Starting out as a Dragon Slave-Chapter 94: Human Slaughter

The blows kept raining down, each strike ringing out like a death knell.Isaac’s katana gleamed under the bluish glow of mana, his draconic scales reinforced by the furious energy surging from his core.The dragon parried and countered with surgical precision—but for the first time, a hint of anxiety flickered in his otherwise cold gaze.

But then a noise caught Isaac’s attention—Yvan, exhausted and injured, was standing again in the distance, turning toward the panicked survivors.

— "Move! Now!" he shouted, his hoarse voice filled with terror. "Get out of the dungeon! Go!"

Charlotte, Victor, Léon, and Sophie obeyed without hesitation—but Charlotte stopped, looking back at Isaac with uncertainty.

— "Isaac’s still out there!"

Yvan grabbed her by the arm, sharply.

— "There’s no Isaac anymore! That thing... he’s not human! We have to leave him—there’s no choice!"

Charlotte wanted to protest, but the fear in Yvan’s eyes was real.She finally turned away, running after the others as fast as her legs would carry her.

The dragon, seeing this, sneered.

— "Your allies abandon you, human... What remains for you now?"

Isaac didn’t answer.He could hear his heartbeat pounding in his skull, every pulse a painful reminder of the internal fractures his body and mana were sustaining.He was cornered, his options draining away under the crushing pressure of this deadly duel.

Then, without a word, without a scream, he let go of the last mental lock holding him back.

[Berserker – Activated.]

A black wave swept through his thoughts.

The change was immediate.Isaac let out a guttural, primal, bestial scream that resonated down to the bones of his enemy.A dark aura burst from his body. His muscles swelled, veins bulging under jet-black scales.His eyes lost all trace of humanity, leaving only incandescent orange embers.

He charged at the dragon with unrelenting savagery.

The strikes came too fast to follow with the naked eye.The dragon, surprised by this sudden explosion of raw power, struggled to dodge.Each blow became wilder, faster, heavier.There was no finesse left—only pure survival instinct and a primal will to destroy.

Isaac vanished and reappeared using [Intangibility], his attacks becoming unpredictable.A punch shattered the dragon’s armor at the ribs, drawing a grunt of pain.A lateral blow cracked the bones in his arm, his dark blood spraying in thick splashes across the snow, now stained a deep red.

The dragon tried to fight back, but Isaac no longer felt pain.The berserker state granted him unnatural resilience. Every wound the dragon inflicted only made him stronger. More determined.

A violent tremor in the dungeon suddenly reminded Isaac of the reality around him.The ceiling had begun collapsing in massive blocks, threatening to bury everything within.

Panicked, Isaac gathered all the strength he had left into a single strike.

His draconic hand—now clawed and grotesquely large—came crashing down with devastating power, launching the dragon into a distant wall.A sickening impact echoed as the enemy was embedded deep into the fractured ice.

Isaac turned toward the portal.

Without thought, driven purely by instinct, he took off like a bolt of lightning toward the exit.

Just meters away, Yvan and the others felt his presence approaching at terrifying speed.Yvan understood instantly.

— "Don’t let him out!" he screamed, eyes wide with fear and hatred. "That monster must not reach the portal!"

They moved to block his path, blades trembling in their hands as the dark, feral figure of Isaac reached them in seconds.

The impact was horrific.

Still in berserker mode, Isaac had already sheathed his katana.His claws and fists were now his only weapons.

He struck Yvan first—with monstrous force.His claws tore through Yvan’s chest like wet paper.The warrior only had time to scream before collapsing, his life pouring out onto the snow.

Charlotte tried to cast a spell—but Isaac was faster.His fist shattered her right arm, her scream piercing the air.He slammed her to the ground, crushing her shoulder under his claws, his gaze devoid of humanity as she choked on her own blood.

— "Isaac, no—stop!" Léon cried, before a brutal strike shattered his jaw and hurled him aside like a ragdoll.

Sophie, the healer, tried to flee.But Isaac grabbed her by the neck with one hand.His claws slowly pierced her throat, cutting off her final scream in a gurgling death rattle.

Yvan, still barely conscious, crawled back—his face now fully contorted by terror.His sword trembled in his clenched fingers.He murmured, voice broken with dread:

— "May the gods forgive us..."Then he collapsed to the ground.

Isaac didn’t hear them.His thoughts were shattered, clouded by the uncontrollable rage of berserker mode. He no longer saw people—only targets, threats, obstacles to be destroyed.

And in that moment, soaked in blood, broken bodies at his feet, Isaac slowly lifted his empty gaze—devoid of anything remotely human—toward the portal.

The impact was brutal, immediate, irreversible.

