Chapter 278
When Zeon opened his eyes, he saw Pantsy staring at him with his mouth hanging open in shock.
It was the exact same posture he had held while pouring curses onto Zeon.
Zeon had thought he had fought Deioden for quite a long time, yet in reality, only about a single second had passed.
Zeon and Pantsy’s gazes met.
The moment Pantsy saw focus return to Zeon’s eyes, he shouted,
“H-how? Prison of Chaos definitely worked properly!”
As its name implied, Prison of Chaos was a curse that trapped the victim’s mind within a prison of chaos.
Unless the caster personally dispelled it, escape was impossible.
Those trapped by the curse would never regain consciousness, and their bodies would eventually wither away and die.
But the caster of the curse also had to endure an enormous backlash.
Curses were originally like a double-edged coin.
The world was not lenient enough to allow someone to spread curses freely without paying a price.
To cast a proper curse, the caster had to sacrifice something as well.
To use Prison of Chaos, Pantsy had sacrificed his youth.
Deep wrinkles rapidly formed across his face, and his skin became dry and shriveled.
It looked as though dozens of years had struck him all at once.
That was the massive price he had paid to cast Prison of Chaos.
Naturally, Pantsy believed Zeon would never escape the curse so easily.
His plan had been for Bessie to devour Zeon while he remained trapped inside the curse.
But before Bessie could even escape the sand, Zeon shattered the curse and regained his senses.
“Y-you…!”
Faced with a completely unexpected situation, Pantsy could only stammer helplessly.
Zeon glanced at his forearm.
The Scorching Gauntlet was still intact.
It was proof that he had escaped the curse and returned to reality.
Now that he was back, his eyes saw Pantsy panicking and Bessie struggling desperately to escape the sand.
The creature was still half-buried, flailing wildly.
During the brief moment Zeon had lost consciousness, the hide that had been shredded apart by Sand Mixer had already begun regenerating.
Its regenerative ability was truly monstrous.
If left alone, it would soon regain its original might.
Zeon had no intention of allowing that to happen.
“Sand Gehenna.”
He unleashed the same skill he had used against Deioden in his mental world.
The overwhelming skill born from the fusion of the authority of sand and the power of the Scorching Gauntlet transformed the sand around Bessie into lava.
In an instant, the sand melted and began boiling like magma.
The horrifying heat roasting its entire body caused Bessie to thrash violently.
Bessie struggled desperately to escape the lava.
But Zeon did not allow it.
“Sand Mixer!”
Gaaaaang!
The molten sand rotated violently.
A literal Sand Gehenna had descended upon Bessie.
There was nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.
The superheated lava spun furiously, grinding away Bessie’s hide while cooking it from the outside inward.
No matter how many powerful magical beasts had been combined to create this chimera, it could not endure such an attack.
Kieeeeeh!
Bessie’s lower body began melting first.
The pain was on an entirely different level from merely having its hide shredded away, and Bessie let out a horrifying shriek.
“Aaaagh!”
Pantsy, who shared Bessie’s emotions, screamed as well.
Chwahaak!
As though making one final desperate struggle, Bessie lashed out at Zeon with its tentacles.
But the tentacles never reached him.
“Fire Rain!”
Zeon summoned a rain of fire and intercepted them.
Peobeobeobeobeong!
Explosions erupted as the countless tentacles rushing toward Zeon were engulfed in flames.
Driven mad by the agony of its burning body, Bessie writhed violently.
But once ignited, the flames showed no sign of going out.
“Be… ssie!”
Pantsy stared blankly at Bessie.
His Bessie was dying.
He had attacked Arkelon in order to save Bessie, only to shorten its lifespan even further.
“I’m really going to lose Bessie like this?”
Pantsy bit his lips until they bled.
Without Bessie, he was nothing.
The only reason he had been able to command such authority as an A-rank curse sorcerer was because Bessie had been with him.
If he lost Bessie, it felt as though he would return to those miserable days of the past.
“I won’t allow it!”
With a scream, Pantsy charged straight into the flames engulfing Bessie.
The superheated fire instantly spread onto Pantsy as well.
Bessie, being a chimera, could at least endure it for a while.
But Pantsy was only human.
His body began melting almost instantly.
And yet Pantsy laughed.
“We stay together until the end, Bessie! We’ll become one forever.”
Even Zeon clicked his tongue at Pantsy’s madness.
At that moment—
As if it had understood Pantsy’s words, Bessie wrapped itself around him.
For a moment, it seemed as though the two were melting together into one.
Then Bessie’s massive body exploded.
Kwaaaang!
A mushroom cloud rose in the middle of the desert as though a nuclear bomb had detonated.
The impact of the explosion created a gigantic crater hundreds of meters wide, like a meteor strike.
Even Zeon lacked the confidence to withstand the blast head-on and hurriedly burrowed underground using sand to hide himself.
Even then, the immense shockwave slammed into his entire body.
The impact felt as though his whole body were being torn apart, making Zeon’s mind reel.
But he clenched his teeth and endured the pain.
After some time, the shockwave finally subsided, and Zeon rose from within the pit.
Nothing remained where Bessie had exploded.
The sheer power of the blast had vaporized everything without leaving even a trace behind.
Zeon stared silently at the site of the explosion for a moment before turning away.
His gaze shifted toward Moby Dick’s territory.
“I wasted too much time. I need to catch up quickly.”
Zeon hurried into the region swallowed by darkness.
“It feels like the deep sea.”
Pabilsa muttered as he looked around inside Moby Dick’s territory.
Hearing his voice, Claire unconsciously asked back,
“The deep sea?”
