224. Winter Palace (6)
224. Winter Palace (6)
Fwoooosh─
The Fire Dragon's clear flames blazed as if to scorch heaven and earth.
Beside it, a single flame of a different, dark-red hue flickered to life.
Compared to the Fire Dragon's violent and merciless inferno, it was an utterly faint and insignificant little flame.
But I could tell.
How much effort was packed into that small flame.
A flame kindled by Shin Se-hee.
Throughout the entire battle against the Fire Dragon.
She had compressed it, and compressed it again.
Refined it until it was just small enough to burn a single scale.
'She found the reverse scale.'
I'd believed in her, but seeing Shin Se-hee actually pull it off, I felt no small amount of pride.
'Then now's the time for a full assault.'
Of course, it was hard to tell since it was mixed among the dragon's own fire, but it would be trouble if the Fire Dragon caught on to that flame.
I knew everyone was exhausted from the long fight, but I shouted at my party members, veins bulging in my neck.
"FULL ASSAULT!!!"
"Haaaaaaah!"
Claaaaaaang─!
The moment I gave the order, Lee Yu-ri's Taunt rang out.
Using that as a signal, the party members stepped onto ice platforms and charged toward the Fire Dragon.
I launched myself toward the dragon alongside them.
─ Kuooooooooo!
Fwooooosh─
The beast let out a shriek and swung its massive tail.
When its attacks were rendered futile several times by Lee Yu-ri's Taunt, this was the countermeasure the thing had come up with.
If it swung with sheer size and mass, it could strike the other party members in its path all at once.
But Utopia hadn't been sitting idle during the fight against the Fire Dragon either.
Whoosh!
Whoosh!
Whoosh!
The party members skillfully stepped on ice platforms, evading the tail's trajectory.
"Acceleration!"
WHOOOOSH!
I received Im Ga-eul's skill that shot in from behind and swung my sword with all my might.
It was a sword that had started to melt from constant contact with the Fire Dragon, but its edge was still alive.
One Slash, Two Halves
Slice-slice-slice-slice—!!
The sword made of ice sliced open the Fire Dragon's belly.
Tah!
At the same time, Kang Do-hee—who possessed fire-attribute resistance, though not as much as Shin Se-hee—leaped up toward the Fire Dragon's face.
SHUNK!
Kang Do-hee's hand, encased in an ice gauntlet, stabbed into the Fire Dragon's eye.
Fwoooosh!
Hot flames erupted from the Fire Dragon's face as if to burn her entire body,
but Kang Do-hee gritted her teeth and clung on desperately.
"Nnngh!"
Squelch!
Finally, her hand seized the dragon's eyeball and crushed it.
─ Kuooooooooooo!!!!!
Then the beast began to thrash, whipping its long neck around like a lash, as if trying to shatter space itself.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
Kang Do-hee's body slammed against the wall along with the Fire Dragon's head.
"Kuh!"
Because of that, Kang Do-hee had no choice but to let go and fall away.
But. I let out a snicker.
"It's over."
Because Shin Se-hee's flame had reached the dragon's reverse scale.
The spot the small, dark-red flame was aimed at was the back of the heel.
The area around the Achilles tendon seemed to be where the reverse scale was located.
Fwoooosh!
As Shin Se-hee's flame burned the beast's heel.
Crackle-crackle-crackle—
Scales began to invert from that spot outward.
The reversal spread across the dragon's entire body like a contagion.
With its entire body inverted like that.
The Fire Dragon began to be scorched black even by its own expelled flames.
In other words, its entire body was now in a state of vulnerability to the fire attribute!
All that was left was self-destruction.
─ Keuaaaaaaaagh!!!
The Fire Dragon let out a death cry incomparable to any before.
The resonant death throes pounded against my eardrums.
And a moment later.
We were able to behold the Fire Dragon's charred-black corpse.
"Kieeeeee······."
The fallen Fire Dragon let out a sound like air leaking from a balloon,
and the light slowly faded from its pupils.
"······."
The party members silently stared at it.
"Wow······. H-ha, hoobae······. We······. We c-caught the F-Fire Dragon······."
Im Ga-eul, who had been staring blankly at the Fire Dragon's corpse, spoke as if she couldn't believe it.
"Indeed, it wasn't easy."
Kang Do-hee rose to her feet with difficulty and flicked the singed ends of her hair off with her fingers.
"It's really, really dead, right?"
Lee Yu-ri raised and lowered her shield several times, examining the Fire Dragon.
Once she was certain it was truly dead, she let out a long sigh.
Haaaah─
"I seriously thought I was gonna die. Ugh. I feel like my whole body's been beaten to a pulp."
Considering Lee Yu-ri had blocked the Fire Dragon's attacks throughout the entire battle, that wasn't exactly wrong.
"Yeah, me too······. I came all the way here to hang out with you, Jin Yu-ha. I haven't even been to the hot spring once yet. I gotta go soak and loosen up today······."
"Hmm, I'm afraid that's impossible?"
