NOVPUB
Chapter 258
Everything changed suddenly.
“N-no!” Sita shouted.
The shadow soldiers who had been battling the birds were thrown into confusion as the colossal dome-shaped barrier surrounding Elvenwood turned ashen.
“Something has happened to our master!” Sita shouted.
“Everyone, return to him immediately!” Que called.
The soldiers quickly halted and turned their attention toward the city, but they were struck with a shocking realization when they tried to enter. The translucent barrier had allowed Suho and his companions to pass through earlier, but it was now repelling them.
Frustration and urgency filled their expressions.
“This isn’t good! The barrier, it’s...”
“It’s refusing to let us through!”
“Break through by force!”
“Our master is in danger inside!”
The shadow soldiers unleashed their full strength against the barrier, attempting to destroy it.
It was a wasted effort. The surface rippled like water, deflecting their strikes without so much as cracking.
“O-oh no! Our attacks are useless!”
The massive barrier seemed to have severed the area within from Earth itself. The verdant city was still clearly visible, but it was now separated like it existed in an entirely different dimension.
“Don’t stop your attacks!”
“We must get through somehow!”
Relentlessly, the soldiers continued throwing their might against the barrier.
“Harmakan!”
“Where is Harmakan?”
Desperate cries for Harmakan rang out among the soldiers. Indeed, this was precisely the moment his services were needed.
As they called out, Que responded with a grim voice, “He is not here. He went inside with Master!”
“What?!” Sita thundered. “Then are we to remain here, waiting helplessly for them to open their doors?!”
Though the soldiers raged in frustration, they did not cease their assault on the barrier.
They couldn’t simply give up. Their highest priority—the very purpose of the shadow army—was Suho’s safety.
From behind them, however, came an ominous sound—the screeching of possessed birds. The creatures swarmed toward the shadow soldiers, taking advantage of their distraction.
Que clenched his teeth in anger. “Was this their plan all along, to separate us from our master?”
“If so, they’ve played us perfectly. I never thought this was the purpose of the barrier!” Sita shouted, exploding with anger.
Still, something about the situation felt off.
“It doesn’t make any sense. How could they have prepared a trap like this if they didn’t know we were coming? Why did they do it?”
It was difficult to understand. Suho had found this place purely by accident, so how had the high elves orchestrated this?
“There must be another reason for this barrier,” Sita concluded. “Those who occupy the city must have created it for some other purpose.”
He tore through a flock of spirit birds with one hand and leaped skyward. From the highest vantage point, he folded his arms, surveying the vast expanse of the barrier and the area below.
His eyes narrowed. “I knew it. There’s more to this than meets the eye.”
“What do you mean?” Que asked.
With a flap of his wings, he had joined Sita and was following his line of sight.
After a moment, Que’s eyes gleamed with understanding. Only from this altitude could they see the true landscape hidden beneath the giant tree’s dense canopy.
“Ah, I see it now. This entire area was a city once.”
Que was not referring to the green city within the barrier. There were traces of a massive human city having existed outside the barrier as well.
“Let’s see now...”
Before becoming a shadow soldier, Que was once Lee Minsung, a Korean man. Tracing the geography of the Korean Peninsula in his mind, he guessed at their current location, and his eyes flashed.
“That’s it! This was Kaesong. The region had giant industrial facilities.”
North Korea was devastated during the Great Cataclysm, its land razed by countless dungeon breaks. The lush forest in this area had grown from the deaths of the countless people who perished here.
However, there was something that didn’t seem to fit.
“I don’t see any human remains anywhere,” Que noted.
“Indeed. I find that to be strange as well.”
Sita had once roamed India’s vast field dungeons as the notorious Siddharth Bachchan, and he was all too familiar with such scenarios.
“In field dungeons, the corpses left behind are usually devoured by beasts, though not completely. Here, not a single bone remains. Magic beasts aren’t that tidy. It doesn’t make sense that nothing is visible at all.”
“They couldn’t have disintegrated completely in just two years, either,” Que added.
It was estimated that more than ten million North Koreans had perished when the Great Cataclysm broke out as they were unable to flee the country. It would have been unnatural for all traces of so many bodies to vanish entirely. Not even their bones remained.
“Did they actually manage to get away, then?” Que mused.
“Sure, there must have been awakened survivors. But remnants of the dead would still be scattered everywhere,” Sita replied. “Even if the mist took them, there would be mounds of ash.”
“So that means...”
“Someone intentionally collected the corpses. I’m sure of it. Perhaps they even took people who were still alive.”
“Looks like we’ve got work to do for our master.”
Que and Sita exchanged determined looks.
“We dragonkin will continue to strike the barrier,” Sita said.
“Then we will handle searching the ruined industrial zones. We are sure to find something that will be of use,” Que said.
“Are you sure you can manage?”
“Of course. You may not believe me, but I used to scour the earth for Stardust back in the day.”