“Children born these days might not know. Back when Earth was still intact, there used to be places called oceans. Countless fish and living creatures dwelled in those saltwater depths. The deep sea was the lowest part of the ocean, where no light could reach, so darkness always settled over it like this. That place was……”
“Please stop talking nonsense.”
The one who cut Pabilsa off was Lee Jeongho.
His nerves were stretched to their limit.
From the very moment they entered Moby Dick’s territory, an overwhelming sense of danger had assaulted him.
That was why he reacted so sharply to Pabilsa’s words.
Pabilsa apologized.
“My apologies. I suppose the tension made me ramble without realizing it.”
“I understand, but right now is the time to focus all of our attention.”
“Understood.”
Pabilsa nodded and looked ahead.
Thud! Thud!
Arkelon trudged forward heavily, each step sounding burdensome.
There was no need for Pabilsa to guide the direction.
As though possessed by something, Arkelon was already moving on its own toward a destination.
“Arkelon!”
Pabilsa called out to Arkelon, but it showed no reaction whatsoever.
No—it seemed unable to hear his voice at all.
Arkelon’s eyes had completely lost their focus, as though it had fallen under some kind of spell.
Lee Jeongho spoke.
“It’s useless. It seems to be completely intoxicated by the song.”
“The song?”
“You can’t hear it?”
“Now that you mention it……”
Pabilsa perked up his ears.
At some point, a faint sound had begun stimulating his eardrums.
The sound resembled the cry of a whale, though depending on how one listened, it also felt like a song.
Claire spoke.
“It’s definitely the sound made by Moby Dick.”
“Hmm!”
“It’s such a mysterious sound.”
With an almost entranced expression, she stared toward the direction from which the song was coming.
‘It really does sound like a whale.’
Pabilsa was someone who had lived almost as long as Jin Geumho.
Naturally, he had heard the cries of whales before—something people of the current era had never experienced, even if only through old television footage.
And the sound echoing now was exactly the same as the whale cries he had heard in those recordings.
‘Then is Moby Dick really a whale that evolved? Like Arkelon?’
It didn’t seem impossible.
After all, this world was no longer normal.
Thud! Thud!
Even at that moment, Arkelon continued walking toward the direction from which Moby Dick’s song echoed.
That was when it happened.
Flap!
Suddenly, the sound of wings beating echoed from the darkness.
The ominous flapping rapidly grew louder.
In that instant, Lee Jeongho swung his sword forward.
Shwaaak!
With a brilliant flash, something was split cleanly in half and fell onto Arkelon’s back.
After confirming what had been cut apart by Lee Jeongho’s sword, Pabilsa hurriedly stepped back and shouted,
“A vampire bat.”
A gigantic bat with a wingspan over a meter long.
Its mouth protruded with fangs as large as those of ordinary magical beasts.
It was unmistakably a vampire bat, a creature said to never release its prey until it had drained every last drop of blood.
The problem was that vampire bats never traveled alone.
They were one of the most infamous swarm-type magical beasts.
Fwoooosh!
Pabilsa’s uneasy premonition soon became reality.
Countless vampire bats tore through the darkness and appeared.
The vampire bats immediately attacked Arkelon and Pabilsa’s group.
Under normal circumstances, they wouldn’t have cared about attacks from mere vampire bats.
Arkelon’s defensive power was far beyond anything such creatures could threaten.
The problem was that Arkelon had become far too weakened.
Unable to deploy its force field, it had to endure the bats’ attacks with its bare body.
The vampire bats bit into Arkelon.
But no matter how massive their fangs were, they couldn’t fully pierce Arkelon’s thick hide.
In the end, they changed targets and attacked the humans instead.
“Damn it! Grandpa, get behind me.”
Kaylie pulled Pabilsa behind her and raised a long rod.
Peong!
The rod fired brilliant flames.
The firework-like flames engulfed the vampire bats.
This was no ordinary fire.
It contained white phosphorus, a substance whose flames would never extinguish once ignited.
The long rod was an item Kaylie had personally created.
Once charged with mana, it could be used ten times.
Bang! Peong!
Kaylie continuously fired bursts of flame.
Each time she did, vampire bats fell from the sky engulfed in fire.
But there were still an overwhelming number remaining.
The power of Kaylie’s item was impressive, but it was impossible to deal with all the vampire bats alone.
“Everyone, calm down!”
Claire tried using her ability to pacify the vampire bats, but it was useless.
Unlike the Thunder Buffalo, the vampire bats held absolutely no goodwill toward humans.
Naturally, Claire’s words had no effect on them.
That was when it happened.
“Everyone, get down!”
Lee Jeongho’s sharp voice rang out.
Without even asking why, Claire, Pabilsa, and Kaylie immediately flattened themselves against the ground.
Swaeaaak!
At that moment, a horrifying slicing sound passed just over their backs.
When they raised their heads, they saw Lee Jeongho charging straight into the swarm of vampire bats with a sword in hand.
The flashes of sword light generated as he slashed in every direction gleamed brilliantly within the darkness.
Every time he swung his sword, more than a dozen vampire bats were cut apart.
Using his Mind’s Eye to predict the movements of the bats before striking, Lee Jeongho’s swordsmanship was terrifyingly chilling, yet strangely beautiful.
The three of them stared at him in a daze.
It took less than ten minutes for every single vampire bat swarming around him to disappear completely.
Shhk!
Only after cutting down the very last bat did Lee Jeongho return his sword to its sheath.
“This really isn’t efficient.”
As expected, fighting such huge numbers of magical beasts didn’t suit him.
He would rather face one gigantic magical beast instead.
Kuuwooo!
Kwaang!
At that moment, the roars of magical beasts erupted from every direction.
The magical beasts that had entered Moby Dick’s territory were slaughtering one another in vicious battles.
Lee Jeongho let out a sigh.
“What a complete mess.”