Re-Awakened :I Ascend as an SSS-Ranked Dragon Summoner

[Planet: Unregistered — Sector Designation Pending]

[Temp: 34°C, Humid]

Noah pushed himself up out of the crater, dirt and shredded bark falling off his shoulders, and looked over at Storm, still rigid, still growling low, ice and lightning both crawling restless along his frame.

”Okay.” Noah brushed off his pants, eyes tracking the same treeline Storm had locked onto. ”You want to tell me what’s got you like this, or are we doing the silent treatment thing again.”

Storm didn’t answer, obviously, but his wings flared another degree wider, tail lashing once against the churned earth.

Noah studied him a long moment. He’d seen Storm anxious before, restless, even genuinely spooked once or twice, but never like this, this specific coiled, defensive stillness. The last time he’d seen anything close to it was months back, right before the alpha dragon fight, before the General showed up and the whole engagement escalated into something that reshaped a solar system’s worth of debris.

”Alright.” Noah rolled his shoulders, void energy settling warm along both arms. ”Let’s go find out what’s got you spooked, then.”

They moved together, side by side, Storm keeping pace low and tense beside him rather than taking to the air, wings half-folded but ready, eyes scanning constantly.

The forest here ran dense and humid, broad-leafed canopy overhead filtering green-gold light down in shifting patches, the air thick with moisture and some sharp, resin-like scent Noah didn’t recognize. Insects, or something insect-adjacent, buzzed somewhere unseen in the underbrush, a low, constant hum that seemed to rise and fall with no particular rhythm.

They walked for maybe ten minutes like that, Storm’s growl never fully dying down, before the humming changed.

It sharpened. Concentrated.

BOOM!!

The blast came from nowhere Noah could immediately identify, a compressed sphere of pale energy tearing through the canopy above them and detonating against a tree thirty feet to their left, the trunk splitting instantly, bark and splinters raining down in a wide radius.

Noah spun, void energy flaring instinctive around both fists.

[BEAST DETECTED]

A shape burst from the shattered canopy, and Noah’s first read on it was almost comical in its wrongness, some part of his brain trying to file it as harmless before the rest of him caught up.

It was small. Barely the length of his forearm, body segmented and iridescent, four thin wings beating so fast they blurred into a shimmering haze, twin curved mandibles flanking a narrow, elongated head. A dragonfly, if a dragonfly had been built by something with genuinely malicious intent, its thorax plated in overlapping segments that caught the light like polished chitin, a soft blue-white glow pulsing from a cluster of nodes along its abdomen.

[Classification: Category 5 Beast — Karnfly]

[Threat Assessment: High]

Noah blinked. ”That’s a category five?”

The creature answered by firing again, another compressed orb of energy screaming toward him, and Noah barely got a hand up in time, deflecting it wide with a burst of void energy that still knocked him back a full step from the impact alone.

’Okay,’ he thought, already recalibrating fast. ’Small. Fast. And that shot actually had weight behind it.’

More of them poured out of the canopy in the next few seconds, a dozen, then two dozen, the buzzing hum swelling into something closer to a roar as the whole swarm scattered wide, breaking into loose, chaotic clusters that moved without any single coordinated pattern Noah could immediately track.

Storm roared, lightning arcing bright off his tail, and lunged at the nearest cluster, jaws snapping one clean out of the air before it could reposition.

[Karnfly defeated. +900 EXP]

Noah caught movement peripherally and spun, catching an energy blast on his forearm this time, the impact stinging sharp even through his void-reinforced skin.

’Fast,’ he thought, already tracking three more incoming from different angles. ’Genuinely fast. Not Widow fast, but close enough that I can’t just casually dodge everything at once.’

He blinked, closing the gap to the nearest one before it could fire again, and drove a precise strike into its thorax.

The impact rebounded.

Not fully, but enough that his knuckles ached from the contact, the creature’s plating flexing rather than shattering the way he’d expected. It spun away from the blow, wings blurring, and returned fire almost instantly, the shot catching him square in the ribs.

[-340 HP]

Noah staggered, genuinely surprised. ”Okay. Insane defense too. Great. Cool. Love that for me.”

He caught his footing and struck again, faster this time, a combination of three rapid blows aimed at the same point on its thorax, and on the third hit something finally gave, plating cracking, the creature dropping out of the air mid-flight.

[Karnfly defeated. +900 EXP]

More closed in immediately, and Noah found himself falling into a rhythm that had nothing in common with any fight he’d had recently. No single overwhelming threat to focus down. Just dozens of small, fast, precise, heavily armored bodies, swarming without any real pattern, striking from every angle simultaneously.

