Chapter 141: Demise
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 141: Demise
The dragon hated humans.
It especially couldn't stand the sight of a mere human acting so cocky before it. Fortunately, the dragon had many ways to kill humans.
A body larger than most buildings, muscles that allowed it to move that body without issue, scales stronger than steel, and so on.
Among them, its most confident weapon was its breath. The most powerful fire, fueled by magic power, that could incinerate the land.
When the dragon unleashed its breath, the human couldn't even react and was swept away by it. Behold. A human is just a human. A being destined to be crushed and disappear like a bug...
─What?
“I told you. I'm invincible.”
Yohan, who had taken a direct hit from the Dragon Breath yet emerged completely unscathed without a single scorch mark on his clothes, casually brushed off some embers and walked toward the Malyong.
“Are you a little slow? Do you not know what the word 'invincible' means?”
─You insolent bastard.
Flap-! Provoked by Yohan’s taunt, the Malyong soared high into the sky. Then, it ripped off the roofs of nearby buildings and hurled them down.
A bombardment of immense mass targeted Yohan, but he just stood there nonchalantly, picking his ear.
“Teacher, are you all right?”
“Yohan, you…”
“Hmm─ you seem fine. We can catch up later, then.”
After reuniting with his teacher, Yohan exchanged brief greetings before turning his gaze back to the Malyong.
The magic of immortality surrounding his body. It was a spell that made him invincible, but it wasn't permanent.
The caster of this spell was Regina, and naturally, she had told him she couldn't maintain it for very long.
'Awakening or not, the lack of sustainability is a real drawback...'
Through her Awakening, Regina could reproduce the records of other witches. She could imitate the magic of any witch whose record existed.
However, this wasn't an all-powerful ability. To use another witch's magic, she needed a two-step process: reproduce the other witch using the magic of records, and then use the reproduced witch's magic.
In other words, she had to consume twice the magic power of other witches. This was why Yohan couldn't drag things out into a long battle.
“So, let's end this quickly. You damn lizard.”
─Do you flaunt a power that isn't even your own!
The Malyong roared and threw another building at Yohan. An overwhelming, one-sided assault of hurling buildings while flying in the sky.
For a creature bound to the ground, it was an absurdly overwhelming form of violence. Even if he could jump up and catch the flying lizard, it could simply fly higher.
So Yohan tapped his chest twice. Immediately, a hidden suit materialized.
It was a custom-made Battle Suit by Makina, hidden in a Subspace with Margaret's magic.
“You're dead.”
The back of the suit opened, and energy fueled by the reactor in its chest began to blast out. Successfully launching his 0.1-ton weight high into the sky, Yohan changed direction and flew straight toward the Malyong.
The Malyong watched the tiny human flying toward it and thought it looked like a gnat.
─They've certainly developed a lot. These gnats.
But it felt no fear. It was the Malyong. The one who sings of humanity's demise. Nothing made by humans could harm it.
─I'll swallow you in one gulp.
The Malyong opened its maw wide, swallowed the approaching Yohan whole, and then fired its breath.
The inside of the Malyong's mouth began to roast from its own breath. But the dragon swallowed the pain and snapped its teeth at where Yohan should be.
Clack, clack- Its teeth slammed together, making a sharp noise. But Yohan was nowhere inside its mouth. The Malyong smacked its lips, thinking Yohan must have melted completely.
─Ugh!?
At that moment, the Malyong felt a searing pain rising from its stomach and grimaced. That's right. Yohan was no longer in its mouth.
He had long since traveled down its esophagus and into its stomach.
─This damn bug!
It never imagined he would withstand the breath it had unleashed inside its own mouth. At this realization, the Malyong's fury reached the heavens.
Its fury soon turned to action. The Malyong began to rampage indiscriminately, destroying the city.
“Aren't you underestimating me a little too much?”
And then, in the middle of its destructive rampage, the Malyong was slammed down to the ground. Startled by the force pulling it down, it jerked its head up.
Its arch-enemy, the Great Witch Evangeline, was there.
─Witch-! Do not interfere!
“Shut up─ and die quietly.”
─Sun Eater! Fallen Angel! Skull Collector! What are you all doing! Stop her, now!
After letting out a roar powerful enough to shake the entire city, the Malyong belatedly realized that the monsters it had summoned were fighting something in the distance.
Through its draconic vision, it saw the monsters were fighting witches. Witches who had appeared from who knows where…
Evangeline must have noticed this too, because she grinned and immediately closed in on the Malyong.
“Looks like you're all alone now.”
─Witch! Did you not hate humans as well!
“True, I'm not very fond of humans. But you see…”
Evangeline stared at the Malyong with a calm expression.
“The thing I love most is also human.”
Immediately after, countless spells from Evangeline shot toward the Malyong.
'It's clean inside...'
