Chapter 206: The Undead Hordes (1)
“It feels like I’m fighting a video game boss. Here comes phase 2, phase 3.”
Russell groaned as he jumped backward.
Bang!
A gigantic monster’s maw erupted from the ground he was standing on, its teeth slamming shut with a loud clack.
“Gah!”
It was a monster with the head of a massive crocodile and the body of a lion. Its eyes, bereft of whites, looked blankly at Russell as it charged toward him.
The scene of the crocodile’s massive maw, spanning two meters in height, closing in on him was enough to make one’s knees buckle.
Snap!
The crocodile’s gaping maw slammed shut. It tried to crush him, but Russell’s arms remained solid.
Russell twisted forcefully, gripping the top jaw with his left hand and the lower jaw with his right foot. His right arm, extended far back, faded into an afterimage.
Thwack!
The crocodile-lion monster split in half and collapsed to the ground. After easily defeating one monster, Russell pulled his greatsword and looked skyward.
When he spread his remaining mana around him, he was immediately inundated with an abundance of information.
It was a different type of perception than the five senses; therefore, the information that came in was chaotic.
The city had already been destroyed, as if it had been bombarded.
The giant had risen and swung its arm, splitting the Lord’s Castle in half. The debris flew everywhere, crushing buildings and people.
Shadows within shadows, demons summoned from the abyss, were another issue. They’d been creeping out of the giant’s shadow since it first appeared.
Fortunately, Calia, Aellasis, Scilio, Weizen, Asharin, and Lexi, who had escaped the castle County on, were fighting the monsters, although the number of monsters summoned much outnumbered those killed.
Grrrrrr!
At that point, the giant, having fully raised, shouted at the heavens.
[I… have come… to plunder… you…]
As the giant roared, the clouds in the sky darkened swiftly. The sun, which had been illuminating the earth like a white pupil, became dark.
Black smoke billowed up from all over the city, greatly reducing visibility. Despite the fact that it was the middle of the day, Russell felt like darkness had arrived County.
His vision expanded, allowing him to see the entire city. The wind carried the fires produced by the castle’s explosion, which spread embers.
During this time period, all structures were composed of wood, which was frequently sun-dried or chemically treated to boost their durability. As a result, the fire grew quickly, gaining size as it destroyed the dry tinder.
“Aaah!”
“H, Help me!”
“Daddy! Mommy!”
“Ugh, cough……”
The dark emotions and thoughts of citizens who had suffocated to death while escaping or been torn apart by the monsters, as well as those who were languishing in misery beneath the wreckage of buildings, intensified.
Dark emotions drew in additional dark emotions, and those emotions fed the monsters of the underworld. Every time they came into contact with sensations of fear and anxiety, the monsters grew larger and stronger, earning new strength to survive in the mortal world.
At this pace, the entire city will be in flames.
Russell’s eyes sprung wide, and more horrors appeared before him. Each of them was a hideous combination of various animal heads, bodies, and limbs, with no visible symmetry or balance.
However, the monsters were adept at murdering, and they charged toward Russell with homicidal purpose.
Russell summoned his mana by raising his greatsword in front of his face.
Boom!
A series of lightning bolts joined like chains, smashing the beasts’ limbs. The evil magic that was attempting to regenerate was melted and destroyed by the heat and power of lightning.
Russell ran up the crumbling pillar of the Lord’s Castle in front of him after annihilating the beasts in a second.
[You are still… alive……!]
The ashen giant, recognizing Russell, exclaimed. Its eyes, which were spread across its body, flickered white.
[Why… won’t you die…?]
“Do you think it makes you sound cool if you drag out your words like that?”
[Insolent…!]
Graaaaah!
Boom!
The ashen giant roared and stomped its foot. The weight of the giant, who stood over 20 meters tall, was great.
Boom!
The ground trembled as shockwaves spread from the simple act of taking one step. And it was gradually becoming quicker.
Boom, boom, boom.
With each stride stretching dozens of meters, the giant simply took three strides before putting its steps down on Russell.
Bang!
The sound and earthquake were so strong that it seemed like a mountain was crumbling.
[Hmm…?]
The giant, which had stepped on Russell, questioned in confusion. At that moment, something like a black toothpick shot out from the giant’s foot. Then, a purplish lightning bolt ripped through its foot, and something emerged from it.
