Chapter 20

Chapter 20

Tracking Deioden was not very difficult.

That was because traces he had left behind could be seen everywhere.

The corpses of monsters that ruled the desert were visible here and there.

Every corpse had been horribly mutilated, or else shattered completely and scattered.

Deioden had slaughtered every monster in his path.

It was tremendous martial power that denied common sense itself.

Thanks to that, Zeon could remain safe from the threat of monsters.

“Just how strong is he? Grade S?”

Zeon soon shook his head.

He had never seen one in person, so he could not know for certain, but it did not seem even a Grade S could display this kind of power.

In reality, even Neo Seoul’s Grade S Awakened were reluctant to act alone in the desert.

It might be different near Neo Seoul, but wandering the distant desert alone was frightening even to Grade S Awakened.

Deioden had been doing something even Grade S Awakened dared not attempt for a very long time.

He roamed the desert alone and faced countless monsters.

He did not fear monsters.

Rather, the monsters feared him.

This was the first Awakened of his kind.

“An Awakened above Grade S? Does Neo Seoul’s leadership know about this?”

He was genuinely curious.

He wondered whether Neo Seoul’s leadership knew of Deioden, and if they did, how they were reacting.

Deioden was an existence that surpassed common sense in many ways.

That was when it happened.

In Zeon’s field of vision, he saw smoke rising far away.

A single plume of smoke was shooting into the sky from where the far end of the horizon touched it.

He knew without having to confirm it with his eyes.

Deioden was there.

Zeon infused mana and increased his speed.

Sssshhh!

His body crossed the desert as if sliding.

After running for around thirty minutes like that, Zeon was able to arrive at an oasis.

It was not a moving oasis like the one where he had encountered the Sand Angler before, but an oasis fixed in one place.

Sand Anglers did not live in places like this, so they were perfect for use as bases or villages.

That was how the Desert Elves’ village had come into being.

The small village the Desert Elves had carefully tended had been destroyed horribly, and chunks of meat that seemed to belong to elves were scattered everywhere.

The moment he saw the gruesome sight spread before his eyes, Zeon’s mouth fell open.

“Insane!”

The arms and legs scattered in every direction looked like the remains of toys children had smashed in a fit of anger.

All of this had been done by Deioden alone.

Zeon hurriedly looked for Deioden.

Finding Deioden was not difficult.

That was because he was standing not far from where Zeon was.

In front of Deioden, a middle-aged man who looked like an elf was kneeling while holding a young girl in his arms.

The middle-aged elf was shedding tears and pleading.

Zeon could not hear his voice, but judging by the atmosphere, he was surely begging Deioden to spare the girl.

The girl still looked young.

He did not know her actual age, but in human terms, she looked to be only about twelve years old.

Zeon did not think Deioden would possibly harm a young elf. No matter how great a grudge he held against an enemy, killing someone who had not yet reached adulthood was a kind of taboo.

GUSH!

But as if mocking Zeon, Deioden cut down the middle-aged elf and the elven girl with a single stroke.

The blood spraying from their bodies stained Deioden red.

The moment he saw that sight, the thread of reason in Zeon’s mind snapped.

“Hey, you dogshit old man!”

Having lost his reason, Zeon shouted.

At that instant, sand rose like a wave and swept toward Deioden.

An enormous amount of sand pressed down as if it would crush Deioden to death.

Then a blood-red force exploded from Deioden’s entire body.

BAAANG!

The red light blew away the sand and Zeon in an instant.

When Zeon came to his senses after rolling across the ground, the first thing he saw was Deioden’s leg.

When he raised his head, Deioden was looking down at him.

A savage light still gleamed in his eyes.

Zeon did not avoid that gaze and glared back at him.

“Aren’t you ashamed of killing a child who hasn’t even grown up yet?”

“A child?”

“She was a young girl.”

“She was probably older than you.”

“That......”

CRUNCH!

At that instant, Deioden pressed down on Zeon’s back with his foot.

At the pressure that felt as though a gigantic boulder were crushing him, Zeon’s face flushed bright red.

It felt as though his spine and breastbone would be crushed completely, and he could not breathe.

Crrrreak!

The breastplate made from the Queen Wolf Ant’s shell screamed as though it would break at any moment.

“Grrgh!”

Zeon struggled to escape from Deioden’s foot. But no matter how hard he tried, Deioden’s foot did not budge.

“Yaaaah!”

As he struggled, Zeon unleashed Sand Blaster.

BOOM! BOOM!

Sand Blaster struck Deioden. But even after taking a direct hit from the Sand Blaster that could shatter a Wolf Ant’s head, Deioden did not move in the slightest.

Deioden pressed down on Zeon’s chest even harder.

“Kuh-hurk!”

Zeon vomited blood.

Deioden stared down at Zeon.

His eyes were not filled with madness as they had been moments before.

They had sunk so deeply that their depth could not be measured.

It was hard to believe they belonged to the same man who had been slaughtering elves in a frenzy just a moment earlier.

He loosened the force in the foot pressing down on Zeon’s chest slightly and asked,

“Do you think I went too far?”

“There was no need to kill...... even a child.”

“Why should I spare a child? Simply because she is young? Because others say so? That little bastard grows up and becomes an enemy.”

