Chapter 247
Chapter 247
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 247
Chapter Title: Swallowing the White Dragon
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The White Dragon King's egg.
Krash Valheim, who had taken the egg passed down through the Epania imperial family into his body, was quietly immersed in meditation.
The place he occupied was the current Giant Forest.
Inside a small hole in one of the massive trees rooted in that Giant Forest.
Drizzle... drizzle...
As it was the rainy season, the sound of rain echoed ceaselessly outside.
The rain falling to the ground soon merged with rivers, creating even larger floods, and before long, the entire forest was swelling with floodwaters.
At that moment.
Krash's eyes slowly began to open.
At the same time, he felt a chill emanating from his mouth.
An intensely frigid chill.
It produced a cold even greater than that of Krash's Moon Yin Physique.
"Sigh."
Krash drew a breath, holding the escaping chill in his mouth.
The chill spreading throughout his body brought a vicious cold.
What was the source of this chill?
The chill's origin was none other than what leaked from the White Dragon King's egg.
This was because what Krash was doing now was none other than awakening the White Dragon King's egg.
As proof, the inside of Krash's body had turned completely pale white, just like the symptoms of white stone syndrome.
Only thanks to the Ignis still burning within him was it barely holding together.
The exasperated remark from Crimson Garden rang out, unable to bear it any longer.
Unfortunately, he had no intention of dying.
He was merely stepping onto yet another foothold to advance to the next stage.
"Don't worry. I have zero intention of dying."
[If that's not suicidal, then what is? You're probably the only lunatic who'd think of awakening the White Dragon King's egg.]
The White Dragon King.
A World Erosion entity of the Dragon King race, just like Crimson Garden, and an ancestor of the Epania imperial family.
Due to the Dragon King race's characteristic obsession with immortality in various forms, he was a deranged World Erosion being who had left his roots to his descendants.
But even a madman like him had something certain.
True to the name Dragon King, the White Dragon King had once reigned at the pinnacle of the world.
"That's why I'm preparing the groundwork, since I have no plans for that."
As he spoke, frost showered down from Krash's body.
This was because the chill leaking from him was freezing even the surrounding moisture.
A normal person would have lost their mind, unable to endure their own chill.
But in such aspects, Krash demonstrated the utmost mental fortitude and tenacity.
Burns and frostbite surprisingly share many similarities.
Drawing on his experiences with curses and Ignis, Krash was grimly enduring the chill.
"Squeak squeak."
At Crimson Garden's frustrated remark, the corpse rat of Evelask voiced its agreement.
This was because anyone could see that Krash's method was dangerous.
"Not... under... estimating."
Krash barely continued, his mind reeling momentarily from the chill surging through his body.
Crack...
At the same time, due to his chill, the inside of the tree had become a frozen sea.
In that scene, Krash slowly closed his eyes again.
Then, he began channeling the power of World Erosion, pushing it into the White Dragon King's egg.
Originally, World Erosion swallowed the aura emanating from the White Dragon King's egg.
Now, it was the reverse—he was feeding it to the egg.
Thanks to the long-awaited meal, the egg went berserk, spewing the White Dragon King's aura in all directions.
Each time, Krash's insides grew ever whiter.
The sensation was utterly horrific.
It was the feeling of his organs freezing solid from rapid cooling.
Moreover, his body temperature was plummeting to the brink.
If he didn't focus his mind to use Ignis, he felt like he'd die of hypothermia any second.
'Compared to the upper curse Frost Maw, that's child's play.'
The Frost Maw he'd wielded for a time was nothing compared to this chill.
For several hours, he barely endured the dizzying chill threatening to snap his mind.
Drip...
Before long, even his hair had turned stark white, and something reached Krash's ears.
The sound came not from outside, but from within himself.
Following the sound with his consciousness, there shone the White Dragon King's egg.
Atop the purely white egg.
A faint crack had formed at the tip.
The moment Krash spotted it, he immediately shoved even more World Erosion into the split.
Crack!
Then, an even greater chill poured from the cracked shell.
"Urk!"
Spit and blood burst from the pain, freezing into ice shards that clattered to the floor.
The blood-mixed ice froze the floor upon impact.
Krash gripped his knees as if they might burst.
Even in this chill, sweat droplets formed, turning to ice chunks rolling across the floor.
Yet Krash didn't stop pushing World Erosion in.
'Not yet.'
This crack wasn't enough.
More. Much more intensely.
He had to shove it in even fiercer so the White Dragon King could break out of the egg.
Krash's blue eyes snapped wide open.
At once, the World Erosion he wielded surged more violently into the egg.
The egg, spewing chill, seemed taken aback and hesitated briefly.
Yet it greedily devoured Krash's World Erosion.
Crack!
The crack grew stronger.
Krash wrapped the fraying thread of his mind tightly around his body.
Binding himself firmly to it to avoid snapping, he kept shoving World Erosion in repeatedly.
Crack...
The egg's cracks continued to widen.
Crack...
Now, he couldn't even gauge how much time had passed.
Crack...
Before long, Krash heard only the sound of the egg cracking.
Crack...
In a sensation where all time around him seemed frozen still.
Amid his hazy mind, Krash felt the egg right before his eyes.
The egg, now cracked nearly everywhere.
It was far larger than Krash.
Facing the egg, Krash confronted the World Erosion power gathered in his hand.
Clenching it into a fist, he thrust it unhesitatingly toward the egg.
Krunch!
His fist shattered the shell and embedded inside, clearly touching the interior.
In that instant, a glimpse beyond the shell flashed by.
There were stark white scales.
Lizard-like scales, incredibly sharp—his fist bled profusely just from brushing them.