He caught one out of the air with a Void Barrage shot, the erasure punching clean through its plating in a way physical strikes hadn’t managed. ”There we go. That works.”

THOOM!

Two more dropped from a follow-up shot, and Noah blinked to reposition, avoiding a coordinated pincer from three incoming shooters, reappearing behind the formation and driving a Rend-charged punch through the nearest one’s abdomen.

[Karnfly defeated. +900 EXP]

[Karnfly defeated. +900 EXP]

[Karnfly defeated. +900 EXP]

Storm tore through his own section of the swarm with lightning and ice both, snapping two out of the air in quick succession, wings buffeting a cluster of three into each other hard enough that Noah finished them with a single Barrage shot before they could recover.

[Karnfly defeated. +900 EXP]

[Karnfly defeated. +900 EXP]

[Karnfly defeated. +900 EXP]

The numbers kept climbing steady, and for a while it looked almost manageable, the swarm’s chaotic scattering actually working against them, individual creatures breaking formation and exposing themselves rather than pressing a coordinated assault.

Then something changed.

A cluster of six broke away from the wider swarm and reformed, tight, deliberate, angling toward Noah specifically from three different directions at once, timing their approach so all three groups would arrive within the same half-second window.

’That’s not chaos,’ Noah thought, already moving to meet it. ’That’s a flanking maneuver.’

He blinked to avoid the worst of it, but one connected anyway, a sharp, precise energy blast catching his shoulder, and he grunted, spinning through the impact into a counter that dropped the shooter clean.

[Karnfly defeated. +900 EXP]

Something latched onto his exposed forearm.

Small, fast, one of the creatures had closed the distance in the chaos and sunk its mandibles directly into his skin, and Noah’s whole arm lit up with a burning, corrosive pain unlike anything a normal bite should have produced.

”Get off—” He grabbed it bodily and tore it free, crushing it in his grip before flinging the remains aside, but the damage was already visible, a ragged wound along his forearm that should have already been closing under his regeneration.

It wasn’t.

He stared at it a half second longer than he should have, blood welling steady from a bite that refused to heal, before another incoming shot forced his attention back to the fight.

’Okay,’ he thought, gritting through it. ’Whatever’s in that bite, it’s interfering with regeneration. Noted. Filed. Deal with it later.’

He pushed forward, void energy blazing brighter now, and the fight shifted into something closer to a controlled purge, Noah moving through the swarm with growing precision, Void Barrage clearing clusters at range, Rend-charged strikes finishing anything that got close, Excaliburn eventually coming out when the sheer accumulated damage from dozens of small hits started actually adding up in a way that concerned him.

[Karnfly defeated. +900 EXP]

[Karnfly defeated. +900 EXP]

[Karnfly defeated. +900 EXP]

[Karnfly defeated. +900 EXP]

Storm fought beside him without pause, ice spreading in widening patches across the forest floor, lightning cracking bright through the canopy, snapping creatures out of the air with brutal, practiced efficiency.

The swarm thinned, slow at first, then faster, individual clusters breaking off and scattering deeper into the forest rather than pressing a fight they were visibly losing.

By the time the last few stragglers retreated fully out of sight, Noah stood breathing hard, his forearm still bleeding steady from the unhealed bite, blood and dirt streaked across most of his exposed skin.

[Karnfly defeated. +900 EXP]

[Karnfly defeated. +900 EXP]

The notifications finally stopped.

He looked around at the clearing they’d carved through the fight, scorched patches where energy blasts had detonated against trees, ice spreading thin and delicate across churned earth, dozens of small, segmented bodies scattered across the ground in every direction.

Storm stood beside him, still tense, wings still half flared, eyes still fixed on something further out.

”They’re gone,” Noah said, glancing at him. ”You can relax now, big guy.”

Storm didn’t relax.

His growl hadn’t stopped. If anything, it deepened, low and constant, his gaze locked on the same distant point it had been fixed on since the moment they’d crashed.

Noah frowned, following the line of his stare, seeing nothing but forest stretching out toward some low ridge in the distance.

His system flickered.

[ENERGY DETECTED]

[Distance: 5km]

[Source: Unclassified]

Noah stared at the notification a long moment, then back at Storm, still rigid, still growling, still refusing to let go of whatever he’d sensed from the moment they’d first entered this system.

”Strange energy, huh.” Noah rubbed at the still-open wound on his forearm, wincing. ”Storm.” He looked out toward the ridge, something settling cold and curious in his chest all at once. ”Could it be a dragon?”