“But......”

“Those elven bastards are an untrustworthy race. To survive themselves, they ruined someone else’s world. And you want me to spare such hypocrites because they are young? Do not make me laugh. Those things have no value worth preserving. From now on, I will kill every one of those insects whenever I see them.”

“......”

“Do you want to say I am wrong? Do you want to stop me? Then stop me with skill, not with your mouth. Do you understand? You cripple whose mouth is the only thing alive!”

Deioden removed the foot pressing down on Zeon’s chest.

“Kuh-hurk! Cough!”

Zeon coughed violently.

His eyes were bloodshot red.

If Deioden had pressed down only a little longer, not only the capillaries in his eyes, but also his heart and organs would have burst.

From the beginning, he had known he was no match for Deioden.

He had not even thought of him as someone he could be compared to.

He had thought Deioden was a star high in the sky, beyond the reach of his hand.

But now his thoughts had changed.

‘I’ll become as strong as Deioden. No, stronger than him.’

He wanted to become strong and say what he wanted to say.

Not tuck his tail between his legs like a miserable dog.

For the first time in his life, he had gained a clear goal.

The goal was Deioden.

Zeon made surpassing him his task.

---

Zeon searched the elven village.

It was because he thought there might still be survivors. But not a single elf had survived Deioden’s hand.

Deioden had not left alive a single living creature in the elven village.

At the sight of more than a hundred elves reduced to chunks of meat, nausea rose in him on its own.

At the same time, a question occurred to him.

He recalled Deioden’s words.

‘They ruined someone else’s world to survive themselves? Then does that mean the elves are partly responsible for the world becoming like this?’

If that was true, Deioden’s anger was understandable.

Zeon had been born after the world had already been ruined.

Because of that, he did not know the world that had come before.

Most people living in Neo Seoul now were the same.

Records remained, but because they had not seen it directly, they could not truly feel how brilliant and abundant that era had been.

But Deioden had been born in the world before.

He had witnessed that era, and the entire process of the world falling into ruin.

Perhaps the sense of loss and rage he had felt during that process were only natural.

“Phew!”

Zeon let out a sigh.

Deioden was alone far outside the elven village.

To him, even remaining for a moment in the elves’ village was horrifying. Merely breathing the same air the elves had breathed was no different from torture for Deioden.

Zeon looked around the elves’ village.

The elves’ dwellings were earthen houses made from hardened sand.

Given the nature of the desert, where no special building materials could be obtained, it had probably been an unavoidable choice.

They had survived until now only because the oasis was beside them. Without even that, the elves would have died long ago.

Zeon entered one of the houses that was still relatively intact.

The inside of the house was extremely plain.

There were only the items absolutely necessary for life.

But the style of the objects was not like anything he had seen in Neo Seoul.

Somehow, they bore the marks of time, and a strongly antique feeling radiated from them.

It seemed they were objects the elves had originally possessed.

Bows and arrows, beautiful ornaments, robes, and other things entered his eyes.

Zeon examined the objects one by one.

“They definitely weren’t made recently.”

What especially drew his attention was a very old book.

Characters of unknown identity were written in it.

It was surely an object the elves had brought from the world where they had originally lived.

For now, Zeon stored the book and the other objects in his subspace.

They were objects he had no need for, but if he sold them, they would certainly become money.

Zeon put every usable object into his subspace.

While searching the house, Zeon discovered a small storeroom hidden behind a wall.

Zeon’s face twisted as he looked inside the storeroom.

That was because everything piled inside the storeroom was human property. Unlike the elves’ antique style, these had efficient designs and materials.

Items made mainly in Neo Seoul had this kind of style.

Blood presumed to be human was smeared on the items.

“These bastards! They robbed people passing by.”

There was no way elves hostile to humans would have obtained goods by paying a proper price.

They had clearly attacked humans passing nearby and stolen their belongings.

Until just moments ago, Zeon had felt a little guilt toward the elves Deioden had killed, but now even that feeling vanished cleanly.

They were Scavengers, only different in appearance.

There was no way they had merely taken the items and left the people alive.

To protect their secret, they must have killed people and silenced them.

Judging by the number of items, the number of people they had killed also seemed enormous.

“They killed a lot.”

Zeon shook his head and searched the storeroom.

It was to see if there was anything he needed.

But perhaps the elves had used every useful item, and only miscellaneous junk remained.

Even if he took items like these, they would only become baggage.

Zeon gave up cleanly and left the house.

He visited several more houses, but there were still no useful items.

Zeon raised his sand control. Then the sand in the area squirmed and moved.

SSSSHHH!

The sand squirmed and covered the entire village.

The broken houses and the elves’ corpses were all buried beneath the sand and vanished.

In an instant, a fairly large village had become a single grave.

Even so, it left no mark.

Unlike ordinary soil, desert sand left no trace even when moved or covered over.

Now, even if someone happened to find this oasis by chance, they would not know elves had once lived here.

Zeon filled his waterskin with water from the oasis, then approached Deioden.

Before he knew it, the long night had passed, and the sun was shining over the desert.

Without saying anything either way, Deioden began walking.

Zeon followed silently behind him.