Chapter 335
“Kgh!”
“Haa! Haa!”
More than two thousand people lay sprawled across the ground, gasping for breath.
They were the awakened members of the magic stone mine expedition who had fallen beneath the underground barrier.
All of them had escaped the barrier and returned to the surface.
“Huuugh! Huuugh!”
The old man lay collapsed on the ground, making ragged, dying breaths.
He had poured every ounce of strength into dismantling the barrier, leaving him without enough power to even move a finger.
The twin sisters lay collapsed on either side of him.
Having supported the old man, they too had exhausted all of their strength. As a result, they were completely drained.
Seo Taeran gave orders to her subordinates.
“Protect the Numbers first and foremost.”
“Yes!”
Her subordinates answered in unison and surrounded the three.
Their bodies, too, were covered in wounds big and small.
Among them were even some whose injuries were deep enough for their internal organs to be visible.
For an ordinary person, such wounds would have been fatal long ago. Yet despite those injuries, the subordinates showed no signs of pain.
It was as if they completely lacked the sense of pain normal humans should possess.
And that wasn’t the only strange thing.
The severe wounds they had sustained while fighting the Bone Drake were healing at a rapid pace.
The gashes that had been deep enough to expose organs were already partially closed.
It was regenerative ability beyond what humans should possess.
It was a secret Seo Taeran and City Hall had desperately wanted to keep hidden.
A superhuman group with such monstrous regenerative powers displayed its true value only when hidden in secrecy. But now that so many people had witnessed it, it was no longer a secret.
The thought left a bitter taste in Seo Taeran’s mouth, but there was nothing she could do.
The Bone Drake was not an enemy they could fight while hiding secrets.
Seo Taeran’s subordinates had released even their second-stage seals and fought the Bone Drake fiercely, allowing the other awakened to survive.
The problem was that even after such a desperate battle, they still hadn’t been able to completely destroy the Bone Drake.
The Bone Drake was an immortal monster.
No matter how strong Seo Taeran’s subordinates’ regenerative abilities were, they still remained within the boundaries of living beings.
Injuries exceeding the limits of life would worsen rather than heal, eventually leading to death.
But the Bone Drake was different.
No matter how much damage they took, they rose again.
Undead.
As the name implied, unless their core was destroyed, they would neither die nor be destroyed.
Seo Taeran’s subordinates struggled desperately to locate the Bone Drake’s core, but in the end, they failed.
All that remained was a tedious war of attrition.
The only method left to them was to slowly buy time until they could locate and destroy the core.
The same was true for the Bone Drakes the other raid leaders were facing.
Even the experienced raid leaders commanding their respective teams were unable to find the hidden cores of the Bone Drakes, causing the assault to stall.
Eventually, they too gave up on defeating the Bone Drakes quickly and instead focused on preventing them from attacking the other awakened.
No one knew how long they fought.
Several raid leaders suffered severe injuries and withdrew from battle.
As a result, the remaining fighters were cornered.
The unexpected change occurred at that exact moment.
The Bone Drakes, which had been relentlessly overwhelming the raid leaders and Seo Taeran’s subordinates, suddenly lost all signs of life and shattered into pieces.
The Bone Drakes broke apart into huge chunks of bone and never moved again afterward.
“What the hell? Their cores weren’t even destroyed.”
“Did the Sand Mage kill the necromancer or something?”
It happened after Zeon trapped the Bone Hydra behind a wall of sand so it couldn’t escape outside.
Naturally, people could only think that way.
No matter how infinite an undead’s regeneration might be, once the necromancer died, the mana supply fueling them would be cut off and they would lose life.
And it was at that exact moment that the barrier was lifted.
“Everyone, get out!”
At the old man’s shout, the exhausted people escaped the underground without a second thought.
And the result was the current scene.
Two thousand three hundred awakened lay sprawled across the ground, panting heavily.
