Chapter 97

Chapter 97

The Inazuma Raid Team blinked.

“What...... is that?”

“So he isn’t a fire Mage, but a Summoner?”

Soldiers resembling Zeon stood around him.

Although they were made of sand and their features were blunt, their physiques resembled Zeon’s perfectly.

Sand Soldiers.

Soldiers made of sand.

Zeon had summoned exactly as many Sand Soldiers as there were members of the Inazuma Raid Team.

“Now, let’s begin.”

The moment Zeon finished speaking, the Sand Soldiers attacked the Inazuma Raid Team.

“You think we’ll fall to mere summons like these?”

“Hyaat!”

The Inazuma Raid Team unleashed their Skills and attacked the Sand Soldiers.

CRACK!

Bai Lun’s axe buried itself deep in a Sand Soldier’s chest.

The Sand Soldier floundered for a moment, then collapsed and returned to sand.

“Heh-heh! They were nothing.”

He bared his white teeth and smiled.

At that moment, something astonishing happened.

The Sand Soldier that had returned to sand rose again.

“What?”

BOOM!

The Sand Soldier attacked Bai Lun while he was defenseless.

Struck hard in the abdomen, Bai Lun flew nearly ten meters and crashed into the ground.

“Urgh!”

He rose with a flustered expression.

The Sand Soldier was charging toward him.

‘They have no fear and no emotions. Since they are lifeless summons, they do not fear death either.’

That was why Zeon favored summoning Sand Soldiers.

Bai Lun was not the only one in trouble.

“Damn it! They come back even after we break them.”

Yuri, the Windmancer, was horrified.

She had clearly shattered one with blades of wind, but the Sand Soldier had restored itself perfectly.

Shu Han and Comaine were in the same predicament.

Shu Han, who had been trying to grasp Zeon’s full strength, was driven into danger by a Sand Soldier, and Comaine rescued him.

Comaine’s ability was Blink.

He possessed the rare ability to teleport to any place within his sight.

But Blink was not an ability he could use recklessly.

Its number of uses and distance were determined by his grade and the amount of mana he possessed.

Around twenty meters, about thirty times.

That was the distance and number of times Comaine could use Blink in a single day.

He had used it only ten times while fighting the Hell Moles, but he had already used it fifteen times against the Sand Soldiers.

He had only five uses left.

Comaine shouted to Koji,

“Captain! Do something!”

“Damn it!”

Koji spat out a curse.

He had never imagined they would struggle against mere summons, not even Zeon himself.

The Sand Soldiers, which revived no matter how many times they were cut down, were no different from a nightmare.

“There must be a core.”

Every lifeless summon had a core.

Koji closed his eyes and heightened all his senses.

He activated Human Body Reading, one of the Skills of a swordsman.

He did not know whether it would work on a lifeless body like a Sand Soldier, but it was still better than doing nothing.

Fortunately, he was able to locate the Sand Soldier’s core.

“The core is in the right side.”

SLASH!

He cut down the Sand Soldier in a single stroke.

Perhaps because he had cut through the core as well, the Sand Soldier did not regenerate.

“Good!”

“It’s the right side.”

Seeing that, his subordinates attacked the Sand Soldiers’ right sides.

SLASH!

The Sand Soldiers whose cores were destroyed returned to sand. And they did not rise again.

“Haa! Haa!”

“Damn it! I thought I was going to die.”

Yuri breathed roughly, and Bai Lun cursed as he pulled back his axe.

Comaine and Shu Han had also taken down their Sand Soldiers.

They glared at Zeon.

“Now it’s your turn.”

“We’ll strip every bone from your body.”

Because they had struggled against the Sand Soldiers, their rage pierced the sky.

While they had been fighting madly, Zeon had been watching calmly with both hands in the pockets of his robe.

Even though all the Sand Soldiers he had summoned had returned to sand, Zeon did not change expression and muttered,

“So this is about their limit against Awakened?”

From the beginning, he had not expected Sand Soldiers to possess combat power equal to Awakened.

No matter how much Zeon’s will acted upon the Sand Soldiers, they could not move like Awakened who thought and fought on their own.

That difference was what had just been shown.

All the Sand Soldiers he had summoned had returned to sand, and the Inazuma Raid Team was attacking him.

SWISH!

Koji’s katana flew in with a sharp sound as it split the air.

Yuri’s blades of wind closed in on him from all directions.

Following them came Bai Lun’s axe, and Comaine’s Blink brought him to Zeon’s side in the blink of an eye.

All of it entered Zeon’s eyes with perfect clarity.

Zeon murmured in a voice without the slightest sense of crisis.

“If five are not enough, how about twenty?”

The moment his words ended, twenty Sand Soldiers rose around Zeon.

“Insane!”

Koji’s eyes trembled as he swung his katana.

The Inazuma Raid Team had fallen into serious danger against only five Sand Soldiers.

The appearance of twenty Sand Soldiers, four times that number, made his heart drop.

“What are you? What the hell are you? Damn it!”

The cold mask Koji had been wearing shattered.

Koji’s true face, revealed once the mask broke, was terribly distorted.

Zeon observed his expression closely and said,

“You attacked without even knowing that?”

“You bastard......”

BOOM!

With a roar, sand scattered in all directions.

One Sand Soldier had blocked Koji’s katana with its body.

The Sand Soldiers neutralized all the other Awakened’s attacks as well.