The moment he burrowed into the Malyong's stomach, Yohan realized his suit's purification system was going haywire.
Well, it made sense. This place was probably filled with things that had been sealed away for hundreds, maybe even thousands of years, never expelled, only left to rot.
In an instant, the suit's purification system exceeded its limit and broke down with a pop.
'The smell...'
The moment the purification system shut down, Yohan felt a wave of nausea from the piercing stench. He knew the smell couldn't actually harm him, but it was still unbearable.
After suffering from the stench for a short while, Yohan eventually grew accustomed to it and moved deeper inside.
'A dragon or whatever, in the end, it's just a living creature...'
No matter if it was a great dragon or a being that would destroy the world, it was ultimately a creature with a brain that thinks and a heart that beats to send blood throughout its body.
In other words, if a vital spot like the brain or heart was destroyed, it would die without question.
That's why Yohan had come inside the Malyong. To kill it from within.
Woooooong─!
Naturally, the inside of a living creature was full of dangers meant to kill intruders. Things like intestinal muscles trying to force him out, or stomach acid trying to dissolve him whole.
Evading all these dangers, Yohan moved deeper, cutting through the Malyong's internal organs—its vital spots—in search of its heart.
After all, a dragon's heart was the most famous weak point, appearing in almost every form of media since the fantasy stories of old.
'Where is it.'
A place where magic power raged. Finding the heart inside a dragon's body, which was larger than most buildings, was quite a difficult task. It wasn't as if there was a convenient path leading from the mouth to the heart.
When he finally reached the heart's location─ Yohan gulped as he saw the massive heart beating before him.
'Crazy, what the...'
The heart was enormous. Perhaps as large as the Malyong's head. And, of course, he couldn't even get close to it.
Approaching a heart that generated infinite magic power meant he had to break through the pressure of that infinite magic.
After a brief attempt nearly sent him flying away with a single heartbeat─ Yohan sat down and tried to figure out a way to destroy the heart.
'...It's not that there isn't a way.'
Yohan quickly found a way to approach the heart. He just had to use his Magic Nullification.
No matter how powerful the magic, it could be nullified by his ability─.
However, there was a huge problem.
'The immortality magic will be nullified too.'
His Magic Nullification wasn't a convenient skill that could selectively nullify things. It was a one-way magic that erased everything it touched.
It was impossible to eliminate only the pressure of the magic power pushing him back while maintaining the immortality spell.
'Did I come in here for nothing?'
Yohan let out a wry chuckle. Thinking he had no other choice, he prepared to jump up. The fact that the Malyong wasn't taking any measures against him, even though he was inside, meant his teacher and the other witches were fighting hard outside.
He couldn't let those witches down. Besides, even if he just sat here and waited, Regina's magic power would eventually run out, and the immortality spell would disappear anyway.
If it was going to disappear anyway, it was better to make use of it before it was gone.
'Here I go.'
Tensing his leg muscles to their limit, Yohan leaped from his spot. At the same time, the magic power erupting from the heart reached him, and the moment it did, Yohan activated his Magic Nullification.
─Kuuuuung-!
The Malyong's internal pressure, the stench, the stomach acid—everything that had been unable to kill him now rushed in to do so.
Enduring all the pain, Yohan finally reached the heart.
“Hnngh-!”
Die, you damn lizard.
Yohan's fist pierced the heart.
─Cough…!?
The Malyong, locked in a fierce battle with Evangeline, couldn't hide its shock as blood spurted from its mouth.
Just now, its heart had stopped. Its body, which should never have been felled by a human, had been wounded by one.
'How, in the world?'
The Malyong felt a sense of bewilderment before it belatedly realized the truth.
It had thought Evangeline was its arch-enemy, but that wasn't the case. Its true arch-enemy was the bug-like human it had just swallowed.
The dragon falls. The Demise of Humanity meets its own demise.
Kuuuung-! As the Malyong crashed to the ground, Evangeline, remembering Yohan was inside, flew over in a panic.
“Yohan!”
The scales, which had been highly resistant to magic, lost their luster and strength, and Evangeline easily tore open the Malyong's chest.
A moment later, Evangeline pulled Yohan out from the Malyong's chest. Completely ignoring the stench and hydrochloric acid emanating from his body, she hugged him tightly.
“Yohan, Yohan!”
“Heh, heheh. Teacher.”
Yohan, who was on the verge of death, felt the warmth of Evangeline's embrace and managed a faint smile.
“I... I smell.”
“It's okay, I don't care about that...!”
“Right, because you're my teacher.”
Yohan calmly looked up at the sky. In the distance, with the fall of the Malyong, the other monsters were also dying off one by one.
“It's over.”
The monsters' rebellion was over. The age of humans had come once again.
Which meant─ the time had come when he could freely build relationships with the witches.
At that realization, Yohan quietly closed his eyes.