The blazing sunlight pouring down as if it would pierce their skin had never felt so welcome.
“Damn it! We actually escaped that hell.”
“Haa! Haa! If I ever go underground again, I’m not human—I’m a damn magical beast.”
“This is the first time in my life sunlight has felt this good.”
Most people lay flat on their backs, enjoying the scorching rays of the sun. But Levin and Brielle’s expressions remained uneasy.
“Why hasn’t hyung come out yet?”
“He didn’t… get taken down, did he?”
Their faces were filled with worry.
At that moment, Eloi spoke to them.
“You’re worrying about that human right now? Don’t. He’s the type who’d crawl his way back even if he fell into hell. Don’t tell me you don’t even trust him that much?”
“Who said we don’t trust him?”
“We’re just worried, that’s all.”
Eloi smiled at the two who reacted defensively.
“Exactly, brats. So just trust him. Worry about everyone else if you want, but there’s no need to worry about that human.”
Holding the Mad Nine-Tailed Fox tightly in her arms, Eloi looked up at the sky.
Like the others, she intended to enjoy the scorching sunlight for now.
That was when the change began.
KWAAAAAA!
The distant sky beyond the horizon suddenly darkened, and a violent storm erupted.
It was the phenomenon people commonly called a dragon column.
Like a dragon ascending to the heavens, a massive sandstorm rose from the earth and shot upward into the sky.
“What the hell is that?”
“A tornado?”
The dragon column that rose from the ground pierced through the rapidly darkening sky.
And in that state, it began growing explosively.
Drawing in sand and wind from all around it, the tornado swelled to several times its original size in an instant.
KWA-RUMBLE!
As if enraged by the sandstorm, lightning repeatedly crashed down from the darkened heavens.
Every time lightning struck, the entire world flashed white.
Massive bolts of lightning—large enough that even S-rank awakened would need to go all out to produce them—continuously slammed into the sandstorm.
KWA-RUMBLE!
Each strike of lightning was accompanied by thunder that sounded like the roar of a monster.
It was as if the lightning and the dragon column were fighting each other.
Like two colossal magical beasts clashing in a battle to devour one another.
It was such an astonishing sight that every awakened stared blankly in awe.
Fortunately, the phenomenon was happening far away. If it had occurred nearby, everyone would have been thrown into chaos trying to flee from the falling lightning.
“Waaaah!”
“This is insane.”
“What the hell is happening over there?”
The awakened stared, entranced by the overwhelming spectacle created by nature itself. But among them, a few wore grave expressions as they gazed toward the distant phenomenon.
“That’s definitely not a natural phenomenon.”
“Something is happening over there.”
“Damn it!”
Even though it was occurring far away, the hair on the backs of their necks stood on end, and the goosebumps crawling across their skin refused to subside.
The instincts of high-ranking awakened were warning them.
Something extraordinary was happening over there.
Flash! KWA-RUMBLE!
As time passed, the clash between the lightning and the dragon column only grew fiercer.
Lightning poured down like rain, and the dragon column had now grown beyond the scale of a mere storm—it had become large enough to swallow an entire region whole.
KWA-KWA-KWA!
The sandstorm spun with terrifying force, surging upward into the heavens as if drawing out every last bit of remaining power.
Hundreds—no, thousands—of lightning bolts slammed into the raging sandstorm.
It looked as though the end of the world had arrived.
Even watching from afar was enough to send chills down one’s spine.
As if realizing something, Brielle muttered,
“Don’t tell me… that’s Zeon?”
“You’re saying Zeon hyung did that?”
Levin stared toward the natural disaster in disbelief. But Brielle gave no answer.
Because all of her focus was fixed on the sandstorm.
No one present believed Zeon could create a sandstorm of that scale.
And understandably so.
The sandstorm before them was so enormous that not even an S-rank awakened should have been capable of creating it.
But Brielle knew the truth.
Zeon’s true abilities were far greater than what people vaguely imagined.
