Chapter 25

Chapter 25

The fading black cluster of light was slowly being absorbed into Crayon.

From Crayon, which was absorbing the black light, an even more chilling sharpness could be felt.

Zeon asked carefully,

“Is that the master of this temple?”

Deioden put Crayon away and answered,

“It is nothing more than the remnant of a god that lost its divinity. At best, it cannot even display ten percent of the power it originally possessed. A mere husk.”

“So it really is a god? Is it possible to kill a god?”

“Did I not tell you? It is nothing but a husk that lost its divinity.”

“But......”

“It is not even a being of Earth. It is only a fragment of Kurayan trapped in a dungeon, barely clinging to breath. Even if it had not been me, it would have vanished on its own someday. So stop making a fuss.”

At Deioden’s words, Zeon pressed his mouth shut. But his face was still filled with confusion.

It had been hard enough to believe that beings called gods truly existed, but now even an unfamiliar word, “Kurayan,” had been mentioned.

He had thought he knew Deioden to some degree now, but in truth, he knew nothing at all.

Deioden’s strength was far beyond his imagination.

Deioden said to Zeon,

“Still, you somehow survived without dying. There must not have been any sand.”

“I barely survived.”

“Hmph! If you did not die, that is enough.”

SSSSHHH!

At last, all of the black light, the remnant of the god, was absorbed into Crayon.

Deioden looked at Crayon with a satisfied smile.

“Now the minimum preparations are finally complete.”

“What preparations?”

“......”

That was when it happened.

RUMBLE!

Suddenly, the temple began to shake.

It was the phenomenon of the dungeon itself vanishing as the temple’s master disappeared.

A giant pillar toppled helplessly, and the ceiling collapsed.

Space was devouring the temple itself.

An entire world was vanishing.

Deioden watched in silence, and Zeon was overwhelmed.

Zeon took the sight of the ruined world into his eyes.

At that instant, the two of them were wrapped in a cluster of light and transferred.

A moment later, the place where the two appeared again was right in front of the stone door where the dungeon entrance had formed.

As soon as it spat the two of them out, the stone door vanished without a trace.

Zeon looked around, but the stone door was nowhere to be seen.

It had disappeared without leaving a single trace, as if it had never existed from the beginning.

The fact that he had entered and returned from the dungeon felt distant, like a dream. But it was neither a dream nor an illusion.

Exion, absorbed into his body, proved that fact.

Perhaps because he had absorbed Exion and risen another step, his control had increased tremendously.

Deioden launched himself first and escaped the sand pit that was one hundred meters deep.

Zeon used Sand Walk.

The sand pushed Zeon out of the enormous pit on its own.

When they emerged from the sand pit, dazzling sunlight greeted them.

He did not know how much time had passed inside the dungeon, but in the real world, morning had come.

The flow of time inside dungeons varied.

In some dungeons, one day in reality became ten days, while in others, time flowed exactly the same as reality.

Because of that, one could not know how much time had passed in reality before checking directly.

However, neither Zeon nor Deioden had any interest in that.

What mattered to them was that they had conquered the dungeon hidden deep beneath the desert.

In this dungeon, Zeon had completely absorbed Exion.

Now, he had prepared the minimum means of self-preservation even in places without sand.

Fortunately, while defeating Gigarein, the Exion that had been running wild had stabilized.

He was now ready to use Exion at any time.

As Zeon’s grade rose, Exion’s power would rise as well.

He glanced at Deioden.

That was because he was curious how much stronger Deioden had become, when Zeon himself had grown this much stronger.

Godslaying.

If Zeon had killed Gigarein, the Guardian, Deioden had killed a god.

Even if it was a god that had lost its divinity and possessed only feeble power.

Zeon knew well just how tremendous and majestic that was.

‘I thought I had caught up a lot, but I’m still far away.’

Even so, Zeon was not disappointed.

Deioden was old, but he was young.

He had far more days left to live, so if he kept working steadily, someday he would be able to catch up to him.

As Zeon followed Deioden, his personality and mindset had begun to resemble Deioden’s before he knew it.

Deioden began walking without even taking a rest.

Zeon also used Sand Walk.

