The agonizing roar of the Ruguth Queen held a greater impact force than the lesser Ruguths’ scratches and bites, especially when Henry was just around a foot or two away from her mouth. The shockwave of her voice alone was enough to toss him back but the Ruguth Queen flung him off of her first as she flailed and thrashed around in agony. As luck would have it, he was flung towards the lake instead of land. He flapped his limbs pointlessly as if they were his wings. A sharp pain rang through his body as he broke into the water. He forgot to curl himself as small as possible and that resulted in him hitting the surface hard.

Henry started flailing and thrashing his limbs around as the Ruguth Queen did the moment he felt the water rising over his head. His breath was expelled involuntarily the moment he hit the water. That was how hard he was flung. Eventually, he stopped his futile struggle and let the water carry him around according to its whims. Surprisingly, he wasn’t drowning like he thought he would. He was just slowly drifting and spinning as if he was in a zero-gravity environment. He was holding his absent breath. He wanted to inhale but he was underwater. He would not get any air but water into his lungs. Still, the temptation to breathe despite knowing so wasn’t something a living being could resist forever, especially when his lungs were burning from the absence of air. His whole body went stiff as he fought hard to hold his absent breath. His vision began to blur as he neared his limits of holding his breath. But then, a curious thought struck him. His vision was only beginning to blur. The last time he had sunk his face into a body of water, he remember how his vision was a blur underwater. But now, he was seeing things clearly underwater right until he started drowning. He saw the Ruguth Queen struggling in agony underwater.

No way…

Taking a leap of faith, he let his breath go and took in a deep breath. He felt water going down his lungs but it didn’t suffocate him. It didn’t feel like he was drowning at all. He felt a slight tickle around his neck. When he touched it, he realized there were gills on both sides of his neck. He had somehow manifested gills. He was sure he didn’t have them when he was on land. He looked at his limbs and tail, his fingers and toes were webbed and his tail had grown fins turning it into a paddle tail. Henry looked closer. He discovered the webs and the fins didn’t look natural. It looked ethereal. It was magic. His ability to breathe and swim underwater was magic. While he was excited over this fact, he also realised the downside to this. Since it was magic, this ability wasn’t permanent. It would last as long as his Mana reserves allowed him to. Still, it was a great discovery. His veil of depression was lifted as he now realise he did gain the Ruguth’s abilities, just in a slightly different manner. 

Henry tried conjuring a water spear but to no avail. That was still not possible. But he wasn’t disheartened. Gaining the ability to swim and breathe underwater was a great achievement. 

The howl of the Ruguth Queen interrupted his celebratory moment. He turned to Ruguth Queen and saw that she had stopped floundering around. The bleeding on her eye had stopped but not healed. Rage burned deeply and greatly in her other eye.

What was I so happy about again?

Even though he could swim and breathe underwater now, it didn’t change his situation much. He doubted he could outperform a lesser Ruguth in water, let alone the queen. The Ruguth Queen howled again. Her fury was transmitted to Henry through the rippling waves. She straightened her body and pointed her head towards him. When she kicked the water, she shot towards him like a bullet. Henry swam to the side and narrowly evaded the Ruguth Queen’s assault. However, she spun around and positioned herself for another shot. Henry tried using his fire breath but only bubbles came out. The Ruguth Queen shot towards him again. He used aura blades, which he did manage to throw. The aura blade hit the Ruguth Queen in the face and caused her to swerve off her intended path but her tail still ended up smacking into Henry. He went rolling across the water and slowly spun to a stop, just in time to see the Ruguth Queen aligning herself for another shot. The aura blades left not even a single scratch on her face.

Henry cast away any attempts at coming up with an idea. There was no time to think. He moved as much as he could while he threw a volley of aura blades but this time, the Ruguth Queen did not veer in her trajectory and took the full brunt of the aura blades. She streaked past him in the blink of an eye, leaving a trail of red wafting to the surface. Henry didn’t know what happened. He was still alive but there was blood. He then saw a piece of limb drifting by his eyes. It took him a second for him to realise it was his limb, his right forelimb. In the next moment, an intense pain tore through his nerves. He screamed at the top of his lungs but the water drowned out his voice. 

The pain was unlike another sort he had ever felt. It was so much for him to bear and the pain actually started to lessen. He was in shock and his shock was dampening his pain and making his body numb. His breathing quickened and turned ragged. He wasn’t suffocating. It was quite the opposite. He was breathing too fast that his lungs were taking in too much air. A vast array of emotions were surging into his mind and none of the emotions was of the good kind. Fear was a prominent one among all those emotions but not the most prominent. The most intense emotion that was running through his mind was rage, the rage towards the one who put him in so much pain and suffering.

