SSS Talent: From Trash to Tyrant

Chapter 182: Chapter 182: Titan Clash V

The air turned heavy, vibrating with a crackling resonance that stabbed at Trafalgar’s eardrums. Sparks danced violently across the dragon’s obsidian scales, red arcs intertwining with veins of molten fire. The Gluttony Dragon wasn’t just preparing an attack—its entire body looked ready to explode.

Trafalgar’s eyes widened, his pulse hammering in his throat. ’Wait... what the hell did it eat to pull this off? How does a dragon even learn something like this? Immolation? Are you insane?! Why the fuck would you kill yourself just to take us with you?!’

The thought of running didn’t even make sense—there was nowhere to run. A creature forty meters tall was charging a blast that could erase mountains. If it went off, there wouldn’t even be bones left to bury.

Cold sweat ran down Trafalgar’s back as he forced his legs not to collapse. He wanted to scream, to curse, to beg, but his eyes remained locked on the beast swelling with fire and lightning. ’No way I’m dying here. Valttair will stop this, right? He has to. He’s not just going to stand there... right?!’

But the dragon kept growing brighter, its aura surging like a sun about to detonate. Each breath it exhaled carried sparks that ignited the snow beneath its feet. The ground trembled, rumbling with the pressure of a storm about to burst.

Time stretched, every second cutting deeper into Trafalgar’s nerves. He could hear his own heartbeat pounding louder than the thunder. His throat went dry, his chest tight.

He forced his gaze away from the monstrosity—towards Valttair.

And that was when Trafalgar saw it. His father wasn’t panicking. Not even a twitch of fear. Just calm, unshaken contempt aimed at the dragon.

Valttair finally moved. One steady step forward. His sword tilted ever so slightly, angling upward as if it were weightless despite the pressure in the air. His eyes narrowed—not with fury, but with the cold precision of a man who had already decided the outcome.

Trafalgar’s head throbbed like it was being split in half, blood dripping from his nose. Sword Insight was tearing his mind apart, yet he couldn’t look away. ’It hurts... fuck it hurts... but I have to see this. I have to.’

The air collapsed.

Valttair swung his blade.

[Morgain’s Final Crescent] ripped reality open. A crescent of pure, condensed mana carved through the world, black-edged and luminous like a second moon tearing across the snow. The arc didn’t simply cut—it shredded the fabric of mana itself, unraveling it into sparks that fizzled out of existence.

The Gluttony Dragon roared, a guttural, panicked bellow as the crescent slammed into its chest. Scales exploded like shrapnel, launching hundreds of shards that embedded themselves into the frozen mountainside. The force ripped straight through its torso, boring into the mana core hidden deep within.

The explosion wasn’t fire or thunder. It was silence—followed by a shockwave so violent that the earth fractured into canyons. Trees a hundred meters away disintegrated into splinters. Peaks in the distance crumbled, avalanches pouring down as if the mountain range itself had been struck by a god.

Snow vaporized. Air howled. The sky above cleared in an instant, the clouds erased by the sheer pressure of the attack.

When the light dimmed, the dragon’s body was staggering, its chest caved in around a wound that pulsed with dying mana. The beast’s electricity guttered out like a storm with its heart torn away.

Trafalgar dropped to one knee, vomiting blood, his head screaming in agony. But through his pain, his lips curled.

’Holy shit... that was... perfect.’

The crescent slash still burned across the dragon’s chest, a black mark seared into its flesh where the mana core had been ruptured. Its colossal frame swayed, each stagger sending tremors through the snow beneath their feet.

Trafalgar forced himself upright, coughing blood into his sleeve. His vision blurred, but he refused to blink. He wanted to see every second of this. ’That attack... it hit the core. Nothing survives that, right?’

But the dragon did.

Its sides expanded and collapsed, shallow, ragged breaths tearing out of its throat. Gluttonous energy churned inside it like a dying furnace, desperate to rebuild what Valttair had destroyed. The wound on its chest began to crackle, threads of electricity spiderwebbing outward as it tried to knit its scales back together.

”No...” Valttair muttered, his voice colder than the mountain air. He raised his sword again, stepping toward the creature with the same calm he had shown all battle. ”You don’t get back up.”

The dragon’s head jerked up, eyes glowing with hunger even as its body failed. It inhaled, sparks flickering between its fangs. A last attempt, a predator’s instinct refusing to die.

Valttair didn’t rush. His blade hummed as mana wrapped around it, a quiet resonance that made Trafalgar’s ears ring. Every step he took was measured, cutting through the dragon’s desperate aura like it was smoke.

Trafalgar wiped blood from his mouth, trembling. ’It’s still alive. Even with its core shattered, it refuses to die... and Valttair—he’s not even winded. Is this... is this the real strength of a Morgain?’

The dragon roared one last time, shaking snow from the peaks, but its voice was weaker now, more like a cry than a challenge.

Valttair kept walking.

The Gluttony Dragon sagged, legs shaking, breath a ragged grind of heat and smoke. Its wound pulsed with dying light—no storm left to call, no core left to feed.

Valttair stopped an arm’s length from the massive skull. No questions. No words. Just judgment.

His sword lifted.

For a heartbeat the valley held its breath. Mana tightened around the blade until the edge flickered like a fault in reality; then the steel fell in a smooth, merciless arc.

The sound wasn’t a clang—it was a single, pure note, as if someone had plucked a wire that ran through the world.

The cut slid through black scales, horn, and bone as if they were wet paper. A ring of frost exploded outward; snow leapt in a perfect circle. The dragon’s head separated cleanly, drifting a fraction before gravity remembered it, then crashed into the snow with a teeth-rattling thud. Stray arcs of purple static crawled across the severed muzzle and went out one by one.

Silence followed. Real silence.

Trafalgar swayed, vision doubling. Blood lined his lips; his skull felt split open. And then the system window blinked into being, crisp and undeniable:

[You have acquired a unique skill, [Morgain’s Final Crescent] ]

A broken laugh escaped him, half-choke, half-triumph. ”Hah... finally. A real skill.”

He wiped the blood from his face with his sleeve and forced himself upright. The mountain wind stung, sharp and clean—no ash, no ozone, no storm. Just the echo of a single perfect cut.

Valttair stood over the fallen giant, aura already sheathing itself back down to a steady glow. Not winded. Not shaken. He reached out, gripped one horn, and with a flex of mana hauled the severed head free of the snow as if it weighed nothing.

He turned, eyes passing over Trafalgar—taking in the blood, the trembling, the stubborn way he was still watching.

”On your feet,” Valttair said, already walking toward the wyvern. ”It’s time to leave. Mission accomplished.”