Chapter 217

Chapter 217

With a spine-chilling sound, the sand in the area began rotating around Zeon.

“What is that?”

“Uwaaah!”

The Awakened who had barely escaped Sand Blender’s blast radius let out cries of alarm.

The sand within a radius of several dozen meters was rotating like a blender.

Inside it were Orcs.

They were not ordinary Orcs.

They were Orcs in a berserk state, strengthened by the tattoo’s buff.

Mad Orcs who felt neither pain nor fear.

Yet at this moment, extreme terror had appeared on their faces.

The sand had covered the Orcs up to their knees.

The Orcs tried to break through the sand with strength. But some invisible force seemed to be acting on the sand, and it did not budge.

In the meantime, the sand was grinding away at their ankles and shins.

The pain of being ground alive was horrific.

“ROOOOAR!”

“Snrrk! Save......”

“Krrk!”

The Orcs, who supposedly laughed off most pain and endured it, were screaming until their throats tore.

The Orcs’ bodies sank deeper and deeper into the sand.

Now the sand had swallowed them up to their waists.

The Orcs’ screams swelled with it.

“Squeeeeal!”

“Kraaaak!”

The sound of pigs being butchered echoed across the desert.

The Awakened’s expressions twisted.

That was because the Orcs’ pain felt like their own.

The Orcs’ screams were that desperate.

Goosebumps rose across their bodies, and their hair stood on end.

It was the first time they had ever felt this way.

They were Awakened who lived alongside death.

They were prepared to die at any moment under threats from monsters and humans. But Zeon’s Sand Blender possessed such horrifying power that even those Awakened were terrified.

At some point, the Orcs no longer screamed.

That was because they had already been ground away up to the chest.

There was no way a creature whose lungs and organs had vanished could scream.

The terrifyingly rotating sand swallowed even the Orcs’ remaining upper bodies.

GRIIIIIND—!

In the suffocating silence, only the sand was rotating fiercely.

At its center stood Zeon.

The Awakened could not say a word.

They felt that if they opened their mouths, Zeon’s Skill might unfold against them.

To the Awakened, it was a time like hell.

Only when the sand finally stopped rotating completely did they exhale the breath they had been holding.

“Puhah!”

“Khaaah!”

Their faces had flushed red from holding their breath.

They looked at Zeon with terrified expressions. Yet Zeon himself was walking over the sand with a calm face.

The place he headed toward was where Jang Yong-beom stood.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. A wound like this is nothing.”

“You lost an arm.”

“When I get back to Neo Seoul, I’ll attach a prosthetic arm or something. It won’t be as good as what the mechanized Awakened use, but there should still be a usable mechanical prosthetic arm.”

“So there was a method like that.”

“Heh-heh! As long as you’re alive, Neo Seoul can fix you. They take special care to treat valuable combat assets like me. So don’t look at me with that kind of expression.”

“Understood. Then we’ll rest for a short while before moving. Raise your condition as much as you can before then.”

Zeon was about to turn away.

“Wait! The Captain needs enough rest. Moving right away is too much.”

Aiden’s voice stopped Zeon.

“I’d like that too, but we don’t know when the Orcs will come after us.”

“Mm!”

Aiden let out a groan.

If the Orcs learned that the ones who had attacked them had been annihilated, other Orcs would certainly track them. But blindly following Zeon’s words still left him feeling uneasy.

So he said,

“Can’t you stop them with your ability? If you use that Skill from earlier, you can take care of them no matter how many Orcs come.”

“It isn’t a Skill I can use recklessly like that. It consumes a lot of mana, so I need time to recover as well.”

“Mm! I suppose so.”

Aiden accepted that.

The more powerful a Skill was, the more mana it consumed.

Once mana was spent, it did not recover easily.

A Skill with the kind of power Zeon had just shown must have consumed even more mana.

‘Well, that’s only balanced. The Sandmancer class is already absurd. If he could spam Skills without any restrictions, who could stop him?’

Aiden thought that was at least a relief.

Zeon smiled faintly.

He seemed to know what Aiden was thinking.

In truth, he could use Sand Blender several times a day, but there was no need to tell them that.

Zeon headed toward Eloy.

In front of Eloy, two elves were kneeling.

They were Rapyuna and her subordinate.

Both had been battered into terrible states.

That was because Eloy had used severe violence while subduing them.

‘Her emotions are in it.’

He could not criticize her for that.

Eloy’s hatred toward pure-blooded elves was carved deep into her bones.

When Zeon approached, Rapyuna and her subordinate looked frightened.

They had no choice.

They had seen with their own eyes how Zeon dealt with the Orcs.

If he unleashed that cursed Skill at them, they would surely be ground away without a trace.

They were not afraid of dying. But they did not want to die like that, leaving no trace behind, as if they had been nothing.

‘Is this man a god of death? Where did a human like this come from......?’

The extreme terror seemed to paralyze her thoughts, so Rapyuna had to grit her teeth to keep her mind from snapping.

Her subordinate shouted in a state of panic.

“You cursed being. Why did God grant a human like you a power that should never have been permitted? How resentful.”

His eyes had rolled back, and he was clearly not sane.

