Doubt
Doubt
The energy Lee Ha-yul had been gathering shot forward.
He only realized it after the force struck its target and erupted into a silent explosion.
The spot where the monster had been was now swallowed by a sphere that flickered black and white.
- ───...!
There was no sound, but a strange vibration rippled outward. The trajectory carved by the Five Ends and the resulting explosion sent space itself undulating like a wave.
Goosebumps prickled his skin as the shockwave slapped against him.
"Wha, wha, crazy... what the hell did you fire...?"
Daera, her jaw hanging open, murmured in a stutter.
She knew Lee Ha-yul possessed various high-output techniques, but this... this was a bit serious, wasn't it?
He had seemingly swallowed up the Heavenly Thunder and Gale released by Daera and Lee Ha-sol. Who would have thought he'd unleash an attack like that?
Everyone who witnessed and felt the explosion froze on the spot.
In combat, this kind of rigidity would invite death, but they were certain of the monster's demise after being struck by the Five Ends.
『Ku, ku, grrrrk...』
Yet contrary to their certainty, the monster, the Tower Master of the Dead, was still alive.
Within the horrific mana wave disturbance that even disoriented Lee Ha-yul's detection.
Sensing a presence that seemed about to flicker out, Lee Ha-yul bared his teeth and moved his legs.
- Thud... Thud...
His legs stomped the ground, and blood splattered down from his wounds.
"Hey, hey hey hey!? Ha-yul!?"
Hong Yeon-hwa, who had been shaking out her numb hands after pouring out Calamity Flame, approached in fright.
The women who had stood frozen and dazed by the output of the Five Ends also rushed over to Lee Ha-yul in a hurry.
A dragon with immensely large, iridescent white scales. Its species was completely different. But Hong Yeon-hwa could feel Lee Ha-yul from that dragon.
No, it was Lee Ha-yul.
Her emotions and instincts confirmed it the moment she saw the dragon.
Her belated reasoning also pointed to it being Lee Ha-yul.
Suddenly turning into a dragon? He could already sprout horns from his head at will, so turning into a dragon might be possible too.
Her threshold of common sense had long been shattered after spending time with Lee Ha-yul.
- Grrrrk...
Lee Ha-yul sensed the people approaching him. The feeling of them climbing onto his head, the touches on his horns and scales.
He felt a flicker of worry, but the tip of his tail swayed softly on its own.
However, he didn't express his joy just yet.
Maintaining his tension, he approached the Tower Master of the Dead, who lay limp on the ground.
The state of the Tower Master of the Dead was critical. Lee Ha-yul was deeply wounded too, but it was nothing compared to the Tower Master of the Dead.
Most of its body had been blown away.
The long, thick body, which seemed like it could coil around the world if it wanted, was all gone. Only the head and neck barely remained.
- Whooosh...! Crack! Sizzle! Crunch!
Even the remaining parts weren't intact.
The barely remaining flesh was being eroded by the energy of the Five Ends.
A body burning up, freezing over, splitting into earth, seared by lightning, and torn to shreds by the wind as it was annihilated.
'It's dead.'
Recovery was impossible.
He could discern that at a glance.
It was alive for the moment, but would die soon. If it hadn't been such a terribly durable Earth Dragon, it would have been completely annihilated the instant it was grazed.
Lee Ha-yul, enduring the intense pain, stirred his tangled mana.
- What were you hit by before this? Who split your Tower like that?
『...Heh, do you think I would, answer nicely?』
The Tower Master of the Dead had reached the same conclusion.
It wasn't completely without options.
If the Authority of the Dead was wielded well, there was room for revival.
But that inevitably required a long time, and Lee Ha-yul would never allow it.
Even with its army corps, it couldn't retrieve its body.
Even its main army corps might fail, and with the army corps depleted from the continuous battle, it was impossible.
『The heavens are truly indifferent. To meet the end of a long life on a battlefield of defeat...』
- Tsk.
As the Tower Master of the Dead mustered those dying thoughts, Lee Ha-yul clicked his tongue.
Force it to talk?
No matter how close it was to death, forcing the mouth of a monster like that open was nearly impossible.
It might be different if he invested time and effort, but the Tower Master of the Dead ceased its resistance, and the erosion of the Five Ends only accelerated.
'Just who wounded the Tower Master of the Dead?'
Before facing Lee Ha-yul, the Tower Master of the Dead was already bearing wounds.
