Two-Headed Venom Dragon (2)
Two-Headed Venom Dragon (2)
A golden trajectory split the sky and slammed into the snake's head.
- Ssssssssshhh!
The instant the trajectory struck, gold bled into the surroundings like spreading pigment.
Shockwaves and explosive booms rippled outward in every direction. The poisonous mire that had filled the area around the Twin-Headed Poison Dragon churned violently.
The Twin-Headed Poison Dragon's head lolled.
A roar erupted from its gaping maw.
Between shrieks that almost sounded pained—even for an undead—shattered scale fragments fluttered through the air with a crunch.
'Tough.'
I landed momentarily on the snake's head and grimaced.
Unsatisfactory.
I had used Spatial Leap to move to the optimal spot and driven in White Night, the single most powerful strike in my arsenal.
And all that accomplished was peeling away a few scales that were little more than surface layer. I hadn't expected to kill it in one blow, but the damage was too slight in return.
"Aaaaah—!"
A shrill scream rang out above my head.
It was Lee Ji-yeon, falling toward me.
Lee Ji-yeon had been screaming about being flung into the air, but the instant she assessed the situation, she was already plummeting this way.
She clutched a stone axe in her hands.
She gripped the elongated handle with both hands, muscles taut, and hoisted it above her head. Menacing aura surged over the blade, fully roused.
I immediately kicked off the snake's head.
Simultaneously, the axe bearing the Giant Strength of Taesan carved through the air and came crashing down.
- WHOOOOM!!
- Ssssssssshhh!
Still not fully lucid, the Twin-Headed Poison Dragon's head lurched again as it flailed. Far more scales than before shattered and scattered this time.
Dark-green fluid spurted from the spot where the scales had been torn away.
Even that fluid is poison. Its blood poison is a lethal toxin so potent that merely grazing it endangers your life.
The Twin-Headed Poison Dragon shook its head violently.
Lee Ji-yeon, who had landed on top, was flung upward, tossed into the air.
"Ah."
Her eyes went round, her gaze shifting.
Where solid ground should have been, there was only poisonous mire that had long since melted away trees, rocks, and even the topsoil.
"Ah, waaaaah!"
"...Huh?"
The scream cut off almost at once.
Cradled and buoyed by the wind spirit, she floated up beside me and blinked.
"...Hey! Junior! How could you abduct someone out of nowhere without a word!"
Then she raised her voice in a burst of anger.
"Flung into the sky all of a sudden! I— I nearly got dumped straight into the poison mire and died!"
【I'm sorry】
【I didn't have time to explain】
At my explanation, her gaze slid sideways.
In the direction the Twin-Headed Poison Dragon had been heading, a free city was still in the middle of evacuating.
It was a deeply underdeveloped region to be called a city. Worse, it was already within the monster's sphere of influence and being steeped in deadly miasma in real time.
'......'
After registering that, Lee Ji-yeon's expression softened.
"Ugh, well, if that's the case it couldn't be helped... but wait, how in the world do you have spatial magic...?"
Lee Ji-yeon suddenly blurted it out like the thought had just struck her. She seemed to assume that the method that had closed such a vast distance in a single leap was spatial magic.
【Somehow ended up learning it from the Vice Headmaster】
I replied nonchalantly.
- Ssssss...
The brief reprieve was over.
Lee Ji-yeon's expression hardened as well as she turned her head.
Below, the poisonous mire swelled and surged.
The green, almost black mire ceaselessly bubbled and burst, releasing a ghastly poison gas.
And from within it, the Twin-Headed Poison Dragon reared its head again.
Twin-headed.
Contrary to its name, the creature had only one head left.
Originally, it was an entity with two heads, just as its name suggests.
A venomous serpent: the head it currently bears exhales lethal poison, while the head it originally possessed—now missing—spewed disease-ridden gas.
That, at least, is a stroke of luck.
If it still had its disease-spewing head, the synergistic effect with its venom would have killed you the moment you entered its area of influence, without even a chance to fight back.