He drew in a deep breath and roared with all the might he could muster. The water shook and ripples radiated from his roar. The Ruguth Queen was cackling at Henry but she stopped instantly when the roar swept past her. Her grin was turned upside down and a furious frown replaced the triumphant grin she had. Her opponent was still showing this much defiance despite his grave injury. She was baffled. She had faced countless opponents and never once had she met such a tenacious one. Considering that she was fighting in her home terrain, any other opponents would have turned tail and ran if they were at this degree of disadvantage. If the normally stubborn ones would at least submit to their fate once they were dragged into a terrain that was completely disadvantageous to them. But not this opponent. This one was defiant to the last moments and it was the one that killed her mate and many of her children. It vexed her to no end and extent. 

The Ruguth Queen snarled and launched a water spear toward Henry. Instead of dodging it, Henry swam towards the spear and blocked with his other forelimb. The water spear pierced through his hide but not through his limb. Henry swam on, disregarding the wound he just sustained and leaving a trail of red behind him. The Ruguth Queen launched four water spears at once but Henry only just took the water spears head-on. Two grazed past him. One pierced into his left shoulder and the other one pierced through his palm. The water spears lost their forms and power the moment they hit their marks, saving Henry the trouble of pulling them out. Eight more water spears came at his way and he just let them find their marks. Five found their marks and three went over it. Regardless, Henry was still swimming directly towards the Ruguth Queen in spite of the wounds covering his body.

The Ruguth Queen roared at Henry’s defiance and swam towards him too. Henry bared his fangs the moment he saw the Ruguth Queen approaching him. She went around Henry instead of meeting him head-on when she saw him opening his mouth. From his back, she bared her jaws in returned and lunged in for a bite. Henry smirked and practically wiggled himself into the Ruguth Queen’s jaws. She knew something was wrong but she was too vexed to think much of his insolence. As she clamped her jaws shut on Henry, she immediately opened her mouth again. She shrieked in pain. There was blood coming out from her teeth and one of her teeth was even slightly loose. Her teeth had failed to pierce through Henry’s hide. Henry himself was unharmed on the surface but the force of the Queen’s bite alone was nothing to scoff at. Still, he persisted. He rushed towards the Ruguth Queen while she was still fussing over her teeth. 

The Ruguth Queen caught sight of Henry’s approach in the peripherals of her vision. She shifted her attention from her teeth to Henry. The flames of rage in her eyes burned stronger than ever. She conjured more than a dozen water spears and sent them all towards Henry. Kicking against the water, Henry launched himself towards the Ruguth Queen as he took all the water spears unflinching. At most, he allowed himself a wince but he did not allow himself to be stopped. The Ruguth Queen grunted at Henry’s persistence. Driven by her rage, she also launched herself at Henry. Water spikes manifested around her. Henry clenched his claws into a fist, ready to swing. The tattoos on his arm glowed. When the two were close enough, the Ruguth Queen lurched with her jaws bared and Henry swung his fist straight into her face. Henry’s fist ploughed through all the water spikes in his way. His scales and bits of his flesh were torn off in his reckless assault. A blast of current was discharged from the Ruguth Queen’s mouth, an attack spell stronger than all the ones she had shown. However, Henry’s fist pressed forward and collided with the current.

“A lizard. A foolish lizard. That’s all you’ll ever be. You’re no Drake. You’re no descendant of the great Dragons.”

So this one thinks I’m a Drake… Perhaps you’re the fool here.

His arm throbbed and a tearing pain spread throughout his arm as the current blast slowly overwhelmed his punch but the tides were uncertain. The tattoos glowed even more intensely. With a battle cry muffled by the water, Henry’s fist ripped through the attack spell of the Ruguth Queen. The collapse of the spell was a volatile one and Henry’s arm suffered much of the backlash but it didn’t stop his fist from slamming into the face of the Ruguth Queen. Blood spurted out and teeth were knocked out of her jaws.

The Ruguth Queen realised she had severely underestimated her opponent’s physical strength. Her vision blurred and shuddered as a concussion disarranged her mind. Before she could recover, Henry moved in and sunk his fangs into her throat. She shrieked and floundered when she felt those fangs tearing into her flesh. She knew about Henry’s venom through her deceased mate, which was why she was struggling harshly and fiercely, though she knew it was already too late. She eventually recovered enough from the punch and pried Henry off of her. She just tossed him away and swam some distance away from him as she clutched at the wound on her neck. Henry spat out a chunk of flesh from his mouth. He didn’t just bite her. He tore off a good portion of her flesh. He was grinning and taunting her with a sneer. The Ruguth Queen responded with a low but furious growl as she stared daggers at Henry.

