Carrion had cheered for a moment. Not with his voice, obviously, since it had all happened so fast that he hadn't had time to open his mouth and move his jaw and tongue to formulate a cry of victory, but inside he had been all in party. When he had seen Sutekh open the wyvern's belly and destroy Haku's protection, then split his head with one sharp blow, he had seriously believed he had won. Finally, that cursed dragon was dead and with him was dead any possibility of him becoming a future threat to the Jurao Kingdom or any other nation in the world or even just any civilized person. His presence had been uprooted from the world before he could become destruction incarnate, just as a weed was uprooted before it could grow and crush the plants around it. And it was he, Carrion, the gardener who, constantly tending to his lawn, had noticed the weed and had found a way to destroy it. It had taken a lot of effort as it was a very persistent weed, but in the end he had succeeded, and thanks to this the rest of the plants in his lawn could now grow in peace and quiet. Now all he had to do was get away, wait for the other dragons to lose their cohesion, and then lure them away one by one and kill them all. Once the most dangerous weed was pulled out, all the others would be a joke.
But a moment lasts a moment, always. And Carrion's happiness had vanished as quickly as it had come, before he could even enjoy it, because Haku's body had changed and had become more squat, thick, with multiple pairs of legs and his head clearly too large. A transformation that certainly could not be related to a natural factor, and that absolutely wasn't what should have happened when a dragon died. In addition, the huge wyvern monster had continued to move and indeed from its belly had emerged legs similar to those of an insect that had grabbed Sutekh and had dragged him into that strange cage of flesh. Which could only lead to one conclusion... that wasn't Haku!
With that knowledge in mind he looked up and looked into the wyvern's eyes, and felt his blood run cold; almost as if he knew he would look in his direction, Haku was looking back with a satisfied expression fixed on his face. Indeed, more than satisfaction, it almost seemed madness: the lips were curved in a macabre and cruel smile, showing the sharp teeth underneath, and a few drops of saliva dripped from them; the eyes, moreover, were wide open so much as to seem almost unnatural, and within them one could easily read such hilarity that it could almost be considered insanity. Then Haku opened his mouth and burst out laughing, a laugh of pure satisfaction and amusement, the typical laugh of those who had cheated another person and were glad they did. "What is it, high royal general Carrion?" Haku asked between laughs. "You didn't let yourself be fooled by a kid, right?"
Carrion gulped as he heard Haku repeating the same words he had said to him earlier. "How... how...?"
"The explanations later. First, let me perform a little show!" Haku replied by smiling even more and lifting his belly almost standing up. "You showed me your big event. Now let me show you mine!"
Inside his belly, more and more insect paw-like joints were closing around Sutekh, and so were his ribs and muscles. Spirit was literally being pinned down in every corner. He tried to use his powers to free himself, but unfortunately there wasn't a single crack left open and he could barely move his forked stick; no matter how hard he struck with his metal hands, the bones and flesh that were enveloping him were extremely hard and for each bone that broke another took its place. That cage of meat was clearly designed not to let anyone escape. Sutekh thought that perhaps it would be the case to generate another explosion with his staff, even if that would have been very risky since he was so close, but then something happened.
It happened so fast that even he was hardly able to notice: in an instant, the entire cage of bone and flesh imploded on itself, crushing him from every direction. Every single inch of his body was compressed, cracked, broken and shattered until it was the size of a tiny grain of sand. The force exerted was so powerful that even Sutekh's marble physique was unable to resist and was crushed under that enormous weight. Unbeknownst to him, the wyvern's entire belly had just been affected by a size reduction spell.
The same spell that had been used on the basilisks making them much more deadly could also be used as an actual weapon. Haku had treasured Isaac's teaching and therefore knew that if a living being was affected by a reduction spell, then it would automatically be compressed until it was torn apart from the inside. A spirit wasn't really a living being, or at least one whose actual characteristics Haku knew, but the dragon was sure that at least it would cause him a lot of damage. So he devised a cunning trap: the cage of bones and flesh that he had built in the chest of the wyvern and which was supposed to serve to protect him in an emergency, in this case it could be turned into a weapon. All it took was adding a few of the sand sharks' legs for them to grab hold of anything that could open the cage and drag it inside, trapping it. And then, of course, Isaac had enchanted those bones to shrink a hundred times at Haku's command, just as if they were inside a dimensional bag. Of course, this was a spell that would have to be reset once used, since, just like the basilisks, it had only one use. But since it was a sort of 'trump card', it was perfect for the purpose. And apparently it had worked perfectly.
Now it was time for the finishing touch. Haku took the cage of bone and flesh from its belly, which had gone from being almost two meters wide to just two centimeters. Then he tossed it into the air and opened his jaws, blasting it with a torrent of blue flame. He continued for more than ten seconds, making sure that of that little ball there was nothing left but a mound of ash which when he was finished came down from the sky and settled on the sand in the form of a strange black snowfall.