In the original story, it was resurrected with both heads fully restored.
And it ran rampant right during a period when monsters were already flooding out of the Demon Realm, so the damage was catastrophic.
In the worst-case scenario, enough that Chinese territory would have been transformed into a demon realm.
Compared to that, the current Twin-Headed Poison Dragon was not just shoddy—it was trivial.
'...Indeed, it's half-baked.'
I confirmed it through the information gathered by the Authority of Observation.
Most undead are weaker than they were in life.
Similarly, this thing's strength had been degraded once when it rose as an undead.
On top of that, it had been raised far too hastily, dragging its level down even further.
- Crack
A scale that had been fissured broke clean off and fell.
It was the section of the head that I and Lee Ji-yeon had just hammered.
'If it were intact, we wouldn't have left a scratch.'
The Twin-Headed Poison Dragon was an undead whose Unique Abilities were venom and disease. Its physical body itself barely scraped the threshold of the 3rd Rank.
Two pairs of thick, roving eyeballs shifted.
Then those lifeless eyes, characteristic of the undead, fixed their glare on us.
- Ssssssssshhh—!
And with a miasma-drenched roar, it lunged straight at us.
I unleashed the wind spirits to the fullest. The wind coiled around me and Lee Ji-yeon, luring the Twin-Headed Poison Dragon away from the city.
The Twin-Headed Poison Dragon paid no attention to the city.
It simply locked onto us and shot forward in a straight line.
'Fast.'
For a snake, its speed was beyond imagining. At this rate, it would catch up.
Worse still...
Riiip! Its jaws split apart. Mana swelled in force, and poison shone deep within its throat.
Poison Breath.
I clicked my tongue and was about to counter—
- KURUNG!
When a wall of stone suddenly erupted, blocking its path.
Poison spewed from its maw. Ssssssh! The wall struck by the poison couldn't endure even a moment before melting away.
Lee Ji-yeon narrowed her brow and extended a hand.
At her gesture, walls of stone rose up one after another.
The Poison Breath was severed a few walls short.
The Twin-Headed Poison Dragon closed its jaws and rammed its head forward.
Boom! The wall it plowed into was crushed and sent flying.
- KURURURUNG!
A single wall wasn't the end of it.
Stone barriers shot up in real time, blocking the Twin-Headed Poison Dragon's path and its venom alike.
Mounds of earth also surged up in the shape of hands to seize the Twin-Headed Poison Dragon's body, and rock fired like bullets, hammering its one remaining head.
The walls crumpled instantly against its body-slam charges, and the earthen hands couldn't hold the poison dragon for even a moment.
That was because the scales themselves were extraordinarily tough, and everything melted from the poison before it even made contact.
But it was still enough of a hindrance that we just barely managed to keep a distance where it couldn't catch us.
Ranged attacks were intercepted over and over at Lee Ji-yeon's end.
Thanks to that, I could focus solely on flight.
"...Junior, just try to hold on a little. With a situation this serious, an emergency signal's bound to have been sent; a subjugation squad will be here soon."
Lee Ji-yeon, somehow managing to slow the Twin-Headed Poison Dragon's advance, spoke through gritted teeth.
"And by any chance, can't you find the main body with that detection ability of yours?"
Eyes fixed on the Twin-Headed Poison Dragon that was glaring at us as if it meant to chew us up and swallow us, Lee Ji-yeon gulped and asked.
"If we just kill the main body... that monstrous snake, all the undead rampaging everywhere—they'll all collapse on their own."
A major weakness of necromancy and other summoning-type abilities is that if the main body dies, everything crumbles like a sandcastle.
The 12th Iteration's Hybrid Summoner had collapsed in much the same way.
Back then, if the Hybrid Summoner had managed to bring out all their summoned creatures first, they could have not only survived but repelled the allied forces in turn.
"...If only we could somehow deal with the main body."
She said that, but Lee Ji-yeon didn't seem particularly optimistic about getting a positive answer.
