#43 Clue to the Fifth Evolution
#43 Clue to the Fifth Evolution
"——!"
The Flying Heavenly Serpent couldn't regain its senses against the Ghost Flame (C) blazing through its torn-away scales. Even when it surged magical power to shake him off, the Wolf wouldn't dislodge. Whenever a paw struck or fangs bit down, dragon scales vanished without fail. The only possible solution would be its breath attack, but using it meant catching itself in the blast. All of it had gone exactly as the Wolf intended.
As time passed and the Flying Heavenly Serpent was reduced to a mangled wreck, no options remained. It twisted its body and lunged in on itself. Its enormous jaws closed over the Wolf. In the instant the vast shadow descended and swallowed him—
"——!"
The Imugi's eye burned red. Its fangs had pierced straight through his body, yet the one remaining eye gleamed with elation. It thought it had brought down a mighty foe. The moment it was certain of its victory, something reflected in the Flying Heavenly Serpent's eye.
The Wolf, cloaked in shifting shadow. ...How? The Flying Heavenly Serpent couldn't process what was happening. Meeting the Imugi's gaze as confusion flooded its eye, the Wolf simply stared back, impassive.
'It was obvious.'
The moment the Imugi's head lunged forward and its shadow fell over him, he had already slipped into that shadow and escaped. He could have dodged earlier, but he had deliberately lured it into biting him. There was no scenario where the Flying Heavenly Serpent could gain the upper hand in a battle of wits against the Wolf. With that, his Tentacles burrowed into the Imugi's remaining eye, and his shadow penetrated even deeper still. When he forcibly wrenched his jaws free from where they had been lodged in the dragon scales, only his jaws pulled loose—his venomous fangs remained embedded behind.
The Flying Heavenly Serpent convulsed in agony, twisting and thrashing. Just before the shadow burrowing into its depths could reach its brain, the Imugi detonated every last drop of magical power it possessed, unleashing a storm. —A force of magic on an entirely different order from anything before.
'That means.'
The Flying Heavenly Serpent had no margin left. The terror and fear swelling inside the Imugi had already branded the Wolf a monster in its mind.
"——!"
The Wolf clenched his teeth and threw everything he had against the storm, but resistance was nearly impossible. The gale the Flying Heavenly Serpent let loose was disproportionately violent, born of sheer panic, and it swallowed him whole—
'This is more like.'
—Instead of fighting the storm, the Wolf surrendered his body to its current. No matter how much Great Magic Resistance he possessed, standing against this was futile. Swept away without end, he created layered footholds in the empty air to brace himself. He formed platforms and anchored himself with Tentacles, but they snapped apart far too easily. Finally slammed into debris, the Wolf's eyes flew wide from the impact.
[All Damage Reduction (D) Lv.9 proficiency at maximum. All Damage Reduction (D) Lv.9 → All Damage Reduction (D) Lv.10]
[All Damage Reduction (D) Lv.10 has reached maximum level. All Damage Reduction (D) Lv.10 → Mitigation (C) Lv.1]
The crushing force that had threatened to collapse his spine eased and diminished. Without pause, the Wolf launched himself forward again. The flames searing his body, his vaporizing blood, the crumbling wreckage. The roof of the Imugi's mouth, now ablaze with Ghost Flame (C), had robbed it of its sense of smell. The Imugi, reeling after pouring out most of its magical power, was nothing more than good prey for the Wolf.
Originally, the Flying Heavenly Serpent possessed the ability to evade and flee from the Wolf indefinitely with its high-speed flight.
But both its eyes were gone now, and its magical power was drained. Deprived of hearing and smell, the Imugi had no way left to find the Wolf. All it could do was flee through the darkness, trembling with fear. The mistake the Flying Heavenly Serpent had made was not attacking the Wolf sooner. If it had collapsed the building and crushed him the instant it saw him, things might have gone differently.
'But not now.'