The Sand Soldiers blocked with their bodies and did not care even when they burst apart.

They threw themselves forward without hesitation to protect Zeon.

The Inazuma Raid Team attacked the Sand Soldiers’ right sides, where the cores had been. But they could not feel any cores there.

“The location of the core has changed.”

“Damn it!”

The destroyed Sand Soldiers restored themselves in an instant and attacked them.

The Sand Soldiers were a nightmare to them.

“Krgh!”

Shu Han was the first to scream and collapse.

He, who had the weakest combat ability, had fallen first.

Next was Comaine.

Having used up his Blink, Comaine was nothing more than easy prey for the Sand Soldiers.

“Kek!”

He collapsed with a scream and never moved again.

Koji, Yuri, and Bai Lun’s eyes were bloodshot red.

The deaths of their comrades had stolen their reason.

Normally, once a raid team was formed, it remained together until the end unless something extraordinary happened.

Naturally, they knew one another too well, and a deep bond formed between them.

In a way, they became closer than blood relatives.

They had lost comrades who were like family, so it was understandable that their eyes rolled back in rage.

They ignored defense and charged in.

To Zeon’s eyes, they looked like moths drawn to a flame.

They looked exactly like creatures leaping into fire even while knowing they would die.

Zeon rained fire down upon them.

“Fire Rain!”

It was a rain of fire on an entirely different level than before.

On top of that, the Sand Soldiers’ attacks were added.

BOOM, BOOM, BOOM!

A tremendous explosion shook the entire dungeon.

***

RUMBLE!

At the tremendous vibration and shaking beneath their feet, Jack and the raid team lost their balance and fell to their knees.

“Urgh!”

“What is this? Did the dungeon disappear?”

When a dungeon disappeared, there were rare cases where it delivered a tremendous shock to its surroundings. But this was the first time they had felt the entire area shake as if an earthquake had struck.

“What happened? What about the people inside the dungeon?”

When a dungeon disappeared, the people inside naturally disappeared as well.

Of course, they had to escape before the dungeon disappeared.

Jack’s voice trembled.

“Don’t tell me they failed to get out?”

“What do you mean...... failed to get out?”

At that moment, someone’s voice came from behind him.

It was the voice of old man Clexi, who was being carried on his back.

“Guildmaster!”

“How long has it been since I handed the guild over to Se-hee? Why are you still calling me Guildmaster?”

“I’m glad you’re safe.”

Jack hurriedly set old man Clexi down on the ground.

Old man Clexi shook his head and said,

“What are you talking about?”

“Pardon?”

“You said someone failed to get out. Who?”

“That is......”

Jack could not continue easily.

Old man Clexi pressed him.

“What happened? I remember being captured by the Hell Moles, but how did you save me? Your abilities should have been insufficient.”

He had only just regained consciousness, but old man Clexi had quickly recovered his sharp reason.

This was a Hell Mole dungeon that even the raid team he had personally led had failed to clear. He could not understand how Jack’s raid team, which was less skilled, had saved him.

“That is......”

“Speak properly at once.”

In the end, Jack told him the truth.

“The truth is......”

After hearing the entire story, old man Clexi clicked his tongue.

“So you left Zeon behind?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Was that Se-hee’s decision?”

“As the Guildmaster, she had no other choice. Awakened had been deployed to another dungeon, so we were terribly short on personnel......”

“And that made her join hands with Xiao Lun? Do you know how cunning that man is? He is not someone Se-hee can handle.”

“To be exact, it was not Xiao Lun, but a man named Tajik......”

“He is someone Xiao Lun raised and trusts. It would not be an exaggeration to call him a copy of Xiao Lun. To think she bit down on bait thrown by a man like that. Did I hand over the guild to her too early?”

He was not worried about Zeon’s safety.

Zeon was an interesting existence, but not more important than his granddaughter.

What he found regrettable was Yu Se-hee’s immaturity in accepting Tajik’s proposal too easily.

“In any case, this is unfortunate. He was still a useful one.”

Old man Clexi clicked his tongue as he thought of Zeon.

He was already certain that Zeon was dead.

No matter how much one denied it, there was a great difference between the Awakened of the slums and the Awakened of Neo Seoul.

The Inazuma Raid Team was fairly well recognized even in Neo Seoul.

No matter how strong Zeon was, old man Clexi believed he would be powerless before their teamwork.

Old man Clexi was gazing in the direction of the dungeon with distant eyes when it happened.

ROOOAR!

Suddenly, a pillar of dust shot high into the sky from the place where the dungeon was.

“Huh?”

“What is that?”

The others also murmured when they saw the sight.

Then something shot out from within the dust rising high into the sky.

The object flew rapidly toward the place where old man Clexi stood.

Old man Clexi’s eyes widened.

“Don’t tell me?”

He was not the only one whose eyes widened.

Jack and his subordinates’ eyes also grew wide enough to pop out.

In their sight, an object that flew through the air like a bird was rapidly approaching.

It took only a few seconds for them to realize that the object was human.

TAP!

The flying object landed lightly in front of old man Clexi and Jack’s raid team.

“H-how?”

Their voices trembled on their own.

That was because the object that had landed before old man Clexi was a person they knew as well.

Old man Clexi said to him,

“You were alive? Zeon!”

The one who had flown from afar was none other than Zeon.

Zeon smiled and said,

“Oh? You’re awake.”