At Sofia's grumbling, Shin Se-hee, who had been hiding until the very end, emerged and dusted herself off.
"······Huh? Why?"
"Well, the thing heating that hot spring was this Fire Dragon, and we just went and killed it, didn't we?"
"Ah."
Sofia's mouth dropped open and she let out a dumb sound.
The party members were chattering and murmuring amongst themselves around the Fire Dragon's corpse.
But I didn't have the leisure to pay attention to that.
Ding─♬
[ 【 Title ─ First to Slay the Fire Dragon. Dragon Slayer 】 ]
Because the first-achievement title I'd been waiting for had appeared before my eyes.
'Keuh, this is it!!'
As the first-achievement title popped up as expected, I clenched my fist inwardly.
[ 10% additional damage against all types of Dragon Clan. ]
Yeah, bonus damage against the Dragon Clan.
This didn't just mean Earth Dragons or Water Dragons.
All types of Dragon Clan. In other words, anything with even a trace of dragon blood in its form—like Lesser Dragons, Wyverns, Drakes, or Crocodiles—would unconditionally take 10% additional damage.
Pretty much anything that looked like a lizard qualified.
Then,
Ding─♬
A chime rang out once more.
I knew what this was.
The thing I'd first seen after killing a Demon.
[ Your rank has ascended. The stars turn toward you. ]
Star Promotion!
'Kyaa, this is it, this is it······! I knew the experience from the first achievement would push me over!! After all, I was still just a 2-star scrub!'
Star-like light, similar to what I'd seen before, rose above my head.
Shiver—
I closed my eyes, feeling my body tremble.
Then, in that moment, a thought crossed my mind.
The first time my star rank went up, I hadn't had the presence of mind to think about it.
But now, on this second time, I had the leisure to have other thoughts.
'But, you know, when a Star Promotion happens······. Don't your clothes get completely torn off······?'
The Star Promotion fanservice scene.
Well, it had already been shown once before.
But back then, I was out of it. And it had only been a small group of three: my master, Im Ga-eul, and Sofia.
But this time, in front of the entire party······?
I cracked my eyes open slightly and turned my shaking pupils toward my party members.
"······."
All of the party members, as if sensing something was about to happen,
were watching this way with bated breath.
Gulp─
Among them, Sofia, who had experienced this once before, was staring intently this way, yet her hands were already fumbling to pull out a camera.
'Ah.'
I'm screwed.
* * *
Meanwhile, the Chairwoman's Office at Velvet Hunter Academy.
Craaack—
"Haaaaaahm······."
Chairwoman Rina finished her work, stretched her hands toward the ceiling, and arched her back.
"Hmm, Seol-hee said she was going to Jeju Island, was it······?"
Rina tilted her head from side to side, loosening her stiff shoulders as she spoke.
Jeju Island.
That place held a certain connection for her too.
It was where she'd first met Seol-hee,
and it was a region where an oddly large number of gates spawned on that small patch of land.
'That boy Jin Yu-ha went with her this time, saying he'd clean out all the dungeons on Jeju Island.'
On top of that, the Demonized Human Extermination Squad led by Baek Seol-hee had supposedly suddenly left to deal with gates in the Maldives and Bali.
When she heard that news,
the vaguely uneasy sensation prickling at her mind had subsided a little.
It was similar to the feeling when Jin Yu-ha stepped up and solved things during the Midterm Evaluation.
A sensation like a crisis had been prevented in advance, so to speak.
'Mm, though there's still a lingering unease, but somehow I don't think it's related to Jeju Island······.'
Still, she felt much better than before.
While thinking of Baek Seol-hee and Jin Yu-ha who had gone to Jeju Island,
a memory from long ago suddenly came to mind.
'Ah, Jeju Island. Now that I think of it, I'd turned one of those into a hot spring resort.'
That troublesome Fire Dragon that had turned an entire gate into a volcanic zone.
If a Gate Break were to happen there, it could cause a catastrophe that would make the nightmare of Pompeii pale in comparison.
So she had resorted to pouring Mana into it over the span of a year, freezing the gate's environment itself.
Once all that work was done,
Rina had felt a sudden urge to parboil her body in some hot water.
So, instead of killing the Fire Dragon, she built a resort and sealed the creature beneath it to use as a source for heating the hot spring water.
"Hmm, work finished quite early today."
Rina nodded as she looked at the neatly organized documents on her desk.
"Shall I hit the hot spring? It's been a while."
Since she was using the foundation that sealed the Fire Dragon as the Ice Palace,
as long as no one had destroyed things like the palace walls or floor, the Fire Dragon should still be diligently heating the hot spring water even now.
"Well, it's inaccessible in the first place if you don't know the exact location, so it should be fine."
The only things there now were ice and snow, so Hunters didn't even enter.
"There's no way some lunatic would track it all the way there, find the Ice Palace, and then rip out the walls or floor."
Rina chuckled and shook her head.
"Well then, shall I? For a break."
Anticipating a rare, relaxing soak in a hot spring, Chairwoman Rina left her office.