Chapter 256: Mounted Goat Inn
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 256: Mounted Goat Inn
Intense pink lightning that shook the very foundations of the earth began to rain down upon the Southeast. The massive pink magic circle rotating in the sky voraciously devoured the mana residue floating in the air, processing it into usable energy to unleash a relentless barrage of further spells.
Lightning travels at roughly one-third the speed of light. While Yoo Eon’s movement speed had reached a point where it had to be measured in Mach units, it was still no match for the speed of a lightning strike.
Compared to Yoo Eon, who fluctuated between Mach 5 and 6, the speed of lightning was approximately Mach 290,000. Dodging it by sight alone was near impossible.
However, there were the fleeting openings that appeared just before a spell was cast, the transcendent understanding of magic, and Queen Arachne’s vision that peered into the future. Furthermore, there were the eyes of the Umbra Valkyrie, which always saw through the opponent's weaknesses and suggested the optimal path of movement.
“My goodness...! How incredible...!!”
Yoo Eon easily evaded the vicious lightning strikes that were randomly bombarding the earth, crushing the ground and even obliterating the very legions the Queen had summoned. He no longer bore the semblance of a living creature; he looked more like a sleek fighter jet from the old world.
Had it not been for the red aura flowing strangely over him or the eyes embedded like grotesque beads, one wouldn't have even recognized him as Yoo Eon.
The current weather, with heavy, thick raindrops falling violently, was generally not conducive to flight, but this did not apply to Yoo Eon.
He emitted heat so intense that anything touching him would instantly vaporize. Even if it didn't, as long as he had the mana of the Megido Serpent, he could easily deflect raindrops before they even reached him.
He was even manipulating those raindrops individually, firing them toward the Succubus Queen at the speed of bullets.
In literally the blink of an eye, her physical barriers were shattered, and the Succubus Queen was forced to defend herself without a moment's respite.
“Haaap...!”
Lilith Astaroth channeled mana into the tip of her three-pronged spear and thrust it forward. Three sharp blades of energy, carrying intense destructive power, spun like a whirlwind toward Yoo Eon.
It was a strike imbued with the power of the Succubus Lord. Just before that massive impact could reach Yoo Eon’s body, his form split wide open—up, down, left, and right—letting the attack pass through harmlessly before he pushed forward once again.
Pushed by his pursuing speed, she fired mental collapse magic and powerful destruction magic at Yoo Eon as he drew near, all while managing the mana consumption that was steadily accumulating in her body.
Had she been anything less than the Succubus Lord, she would have collapsed long ago from the sheer intensity.
“Kyahak—?!”
In a flash, Yoo Eon, having completed a powerful combustion twice his usual rate, instantaneously reached hypersonic speeds. His wings tore through the body of the Succubus Queen, Lilith Astaroth, as he passed.
If she hadn't possessed the high status of a Monarch, she would have been turned into a bloody pulp and exploded on the spot. Having consumed a large portion of her remaining mana to barely block the attack, Lilith Astaroth crashed helplessly into the ground.
—Crash!!
It was an incredibly one-sided fight. Even the aerial maneuvers she used to dodge Yoo Eon—who had reached the Mach realm—required her to burn through an amount of mana that an ordinary person couldn't even imagine, every single second.
Yoo Eon, on the other hand, could achieve such speeds simply by decomposing the monster meat and fat he had stored and using it as biological fuel.
After decomposing his body to spread it wide and using air resistance to slow down, Yoo Eon turned only his head in the opposite direction, reconstructed his body, and charged toward Lilith again.
—Rumble!!!
Flying at a low altitude and smashing through dozens of buildings with his body, Yoo Eon tilted himself 90 degrees to the right toward Lilith, who was still pinned to the ground.
Seeing the spot where Lilith lay, still reeling from the aftermath of the impact, he plowed through the ground with her using his vertically aligned, razor-sharp wings.
Yoo Eon only stopped after turning the entire Southeast District into a wasteland. Returning to a human form with arms and limbs, he approached Lilith.
—Crumble....
Extending his hand to rummage through the pile of debris, Yoo Eon grabbed Lilith by the neck and lifted her up.
“Heh, hehehe... That ability is truly unfair...!”
The Succubus Queen hung dangling in the air, her limbs shattered. She had maintained a physical barrier that blocked attacks—attacks even high-grade explorers would find difficult to withstand—hundreds of times per minute for a long duration. All the while, she had been bombarded by the Evil Eye’s paralysis attacks, the Lich’s phantasm attacks, and countless others too numerous to list. She had spent the entire fight merely struggling to defend herself.
“A-Ah.... Why, of all things....”
Heavy raindrops poured over the Succubus Queen’s head, washing away the blood flowing down. Because her mana was completely depleted, her entire body, which had been maintained without a single shallow scratch throughout the battle, was now completely broken.
“Hey, you... Can’t you at least say something...?”
Lilith Astaroth gasped for breath as she looked at Yoo Eon. His expression was impossible to read. No, he had no expression to begin with.
Behind the narrow slits of his face, which was encased in a hard exoskeleton, hundreds of eyeballs were merely calculating her death.
“It’s cold... Do humans live in such cold...?”
She had exhausted all her mana. Lilith knew. She knew that Yoo Eon hadn't gone all out at all.
