Chapter 213
Translator: Vine
Chapter: 213
Chapter Title: Drake vs. Twin-Headed Ogre
The area near the castle gate, where Eugene had first revealed himself after transforming into a drake, was in utter chaos.
“Get out of the way! Move it!”
“Uwaaaah!”
As countless crowds were scrambling to flee the capital, creating pandemonium, Prince Rokarop returned from the royal castle and grabbed Viscount Horei, who was running around frantically.
“Viscount! Hear me out for a moment!”
“Ugh! Viscount! It’s an emergency right now…….”
Even though they were the prince’s entourage, Viscount Horei, who had no spare capacity to look after him in this situation, tried to shake off his hand.
“It’s not that—right now, there are knights hired separately by Your Highness waiting nearby!”
“What!? Is that true!?”
“Even though we’re from another country, we can’t just sit by and watch this crisis unfold, can we? His Highness wishes to aid King Kailer. So, may I call in the knights?”
“Ooh! Is, is that really true?”
Viscount Horei, who had become a count’s advisor thanks to his family background and lacked any real combat experience, brightened up.
Under normal circumstances, he would have weighed the options or reported to the royal castle first before granting permission, but in this unprecedented uproar he’d never experienced before, his thoughts didn’t extend that far.
Moreover, he was currently responsible for the capital’s defense in place of the count who had departed as commander of the subjugation force.
Overcoming the immediate crisis at hand was far more important than any future reprimands.
“His Highness was fortunate enough to hire a large number of knights. It must be a divine revelation preparing for such a crisis. Anyway, may I bring them in?”
“Of course! I’ll express my personal gratitude to His Highness. I must head to the royal castle, so please handle calling the knights yourself. Farewell!”
Viscount Horei, out of his mind with the emergency, led the guards and raced toward the royal castle.
Seeing this, Prince Rokarop said to his escort knights.
“We must hurry too! We need to bring the knights quickly!”
“But, Your Highness! The gate is too chaotic! We can’t ride out on horseback!”
“What? This…….”
The prince’s face darkened at the unforeseen obstacle.
At that moment, a fist-sized spirit rascal burst into arrogant laughter and floated up lightly.
“Kkihehehehe! That’s something I, King God Neo Revolution Mirian Marktu, can solve for you!”
“……?”
His self-introduction was still gibberish as always, but the prince’s eyes widened at the spirit’s utterly confident declaration out of nowhere.
* * *
“Hahaha! Sir Bello caught four deer! I think I’ve won this hunt, Your Majesty brother.”
“Tch! No helping it. You there!”
At King Feil II of the Kailer Kingdom’s gesture, the waiting attendants hurriedly brought over a large chest and set it down.
“Haha! Thank you.”
Heibon, the cousin of Feil II and bearer of the Earl of Entoller title, laughed in satisfaction as he opened the chest lid.
Inside were armaments crafted from mid-to-high-grade monster byproducts and precious artworks carved from mana stones.
“Sir Bello, I bestow this upon you.”
“It is an honor, Your Excellency, Earl of Entoller.”
As Sir Bello, Heibon’s knight, reached out with a beaming face to receive the armament.
Boom, boom, boom, boom……
“Hm? What’s that sound?”
“Hmm. Indeed.”
Everyone turned their faces toward the direction of the faint rumbling coming from afar.
“Maybe someone’s chopping down a tree?”
“What!? Daring to do so here?”
This was the royal family’s exclusive hunting ground, one of the capital’s forbidden zones.
Anyone who entered without permission would lose their head regardless of reason. No sane person would come here.
“With the state of affairs as they are, madmen might have slipped in. I’ll go check, Your Majesty.”
Sir Bello, the winner of this hunt, quickly received his shield and spear-sword from his squire and spoke up.
Having already won the hunt, handling this matter as well would earn him even greater favor from the king.
“Indeed. Handle it swiftly.”
Confirming the king’s foul mood, Bello mounted his horse and rode off quickly with his squires.
However, he and his squires hadn’t even covered 50 meters before they had to halt their horses.
Boom! Boooom! Boooom! Boooom!
The rumbling grew closer.
Queeeeeeeh!
A massive monster resembling a dragon burst through a stand of tall trees, unleashing a horrific roar that froze the souls of all living beings, human and beast alike.
“Huhk!?”
Sir Bello, who had been charging forward boldly, swallowed hard.
If the knight was like this, there was no need to mention the squires.
Everyone forgot to even breathe, staring at the drake that had emerged while laying waste to the forest.
Meanwhile, Eugene, transformed into a drake, looked down at the group he’d suddenly encountered in the forest near the royal castle and tilted his head inwardly.
‘What are these guys? They look like nobles from their attire?’
Having never been to the capital before, Eugene had no idea exactly where this place was.
He’d simply judged that it was close to the royal castle, had a forest despite being hilly overall, and causing a ruckus here would make him more visible.
That way, the king and castle nobles would be more rattled, and the knights waiting near the capital would gain sufficient justification to enter the city.
Knights rising valiantly against a monster threat!
What could be a more perfect pretext?
‘But what to do with these guys?’
As he pondered briefly.
“Huaaaap!”
Pahk!
True to his rigorous long-term training as a knight, Sir Bello regained his composure faster than the others and hurled his spear with full force.
But the moment the whoosh of air reached him, Eugene had already leaped from his spot.
Whoosh!
“What……!?”
Bello was stunned that the massive monster had not only lightly evaded the thrown spear by jumping but had closed the distance in the blink of an eye.
