Laz was barely in the upper realm of godhood while the shadow dragon was standing at the line to being an ancient god. Despite that, when they clashed, neither came out ahead as the resulting wave of force blasted out, sending the weaker beings around them flying.

Fist to fist.

Palm to palm.

Their clash wasn’t any sort of mastery of martial arts battle, even though Laz had extensive training in that degree. Instead, it was a fight of pure strength, one that was meant to dominate the other party and cause fear for the other side.

Or that was the goal of the shadow dragon. As for Laz, he wanted to show this beast that it’s power was nothing special and that it wasn’t as strong as it thought it was. As for taking it down, had Laz met it’s attacks with any of his training, the beast would have already been on the ground.

But that wasn’t what he was going for and such a win wouldn’t help his people. Instead, what he needed to do was to put the beast in it’s place and make everyone understand that it wasn’t as strong as everyone thought it was.

Despite that, even Laz had to admit the beast was far stronger that even he thought. Despite being able to stop the beast’s attacks, Laz couldn’t do much more than that. He couldn’t over power it nor could he outlast it. His abilities were far from what normal gods could do at his realm, but his source wasn’t infinite.

And it didn’t have to be either. After losing the momentum from it’s straight on attacks, Laz figured the beast would probably lose it’s cool first and it seemed like his bet had paid off.

"AHHHH. FORGET THIS TWO LEGGED FIGHT!" The beast roared, pushing back everyone, including Laz, with the shockwave from it’s voice.

As Laz stood there, the human emperor, once the strongest man in this pocket dimension, suddenly lost it’s shape and dissolved, it’s body becoming black vapor that gradually expanded out, becoming bigger and bigger by the second. As Laz watched on, the beast became as big as a house, then it kept growing more.

By the time it was done, It was massive, almost as large as the black castle that still hovered above the fortress. Compared to it, Laz looked tiny and insignificant, as did all the other ones gathered around, even the other beasts in their original forms.

It’s roar shook the countryside as every fled away from it in opposite directions. Everyone except Laz.

Standing before the beast, Laz couldn’t help but be reminded about some magazine cover he had seen of his dad’s when he was younger, where a young man with a sword and a glowing wand was standing tall against a dragon covered in flames. It looked both epic and hopeless for the young man because the moment the beast attacked, what could the young man do?

Laz couldn’t help but smile to himself though as this wasn’t some 80’s style fantasy battle and he wasn’t some wizard.

He was an Asura.

His body began to pulse with energy as his hair grew out, the sparkling white mixing with the blood red as his eyes took on their golden hue. On top of that, the black tattoos grew along his body as his skin became a light grew color. All the while, wave upon wave of energy projected out of his as his blood pumped hard and his heart beat echoed over the open landscape, like the beating of a massive war drum.

It was only after those dreams and visions that Laz could truly understand the strength and conviction of a real Asura.

Even if cosmic nightmares emerged from the dark depths of space, the Asura would charge forward without hesitation, to beat back the horrors, laughing all the while. This sort of inspiration gave rise to a new type of fighting style by Laz. He had been fighting normally, as normal as he could be, before this. Taking on opponents he could beat, retreating from those who were too powerful. But ever since he had awoken, he had never feared a battle, even when surrounded by god beasts stronger than himself. Perhaps others wouldn’t have noticed the change in his fighting style, but he did upon reflection.

And now, squaring off against this beast that should have been much stronger and was definitely older than him, Laz couldn’t help but feel excitement and nothing else.

Laz removed Sever from his ring and charged forward, unafraid, while the others just looked on, afraid of being caught in the fight.

Laz couldn’t throw lightning, couldn’t summon meteors from the sky, command clouds and rain or do any of those things. He had the black flame, but even that was something that could only be used close to his body within a small range. He wasn’t like those heroes with super powers. No laser eyes, no freezing breath, sonic voice or anything like that. Instead, what he had was a body that surpassed imagination and a mind that could watch the whole battle field even if he couldn’t see it. So when he charged forward and the shadow dragon brought down one of it’s mighty claws to smash Laz beneath it, Laz just jumped out of the way and continued on, pumping energy into the blade as the black flames surrounded him.

As big as the beast was, it moved quickly. But even then it had trouble locking down Laz’s presence, allowing Laz to move right up to it’s hind claw. With Sever fully fused with energy, Laz swung it, striking deep and cleaving some scales and flesh away from the massive beast.

Feeling the pain, it jolted and jumped into the air, looking down at where it now knew Laz was.

Except he wasn’t.

Laz jumped into the air, following the beast. He could use his energy to fly within the air, but as a human who had lived on the ground for most of his life, it wasn’t yet instinct to fight in the skies.

Luckily for him, his Asura instinct took over. 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

Sever was alive as it struck out, cutting down parts of the beast. While it was called a shadow dragon, it wasn’t exactly made up of shadows. It could just use the shadows to hide by changing it’s body to shadows, also allowing it to strike from the shadows. While it was a great ability, it would have needed to find shadows to hide in first and at the moment, it hadn’t thought it would need the shadow so being in the middle of a field during the day didn’t allow it a lot of area to hide although the giant fortress and the floating castle did give it some area with which to work. It just didn’t think it would need it until Laz actually started his attack.

It’s pride also didn’t allow it to run, not until it didn’t have a chance.

In the air, the beast tried to swipe at Laz several times, but his ability to detect and avoid the attacks seemed almost magical as his body weaved and dashed from one strike to the next, avoid every attempt to swat him down like a fly.

Unlike a fly though, Laz didn’t just take small bites from the beast, but large lumps of scales and flesh.

The shadow dragon finally had enough and spat a noxious green color flame everywhere, igniting the sky with it as it was finally able to catch Laz in an attack by basically spitting the flame on itself.

Retreating from where it was, it roared into the air in triumph as the attacks against it stopped, signaling an end to it’s foe. As for the onlookers on the ground, they had saw Laz get engulfed in the flames and couldn’t help but hold their breath and ready their weapons, afraid for the impending attack from the beasts.

Nagi though, who had somehow ended up on the field next to Hera and Pooja, just laughed as she watched Laz become engulfed.

"That little snake thinks that something like those flames could stop him? How stupid it must be? Perhaps this is what momma meant by the intelligence of lesser creatures...? Nagi said, loud enough for those around her to hear her and wonder just what she meant as they themselves felt Laz was in danger.

"Burn you weak and insignificant being. Burn until your bones become ashes!!!"

The shadow dragon roared it’s victory.

"Wow. Jesus you asshole, could you be a little less loud for fuck sake? You’re going to blow out my ear drums..." Laz’s voice then came from behind and above the roaring beast as he floated there, unharmed, the last wisps of the green flames dissolving into nothingness as the black flame roared around him. While the beast’s flame had almost taken his life when he had first entered this world and almost crippled him, he had grown immensely since then and such a thing was no longer possible. As the black flame grew with him, Laz felt more and more like he didn’t understand it, but he knew he could rely on in.

The beast had barely turned it’s head as it heard Laz’s voice before Laz’s foot met the beast in the face. Driving his full energy into the curb stomp, Laz surprisingly sent the massive beast spiraling for the ground as shock covered people’s faces.

As the dust cloud rose into the air, Laz stayed in the air, expecting the beast to come charging for him.

But once the cloud cleared, the beast was nowhere to be found.