After rising to Grade D, his ability to use sand had developed by leaps and bounds. Thanks to that, he could move at almost the same speed as Deioden.

Deioden walked without rest toward the direction where the sun rose.

Zeon silently followed behind him.

After they walked east for days and days, an alien landscape appeared.

At first, he thought it was an illusion or a trick of the eye.

That was how far the scene before him surpassed Zeon’s expectations.

“My God! A forest.”

What he was looking at was clearly an enormous forest.

In the middle of the barren desert, a forest of tremendous scale stretched out.

After the world had been ruined to this state, this was the first time he had seen a forest made of trees.

There were trees and forests inside Neo Seoul as well.

That was because they were perfectly protected from the desert’s dry climate by a force field. But the people in the slums could not see that sight.

It was because of the high wall dividing the slums and Neo Seoul.

Zeon had only heard that trees and forests existed. This was his first time seeing them in person.

Zeon’s steps gradually quickened, and later, he even passed Deioden.

That was how badly he wanted to see the trees up close.

But the closer he approached, the more Zeon felt that the forest was strange.

Trees were definitely gathered together to form a forest. But not the slightest trace of green vitality could be felt.

Not a single leaf was attached, and all the trunks and branches had turned black.

It was very different from the image of trees he had heard about when he was young.

“Are these trees?”

“They have been carbonized and only their forms remain. Their lives as trees ended long ago.”

Deioden looked at the carbonized forest with coldly sunken eyes.

“People call this place the Black Forest.”

“People? Do people live here?”

“There are foolish ones who cannot let go of the thread of attachment and continue living.”

Deioden spoke bluntly and sat beneath a large tree.

Although only the trunk and branches remained, it still cast enough shade to block the sunlight.

Perhaps because it blocked the hot sun, a cool air could be felt inside the Black Forest.

“Wow!”

At the chill, cool enough to feel cold, Zeon let out an exclamation without realizing it.

Except for dungeons and underground places, he had never felt this much cold air anywhere.

Zeon looked up blankly at the Black Forest.

Black trees covered the entire sky.

He felt regret, wondering how wonderful it would have been if they were not carbonized, but real living trees.

That was when it happened.

Bzzz!

A faint sound reached Zeon’s ears.

It was the sound of something small flapping its wings.

Zeon instinctively raised a sand barrier right before him.

BOOM!

Immediately afterward, something flew in and struck the sand barrier.

The object that hit the sand barrier exploded on the spot.

Fortunately, the range of the explosion was not very wide, so Zeon suffered no damage.

Then Deioden said,

“Do not go too deep. The inside of the Black Forest is the territory of Bomb Bees.”

“Bomb Bees? You mean bees explode?”

“Yes. When intruders enter their territory, they launch themselves and explode.”

Zeon looked down at the ground.

The remains of a Bomb Bee were scattered there.

Judging from the remains, he could infer that its original size had been about as large as a child’s fist.

“Is the entire inner area Bomb Bee territory?”

“Yes. As long as you do not cross that line, nothing much will happen.”

“Is it perhaps because of the Bomb Bees that people do not live here?”

“You are fairly quick. Correct.”

“Couldn’t they just catch all the Bomb Bees?”

“If that had been easy, they would have dealt with them long ago. No matter how many Bomb Bees are killed, if the queen bee is alive, they quickly reproduce and gather into a colony. So do not think about wasting your strength needlessly. Rest here.”

“Yes!”

If Deioden went as far as to say this much, they seemed to be no ordinary nuisance.

It felt less like he was avoiding them because they were frightening and more like he was avoiding them because they were bothersome.

In any case, it had nothing to do with him, so Zeon also sat beneath a tree near Deioden.

For now, he simply wanted to forget all troublesome matters and enjoy this scenery.

Zeon leaned his back against a carbonized tree and looked forward.

Unlike the shaded Black Forest, intense heat was rising from the desert where the sunlight beat down brightly.

Even for Zeon, crossing the desert with his bare body was madness.

‘I need to get a new robe...... Ah!’

Zeon suddenly remembered that he had a spare robe in his subspace.

When he had taken bows and various other objects from the elven village Deioden had destroyed, he had stored robes as well.