But neither of them made a move. They were just exchanging taunts and intimidation. Both of them were in no state to be fighting any longer. Henry was running on fumes with all the wounds and injuries he incurred. The Ruguth Queen was on borrowed time. It was only a matter of time before she succumbed to the venom unless, of course, she had a skill or a spell that could cleanse herself of the venom. Henry waited with bated breaths in dread for the Ruguth Queen to surprise him at the last moment with a detoxifying spell or the such but even after a minute passed, she made no movements of that sort. Henry relaxed his nerves and sighed in relief. It was also then that the pain from all his injuries caught up to him. The pain surged into his nerves and with that tremendous amount, his body instantly went numb.

“You are… so… infuriating… Even at death’s door, you remained defiant…” the Ruguth Queen grumbled. The fire in her eyes was starting to weaken. “You’re just like those abhorrent bunch… You will drag others down with you in the face of your demise.”

Henry couldn’t think of any retort. His mind was also numbed from the pain but hearing the Ruguth’s rambling, his pride just couldn’t let it go. He growled but it was meek. Not even he himself could hear the growl. He lifted his forelimb. He curled all his fingers into his palm but one. He flipped the bird to the Ruguth Queen. He didn’t think she would know his meaning but he didn’t care. He just wanted to vent his frustration. 

“Y-you… you dare show me the slur of humans!?” The queen’s brows creased and contorted. “You ghastly repugnant lizard! You dare equate me to humans?!”

She knows about the middle finger?

The flames in the Ruguth Queen’s eyes suddenly flared into a blazing storm. Her blood gushed out even stronger in response to her rage. The water rippled around her as water spikes manifested around her. She kicked against the water and flew directly to Henry. Her blood dyed her rippling trails red. Though the water spikes looked weaker than before, it was compensated by the Ruguth Queen’s rushing momentum.

Oh crap…

His rage had subsided after he landed a fatal blow to the Ruguth Queen. With his rage faded, so did his adrenaline and the fumes he was running on. He had no energy left to move his body. Slowly wagging his limbs around was the best he could in his current state. The Ruguth Queen was charging in his direction as it stood and without being able to dodge, with so much momentum and such a mass and coupled with his grave wounds, Henry knew he wouldn’t be able to survive the ramming.

Am I going to die here?

At some point, he had stopped hearing the girl’s voice but it didn’t leave his mind. He wondered who would save that girl if he died here. He began to laugh as his eyelids came to a close like the curtains on a stage, signifying the gradual end of his life.

I’m not going to die here, right?

“I knew it had to be you,” said a voice filled with excitement and relief. The voice sounded elegant, tinged with a trace of solemnity. The voice sounded like it belonged to a dignified young lady.

Henry opened his eyes and turned his gaze to the direction he heard the voice from. The Ruguth Queen stopped her charge and also turned her gaze in that direction. The two widened their eyes at the owner of the voice.

“How dare you run away from me, my dear husband,” said the Bristly Serpent as it sped towards them.

H-husband? Who the fuck’s your dear husband!?

Henry roared his disapproval of the serpent’s statement but he only ended up coughing up blood. He already knew the Bristly Serpent was a female but hearing her voice gave him an entirely different expression than the one he had.

“This Drake is the mate of the Azure Serpent? Preposterous!” the Ruguth Queen spat. Her focus was shifted entirely to the so-called Azure Serpent. “You two are not even the same Genera!”

“Be quiet, old hag,” the Azure Serpent muttered and unleashed her own version of the water jet spell. 

The Ruguth Queen didn’t even have time to react, not even a shout or a shriek. Her head just rolled off her neck as the body and the severed head slowly floated to the surface.

Henry gasped at the surreal scene before him. He was having such a hard time against the Ruguth Queen but the Azure Serpent just came and decapitated it with a single attack. He had fought the Azure Serpent before but she was nowhere this strong. There was the matter of her water jet ability. It was stronger and faster than he remembered. He surmised her ability was stronger since she was a water-type monster and they were underwater. Or it could be that she was restraining her true strength when she was under the influence of the haggard man. Henry’s consciousness was fading a while ago but the Azure Serpent’s appearance had jolted him wide awake.

After she killed the Ruguth Queen, the Azure Serpent swam up to Henry and coiled her body around him, forming a cradle.

“This is what you get from running away from home, dear.” The Azure Serpent shook her head in disappointment.

It was all too surreal for Henry in spite of all that he had seen and experienced. A monster talking in a human-like manner with such courtesy was too high of a hurdle for him to quickly accept it as something normal in this world.

“Look at yourself. You are hopeless without me. Well, not entirely hopeless. You are sort of capable. You did free me from the accursed human’s spell after all. I will never forget that, my dear husband.”

I’m not your goddamn husband, you damn lunatic!

“Now come, my darling. Let us go home where you can recuperate safely and without interference. After we fill our bellies, we can get right down to our long-awaited copulation.”