Chapter 288 Independence -17
Chapter 288 Independence -17
Alex, his face drained of all color, stared at the beast the size of a house.
"A woman built like a mountain. She's going to have a hard time finding a husband."
Jiha's mockery went unheard as Alex charged straight for the monster.
A wide-open back. Jiha took aim and swung his sword, but at that moment Alex's body turned transparent and the blade cut through empty air.
The Intangibility ability Heinrich had demonstrated. But with a Unique's Mana reserves, forcing through it with sheer Mana like before was out of the question.
As Jiha observed warily, Alex kept running for the monster.
People being trampled by the creature, dying, turned their pleading faces toward Alex the instant they saw him.
"Ah..."
"P-please, Lord Alex..."
Even after witnessing Alex's indiscriminate slaughter, they still couldn't accept his true nature.
No—with that mindless horror right in front of them, anyone would beg for help, no matter who it was.
"Grrrrr!"
The moment Alex closed in, the monster raised a forepaw and slammed it down without hesitation.
But Alex activated his Intangibility, let the attack pass through, phased straight through the monster's body, and slipped out of the party hall entirely.
The evasive power of Intangibility was remarkably useful.
Killing that thing is going to be a pain...
Intangibility consumes a massive amount of Mana.
Heinrich had been killable because his Mana was finite, but a Unique's Mana was virtually infinite, letting them sustain the ability indefinitely.
With Alex gone, a pall of silence, terror, and despair settled over the party hall.
"A-ahhh..."
Laments from people forced to admit that Alex had abandoned them and fled, that he had never been someone to trust or follow.
And despair as they faced the monster before them.
"GRROOOAAARR!"
Frustrated after letting Alex slip away, the three-headed monster bellowed and stomped down on people with its feet.
Screaming, people scrambled in every direction to dodge.
Those too injured to move properly were sent flying by its forepaws or crushed flat and burst like overripe fruit.
Death was being manufactured on a massive scale, one horrific scene after another.
"KRAAHHH!"
Even as the monster roared, blood splashed across the party entrance, and people shrieked for their lives, Jiha remained coldly detached.
These were the fools who'd refused him even when he'd given them a choice.
"So what is that thing?"
"A Monster."
A voice from behind. Jiha turned to look.
Down on one knee and gasping for breath, Lowchen looked utterly wrecked.
Yogwi skin was naturally pale, but now it resembled wax.
The price of moving recklessly with severe injuries.
"Monster?"
"All the various races banished beyond the dimensional boundary during the Thousand-Year War. Ouroboros has been conducting experiments to summon those races back."
"Right. You threw yourself into Ouroboros to summon Shade."
"It was the most effective method."
Lowchen gave a clipped explanation.
"From what I know, that's a Chimera. A savage Monster."
"Warsland has plenty of races already. What's the difference between them and Monsters?"
"Look in front of you."
Squelch. Crunch. Gnash.
The sounds from ahead made Jiha frown.
The Chimera was devouring corpses like a starved beast.
Its left lion head opened its mouth to chew a body while the snake head on its tail lunged at a fleeing girl.
A young girl who had likely come with her parents could do nothing as she was sucked into the black serpent's maw.
Eaten alive, eaten dead.
"AAAAARGH!"
"KYAAAAH! AAAAH!"
The people being devoured screamed, and those who saw it foamed at the mouth and screamed too.
The mere sight of a person being eaten alive was enough to make one's legs buckle with sheer terror.
It was, in every sense, a meal.
"No race in Warsland eats people. But Monsters do. In fact, people are their staple food."
"Then coexistence is impossible..."
The spectacle of the living being devoured alongside the dead. Hundreds of powerless people were paralyzed by fear.
Witnessing friends, parents, and children not merely killed by a giant Monster but eaten was so profoundly shocking that no one could move.
Crunch. Craaack.
The only sound echoing through the silence was bones snapping and flesh being chewed inside the Chimera's mouths.
Hundreds of people, steeped in despair and terror, couldn't even manage a groan.
They could only pray that their own turn would come late. Or, perhaps, that it would come quickly.
"You idiots."
Jiha walked through the midst of the paralyzed crowd.
The naked insult made everyone's eyes instinctively turn toward him.
Even with their families and friends being killed and eaten before their eyes, they found themselves following that voice.
That was how much fury it carried.
"If you have power, fight. If you don't have power, fight anyway. Anyone with no will to fight can die or not—I don't care either way."
Walking forward, Jiha spoke with a sharp edge.
There were children among them. Old people too. The vast majority had no Mana.
None of that mattered.
"Whatever kind of hotshot any of you were before, I don't give a damn anymore. Starting tonight, the era has changed."
The terror-stricken gazes converged on Jiha.
He was the only one standing tall, striding fearlessly toward the people-eating abomination.
While everyone else had collapsed, he alone remained on his feet and walked forward.
"A-are you going to save us?"
Someone scraped together the courage to ask.
Courage? Jiha sneered.
"I gave you a chance earlier, and you're the ones who kicked it away. So what makes you so precious that I'd save you now?"
"M-money! We'll give you as much as you want!"
The bank president shouted, drawing a derisive laugh from Jiha.
"Sure. Next corpse."
"D-do you need a woman?"
The voice alone was lovely, but Jiha didn't even glance her way as he sneered.
"If you don't want to die a virgin, go fuck the guy next to you right now."
"Th-then what in the world do you want?!"
Someone finally burst out. They were offering money and women, and Jiha was ignoring it all.