Smelling the blood, perhaps.
Wriggles...
The interior scales rustled all at once.
The sight was like leaves fluttering in the wind.
Thud...
A massive reverberation echoed from within the egg.
Before the enormous echo that lifted even Krash's body briefly into the air.
Krash's gaze slowly lifted upward.
And there appeared an eye.
Not human—a pupil with a slit down the middle.
The drowsy eye stared straight at Krash for a moment before opening its mouth.
His question carried warning and doubt.
This made sense—only his descendants could awaken the egg.
Krash clearly had no relation to the White Dragon King's lineage.
Yet this man had awakened him, something no Epania imperial even among past generations had managed.
Doubt was natural.
"I'm the wake-up alarm clock for lazy sleepers like you."
Hearing Krash's words, the White Dragon King rolled his eyes silently for a moment.
Then, as if grasping something, he let out an incredulous chuckle.
What had he read in this empty space?
With a snort, he slowly uncurled his body from within the egg.
There appeared the massive, stark white head of a dragon.
The head piercing the shell was so large that a single eye dwarfed Krash.
He laughed delightedly, as if appraising an entertaining diversion after ages.
The White Dragon King lowered his head to meet Krash's gaze.
It was a question of what kind of twisted thinking led to this.
That was when it happened.
Krash realized his feet had frozen solid.
Precisely, his legs had turned to ice instead of their original form.
The frozen legs naturally refused to move.
Moreover, chill began pouring from the White Dragon King's body.
It was the White Dragon King's aura.
The encroaching chill rapidly froze Krash.
But even in that situation, Krash silently stared at him.
'This is the mental world.'
Not reality, but the mental world.
Thus, the freshly hatched White Dragon King wielded his power so freely.
The White Dragon King was an ancient being who had lived countless eternities even before immortality.
No matter how great Krash was, he was helpless before such a one's mental realm.
Seeing Krash freezing over, the White Dragon King laughed gleefully.
And soon, he seemed to decide to seize Krash's body.
Krash's body was now entirely ice except for his head.
The White Dragon King was completely erasing Krash's mind and mental world.
Just as he said that, Krash's body was on the verge of becoming fully ice, save one eye.
Fwoosh...
Flames erupted from within Krash's body.
The blaze spread instantly throughout his body, and the moment it covered his flesh entirely.
Shatter!
His frozen body shattered, and Krash exploded into pieces.
The White Dragon King showed a baffled reaction at the sight.
He hadn't expected him to shatter his own mind.
As the White Dragon King stared at the shattered ice in bewilderment, he soon sensed a gaze.
Wondering what it was, he looked around and slowly raised his head.
There gleamed an intensely crimson eye.
The moment he met that eye, showing bewilderment.
The White Dragon King soon realized one fact.
The egg he'd just broken out of.
It had turned to ice shards and melted away.
Seeing that, the flustered White Dragon King then realized what the entire black space was made of.
The black space was the egg.
The White Dragon King was still trapped inside his own egg, unable to escape.
Realizing he'd been toyed with by Krash, the White Dragon King instantly spread his wings and soared.
He intended to tear apart the eye of Krash looking down on him.
But as he flew up, he realized something pouring in from the pierced ceiling.
What entered the egg was pitch-black liquid.
The black liquid instantly enveloped the White Dragon King and pressed him to the bottom.
It began filling the egg's interior at rapid speed.
Recognizing the black liquid as World Erosion, the White Dragon King flapped his wings frantically.
He struggled to escape, but felt his body sinking deeper into it.
This was bizarre.
The situation defied explanation.
He should have devoured Krash's mental world in one gulp and taken his body.
Instead, the mighty White Dragon King was being overwhelmed mentally by some brat.
In his incomprehension, the crimson eye gazing down drifted farther.
"The mental world you entered isn't mine."
Krash's voice echoed throughout.
He reacted with shock.
Then whose mental world was this?
"Four Seasons."
And from Krash's mouth came the name of the supreme curse.
The supreme curse born from World Erosion, possessing its own will.
Four Seasons.
This was the mental world of the supreme curse Four Seasons.
Curses have no need for a mental world.
They themselves are the deepest manifestations of mentality.
In the mental world of such a Four Seasons, even the White Dragon King was mere prey.
Krash ignored the White Dragon King's roar.
Instead, the White Dragon King realized his body was dissolving into the black liquid Four Seasons had shoved in.
Four Seasons devours and digests anything, assimilating it as its own.
And it can perfectly mimic what it assimilates.
Except, to maintain a physical form, it transforms it into something unrelated to the host's life.
This applied to the White Dragon King's egg as well.
The White Dragon King, who sought Krash's body, had instead been devoured by Four Seasons along with the egg.
The moment his curse-filled scream echoed.
Plop...
Even his head was completely devoured by Four Seasons and vanished.
Finally, Krash felt the White Dragon King's aura filling his body dissipate.
Just like when Four Seasons had swallowed the aura and World Erosion power.
Four Seasons had devoured the White Dragon King's power entirely.
Krash slowly opened his eyes and raised his hand.
In that instant, stark white White Dragon aura poured forth.
Grip...
His eyes gleamed sharply as he clenched his fist.
He had successfully devoured even the White Dragon King's power.
Kaboom!
The moment Krash reveled in his achievement.
A fierce noise erupted from outside.
Hearing it, Krash slowly rose from his seat.
This pitch-black, ominous energy.
He knew instantly upon sensing it.
'Ixion got here fast.'
Ixion had reached the Giant Forest before even the Demon King.
But they wouldn't know.
Who was the fastest after bypassing the Demon King.
"Let's see."
Krash swallowed the chill from his mouth and grinned.
Time to test the new power.