Graaaah-!
Ignoring the screaming giant, Russell, covered in black blood, stood up and flung the blood behind him. The purple lightning he unleashed scorched the giant’s ashen blood, which had covered his body, and caused it to crumble.
Russell moved like a bolt of lightning, defying gravity as he passed the giant’s ankles, calves, and hips.
As he raced, he drew the axe blade of his Final Frost, which he gripped with his left hand, across the giant’s flesh. The giant’s legs rapidly froze, and the eyeballs connected to its legs, like barnacles, froze and burst, spilling a sticky goo.
[Ugh…!]
The giant grunted for the first time and swung its arm. Russell, who had now climbed over the hips and was at the neck, quickly brought his shoulder back to deliver a hit to the giant’s neck.
At that point, all of the eyes that had been covering the ashen giant’s body moved to Russell. The pupils in the hundreds of eyeballs that had been staring blankly changed red and emitted a beam of mana at Russell.
As the mana saturated the several gazes focused upon Russell, hundreds of rays of heat appeared in the abyss. Russell aborted his attack on the giant’s neck and crossed his weapons in front of him, knowing that the gazes would soon turn into attacks.
Boom!
Hundreds of beams spread around Russell. He was hit head-on, flying through buildings and streets, leaving a trail of dust behind him.
The giant’s entire body unleashed heat beams, which tracked the falling Russell and gained strength from the great heat. It was as if a fierce storm had been unleashed on the city.
Wherever the beams of light passed, walls of fire rose like curtains and spread outwards like a tidal wave.
Russell could not stop until he had destroyed dozens of residences, restaurants, carpentry businesses, blacksmiths, mills, and warehouses.
“Cough.”
Russell struggled to lift himself, breathing up smoke from his entire body. Even he found it difficult to entirely deflect rays of light that contained hundreds of degrees of heat and were capable of melting stone.
His coat was now in shreds, his pants and shoes had been torched, and he had dropped his greatsword and axe.
“That’s it.”
Russell stood up. He pushed himself off the wall of the structure he had smashed into, revealing a clean view in front of him. That was the path he had wrecked.
The street, which had previously been congested with lanes, fences, walls, buildings, and spaces between buildings, was now wide open. And it was burning.
In the distance, the giant who had descended from the Lord’s Castle ruins was approaching Russell. Buildings crumbled with a roar as the giant approached, surrounded by flames, black smoke, and ash.
A big shadow crossed the sky at that exact moment. Russell glanced up and recognized what it was. The dragon, Aellasis, had white scales and horns.
A dragon with a long, sleek body, four limbs, two sets of wings, and a long tail was flying over the sky.
The giant standing among the ruins exclaimed in amazement when he saw the dragon.
[Dragon……? How?]
There was no response. The dragon hovered high in the sky, motionless. The beautiful up-and-down movement of its two sets of wings, which lifted its gigantic shape aloft, appeared to defy physical rules.
Wooooosh……!
A surge of invisible force emerged from the dragon, producing a transparent sphere. The displaced air, together with the rising dust, became white and caused a localized sonic boom.
The buildings hit by the shockwave crumbled, flattening the creatures lurking inside.
Crack!
A strand of electricity was connected between the dragon’s huge horns. Soon, the white strand of electricity rose like a lightning rod, rising into the sky. The single spark of lightning that struck the gloomy sky quickly turned it a pale blue.
Boom, crackle, bang!
Deafening thunderclaps shook the earth. The dragon’s mana and the mana in the atmosphere combined, causing the air to ripple and the sky to churn.
The flashes of lightning, which had glowed red in the sky full of storm clouds, turned white and blue under the influence of Aellasis’s mana. The flashes of lightning in the storm clouds turned into beams of light, splitting into dozens of rays, and plunged toward the ground.
The lightning bolts, which resembled light branches, impacted the dragon rather than the ground. Aellasis looked to be connected by dozens of white lightning flashes, much like a power line.
A large amount of electricity stretched out like a mandala, illuminating the city sky. The metropolis, which had been buried in the shadows caused by the cloudy clouds, had lost its original hue and turned pale, bathed in white light.
