"A human?"
Selene stared down at Marco in disbelief.
From the force that had just torn through her estate, she had assumed another dragon had followed her to Elentear.
Finding a human standing at the center of the destruction was the last thing she had expected.
"I finally found you, Selene." Marco rolled his shoulders as he looked up at the Moon Dragon God.
"You've been hiding in another world and living like a queen. Must be nice."
She was the final target. Once Selene was dealt with, the Five Dragon Gods portion of the quest would be complete.
"You came from Earth-land?" Selene tilted her head, and a faint, amused smile appeared on her lips.
"You crossed worlds just to find me? What exactly do you want?"
She did not see Marco as a threat yet. If anything, his sudden arrival had given her something interesting to play with.
"Did you cause the imbalance in this world's magic?"
Rather than answering her question, Marco voiced the suspicion that had formed the moment he arrived in Elentear.
He had no proof yet, but the connection was too obvious to ignore.
"Did those women send you?" Selene's expression tightened.
That was answer enough.
"So it really was you."
Marco had only been guessing before, but her reaction confirmed it. Elentear's dangerously swollen magic supply was connected to Selene.
"Those White Mages truly never know when to give up," Selene muttered, irritation creeping into her voice.
She had been in Elentear for a long time, yet she still had not brought the entire world under her control.
The priestesses of Whiteout Village continued to resist her, using every method they could find to drive her away.
Elentear had always possessed an enormous amount of magic, but it had never been this unstable.
For generations, the White Mages had used Whiteout, a power capable of regulating and suppressing magic, to seal away the excess and keep the world in balance.
Selene had tampered with that ancient seal.
She had reversed part of its function, allowing the stored magic to pour back into the world. That was why Elentear now felt like it was ready to burst.
She had not removed the seal completely, however.
Selene had no intention of destroying the world she had chosen to live in. She merely wanted to force the White Mages into submission.
If they wanted Elentear to survive, then they could stop resisting and serve her properly.
Selene had once belonged to the dragons' war faction and had never cared much for humans. But after spending centuries among them, she had grown fond of their way of life.
She enjoyed their luxuries, their pleasures, and the comfort of living in human form.
She did not love humanity, but she no longer hated them either.
That was the only reason she had shown this much patience. The current Selene wanted humans alive so they could maintain the lavish life she enjoyed.
Her younger self would simply have crushed the resistance by force.
"Those White Mages have tested my patience long enough," Selene said through clenched teeth.
"Sooner or later, I'll kill every last one of them."
Their defiance had gone far beyond refusing to obey her.
Some had even crossed into Earth-land and established an organization there to oppose her.
They were no longer merely stubborn. They had stopped treating her authority seriously at all!
"White Mages?" Marco paused.
From what he could gather, they were Elentear's native resistance, and they had been fighting Selene for years.
"They didn't send you?"
His reaction made Selene realize she had misunderstood him.
Since he had immediately asked about Elentear's magic imbalance, she had assumed that was why he had come.
"I don't know anything about your White Mages, and they have nothing to do with me." Marco smiled. "I came for you. Elefseria gave me a job to deal with the Five Dragon Gods."
"Elefseria... So that old man still hasn't given up."
Recognition crossed Selene's face.
She had spent years in Elentear and often traveled to other worlds, so very few of Elefseria's challengers had ever managed to bother her.
Still, she knew about the 100 Years Quest and the reason it existed.
Buzz!
Now that she understood who Marco was, Selene lost interest in talking.
Her human form expanded rapidly, transforming into an enormous dragon with a long, slender body.
White fur covered her extended neck, and two long, pointed ears rose from her head.
Crescent-shaped horns curved upward and back, while several fluffy white tails fanned out behind her alongside a single scaled dragon tail, giving her the appearance of a gigantic nine-tailed fox.
Dragons truly came in every possible shape.
Without knowing what she was, few people would have guessed Selene belonged to the same species as a traditional fire dragon like Igneel.