“Well, I’ve got a thing or two to say myself about that—”
Que sneered. “What is this, a bragging contest? We can switch roles if you’d like.”
“You know what? Let’s just cut the chatter and get started.”
The two former villains glared at each other with barely concealed disdain, then flew off in opposite directions. They both despised those of their own kind.
***
Meanwhile, within the barrier, the once serene city had transformed into a field of brambles and thorns. The dried grass erupted with sharp wooden spikes that lunged at Suho and his party.
“Squirm all you like, insects!” Fores shouted.
Thick, barbed roots shot forth, writhing and twisting like serpents. They slithered through the earth, bursting upward with startling force, then coiling and snapping as if alive.
“But there is nowhere for you to run!”
The high elves launched their own attacks in unison. Their pale, smooth arms elongated into tree-like branches, snapping through the air like whips.
The elves’ elegant, slender fingers had transformed into splintered twigs, sharp and jagged. They clawed the earth with violent force.
From every direction came more grotesque attacks. They were chaotic, relentless, and descending on Suho’s party all at the same time.
Suho and the others were trapped in the center of the assault, but they were quick to react.
“Suho!”
Haein raised the Demon King’s Longsword in the air, her eyes gleaming blue.
“Step aside for a moment, please.”
Storm of White Flames.
Despite the absence of clouds in the sky, lightning and thunder began to rain down on the thorns.
At that moment, the high elves’ faces became unsettled as they fiercely charged forward.
“What is this energy?”
“White Flames?!”
There were some things that they could actually sense better without eyes. As they had plucked out their own eyeballs to replace them with Stones of the Outer Gods, the elves could instantly recognize the weapon in Haein’s grasp.
[Item: Demon King’s Longsword]
[Acquisition Difficulty: S
Type: Sword
Attack Power +350
A longsword that contains the power of Baran, the King of Demons.
The “Storm of White Flames” effect activates every time it is swung.
Effect “Storm of White Flames”: Creates a storm of endless lightning within a given area.]
They were astonished.
“How is this possible?”
“Baran must have died long ago!”
“How did a Monarch’s artifact land in this human’s hands?”
Though Baran was gone, the hallmark of his power, the Storm of White Flames, now resided with Haein.
She moved fluidly, her strikes almost like a dance as she combined Sword Dance with the white flames. Hundreds of streaks of lightning exploded outward, splitting and shattering as they struck every corner of the battlefield.
“I’ve kept my power in check!” she shouted to Suho. “I’ve learned a thing or two about using this sword.”
Haein had earned many nicknames in her lifetime, but there was one that was particularly famous—the Training Addict. She had been a world-class athlete and one of South Korea’s top S-rank hunters. With the unmatched discipline she had cultivated, she had put herself through an incredible amount of training with the Demon King’s Longsword while killing time in the Grave of the Dragons.
“I’ve spread the attack lightly over a wide area. It’ll induce a status effect across the field. The rest I leave to you,” she said.
Conserving one’s mana was essential when dealing with an overwhelming number of enemies. At the same time, it ensured Suho could reap all experience points available.
He stepped through the cascading lightning, his eyes ablaze with the flames of hell.
“Burn,” he commanded.
The shadow blanketing Elvenwood ignited and began to smolder.
Suho mocked the high elves as he stood amid the burning shadows.
“You’re nothing but firewood.”
The high elves were enraged.
“How dare you!”
“You creations who deny the will of the spirits!”
“Surrender your bodies as nutrients!”
“Rise up, Elvenwood!”
It seemed that “Elvenwood” referred to the massive tree that stood at the center of the city.
The tree responded, its roots tearing through the ground as an earthquake rippled outward. At its base, Fores let out a crazed laugh.
“Hilarious, Child of Shadow!” he bellowed.
“We have taken the bodies of the high elves!”
“No one but a Monarch can defeat us—”
“As I was saying...” Suho interrupted.
He bared his teeth in a grin, and a dark red energy began to swirl, gathering toward him.
Fores’ expression twisted in alarm as the Stones of the Outer Gods conveyed the vision to him.
“W-wait. This energy... It can’t be!”
“It can,” Suho replied.
“But you’re the child of the Shadow Monarch!”
“Well, it’s a long story.”
[Skill: “Breath of Destruction” has activated.]
For the high elves, the shock of seeing Baran’s White Flames was only the beginning.
The destructive flames of Antares burst forth in a straight line toward the giant tree, Elvenwood, leaving the elves in a state of shock and awe.
“Noooo!”
They poured all their strength into one last desperate assault as they lunged at Suho.
He met their charge, Kamish’s Wraths in his hands.
He was using a new move he had learned, a small gift that Jinho had entrusted to Beru. Jinho had acquired a rune stone after squeezing South Korea’s large guilds dry for his nephew’s sake, and now Suho was finally putting the skill it contained to use.
[Skill: “Mutilation” has activated.]
