Chapter 335

Chapter 335

“Ghk!”

“Hah! Hah!”

More than two thousand people lay sprawled on the ground, gasping for breath.

They were the Awakened of the Mana Stone Mine expedition who had fallen beneath the underground barrier.

Every single one of them had escaped the barrier and returned to the surface.

“Huuuuh! Huuuuh!”

Elder Go lay collapsed, making sounds as if he were about to stop breathing.

He had poured every bit of his strength into releasing the barrier, so he did not even have the strength to twitch a finger.

The twin sisters lay collapsed on either side of him.

They, too, had poured out all their strength while assisting Elder Go. As a result, they were also completely exhausted.

Seo Tae-ran gave an order to her subordinates.

“Protect the Numbers as top priority.”

“Yes!”

Her subordinates answered in one voice and surrounded the three of them.

Their entire bodies, too, were covered in wounds large and small.

Among them, some had wounds so deep their internal organs were visible.

For an ordinary person, it would not have been strange if they had already died from such deep wounds. Yet even with wounds like that, the subordinates showed no sign of pain at all.

It was as though they did not possess the sense of pain that ordinary humans should naturally have.

That was not the only strange thing.

The deep wounds they had received while facing the Bone Drakes were healing at high speed.

The wounds that had split open deeply enough to reveal their organs were already sealed to some extent.

It was a tremendous regenerative power that could not be seen as human.

It was a secret Seo Tae-ran and City Hall had wanted to hide until the very end.

That was because a superhuman group with such powerful regenerative ability revealed its true value only when kept hidden. But now that so many people had witnessed it, it was no longer a secret.

That fact left an unbearably bitter taste in Seo Tae-ran’s mouth, but there was nothing she could do.

The Bone Drakes were not opponents they could face while keeping various secrets hidden.

Seo Tae-ran’s subordinates had released even their second-stage seals and fought the Bone Drakes fiercely, and thanks to that, the other Awakened had survived unharmed.

The problem was that even after fighting such a fierce battle, they still had not been able to bring the Bone Drakes down completely.

The Bone Drakes were monsters that did not die.

No matter how strong Seo Tae-ran’s subordinates’ regenerative power was, they were still within the category of living beings.

Wounds that surpassed the limits of a living body did not heal. They worsened, and the body died.

The Bone Drakes were different.

No matter how much they were destroyed, they came back to life.

Undead.

As the word implied, until their cores were destroyed, they would never die and never be destroyed.

Seo Tae-ran’s subordinates struggled desperately to find the Bone Drakes’ cores, but in the end, they could not find them.

All that remained was a tedious war of attrition.

Slowly finding and destroying the cores over time was the only method left to them.

The same was true for the Bone Drake being faced by the other raid party leaders.

Even the experienced raid party leaders, who each led their own raid parties, had difficulty dealing with the Bone Drake because they could not find its hidden core.

In the end, they too gave up on bringing down the Bone Drake in a short time, and their best option was to keep it from attacking the other Awakened.

They did not know how long they had fought like that.

Several raid party leaders suffered serious injuries and withdrew from the battle.

Because of that, those who remained were driven into a corner.

It was precisely at that moment that the change occurred.

The Bone Drakes that had been fiercely pushing back the raid party leaders and Seo Tae-ran’s subordinates suddenly lost their vitality and broke apart into pieces.

The Bone Drakes, which had shattered into large sections of bone, did not move again after that.

“What the hell? We didn’t even destroy the core.”

“Did the Sandmancer kill the Necromancer?”

It had happened after Zeon created a sand wall to keep the Bone Hydra from escaping outside.

Naturally, people could only think that way.

No matter how infinitely regenerative an undead was, if the Necromancer died, all incoming mana would be cut off, and it would lose its life.

The barrier was released right then.

“Everyone, get out.”

At Elder Go’s shout, the exhausted people left the underground without needing to think any further.

