violet eyes flared with a sudden, aggressive intensity as he delivered his final judgment: "...what made you think you could even attack master in the first place?"