The weakness of the summoning category is that if the main body falls, its summoned creatures collapse en masse.
That weakness is so well-known and obvious.
So the textbook approach for a summoner is to stay hidden and hole up inside a heavily fortified spell workshop.
That makes them extremely difficult to find. Even with a detection-type ability, what normally takes great effort and time can't be wrapped up in a single stroke.
【I've found them】
"Seriously!?"
That's probably why Lee Ji-yeon's face lit up with color at the hopeful answer.
I nodded and pointed my finger at the location of the main body.
Lee Ji-yeon's gaze followed my finger.
"...The main body?"
My finger was pointing at the Twin-Headed Poison Dragon.
The Authority of Observation indicated that it was the main body.
Just as spirit casters and spirits are bound by a contract, necromancers and their undead are bound by something similar.
Such a link certainly exists, but it's only theoretical—it isn't something you can see.
The Authority of Observation could trace it.
It consumed a bit of heart power, but it could definitely uncover it.
Within the information gathered through Observation.
The thread extending from that undead, the Twin-Headed Poison Dragon, led back to itself as though looping home.
'...Tsk.'
A small question was resolved.
How had a necromancer with utterly insufficient skills and resources managed to raise the Twin-Headed Poison Dragon as an undead, however unstable?
'They used themselves as the sacrifice.'
What a madman. Whether they were completely fused or not, it seemed impossible to separate them cleanly.
Lee Ji-yeon's eyes trembled.
Her eyes were yearning for a different answer than before.
Unfortunately, I gave her the answer.
[Main body]
[It's that.]
"...Fuck."
[Pardon?]
"Forget it."
She didn't say anything like, That's impossible.
She shut her mouth tight and stared at the Twin-Headed Poison Dragon glaring this way.
"...?"
Glaring this way.
Lee Ji-yeon wasn't particularly included in that glare.
Lee Ji-yeon followed the Twin-Headed Poison Dragon's gaze.
At the end of it was me.
'It's targeting me.'
I don't know why, but it was glaring at me with utter blatancy.
Even though Lee Ji-yeon, who had bashed its head twice, was right next to me, it showed no sign of caring.
It was intent on killing me and me alone.
'......'
I narrowed my brow for a moment, then spoke.
[Senior]
[I'll lure it away alone.]
"Absolutely not!"
Lee Ji-yeon shouted as if it wasn't even worth considering.
"We don't know when it might catch up! When that happens, holding out together is the best option! Support will arrive soon! If we just hold on until then—!"
[Instead, please help the civilians.]
Her urgent shouting came to an abrupt halt.
Lee Ji-yeon closed her mouth and stared blankly at my face.
[There are still many people who haven't evacuated.]
[There are also dungeons running wild under the undead's influence.]
[If it's you, Senior, there are so many people you could save.]
I turned my head slightly.
My eyes didn't meet hers, but I did it to face her at least.
[I'll be fine.]
"...You'll die doing that."
[Don't worry.]
[I absolutely won't die.]
[Please trust me.]
I shook my head.
[I'm doing this because I don't want to die.]
.
.
.
The wind spirit carrying Lee Ji-yeon drew farther away.
I confirmed that, then observed behind me.
The Twin-Headed Poison Dragon was still chasing me without sparing a glance for Lee Ji-yeon.
The distance gradually closed. The mana it held in its maw churned violently.
At first it had chased Lee Ji-yeon like crazy, so I don't know why it was now throwing a tantrum at me.
I exhaled heavily and untied my robe.
I roughly stuffed the robe I was holding into the empty air.
Space rippled and the robe was stored into the subspace.
At the same time, the serpent's maw fully opened. The mana it had been holding lashed out like a laser.
Not pure venom, but a mana cannon laced with poison.
- BOOOOM!
The dark-green mana cannon closed in instantly. A shockwave accompanied it. The vegetation and earth not yet melted couldn't withstand the impact and were overturned.
A direct hit would kill me without leaving a corpse.
I extended my right arm toward that mana cannon.
And clenched my fist.