“Zeon… what in the world are you fighting?”
Shuuuu!
A single figure was falling toward the ground.
The one plummeting downward, charred black like burnt charcoal, was Zeon.
Even as he fell toward the earth like a meteor, Zeon’s gaze remained fixed on the empty sky.
Nigel, the half-dragon who had just fought him in a fierce battle, had vanished like a mirage.
The torrential rain of lightning and the overwhelming pressure that had crushed him moments ago had disappeared without a trace, leaving behind a perfectly clear sky.
The sandstorm Zeon had created was also dispersing and fading away.
“So in the end… I couldn’t win?”
But neither had he lost.
If he had to explain it, he had taken one massive hit and returned a few smaller ones.
“Tch! I’m the one at a disadvantage.”
To be precise, it had ended in a draw, but that fact held no meaning.
The half-dragon Nigel had not gone all out, and Zeon had not fully revealed all of his hidden cards either.
Nigel likely knew that as well.
And yet he had simply left.
It seemed Zeon’s true strength had never been what mattered to Nigel.
What mattered was whether Zeon met some minimum standard he had in mind.
And the moment Zeon crossed that line, Nigel departed without hesitation.
Even while falling, Zeon continued thinking.
“That gem recovered from Pilgram’s chest seemed important. That must have been the real reason Nigel moved personally.”
No matter how legendary Pilgram had once been as a necromancer in Kurayan, now he was nothing more than an accessory to a dungeon.
A dungeon-bound boss. Nothing more, nothing less.
And yet he had created summons that were far too powerful.
The Bone Drake and the Bone Hydra were undead creatures beyond what Pilgram should have been capable of creating.
Perhaps it would have been possible while he was alive, but now that he had become a dungeon boss and lost his autonomy, it should have been impossible.
The only explanation was the gem hidden deep within Pilgram’s chest.
“That thing definitely contains power far too great for a mere human to possess. That’s why Nigel came to retrieve it…”
Zeon had no idea how Nigel intended to use the gem.
Nigel was already overwhelmingly powerful. If he used the power contained within that gem, he would become completely impossible to deal with.
“But he didn’t seem greedy for its power. If anything, he seemed extremely reluctant to use it. Almost as if it absolutely must never be used. Why?”
While Zeon sank deeper into his thoughts, the earth rapidly approached.
No matter how durable Zeon was, if he crashed into the ground like this, death would be inevitable.
But Zeon showed no concern whatsoever.
—Ppiii!
Because a small whale poked its head out from subspace and gently caught him.
Gaia had saved Zeon right before impact.
Lying on Gaia’s back, Zeon stroked its head.
“Thanks.”
—Bei!
“Sorry. I didn’t even have the strength to move a finger.”
—Ppi! Ppiii!
“Yeah, I was trusting only you. I won’t make you worry like this next time.”
—Be?
“Yeah! I promise.”
Only after Zeon answered firmly did Gaia finally stop scolding him.
Carrying Zeon on its back, Gaia landed softly on the ground. Only then did Zeon climb down.
By the time both of his feet touched the earth, his body had already begun recovering.
His charred-black skin and hair had already returned to normal.
It was thanks to one of his abilities: super regeneration.
Though not to the extent of the Bone Drake, Zeon also possessed the ability to instantly regenerate injuries.
That was why he could recover immediately despite suffering such horrific damage.
Even the robe that had been torn to rags and burned black had already restored itself.
The robe made from Leviathan’s hide possessed an automatic restoration function.
Unless it was destroyed down to the particle level, it would regenerate back to its original state on its own.
Thanks to that, Zeon no longer looked like someone who had just fought such a terrifying battle.
Tap! Tap!
Letting out a sigh, Zeon brushed the dust off his body.
He could sense the people who had escaped from the underground gathering far beyond the horizon.
“Hoo… I fell pretty far away. Now when am I supposed to get back there?”