Over the past four days, the Wolf had grown intimately familiar with this place. Blinded, the Imugi's terror ballooned without end. Convinced its roasting flesh meant it was about to die, the Imugi climbed higher and higher in its final moments. If only it could scrape its body against something and extinguish the Ghost Flame (C), it could cling to life a little longer.
'It's going to make for the ceiling.'
He expected as much. Figured it couldn't do anything else. What he had read in its eyes at the end had been nothing but boundless dread and terror. —So he had waited. Reading the Flying Heavenly Serpent's trajectory in advance, the Wolf leaped. Never even registering that something had mounted its body, the terrified Imugi simply kept climbing.
Amid the blazing fire, the Imugi was reduced to a mere beast, and just before it reached the ceiling, the shadow extending from the Wolf finally bored into the Imugi's eye socket and touched its brain.
"————!"
The most absolute vital point. Shrieking its death cry until the instant its consciousness cut out, the Flying Heavenly Serpent plummeted at last toward the abyss below. Just before it fell, the Wolf lashed a Tentacle to the building and pulled himself clear, avoiding the same fate.
"...Are you all right?"
Baekrok had drawn close before he knew it and asked with an odd expression. Having accompanied the Wolf through dungeons, Baekrok was well aware that he possessed a superior form of Predation.
And so, he couldn't stop himself from asking.
"......."
The Wolf gave no answer. He simply kept watching the Falling Heavenly Serpent.
'He must be deeply disappointed.'
But what Baekrok read in the Wolf's eyes wasn't lingering attachment or regret. They were filled only with a certain expectation and conviction.
"......?"
In that moment, Baekrok's ears twitched and pricked forward. —Something anomalous was happening.
"Baekrok! Run!"
At the Wolf's words, Baekrok belatedly grasped the situation. The Wolf hadn't had the faintest intention of abandoning the Flying Heavenly Serpent's corpse. Only—!
'What sort of reckless madness...!'
Slowly, the World warped. No—it was the opposite. The World that had been eroded under the name of the dungeon was reclaiming its true shape. Below and above began to invert, and at last, floor and ceiling reversed. —Up became down. Down became up.
Even though they had returned to the Illusion Realm, the Wolf and Baekrok ran without hesitation.
"You! Have you lost your mind!"
The Inverted Skyscraper had returned to its rightful orientation. And sliding through the dungeon boundary that had hovered in the airspace above the skyscraper, falling was—!
"......!"
The colossal Imugi slammed into the skyscraper. There was no world in which a massive body weighing forty tons could survive a drop of hundreds of meters. The building collapsed with a thunderous roar, and the aftershock made the very earth ring out. Dust erupted like a cloud, shrouding the air, and when it finally settled—
"Ha... You?"
The skyscraper had already crumbled and the surrounding area was scorched earth. At that, the Wolf averted his gaze just slightly, as if embarrassed.
"......."
Because his prediction had been a little off. Though, truthfully, it had happened this way because this was the Illusion Realm, not the Reality Realm. Things had gone off-course, but he'd figured that even with a fall from a few hundred meters up, the fairies and phantom beasts could be saved in a worst-case scenario.
"Just what are you...!"
Sounding genuinely fed up, Baekrok shook his head. He wanted to give him a good scolding, but he understood that this really had been the only way to eat the Flying Heavenly Serpent's corpse. ...Fine. He understood that much, but.
"Hooo."
Unusually for him, Baekrok let out a sigh, unable to suppress his frustration. After all, what he had wanted to protect was this Illusion Realm. He knew it would be restored before long.
"If you were going to pull something like this, couldn't you at least tell me beforehand?"
"...Sorry."
If there had been a miscalculation in the Wolf's plan, it was that the dungeon collapsed more slowly than he'd expected. By his reckoning, the moment he destroyed the Flying Heavenly Serpent's brain near the ceiling, the dungeon should have collapsed and the ceiling—the floor—should have sent it plunging down.
'It was a little late.'
While he was tilting his head, wondering why it had taken time for the dungeon to collapse, the commotion began to draw fairies and dragon bugs gathering around.
"......."
Acting as though nothing had happened, the Wolf calmly set about devouring the Flying Heavenly Serpent.
