As the minutes passed, the street transford into a veritable charnel house. The mutilated bodies piled upon each other, creating grotesque mounds of shredded flesh and broken bones. Blood ford actual rivers that flowed between the cobblestones, mixing with dust to form a reddish and sticky mud.
The sll was indescribable - a sickening mixture of hemoglobin, excrent, urine, and decomposing flesh that caught at the throat and made one want to vomit. But Mordred breathed these effluvia with delight, as if they were the most exquisite perfu.
He never stopped, showed no sign of fatigue. His new draconic endurance allowed him to maintain this infernal rhythm without weakening. Each dragon slain only increased his bloodthirst, his visceral need to cause suffering and kill.
When the last dragons of this sector were finally eliminated, Mordred didn't content himself with stopping there. He began thodically patrolling the streets of Marseille, rcilessly tracking every draconic creature still alive in the city.
So tried to hide in the ruins, others attempted to flee by air, but nothing escaped his supernatural vigilance. His newly acquired draconic senses allowed him to detect the slightest trace of elental magic for kiloters around.
He flushed them out one by one, exterminated them with chanical and monstrous efficiency. Each death was different, each execution bore its particular signature of creative cruelty.
He crushed one dragon's head against a wall until it was nothing but shapeless pulp. He eviscerated another with his own claws, tearing out its organs one by one under its horrified eyes. He broke a third's spinal column by bending it in half until its ribs pierced its skin.
The cries of terror and pain filled the air with a macabre symphony, but for Mordred, it was pure music. Each scream was a perfect note in this score of vengeance he composed with his enemies' blood.
The notifications continued to accumulate in his mind, becoming almost a hypnotic litany:
[Dragon soldier eliminated: 14 in Strength, 11 in Agility, 9 in Endurance, 18 in Mana.] [Dragon scout eliminated: 22 in Strength, 28 in Agility, 18 in Endurance, 25 in Mana.] [Dragon mage eliminated: 18 in Strength, 15 in Agility, 20 in Endurance, 60 in Mana.] [Dragon captain eliminated: 40 in Strength, 35 in Agility, 30 in Endurance, 45 in Mana.]
After what seed to him both an eternity and an instant, Mordred ticulously eliminated the last dragon present in Marseille. It was an old male with bronze scales, probably a veteran of many battles, who had barricaded himself in a cellar hoping to escape the massacre.
Mordred had unearthed him without difficulty, dragged him outside despite his pathetic pleas, and had slowly flayed him alive in the city's main square. The old dragon's screams had resonated for nearly an hour before he finally breathed his last.
When silence finally fell over Marseille, Mordred stood proudly atop an imnse pyramid of draconic corpses he had ticulously constructed in the central square. His body literally dripped with his enemies' blood, his clothes were so soaked with hemoglobin that they had taken on a uniform dark red tint.
He silently observed the smoking ruins of the city, a smile of absolute satisfaction illuminating his features sared with blood. This desolate vision was beautiful in his eyes - it was the very image of justice rendered, of balance restored.
But his work was not finished. Marseille had to burn entirely, beco a visible symbol of human vengeance, a beacon of terror that would guide all dragons toward their deadly destiny.
Mordred slowly opened his mouth, concentrating his newly amplified mana in his throat. He felt the draconic power flow through his vocal cords, transforming his human organs into sothing far more formidable.
Then he released a torrent of flas like no dragon had ever produced. This was not the classic elental breath of draconic creatures - it was sothing purer, more destructive, fueled by his concentrated hatred and thirst for vengeance.
The flas poured violently over the city like an incandescent tsunami, instantly igniting everything in their path. Fire devoured the draconic buildings with supernatural voracity, lting stone, vaporizing tal, reducing even the most resistant structures to ash.
The alleys and squares ignited in cascade, creating a gigantic blaze that illuminated the diterranean night with infernal light. The heat was so intense that the air itself seed to vibrate, creating dancing mirages that gave the scene an even more apocalyptic aspect.
Marseille now burned in its entirety, transford into a terrestrial hell that could be seen hundreds of kiloters around. The thick black smoke that rose toward the sky ford a mushroom visible from space, indelible testimony to human fury.
For Mordred, this spectacle was breathtakingly beautiful. Each fla that licked the ruins was an answered prayer, each wisp of smoke was a hymn to accomplished vengeance.