Having lost his emotions, he had used the minimum amount of resources to produce the maximum result. Following his design, Lilith had been forced into a continuous, grueling aerial dogfight that gnawed away at her mana until she suffered a pathetic defeat.
The mana protecting her body and the status she held as the Succubus Lord were gone. All that remained was a fragile body, shattered bones, blood continuously seeping out from internal and external bleeding, and the cold midnight downpour.
Drenched in the rain through her tattered, thin clothing, she couldn't help but feel the cold. Soon, she felt the sensation of something crawling up from her toes, enveloping her body.
“Haa... Perfect.... So this is how I die....”
With Lilith completely sealed within the warm, crimson walls of flesh, the connection to the Demon Realm was severed, and the situation came to an end.
“Store.”
* * *
The black-bodied monsters with pink eyes and massive frames—the legion of the Succubus Queen, whose identity as either Beast Species or Demon Species remained uncertain—instantly stopped crossing over to the surface.
The forces located near the corpse disposal site, where the entrance to the Demon Realm had opened, vanished as if sucked into a black hole. With that, the expansion of the monster army ravaging Calax ceased.
Numerous high-grade explorers fought directly at the Southeastern boundary, while lower-grade explorers struggled in the rear to support them.
The mages of the Page of Arcana, who had been mobilized from the edge of the Northeast to the Southeastern boundary, moved as quickly as possible to begin the restoration of the Teleportation Gateway.
Because the Southeast was so damn vast, many remnants of the legion Lilith had summoned still remained inside.
For the next three days, a chaotic atmosphere persisted in Calax as they dealt with the many remnants still in the Southeast and proceeded with the restoration of the ruined city.
Lilith had died at Yoo Eon’s hands around five in the morning. After a long battle lasting six hours, it ended before dawn.
Murit Denshter, an Orichalcum-grade explorer dispatched by the Guild Headquarters to investigate the truth of the incident, arrived late, just as the sun was setting again.
He listened to the full story at the Calax Branch of the Explorer’s Guild while raining arrows down upon the swarming monsters of uncertain identity amidst the horrific ruins of the Southeast.
“I had my suspicions, but I thought a Labyrinth Opening had occurred.”
What else could cause a disaster of the magnitude where a Gateway was completely destroyed in a Labyrinth City? This was a place where thousands of powerful explorers resided and where the city's infrastructure had developed exponentially to match.
It was something difficult to explain unless it was a Labyrinth Opening. Since the actual situation was similar, his guess was mostly correct.
The Southwestern front, where the Northwestern explorers had come down to hold the boundary, had been pushed back about 1km from its original position near the Southeast. As a result, the buildings within that range were completely destroyed. Without Soles Getia’s efforts, even this level of defense would have been difficult.
The Northeastern boundary was in decent shape, except for about three blocks of buildings that were damaged, thanks to the tearful support of the Page of Arcana.
The biggest problem was that the interior of the Southeast was completely devastated, save for a few areas on the outskirts.
“Lymain will provide financial support.”
“R-Really?!”
The Calax Branch of the Explorer’s Guild had already been indebted to the Lymain family once. They were grateful enough that the family had used their authority to pressure the prideful Northwestern explorers into the battlefield.
‘If this happens, Lymain’s influence within Calax will...’
The manager of the Northwestern Explorer’s Guild worried, but there was no other way.
The beggars rescued by Yoo Eon in the Southeast were a highly efficient workforce who would move their bodies even if given only cheap wheat bread and water. If they were guaranteed a future where they were provided with jobs and proper rights in the reconstructed buildings, their efficiency would double.
With the disappearance of Lilith Astaroth, the Succubus Queen, from the surface, the Guild Headquarters and all of Calax, where her influence had reached even slightly, were in an uproar.
Thinking back on it now, the level of favor they had felt was strange. They were clearly bad people, so why had they acted so complacently?
“Brainwashing... how terrifying....”
“Could it still be happening?”
“Dumbass. You think it’s been lifted?”
For a while, stories that ‘the brainwashing still hasn't been lifted’ circulated through Calax like urban legends.
And so, eight days after the incident, the Gateway was reactivated. The Southeast was still in a state of ruin, and remnants of the legion were frequently seen in the center, where the army had been most numerous.
Despite this, the Gateway was suddenly opened because the restoration was complete.
Around the time rumors were spreading across the surface that Calax was ruined, the Golden Glove Syndicate acted quickly to change public opinion to ‘Calax is overflowing with jobs.’ It wasn't exactly a lie, as the Lymain family, having secured finances with the support of the Golden Glove Syndicate, was spreading bread and meat and exerting their influence within Calax.
“W-What is all this?!”
On the second day of the Gateway’s opening, the group from the Mounted Goat Inn and Theodora safely crossed over to Calax. They checked the inn just in case, and fortunately, there was no damage as far as the inner part of the Southwest.
Instead, there was Ravi, weeping bitterly as she looked at her former home, which had been completely demolished. Since it was originally located close to the Southeast, it had vanished without a trace.
“Uwaaaah... My fifty gold coins...!!”
Leaving Ravi’s screams behind, they visited the Mounted Goat Inn for the first time in a long while. Inside, a young man was waiting for them.
“Welcome. This is the Mounted Goat Inn.”