The result was what they looked like now.

Two thousand three hundred Awakened were lying on the ground, panting.

The scorching sunlight beating down as if it would pierce their skin had never felt so welcome.

“Damn it! We made it out of that hellish place.”

“Hah! Hah! If I ever go underground again, I’m not a person. I’m a monster bastard.”

“Never thought sunlight would feel this good in my whole life.”

Most of them lay spread-eagled, enjoying the blazing sun. But Levin and Briel did not look at ease.

“Why isn’t Brother coming out?”

“Surely he didn’t get taken down, right?”

Their faces were full of worry.

At that moment, Eloy said to them,

“You’re worrying about that human right now? Don’t worry. He’s the kind of human who’d crawl back up even if he fell into hell. Don’t tell me you don’t even have that much faith?”

“Who said I don’t have faith?”

“I’m only saying it because I’m worried.”

Eloy smiled at the two of them as they flared up.

“Yeah! Little brats! So just believe in him. You can worry about anyone else, but there’s no need to worry about that human.”

Eloy tightly gripped Mad Nine-Tailed Fox and looked up at the sky.

Like the others, she intended to enjoy the hot sunlight for now.

It was then that the change occurred.

Ruuumble!

Far beyond the horizon, the sky suddenly darkened, and a storm began to whirl.

It was the phenomenon people commonly called a tornado.

Like a dragon ascending into the heavens, a sandstorm rose from the ground and surged into the sky.

“What is that?”

“A tornado?”

The tornado that began on the ground pierced through the darkened sky in an instant.

In that state, it rapidly expanded its force.

It drew in the surrounding sand and wind, growing several times larger in an instant.

Ruuumble!

As if enraged by the sandstorm, lightning struck again and again from the darkened sky.

Each time lightning fell, the entire world was dyed white.

A huge bolt of lightning, the kind that seemed as though it would only appear if a Grade S Awakened went all out, struck the sandstorm without pause.

Ruuumble!

Every lightning strike was accompanied by thunder like the roar of a monster.

It looked as though the lightning and the tornado were fighting.

It looked like a battle between enormous monsters contesting their strength to devour each other.

It was their first time seeing such an astonishing sight, so all the Awakened stared at it in a daze.

At least it was happening far away. If such a phenomenon had occurred right nearby, everyone would have been in chaos, fleeing to avoid the falling lightning.

“Wow!”

“That’s insane.”

“What the hell is happening?”

The Awakened stared blankly at the overwhelming landscape created by nature. But among them, a few watched the phenomenon occurring in the far distance with grave expressions.

“That is definitely not a natural phenomenon.”

“Something is happening over there.”

“Damn it!”

Even though the phenomenon was happening far away, their hair stood on end, and the goosebumps that had risen would not subside.

The instincts of high-ranking Awakened were warning them.

Something extraordinary was happening there.

Flash! Ruuumble!

As time passed, the battle between the lightning and the tornado grew even more intense.

Lightning poured down like rain, and the tornado had now become more than a mere storm, growing large enough to swallow an entire region.

Rumble, rumble, rumble!

The sandstorm rotating with terrifying force soared into the sky as if gathering even the last of its remaining power.

Hundreds, thousands of lightning bolts struck that sandstorm.

It was a sight as though the end of the world had arrived.

Just watching from afar was enough to make their hair stand on end.

Briel muttered as if she had realized something.

“Could that be Zeon?”

“You think Brother Zeon did that?”

Levin stared at the place where the cataclysm was happening as if he could not believe it. But Briel did not answer.

All her senses were focused on the sandstorm.

No one here thought Zeon could create a sandstorm of that scale.

That was only natural, because the sandstorm before their eyes was so enormous that even a Grade S Awakened could not create it.

But Briel knew very well.

Zeon’s true ability was far more powerful than people vaguely guessed.

“Zeon! What in the world are you fighting?”

---

Whoooosh!