- CRACK!
The mana cannon split right in front of my nose.
The dark-green line divided in the empty air, passing by both my sides and gouging out the unfortunate ground.
BOOM! The mana exploded belatedly.
A crooked V-shaped mark was carved among the slowly dying vegetation.
- Sssss...!
The Twin-Headed Poison Dragon halted at the unprecedented feat.
It coiled itself as if guarding something. The sound of its dark-green scales scraping against each other rang out.
It raised its neck straight, and its two pairs of eyes rolled as it glared at me.
'......'
Though it was only an illustration in a game, that memory overlapped with the information I was now facing.
A body so vast it could wrap around a colossal tower—dwarfing skyscrapers—and still have length to spare.
Dragon wings jutting awkwardly from the middle of its body.
Hundreds of eyes rolling on a head adorned with three pairs of thick horns, scanning in all directions.
Countless teeth visible through its gaping maw, and a tongue that forked into dozens of strands.
An Earth Dragon that could not become a Heavenly Dragon.
'The Tower Master of the Dead.'
There were many differences if you looked, but for some reason that scene came to mind.
I had heard from the Calamity Flame Family.
The Calamity Flame Family head, Hong Yeon-hwa's father, was stationed inside the Demon Realm.
He should have attended the regular gathering, but for some reason he couldn't leave the Demon Realm.
In the original, you could learn the reason.
'He discovered a Tower.'
Tower of the Dead.
Since this is reality and not the game, it might be an unconquered tower.
Which is it?
I don't know for sure. But it's probably the Tower of the Dead.
And nothing really changes.
'I have to fight it someday.'
The serpent before me, likely around 4th Rank or below.
And the naturally occurring 2nd-Rank monsters someday.
And the Tower Masters who might invade, along with their armies.
I don't know my chances.
To live reasonably on my own, I could run.
But to live happily with the people who care for me, I mustn't run.
If all I ever do is run, someday I'll only end up facing a sheer cliff.
So I stopped. I turned around. I faced it.
'Spirit summoning.'
CRACK—space split open behind me.
Besides the wind spirits wandering nearby, the spirits contracted to me poured out in droves.
In an instant, the area filled with hundreds of light clusters.
- WHOOOSH!
The Sky Wing Feather I wore like a winged garment transformed.
Having drunk deep of the Lake of Mana's mana, the Sky Wing Feather displayed more vivid and intense colors than before.
I, too, had gorged on pure mana.
Mana, greatly increased in density, purity, and capacity, filled the Sky Wing Feather.
The Sky Wing Feather unfurled like a carpet being rolled out.
Split into three pairs on each side, it resembled wings.
CHAAK! Spirits hurled themselves without reservation into those spread white and blue wings.
Like a towel absorbing water, the spirits were soaked into the wings.
The wings, filled with mana and spirits, swelled in size.
Their light intensity intensified immensely.
They grew larger, extending their reach farther.
The white was dyed with other colors.
- FLUTTER!
With a single flap, a five-colored light cluster scattered.
Red, blue, green, yellow, brown.
Five-colored light fell upon the deadened land.
* * *
[Player Correction System: Affection]
Lee Ha-yul → Lee Ji-yeon
●●●●○○○○○○(31→40/100)
｢Successor of Taesan｣ ｢Good Person｣
...
[Drawing out the true worth of the Artifact ｢Sky Wing Feather｣.]
...
[Mental State ｢?ection｣ is changing.]
...
[Savior Correction System: Evil Annihilation Progress]
[The System expresses intense repulsion toward the undead!]
[Main Quest ｢Tower of the Dead｣ linkage confirmed.]
[Quest ｢Twin-Headed Poison Dragon｣ linkage confirmed.]
[Quest ｢Demon-Realmification of China｣ linkage confirmed.]
[Assisting the Savior!]
...
[Savior Correction System: Salvation Progress]
[Mental State ｢Salvation｣ ｢Goodwill｣ ｢Sacrifice｣ confirmed.]
[Assisting the Savior!]