The inhuman violence possessing him vanished the instant he crossed the barrier of the portal, replaced instantly by a void so deep it seemed infinite.His body hit the cold, muddy ground hard, rolling like a discarded corpse.All the strength that had filled him drained away in a heartbeat, as if a dam had burst within his soul, washing away all will.

Lying face down, Isaac slowly opened his eyes.Reality appeared blurry, distorted, as if he were emerging from the black depths of a nightmare still clinging to his mind.A freezing shiver ran down his entire body, each nerve ending screaming from the backlash.His muscles, once taut like steel cables, had become weak, trembling flesh, unable to support even the smallest motion.

He tried to take a deep breath—but a sharp, unbearable pain tore through his chest, forcing a choked gasp from his lips.Every part of him, every cell, protested violently at the simple act of breathing.He lay there, completely still, gasping, his cheek pressed into the cold, muddy earth.

— "Shit... that hurts like hell..."

And then the memories came crashing back.They surged like a tidal wave, violent and unstoppable, so intense that his mind couldn’t push them away.

He saw Charlotte again—her eyes wide with pure horror, her high-pitched scream echoing endlessly.He felt again the sickening snap as his hand crushed the fragile bones of her arm, the precise sensation of his claws piercing trembling flesh—so vivid, he could almost feel it happening again.

He saw Victor’s face—shocked, disbelieving—his breath cut short as claws tore through his chest in a savage, unstoppable push.He remembered the warmth of the blood, thick and dark, coating his arms, his face—staining his skin with a shame that would never wash away.

Sophie, her tears falling endlessly as he crushed her slender throat, the light fading from her eyes, filled with pain and incomprehension.Léon, lying broken on the cold ground, his eyes wide open, staring at a sky he would never see again.

A strangled sound escaped Isaac’s lips as an icy terror seized him, rising from deep within his gut in a wave of raw panic.He convulsed, violently, and vomited into the mud, burning bile wrenching spasms from his ruined body.

He tried to push the images away—but they were too deeply carved into him.Too real.Burned into his soul.

Tears flooded his eyes, hot and uncontrollable.They spilled over his dirty cheeks, streaked with blood and mud.He began to sob like a lost child, each shuddering cry reigniting the physical pain that had shattered him.

— "No... no... I didn’t..." he murmured, voice cracked and strangled with guilt. "Not them... I couldn’t have..."

His glazed eyes drifted slowly to his hands—still trembling, still stained with dark red.The dried blood cracked across his fingers like a grotesque reminder.These hands—once able to comfort, to help, to love—were now tainted beyond repair.

Isaac felt something fracture deep inside.An irreversible break opening in his mind.His soul writhed beneath the weight of the horror he had caused.A guilt so crushing, it became physical—an iron vice squeezing his very consciousness.He had become the thing he hated most: a monster.A beast.A soulless creature.

Above him, the black clouds—almost as if they shared in his agony—burst into cold, torrential rain, pouring down over his limp, unmoving body.The rain washed over his upturned face, slowly carrying away the dried blood...But not the atrocities.Not the memory.

His scales began to retract slowly—painfully—disappearing beneath his skin with barely noticed agony.The horns that had jutted from his forehead withdrew as well, leaving behind a dull, throbbing ache—another reminder of what he was.

He remained there, half-naked, drenched by the freezing rain, arms spread on the wet ground.His eyes were blank.Lifeless.He stared into nothingness, lost in a broken consciousness, unable to feel anything except the absolute emptiness that had swallowed his soul.

Hours passed without him moving—without him even realizing.Time had become meaningless.

Until...A distant sound caught his ears: the muffled crunch of tires on wet earth.

Isaac lifted his head—just slightly.His vacant eyes turned toward a white van, bearing the Guild’s emblem, pulling up nearby.He vaguely heard the doors slam, footsteps approaching in the mud, voices muffled and distant, like from beneath deep water:

— "What the hell happened here?! Where are the others? Where’s Yvan?!"

— "Isaac... that’s Isaac! What the hell did he do?!"

The voices felt unreal.Distant.Foreign.They didn’t concern him anymore.Nothing did.

Hands gently took hold of him, trying to lift his limp body but he offered no resistance.He was just a dead weight in their arms.

— "He’s still breathing... Isaac, can you hear me? Answer us!"

But Isaac had no words left to give.His mind was shut, locked inside a guilt too vast to endure.The voices kept calling his name, pleading but to him, they were just noise, drowned beneath the black water of memory.

Eventually, they lifted him from the ground his body limp and unresponsive.The world spun around him, indistinct.As if nothing truly mattered anymore.

The last thing his conscious mind registered...Was the image, horrifically clear, of Charlotte’s shattered gaze—as he killed her with his own hands.

And then... darkness took him.

Temporarily washing the pain away.freeweɓnøvel.com