When he opened his subspace, he saw the elves’ robes.

Zeon draped a robe over his body.

It was not as good as the robe made from Sand Angler skin, but the elves’ robe also blocked heat to some degree.

‘I can wear this robe for now.’

Deioden hated nonhuman races terribly, but he said nothing about Zeon using the elves’ belongings.

Deioden once again stuck Crayon in front of him and conversed with it in a low voice.

Zeon had seen the sight so many times that he simply accepted it.

At one time, he had listened carefully because he wanted to know what Deioden was discussing, but perhaps because sound waves had been blocked, he could not hear well.

After that, he gave up on eavesdropping.

It was far more profitable to inspect the ability he had newly obtained during that time.

‘Thanks to Exion, my control has grown even stronger.’

According to what he had confirmed after coming outside, if he raised his control while operating Exion, he could handle sand far more easily.

In the past, he had barely been able to control sand within a radius of around ten meters, but now it had expanded to several dozen meters.

If he continued growing like this, eventually, he felt he would be able to control all the sand within his field of vision.

‘I struggled because my compatibility with Golems was bad. I won by luck this time, but I need to study this more thoroughly.’

If, as Deioden had said, the temple’s god had lost its divinity and become weakened, then Gigarein, the Guardian, must also have been much weaker than before.

If Gigarein had been in its normal state, there was a high chance Zeon would have been defeated even after using Exion.

Zeon calmly reviewed his battle against Gigarein and identified his problems.

Looking back over battles like this was a great help in improving Zeon’s skills.

‘Blink and Chain Lightning. Both were powerful. If I meet an Awakened who can use these two Skills freely, there is a high chance I will be defeated.’

The difference between Golems and humans was flexibility of thought.

Golems acted only according to what had been set, but humans could respond flexibly depending on the situation.

At present, Zeon was specialized in anti-monster battles.

Because he had only dealt with monsters while following Deioden, his Skills had developed in that direction.

If he thought about returning to Neo Seoul someday, it was right to develop his Skills with interpersonal combat in mind from now on.

Once he seized that topic, his thoughts spread out on their own like branches.

‘Hmm!’

Zeon sat in a lotus position and entrusted himself entirely to thought.

He did not even know how much time had passed.

When Zeon opened his eyes again, dawn was already breaking far in the distance.

He had stayed awake the entire night.

“Phew!”

Zeon rose from his seat and pounded his legs.

After sitting all night without moving, his entire body ached.

“Huh?”

Zeon, who had been stretching his stiff body for a while, suddenly looked forward.

That was because he felt the movement of a living creature on the sand far away.

Wondering if it was perhaps a Bomb Bee, he looked carefully, but a completely different being was there.

‘A child?’

Far away, a girl who looked around twelve years old was lying flat on the sand, watching Zeon and Deioden.

Then Deioden opened his mouth.

“A half-breed of the Goya Clan.”

“What?”

“A filthy half-breed born from a family of foolish people who cling to an impossible task. She has grown that much already. I should have killed her back then.”

Deep contempt appeared on Deioden’s face as he looked at the girl.

“This child is not a half-breed. She will surely become the future of this land.”

Then, together with a calm voice, a middle-aged man appeared beside the girl.

On the middle-aged man’s back hung a large bow and a quiver filled with arrows. It was the typical attire of a hunter.

Even at the middle-aged man’s sudden appearance, Deioden was not surprised and spoke bluntly.

“Your sophistry remains the same. Did that woman teach you that?”

“She died not long ago.”

The middle-aged man’s face as he answered was full of sorrow. But Deioden’s eyes as he looked at him remained cold.

“She died? I should have killed her with these hands.”

“You have not changed at all, Deioden. How long will you keep scorning and treating them like enemies? The fact that this land became like this was never their will......”

“Stop there. If you babble any further, I will kill you, your half-breed brat, and your entire clan.”

Deioden exploded with terrifying murderous intent.

Exposed to his murderous intent, the girl sprang up and hid behind the middle-aged man.

At that moment, Zeon saw it.

The girl’s ears had a different shape from ordinary humans.

“An elf?”