Dark Dragon: The Summoned Hero Is A Villain

Chapter 324: A Sacrifice Called Rhino

Noah stood at the edge of the academy woods, staring at the darkness that filled it.

There was no moon overhead, only a blanket of clouds that smothered the stars and left the world in near-total darkness.

The academy stood behind him, quiet as ever. Guards patrolled the inner grounds, but none of them watched this far out. At least not a constant patrol.

He had managed to slip away unnoticed, something he hadn’t been sure he’d be able to do without the use of magic. But somehow, he’d managed it.

The night air was cold against his skin as he stepped beneath the trees. Leaves rustled softly, disturbed by unseen creatures retreating deeper into the forest.

This place was officially part of the academy’s territory, but it was wild enough that few students ever ventured here without supervision.

And now, he needed a powerful magical beast.

His jaw tightened. If he ventured out to get one, he didn’t even know if dragging such a thing back onto campus was possible.

The wards might react. The guards might notice. Everything about this plan was reckless. But there was another possibility, one he was counting on.

What if the sacrifice never had to enter the academy? What if it was already here? Which brought him here to the woods.

This was the place he had encountered the Void Tortoise. All he needed was another lucky break, just like that one.

Without hesitation, dark wings burst from his back, unfurling in a silent rush of displaced air. Shadows bent around them as he leapt upward, lifting cleanly from the forest floor.

Thankfully, he wasn’t really using magic, but instead, using a physical body part of his own. If not, he would have been writhing in pain as the Mana Leech sucked away the mana as he tried to use it.

Even as this wasn’t full magic, he still felt a twinge of pain when he manifested the wings.

He flew low, weaving between treetops, his movements silent.

Below him, mana signatures flickered faintly. The signatures were small, scattered, and weak. Those were the F-rank and E-rank beasts. Nothing worth stopping for.

He passed over a pack of nocturnal predators, their magic thin and unstable. Their blood will be inconsequential to what he wanted to do.

Another cluster clung to a rather familiar ravine, feeding on what looked like the carcass of a dead predator. Passable, but still not enough.

Time passed and the trees grew denser the deeper he went. Soon, it wasn’t too practical to fly at such speed. Noah slowed, eyes narrowing.

There!

Just ahead, something was moving through the woods, its presence leaving behind evidence of its passage.

The trees shuddered as it passed, the branches snapping, leaves scattering in its wake.

Noah felt it before he saw it, a solid, cohesive mana presence, dense and pulsing.

Not too strong.

But not weak either.

He circled once, spotting the creature through a break in the canopy. Broad-backed. Armored hide. A horned silhouette glowing faintly with what looked like elemental residue.

B-rank.

Noah exhaled slowly, descending towards the shadows. It wasn’t ideal, but he’d take what he could get.

Of course, he recognized the creature immediately.

It was a Gale Rhino. Roughly the size of a draft horse, its body was encased in overlapping plates of dark grey hide that seemed to blend in with the darkness, making it even harder to spot with ordinary eyes.

But Noah’s eyes were a dark dragon’s. They were a cut above the rest. In the darkness, there was nothing he couldn’t see.

The single curved horn jutting from the rhino’s skull gleamed faintly, slicked with residual mana.

However, its most powerful weapon was its almost invisible blades of air that it shot at prey.

In short, the creature was powerful at close range, and lethal at a distance.

And he couldn’t use magic. Not yet. Not until the moment it would count.

He descended fast, wings angled tight against his back to cut through the air. For a breath, the rhino didn’t react, its broad head low, snuffling at the forest floor.

Then it raised its head.

The blade of air left its mouth before Noah even registered the motion, a near-invisible crescent of compressed wind that sang as it tore through the dark.

He threw himself sideways at the last second, the attack grazing the air beside his ear with a whistle.

He barely had time to breathe before the second one came.

Noah twisted, reaching out with his claws, and caught the trunk of a passing oak.

The bark exploded beneath his grip as the air blade sliced through the space where his torso had been.

He used the impact to redirect himself, swinging around the tree and landing in a crouch on a thick branch above.

Below, the Gale Rhino was already moving, crashing through the undergrowth with a speed that didn’t suit its bulk.

Noah launched off the branch, wings snapping open, cutting low through the canopy to intercept.

He could predict its path, a straight line through the thinner stretch of trees to the east.

He angled ahead of it, dropping into a glide, gaining ground.

The rhino stopped.

There was no warning to indicate what it was about to do. No shift in its movement to telegraph the change. It simply halted, pivoted its massive head upwards, and fired.

Noah saw it this time and wrenched his body to the left. But it was not fast enough.

The blade caught him across the right shoulder. The impact was less like being cut and more like being struck by something moving too fast to comprehend.

A line of white heat tore through his shoulder, and then the blood came, spraying outwards in a dark arc against the leaves.

He didn’t scream. He swallowed it, teeth grinding together as his body lost its coordination in mid-air.

His wing clipped a branch. Then a second. He hit a trunk full on, the impact detonating through his right shoulder blade with a crack he felt more than heard, and dropped.

The ground came up hard.

He lay there, chest heaving, vision fragmenting at the edges, the forest tilting around him in slow, sickening rotations.

His shoulder was wrong. He could feel the wrongness of it radiating down into his ribs with every breath.

Through the blur of pain, he heard the Gale Rhino turn.

Then the sound of air compressing as it prepared to fire again.