Only then did Jiha stop walking and turn around.
Under that terrifyingly cold stare, everyone shut their mouths.
They were all members of high society, each in their own field. They had no experience being looked at like lowlifes.
Because not even a Unique would dare be so brazenly rude to them.
"Everything."
"..."
"Everything in this world."
Jiha calmly laid out his ambition.
"If you want to kneel beneath me and keep breathing, give me all of it. Your lives, your fortunes, your bodies, your hearts—hand everything over to me. We'll talk after that."
"What—"
"Do you think you have any right to make demands of me? Do you think this is still that kind of era?"
Jiha spoke steadily, the man-eating monster at his back.
The sheer surreality of the scene made hundreds of people shiver with dread.
Behind him, a beast the size of a house was digging into corpses and chewing them to pulp.
A Common stood upright with that monster right under his nose, speaking to them.
A single word surfaced in the minds of everyone who saw that man.
Hero.
"You think the peaceful era you've enjoyed up to now is just going to keep rolling along?"
Confronted with a monster that ate people, no one could answer.
Jiha spoke.
"Last chance. If you want to follow me and push through this age, if you're ready to give up everything, get up on your own two feet and hide behind Tonikang. If you survive that way, I'll be generous and work you to the bone as my slaves."
Words of outrageous arrogance. By all rights, the people who were practically nobles of society should have bristled, but none dared to.
The man before them had the right.
Because he stood alone, ahead of everyone else.
"If you want to live, stand up."
With those words, Jiha turned back around.
The Chimera, wholly absorbed in devouring corpses, finally noticed Jiha approaching and glared at him.
From the way Alex mentioned Gashiel, this thing must have been the Gatekeeper. Which means Barjet succeeded... Is she dead? No, she probably evaded it.
Either way, this was an opponent he hadn't planned for, and a gigantic monster at that.
Let's give this a real try.
Resolve firming inside him, Jiha gripped his sword. At that, the Chimera's lion head drew in a huge breath... and opened its mouth.
Fire poured forth!
A breath attack. At the unexpected assault, Jiha threw himself sideways to dodge, planted a hand on the ground, and charged at the Chimera on a diagonal line.
"KYAAAAAHH!"
Screams rang out as the stray breath engulfed the people behind him.
That was the end for those who had heard Jiha's words and still failed to move fast enough.
Even as he charged, Jiha kept his guard up. Sure enough, the snake head attached to the tail opened its jaws and lunged at him.
A mouth big enough to swallow a person whole in a single bite!
"You stink."
Anticipating it, Jiha swung his wreathed Wind Blade vertically without a trace of panic.
A powerful Special Ability that ignored defense. The snake head that came at him with its mouth wide open was sliced clean in half, from upper jaw to lower jaw, in an instant.
"KUEEEEGH!"
The vertically bisected head rolled around, shrieking in agony.
Even then, the snake's body came whipping at Jiha like a lash.
Jiha quickly deployed his Wings to evade, coated his blade with Wind Blade once more, and swung.
Slick!
The enormous serpent, its body easily over two meters in diameter, was lopped off with a snap and went rolling.
The completely severed head thrashed like a fish out of water, spraying scarlet blood everywhere.
"GRAAAGH!"
The Chimera, its tail still half intact, roared in fury and swung a forepaw at Jiha.
He was just about to counter... when a black hole suddenly yawned open in front of the forepaw, and the limb plunged into it.
Then the forepaw erupted from a hole that opened right next to the Chimera's lion head and smashed squarely into its own face.
WHAM!
A bizarre sight: the monster clocked itself in the head with its own furious strike.
The Special Ability was Blink—one Jiha knew well and used himself.
Behind the monster's body, Barjet stood drenched in cold sweat.
"G-get out of here, quick!"
"You're alive. Good work."
Jiha smiled, making Barjet stamp her foot in agitation.
The Chimera, briefly stunned with its bell rung, turned its anger toward Barjet.
"Hik?!"
Though visibly terrified, Barjet swiftly raised her Mana and readied a response.
Seeing that, it was clear she hadn't fled; she had dealt with something else and then pursued the Chimera.
As Barjet laid down a Blink defense in front of her and tried to open another near the Chimera, Jiha moved.
How dare it turn its body away from him.
"What, are you an idiot too?"
Jiha leaped up lightly and again slashed down with his Wind Blade-wreathed sword.
The Chimera, about to attack Barjet, belatedly noticed Jiha's leap and tried to open its mouth and bite him, but—
"You're way too small to eat me."
The Wind Blade-coated sword punched through the lion head's gaping jaw, from the left corner of its mouth all the way to the right.
Its cheeks cleanly split in a vertical bisection, the lion head could no longer close its mouth, and fountains of blood gushed out.
Unsatisfied, Jiha grabbed the lush lion's mane as he dropped, then flung his body sideways again.
The goat head started in shock at the acrobatic assault, but Jiha had already wrapped his sword in Wind Blade again and brought it down on a diagonal.
SHLUNK!
The massive head flew off with a ghastly sound. Ignoring the blood cascading like a fountain, Jiha spread his Wings.
The man who unfurled demonic wings, drenched in a spray of blood, glared at the Monster.
The final remaining lion head's eyes flew wide open. It was a creature that feasted on people, but the little human before it was an entirely different existence.
An existence whose own head would fly off if it tried to swallow him.
Belatedly realizing this, the Chimera's final head met Jiha's swung sword.
A head soaring into the air. A colossal body collapsing to the ground.
The one being devoured was the monster.