He had gone mad from extreme fear.

“Haa! This one doesn’t look very useful.”

THUD—!

Eloy struck the back of the elf’s head with the head of her spear.

The elf lost consciousness without even screaming.

Zeon knelt on one knee and met Rapyuna’s eyes.

“Why did you do it?”

“Wh-what do you mean?”

“I’m asking why you lured the Orcs to us.”

“I didn’t. The Orcs were tracking us, so we had no choice but to flee.”

“So you’re saying you didn’t deliberately lure them?”

“That’s right.”

Rapyuna used all her strength to make excuses.

She had to hide the village’s existence somehow.

If Zeon learned that they had lured the Orcs here to save their village, she did not know what he might do.

Zeon looked into Rapyuna’s eyes.

Rapyuna gritted her teeth to hide her agitation. But she could not deceive Zeon’s eyes.

“There’s an elven village near here. Where is it?”

“Our village is hundreds of kilometers away from here.”

“You’re still not used to lying. The range of activity for Desert Elf Rangers should only be several dozen kilometers around their village.”

“H-how do you know that?”

Instead of answering, Zeon smiled faintly.

There was probably no one who knew the Desert Elves’ way of life and activity range better than he did. And elves were originally a race bad at lying.

Not because they were pure, but because they were clumsy.

At least the elves who had settled in Neo Seoul had been stained by humans and had become fairly cunning. But the elves who had survived independently in the desert had no such slyness.

Suddenly, Rapyuna prostrated herself on the ground.

“Wait! Don’t touch our village. I decided everything on my own.”

“You did?”

“That’s right. I lured the Orcs here to protect our village.”

“You expect me to believe that?”

“It’s true. I can swear it.”

“An ordinary elf’s oath isn’t very convincing.”

“That’s......”

Rapyuna’s face turned deathly pale.

She had to keep making excuses somehow, but her mind went blank, and no thoughts came to her.

The one who stepped forward then was Briel.

“Zeon!”

“What?”

“You aren’t going to attack the elven village, are you?”

“Who knows?”

“Can’t you overlook it just this once? For my sake......”

“For your sake?”

“In a way, they’re stranded too. The hearts of people stranded like this can’t help narrowing.”

‘......Just like the High Elf village.’

Briel swallowed the rest of her words.

The village where she had been born had also stagnated.

Even though more than a hundred years had passed since they crossed to Earth, it had remained exactly as it had been in the beginning. The elves’ way of thinking had not changed much either.

When she was in the village, she had thought that was the correct way to maintain purity. But after spending a long time in the human world, she clearly realized how stagnant they had been.

Humans were adapting to this hellish world and developing at a frightening pace.

By contrast, the elves were trapped inside a prison of time.

Perhaps they were receiving punishment for ruining the world.

Because they were such elves, their field of vision had narrowed greatly, and to survive, they had made innocent humans their sacrifice.

Even if Zeon did not punish them, they would be weeded out by the flow of time and disappear.

Unless there was some dramatic change.

Now only Zeon’s decision remained.

Whatever decision Zeon made, Briel intended to accept it humbly.

At last, Zeon opened his mouth.

“I’m not a murderer crazed with slaughter. I can’t massacre an entire village.”

“Then?”

“Still, I should give them a warning.”

Zeon’s gaze turned to Rapyuna.

“Tell your village elders clearly.”

“What?”

“I’ll let this incident pass, but if they try this kind of dirty trick again, I’ll collapse the entire village.”

“That’s......”

“You saw it, didn’t you? If it’s me, I can collapse the village you spent a hundred years building in an instant.”

He did not know where the Desert Elves’ village was, but finding it would not be that difficult.

They had surely dug a large pit in the sand and built it there.

Just like most Desert Elf villages.

If it was inside sand, it could not escape Zeon’s senses. The sand was on Zeon’s side.

Rapyuna hurriedly answered,

“I-I’ll tell them that.”

“Then go. Before I change my mind......”

At Zeon’s gesture, Rapyuna slung her subordinate over her shoulder and fled in a hurry.

At that sight, a few Awakened burst into anger.

“No, how can you just let those elves go?”

“Several people died because of them.”

“To decide this so arbitrarily......”

At that instant, a cold smile appeared on Zeon’s lips.

This was the problem with Awakened.

Even when saved, their gratitude did not last long, and they quickly forgot their fear.

He understood their anger, but he could not let them cross the line.

“Then let’s part ways here.”

“What?”

“If you can’t accept my decision, let’s split up here and go separately.”

“Th-that’s......”

“Even if the elves hadn’t lured them here, we would have had no choice but to run into the Orcs anyway. The timing was only moved forward a little. If you still can’t accept my decision, then we part ways right now.”

At Zeon’s cold words, the Awakened could say nothing.

Then Jang Yong-beom stood and said,

“Ignore everything those idiots said. They call themselves Awakened, but they’re cowards.”

“Then, Jang Yong-beom, do you accept my decision?”

“Of course. If we want to survive in this desert, whether we like it or not, we have to stick by your side.”

“Then will you follow my words from now on?”

“Yes, sir, Captain.”

Jang Yong-beom answered slyly.