In that brief instant, Eugene narrowed dozens of meters with a single movement and swung his massive forepaw.
Kwachik!
Bello was turned into unrecognizable chunks of mangled flesh with one blow and sent flying.
“Siiir Bellooo!”
“Master!”
Puk-puk-puk!
As Eugene whipped his tail to knock the wailing squires from their horses, the other knights belatedly charged in.
“You monster!”
They were all the royal guard knights, known as the shields of the royal family.
Typically, one might think knights guarding royalty up close would be exceptionally strong.
But reality was different.
In truth, the most important qualification for becoming a royal guard knight was not skill, but lineage.
No matter how skilled, one couldn’t become a royal guard without hailing from a family utterly loyal to the crown.
Moreover, Kailer’s royal castle was run not by the king, but under the cardinal’s influence.
Thus, these royal guard knights were selected for their family backgrounds and loyalty to the church rather than prowess.
For that reason, they stood no chance against a top-grade monster like a drake.
Especially since they were lightly armed for the hunt.
“Kaaak!”
“Kek!”
Unaware that those charging at him were royal guards, Eugene turned over a dozen into bloody pulps in an instant and turned to the others.
‘Time to roar once around here.’
Kraaaaaargh!!!
He bellowed with all his might, loud enough to reach the royal castle, and the people who had been frozen in terror up to then scattered like a flock of sheep.
“Huaak! Aaaah! Aaaah!”
“Kyaaak!”
Eugene ignored those fleeing on foot and pursued those escaping on horseback.
All of them wore lavish, expensive-looking garments, clearly high-ranking nobles.
‘If nobles are threatened, they’ll have no choice but to dispatch troops immediately.’
It would also give the Maren knights waiting nearby an excellent reason to enter the capital right away.
Satisfied with his own perfect plan, Eugene roared once more and chased after the nobles like a wolf herding prey.
But then.
Hwoooooooo……!
Even Eugene, the highest undead noble, flinched at the intensely mystical wail resonating with otherworldly power.
‘This is?’
And it was a roar he was certain he’d heard somewhere before.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
“……!?”
Halting his pursuit of the nobles, Eugene stared at the monster charging from afar, shaking the earth.
“……Twin-Headed Ogre?”
Moreover, like the twin ogre he’d encountered in the demon realm before, it was an undead, revived from death.
Hwoooooong!
The top-grade monster with two heads spewed a bizarre cry and swung the two massive axes it held in both hands.
Shwoooong! Kwaaaarrr!
Unlike mana, demonic energy flared like flames along the axe blades slicing through the air, and every living thing it touched turned to gray ash and burst apart.
Pop! Puk-puk-pop!
In the brief time it took to catch his breath a few times, the nobles were slaughtered without even a scream and vanished without a trace.
Naturally, King Feil II was among the dead.
It was an utterly ridiculous and pathetic end, but the king of Kailer Kingdom had died to an undead monster in his own hunting grounds.
Of course, Eugene couldn’t even guess this.
Who could imagine that, amid the kingdom’s descent into civil war, the king would leisurely go hunting with nobles?
Assuming they were just unlucky capital nobles who died, Eugene quickly scanned the surroundings.
Undead monsters were ultimately puppets. Nine times out of ten, they came with the necromancer who had revived them from death.
To take down the undead twin-headed ogre, he just needed to find its controlling mage.
Unfortunately, no mage was in sight.
To make matters worse, Eugene had little time left to maintain his drake form.
Moreover, while drakes were top-grade powerful monsters, they couldn’t match the earthly strongest being, the twin-headed ogre.
‘Damn it.’
In the end, Eugene had no choice but to release his transformation, standing bare before the planet’s mightiest monster.
Hwoooooooong!!!
The monster, its sanity fully eroded by demonic energy, roared toward Eugene, the only one still standing.
Fwoosh!
Black Scale Mail enveloped Eugene’s entire body as his aura surged forth.
The materialized Origin aura roiled like red flames. Any living being would have frozen in terror, its soul overwhelmed.
But unfortunately, the monster before him now, spewing demonic energy, was the ultimate undead revived by magic.
Thus, it was barely affected by the Origin aura.
Moreover, Eugene had removed all his gear to transform into a drake.
Of course, he did have a weapon.
Saaat!
Eugene’s fangs extended below his lips to finger-length.
Kwaddduk!
His claws, growing stronger as he regained his abilities, shot out to a meter long.
The ultimate undeads, each wrapped in dark-red aura and pitch-black demonic energy, faced off.
Though its sanity was gone, the twin-headed ogre seemed to sense the danger of the Origin vampire and hesitated to charge.
Eugene, for his part, racked his brain on how to defeat it.
But that time was short.
‘No choice.’
Fwoooosh!
The aura roiling around Eugene’s body flared up like flames doused in oil.
The aura rose 4-5 meters high, swirling in a vortex before being sucked into Eugene’s wide-open maw in an instant.
Kraaaaaargh!
Piercing pain stabbed his lungs, countered by an eerie vitality at the opposite extreme, and Eugene roared.
At the same time, his mind grew hazy, only for an unprecedented murderous intent to batter his soul.
And a single phrase echoed in his mind.
Kill and destroy.
It was the whisper of chaos, pursuing only destruction.
The berserker ability he had never once used until now.
Kweeeeeeee!!!
The berserk Origin vampire charged at the undead twin-headed ogre like a demon armed with hellfire.
(To be continued in the next installment)