Carrion gasped. He could hardly believe what had just happened. Well, it kind of made sense when he thought about it, and there was nothing supernatural about it…but still he couldn't believe it. Had Haku just compressed his own belly into a ball and then incinerated it, and in doing so incinerated Sutekh as well? Had that dragon just killed a spirit? No, it was impossible, Sutekh couldn't have died so easily...
Fortunately, he discovered he was right: a tiny grain of ash was in fact left in the sky and quickly began to regenerate. Soon the spirit's face, torso, and left arm were fully restored to shape, but the rest of the body did not; where the legs or right arm should have started were only blackened stumps. All the clothes and jewels that Sutekh had had until a few moments before had vanished, dissolved into nothingness. He had a strange expression on his face, one Carrion had never expected to see on a spirit: a mixture of relief, anger, fear and concern, as if he had actually just brushed death. He was gasping as if he'd just run hundreds of miles, and appeared to be barely able to keep his battered body airborne. Suketh turned to Carrion and yelled: "My lord, run away now! He is too powerful for both of us! Get to safety, I hold him here..."
Haku's laughter was heard again. "Ha ha! Good, little dog, tell your master to run away! But tell me, how do you plan to hold me back?" the dragon said with a satisfied smile on his face. "I'll admit you've proven to be a lot tougher than I expected… but as it stands, you have no chance of even holding me back. And in case you haven't noticed, there are three of us here!"
Carrion gritted his teeth. He knew that Haku was right: there was no way Suketh could hold him, Darbi and Rhaegal together. As soon as he tried to focus on one, the other two would go after Carrion. With his spirit reduced to this condition, he had no way to escape. "Son of a bitch... did you expect this too!?"
"You guessed right, sir! Too bad for you there is no prize!" Haku replied in a triumphant voice. "I would never have put my own life in danger, not when I had a viable alternative. When you and I first faced each other, I had no choice but to act as bait myself. But now, I'm no longer the one that I was before and with a bit of luck I got what I needed to fool even a legendary level or even a spirit it seems. So why would I risk myself? Right now, my real body sleeps peacefully in a safe place very far from here. Considering that I knew that I would have to fight with this spirit, and that from my previous experience spirits are quite dangerous, I preferred to use something as bait that wasn't me. Also because I didn't feel like getting high crush alive by my own trap"
If Haku had used the same invisibility rune he had used when he first faced Carrion, he might have known that the decoy was actually a fake. But the new, enhanced invisibility rune he had recently obtained was able to deceive even a legendary level, so he had only needed to use the body of a great basilisk, obviously stripped of all its armor to be able to run faster and not arouse suspicion, and activate that rune in order to create a perfect fake decoy. Then, when Carrion had attacked him, he had sent the signal via the communication device to all his siblings, and while he exchanged this body with that of the modified wyvern, one of his sisters (Finiar) took his place continuing to impersonate the real body of the dragon, so that Carrion would think it was really inside the cavity in the belly of the monster. Once Suketh had destroyed the avatar's brain, the illusion was gone as Finiar's control was truncated, but it wasn't important since it was no longer necessary to continue the play.
Carrion gritted his teeth so hard he almost salivated like a mad dog. "You knew you'd be facing a spirit? But then... does that mean..."
"That's right, Carrion! This was all part of my precise plan! Since the beginning of this battle, everything has gone exactly the way I wanted!" Haku replied. "I knew you wouldn't fall into my trap. After all, my actions were too obvious. Any general with even the slightest bit of intelligence would know it was all too simple. So I decided to play along with you. I made sure my siblings act like something important is about to happen, so you know we've found out about you. 'Please take care of him, girls'… we dragons have very good acting skills after all. That way, you would have understood that I understood that yours was a trap, and that I was aiming to use it against you. That way, you set yourself up accordingly in exactly the way I wanted. Seeing as how my siblings had performed, I didn't you considered the possibility that my real body was actually a fake, and you mistakenly convinced yourself that you could outsmart me. And you did exactly what I wanted you to do: just like me, you used a fake spirit to mislead my attention, only to bring the real one into battle at the right moment. In a nutshell, we can say that I had understood that you would have understood that I had understood that yours was a trap"
"What the fuck is this, a battle of paranoids?" Darbi asked in an annoyed voice.
"You just described our brother's entire life" Rhaegal replied.
Carrion ignored the two. "I don't understand. If you already knew everything, then why..."
"Why did I choose to play along instead of using a less complicated plan?" Haku asked in a mocking voice. "Very simple. Because I am a greedy person, and I always want to get the most high number of trophies in my every battle"