A human figure was falling toward the ground.

The one falling, his body charred black as though he had become charcoal, was Zeon.

Even as he fell toward the earth like a meteor, Zeon’s gaze remained fixed on the sky.

Nigel, the half-demon dragon who had fought a fierce battle with him just moments ago, had vanished like a mirage.

The rain of lightning that had shot down so terrifyingly, and the immense pressure that had weighed down on him, were all gone as if they had been lies. The sky was unbelievably clear.

The sandstorm Zeon had called forth was also scattering and disappearing.

“So I couldn’t win in the end?”

That did not mean he had lost, either.

If he had to explain it, he had taken one heavy blow and returned several smaller ones.

“Tch! I came out at a loss.”

If he had to correct himself, it was a draw, but that had no meaning.

Nigel, the half-demon dragon, had not gone all out, and Zeon had not completely revealed his hidden cards either.

Nigel probably knew that as well.

Even so, he had let it pass.

To Nigel, Zeon’s true fighting strength did not seem to be what mattered.

What mattered was whether Zeon satisfied the minimum line he wanted.

Once Zeon crossed that line, Nigel left this place without hesitation.

Even as he fell, Zeon thought,

“The jewel he recovered from Pilgram’s chest seemed important. That must be the true reason Nigel moved.”

No matter how legendary a Necromancer Pilgram had been in Kurayan, right now, he had been nothing more than an accessory of the dungeon.

A boss subordinated to a dungeon. Nothing more, nothing less.

Yet despite that, he had created summons that were far too powerful.

The Bone Drakes, and the Bone Hydra as well, were undead that Pilgram should have been incapable of creating.

Perhaps it might have been possible when he had been alive, but now that he had become the boss of a dungeon and lost his autonomy, it should have been impossible.

What had made such a thing possible was surely the jewel Pilgram had hidden deep inside his chest.

“It’s definitely holding power far too tremendous for a mere human to possess. That’s why Nigel came to retrieve it……”

He did not know how Nigel intended to use that jewel.

If Nigel, who was already powerful, used the power contained in the jewel, he would become so strong that he would be impossible to handle.

“But he didn’t seem to covet the jewel’s power. Instead, he seemed extremely reluctant to use it. As if that jewel must never be used. Why?”

While Zeon was lost in his own thoughts like that, the ground rapidly drew closer.

Even for Zeon, if he crashed into the ground like this, he would have no choice but to die. But Zeon was not worried at all.

—Pii!

Because a small whale poking out of subspace gently caught his body.

Gaia had saved Zeon just before he crashed.

Lying on Gaia’s back, Zeon stroked its head.

“Thanks!”

—Pii!

“Sorry! I didn’t even have the strength to move a finger.”

—Pii! Piiii!

“Yeah! I was counting on you. I won’t worry you like this next time.”

—Pii?

“Yeah! I promise.”

Only after Zeon gave a firm answer did Gaia’s scolding stop.

With Zeon on its back, Gaia landed softly on the ground. Only then did Zeon get down from Gaia’s back.

When Zeon stood on the ground with his own two feet, his appearance was recovering to its original state.

His skin and hair, which had been charred black, had returned to normal before he knew it.

It was thanks to super-regeneration, one of his abilities.

Although it was not quite on the level of the Bone Drakes, Zeon also had the ability to regenerate wounds immediately.

Thanks to that, even after suffering tremendous injuries, he could recover right away.

His robe, which had been torn to rags and burned, was also returning to its original state.

The robe made from Leviathan’s hide possessed an automatic self-repair function.

Unless it was smashed apart on the atomic level, it automatically restored its original form.

Thanks to that, Zeon did not look like someone who had just fought such a terrifying battle.

Pat! Pat!

Zeon sighed and brushed the dust from his body.

He could sense the people who had escaped from underground gathered far beyond the horizon.

“Whew! I fell pretty far away. When am I supposed to get all the way back there?”