"Hooo..."
Watching this, Baekrok forced himself to take a deep breath. The building had collapsed, yes, but no phantom beasts had been caught up in it. And eventually, this too would restore itself with time. The Illusion Realm was a World like a mirror subordinated to the Reality Realm. When the Illusion Realm reflected the Reality Realm once more, the scenery here would change with it.
As Baekrok's thoughts deepened, the Wolf tore off a portion of the Flying Heavenly Serpent's flesh that he was eating and offered it to the dragon bugs.
"Kyaaah~! A monster corpse! A monster corpse!"
The fairies laughed and circled around the Wolf, and the dragon bugs gathered with bright-eyed excitement. Of the Flying Heavenly Serpent's thirty-eight-ton carcass, it was a piece less than ten kilograms, but for dragon bugs smaller than a knuckle, it was a meal more than ample.
'There's something I want to confirm.'
Even as he devoured the Flying Heavenly Serpent, the Wolf's gaze remained fixed on the dragon bugs. Baekrok had said before: most dragon bugs never bothered risking evolution and lived their whole lives as larvae. Very few ever ventured into the Reality Realm.
'The method for growing into a Fairy Dragon.'
Almost certainly, it was devouring something. Much like how the Wolf himself raised his level. His opinion on that hadn't changed. Normally, they would need meat far larger in proportion to their own size, but with the Flying Heavenly Serpent's flesh, he'd had a hunch.
'If my theory is correct.'
[Flying Heavenly Serpent ingested. Experience Points and Satiety increase.]
[Experience Points at maximum. Lv.26 → Lv.27]
[EXP 137,521 / 496,722]
—By the time he finished consuming the Flying Heavenly Serpent, he had risen to Level 27 and gained roughly a hundred thousand additional experience points on top. That meant he'd earned close to a million experience points in total.
'And yet only two levels...'
The unit scale of experience points was shifting. With every level he gained, the experience requirement swelled along with it. At this rate, he was already worrying about the next evolution.
'Sure, it wasn't a difficult fight.'
Baekrok had helped, but the flow of battle had been entirely one-sided. The moments he'd felt genuinely endangered were few. If there had been solid ground or if they'd fought on the surface, the Flying Heavenly Serpent wouldn't have even been a match for the Wolf. That fact made it feel a little unsatisfying despite everything.
"Whoa~! The Wolf ate the whole giant snake! He's fat! Fat!"
"Idiot! You don't say fat, you say he eats well~!"
The fairies who watched the Wolf polish off the entire Flying Heavenly Serpent on the spot were horrified. In the meantime, I checked the dragon bugs. The dragon bugs that were still there. And among them.
[Dragon Bug (Metamorphosing)]
Just as I'd predicted, some of them had begun to metamorphose. The dragon bugs were sprawled out as if they couldn't eat another bite, but nearly half of the ten kilograms of meat I'd given them still remained.
'As expected.'
I had successfully induced dozens of dragon bugs into metamorphosis. At the sight, the fairies' eyes went wide, and they gathered up the metamorphosing eggs.
[Destruction Probability 91.54% → 91.53%]
[0.01% Karma acquired.]
The collapse of the Inverted Skyscraper had dropped the destruction probability by 0.12%, and on top of that, I'd gained an additional 0.01% from the dragon bugs' metamorphosis. A thoroughly satisfactory result.
'As I thought.'
I nodded inwardly. If the birth of Fairy Dragons was something that benefited this World, then of course the destruction probability would decrease.
'Though I don't know how long it'll stay possible.'
Obviously, endlessly birthing Fairy Dragons wouldn't stop destruction. No matter how many there were, there was a limit to what Fairy Dragons could do, and once their numbers swelled past a certain point, the destruction probability would likely stop dropping.
But the important thing was that I had realized this method existed. Someday, without a doubt, I'd be able to put it to use.
'...And above all else.'
[Evolution Route revealed.]
The Wolf's eyes blazed at the long-awaited moment finally arriving.