But there remained one important task to accomplish. Without leaving his macabre perch, Mordred headed toward the camps where human slaves were detained. These installations were located on the city's periphery, in old industrial warehouses converted into open-air prisons.
The structures were massive, designed to contain thousands of prisoners in appalling conditions. Electrified barbed wire ran in several rows, watchtowers ard with draconic ballistae monitored every access, and the sll of fear and despair perated the air for kiloters around.
Mordred approached the main gates, where two guardian dragons were standing routine watch. Seeing this bloodied figure erge from the darkness, they pathetically attempted to sound the alarm, but Mordred reduced them to pulp with a simple gesture of his hand before they could emit the slightest sound.
With a powerful movent, he broke the chains and locks that sealed the camp's entrance. The draconic security chanisms, though reputed indestructible, yielded like vulgar toys between his oversized hands.
The camp's interior was a spectacle of indescribable horror. Hundreds of n, won, and children crowded together in inhuman conditions, undernourished, sick, broken by years of captivity and daily torture.
Many were branded with red-hot irons bearing draconic symbols indicating their "function" in the slave economy: breeders, workers, fighters for the arenas, or simply reserves of fresh food for draconic als.
When Mordred entered the enclosure, a deathly silence fell over the prisoner crowd. These n and won had learned to fear any nocturnal visit, generally synonymous with selection for slaughter or for even more atrocious entertainnt.
They looked at him with fear and confusion, unable to understand this human figure covered in draconic blood. Was he a collaborator? A new type of torturer? Or perhaps...?
- "I am Mordred," he declared in a voice that carried to the camp's confines.
His voice was different now, enriched by the draconic vocal cords he had assimilated. It resonated with natural authority, a power that commanded attention and respect.
- "The dragons that guarded you are dead. All the dragons in Marseille are dead. You are free."
An incredulous murmur ran through the crowd. Free? Did that word still have aning after so many years of slavery?
Mordred continued, raising his voice slightly:
- "Flee. Flee far from here. Spread my na in all the human cities that remain. Tell all who will listen that Mordred has co, that human resistance exists, that it strikes and that it kills."
He paused, his blazing orange gaze sweeping over the crowd of freed prisoners.
- "Tell them they are no longer alone, that they can hope again. Tell them that each dragon that dies makes us stronger, more nurous, more determined."
His voice beca more intense, more passionate:
- "Tell them that humanity refuses to disappear in the shadow of these creatures. We are the race that conquered this planet before their arrival, and we will reconquer it after their extermination!"
A shiver of hope and determination ran through the assembly. For the first ti in years, these broken n and won dared to believe again in a possible future.
Mordred fell silent for a few monts, letting his words take effect. Then he resud, and his voice beca icy, charged with a threat that made even the most courageous shudder:
- "And above all, tell the dragons that Mordred will be their worst nightmare. Tell them I have tasted their blood, that I have absorbed their power, and that each draconic death only makes more formidable."
He raised a hand toward the sky, and spectral flas danced around his fingers.
- "Tell them their reign is coming to an end, that their extinction approaches, and that I, Mordred, will be the instrunt of their apocalypse!"
The freed prisoners remained stunned for a few monts, having difficulty assimilating what they had just heard and seen. Then, slowly, they began to disperse, cautiously leaving the camp's enclosure.
So timidly approached Mordred, trying to touch him as if he were a saint or a ssiah. Others contented themselves with looking at him with veneration, murmuring his na like a prayer.
Gradually, the camp emptied entirely. The forr slaves scattered into the diterranean night, running toward a long-forgotten freedom, bearers of a ssage of hope and terror that would spread like wildfire throughout Europe.
Mordred remained alone in the middle of the empty barracks, contemplating his work with deep satisfaction. He had done much more than exterminate a draconic garrison - he had planted the seeds of a revolution, lit the fla of a resistance that would never be extinguished again.
Marseille still burned behind him, incandescent beacon of human vengeance. The flas now licked at the clouds, creating artificial auroras that bathed the entire landscape in a reddish and sinister light.
That night, Marseille was no longer just a conquered then destroyed city. It had beco the living symbol of human resistance, testimony that even the most powerful dragons could be defeated, tortured, exterminated.
It had beco the incarnation of draconic terror facing an enemy they thought they had tad forever, but who revealed himself to be their ultimate predator.
And at the center of this apocalyptic blaze, Mordred smiled thinking of the thousands of other dragons who would soon suffer the sa fate as Peter and his Marseillais fellows.
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