"Destroy the Five Dragon Gods? Destroy me?" Selene laughed as she towered over Marco.
"A human thinks he can accomplish that? You alone? How amusing!"
She had killed countless humans.
Some had lost their minds from fear the moment they saw her true form.
Selene did not look down on humanity quite as completely as many dragons did, and she accepted that the age of dragons ruling Earth-land was over.
Even so, she did not believe a human could defeat her so easily.
Humans were weak, foolish, and endlessly competitive.
They hated one another, fought for power, and slaughtered their own kind, yet they had still managed to build thriving civilizations.
Clearly, there was something remarkable about them.
But only a tiny handful ever gained the wisdom and strength to challenge dragons. If such humans had been common, dragons would never have ruled the world for so long.
"Amusing?" Marco laughed softly. "Let's see whether you're still laughing in a minute."
The arrogance of dragons was almost predictable.
No matter which one he met, they all seemed convinced humans were beneath them.
Mercphobia was the rare exception, and even he had once been the same way before being won over by the apparently irresistible charm of a human child.
Buzz!
Golden light erupted from the Sagittarius Gold Cloth as Marco's Cosmo surged around him.
Selene's casual amusement vanished.
The power coming from him was nothing like magic.
As a dragon, she knew the nature of magic well enough not to fear most of it.
Only Dragon Slayer Magic normally demanded caution. But an unfamiliar power was another matter entirely.
Unlike dragons who had spent their lives in one world, Selene had traveled between dimensions and encountered many strange abilities.
Elentear's Whiteout power, for example, did not exist in Earth-land. She had learned long ago that the unknown should never be underestimated.
Without wasting another second, she brought out her full strength.
Buzz, buzz, buzz!
The daylight vanished.
Darkness spread across the sky, swallowing the sun as a full moon appeared behind Selene. Silver light poured down over the mountain, transforming day into night.
This was Selene's Dragon Magic: Moon.
Her power came from the moon itself, and she could draw directly on its magic.
She could even create a scene that looked as though she had changed the movement of the heavens.
It was far beyond ordinary Celestial Magic.
"Interesting," Marco said, his smile widening. "But not nearly enough."
Night belonged to him too!
Buzz!
At Marco's will, stars blazed to life across the dark sky.
Constellations appeared one after another, shining so brightly that the full moon behind Selene suddenly seemed dim by comparison.
"Moon Dragon's Roar!"
Selene sensed danger, but she had already committed to the attack.
She drew in the moon's magic and unleashed it from her jaws in a massive silver blast.
Boom!
Moonlight poured across the sky like a falling galaxy, beautiful enough to hide the deadly force behind it.
Marco simply raised the Golden Bow.
Light gathered around the Golden Arrow as the Sagittarius constellation appeared above him, drawing its own celestial bow and taking aim toward the moon.
Twang!
Marco released the string and a line of gold tore through the night.
Selene's roar collapsed the instant the arrow struck it, scattering into countless silver fragments that drifted through the darkness like a meteor shower.
Then the golden light reached the full moon behind her.
Crack!
The moon split down the center like a shattered silver mirror.
The artificial night fell apart, daylight returning in an instant.
Only Marco's constellations remained overhead, glittering around the golden streak that continued far into the distance.
Boom!
Selene's silver-white body crashed into the ground.
The Moon Dragon God, who had been laughing so confidently moments earlier, no longer moved. The warmth was already fading from her flesh.
Marco descended beside the remains and looked directly at Selene's soul.
Dragons truly possessed absurd vitality.
Even after the Golden Arrow had obliterated the upper half of her body, leaving only the lower portion behind, Selene was still not completely dead.
Marco had also learned something important from Viernes.
Destroying a dragon's body did not necessarily mean the end. Some might still have ways to escape as souls.
Until he personally watched Selene's soul disappear, he would not consider the matter finished.
More importantly, the system had not announced the mission's completion.
He needed to finish the job properly!