The dragon opened its mouth. It rotated, generating a humming sound as if poised to unleash a bolt of lightning.
Faced with such enormous force, the giant roared and lifted both hands. Its two arms came together to form a gigantic pillar of flesh, and its hands spread out like petals, producing a strange configuration with fingers pointing in all directions.
A massive eye opened in the center. As the eye opened, all of the other eyeballs on its body closed and became silent. The eye that had opened in the center of the flesh flower, with its finger-shaped petals, was completely black, and a pale waterfall poured down.
A white pillar plummeted from the sky. The outside wall exploded like an eggshell beneath the unfathomable shock, and the hill that once housed the Lord’s Castle was forced to lower its height.
The energy that had burst through the castle walls appeared to spread like flames, but it immediately turned back on itself, as if it had its own volition, and instead of spreading throughout the city, it congregated in the center.
It seemed as if a god was administering divine punishment, and the electricity was charged with pure mana.
As if to cleanse the ground soiled by the ashen giant, the tainted mana in the areas where the lightning had struck flared up and then dispersed. As soon as the monsters emerged from the shadows, they erupted into flames, turned to ashes, and vanished.
Just when everything appeared to be going pale white, a black line was drawn across the painting.
While everyone else was either turning their heads or stooping down, unable to open their eyes adequately to dodge the lightning, Russell was the only one who saw it.
The lightning had struck the giant directly. However, the giant was also able to strike the dragon with its own attack, which it had created by transforming its body.
“Kaaah…!”
The dragon was falling. The left wing of the two pairs of wings that had allowed it to float in the air had been blown away.
The cross-section of the wing, which had been cleanly severed by the black line, was engulfed in a black flame, engulfing its body.
Russell drew on his mana as he saw the dragon fall. Purple mana appeared around his body, swirling like an aura.
Boom!
As he pushed off with his legs, the structure he was standing on fell completely. Russell used the recoil to shoot up like a meteor and land right where the dragon was about to fall.
Clang!
At the same time, a mountain of ice emerged from the ground. The iceberg tilted as it captured the descending dragon, spreading the force of the descent. The iceberg split under the weight of the dragon, but Russell was able to securely grab Aellasis.
“Aella? Wake up.”
The dragon hung its huge head weakly and breathed deeply. Russell jumped up and landed on its back, knowing that getting an answer would be tough.
As he noticed, the black flames left by the light beam that had sliced through the wing were consuming the dragon’s wing joints and scales.
Russell’s fist hit the black flames. Covered in purple mana, the black flames blazed up even more, attempting to devour his mana as well, but were unable to resist his power and faded.
Russell had just killed the remaining black flames and was ready to turn around when a ray of light pierced through the space, piercing past his huge and dense mana detection.
Russell, instinctively aware of its direction, raised his mana and extended his hand.
Clang!
The ice he had created all around him suddenly rose up, making a massive wall. The beam of light that had flown in immediately clashed with Russell’s ice wall.
Crack!
The beam of light, which had appeared to pause for a second, smashed the ice wall in an instant, reaching Russell’s left hand.
“……!”
Russell gazed at his left hand in excruciating pain. Black mana squirmed, attempting to melt and puncture his palm.
Russell squeezed his fist, crushing the mana, then turned his head.
There was a mass of flesh creeping towards him, its skin melting from the extreme heat and then hardening.
[Ex, ext, ext, heeheehee.]
It was a peculiar, wailing, unintelligible phrase. All of its eyeballs had burst, and crimson fluid flowed down its cheeks like tears.
However, the strange appearance was short-lived. The mass of flesh crawled like a slug, and blood spurted out of its back. Then a massive, muscular hand appeared.
[Ugh, Kahaaaah.]
Dripping a sticky black liquid like oil from its entire body, the creature that emerged from the mass of flesh was a monster that resembled the last giant, albeit about half the size.
A head lacking correct facial characteristics, flesh melting, and bones showing through. The skin, which had turned purple and stiffened, was deeply wrinkled. It had nasty tentacles and black bone wings that had ripped through its back.
[D, Die, die. usurpers. Abominable gods. Dragons that fled…… The world will…… collide……
Was its brain destroyed by lightning? The giant murmured incomprehensible syllables, unable to form a coherent phrase.
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