And not just ordinary wounds.
A deep-seated grudge and curse had burrowed thickly into its soul. It was definitely an injury amounting to a fatal wound. Some being had inflicted that much damage on this Earth Dragon.
Lee Ha-yul quickly spread his mana and detected the army of the dead.
Every single one was a high-grade undead.
The undead amalgamated into composite beasts easily rivaled 4th Rank, and the number of entities rivaling 3rd Rank reached double digits.
Even sensing just this much, it was a terrifyingly dreadful horde, but it was nothing compared to the army he experienced in the original work.
'There are no 2nd Rank.'
The legion commanders who led the army of the dead.
There were a few 3rd-Rank Alphas, but their numbers were few. A 2nd Rank legion commander didn't appear at all.
It couldn't be that the Tower Master had conserved them until the moment of death. It simply had no more legion commanders to deploy.
The army corps had already been expended.
'Who in the world...?'
Lee Ha-yul's mind tangled in confusion.
『Keuk... agonize over it hard. If you're lucky, it might be a riddle easier to untie than a knot of thread.』
- You insignificant little worm.
The Tower Master of the Dead, having seen through Lee Ha-yul's psychology, jeered.
Although Lee Ha-yul bared his teeth and mentioned the Earth Dragon's reverse scale, the Tower Master of the Dead did not react fiercely.
'This is the end.'
To be precise, it couldn't react.
Its dimming consciousness was being pulled downward.
The death before its eyes was familiar. Naturally so, since it had killed life throughout its long existence and handled death through necromancy.
As its very soul was encroached upon and being annihilated by the Five Ends, there would probably be no revival.
The true end.
The Earth Dragon couldn't die as a Heavenly Dragon.
The one who killed that Earth Dragon was Lee Ha-yul, who had taken on a form identical to a Heavenly Dragon.
'The heavens truly are indifferent...'
The Tower Master of the Dead, having repeated that thought to itself again, let out a hollow laugh.
The heavens are indifferent. Wasn't it a laughable thought?
- Wicked worm, the will of the Heavenly Dragons shall gather and become your shackle, and you shall never trespass upon the heavens.
Since the Heavenly Dragons who ruled the sky had cursed the Earth Dragon, it was reasonable to see it as the heavens directly imposing punishment.
'...There is no longer any place to hold a grudge.'
The thread of consciousness snapped.
The Tower Master of the Dead, once revered as a god of death, sank into death.
The Earth Dragon met its end, slumping onto the very earth it had so desperately wanted to leave.
.
.
.
It was dead.
The moment the Five Ends finally annihilated the Earth Dragon's physical body and soul completely, Lee Ha-yul could only judge it so.
The Five Ends, which had cleanly erased the Tower Master of the Dead, died down.
That sight felt terribly slow and strange.
He had killed a Tower Master.
An existence of a Tower Master, one he had trembled at just a year ago, not knowing how to oppose them.
He had finished off one of those three invading Tower Masters.
'......'
An indescribable feeling spread out.
It didn't feel real.
After the Tower Master of Bitter Cold, this invasion had come too suddenly—a battle that ended much faster and more easily than he had prepared for.
Most importantly, it still wasn't over.
The Tower Master of Purgatory remained, and while he'd dealt significant damage, the Tower Master of Bitter Cold remained.
And the unknown entity that had clashed with and ground down the Tower Master of the Dead and its army corps also remained.
It was far too early a moment to feel relief.
As Lee Ha-yul struggled to interpret such complicated feelings, he belatedly realized his surroundings were noisy.
"No, is this really a dragon... no, first of all! Is it okay for you to be moving right now...?!"
"Good heavens, what a state...!"
As if to prove them right, Lee Ha-yul was in a condition that made the phrase 'covered in wounds' an understatement.
The faces of those who examined Lee Ha-yul turned pale.
The close-quarters brawl he'd engaged in with the Tower Master of the Dead, ignoring all safety, had easily wrecked his sturdy scales and body.
On top of that, the reckless barrage of Three Ends and finally firing the Five Ends had ripped his body apart with tremendous recoil.
Although his pure white scales hadn't lost their iridescence, they couldn't hide their tattered state.
'Ah.'
There was a reason his thoughts were sluggish.
His emotions were complicated, but it was also because his consciousness was hazy to begin with.
Hong Yeon-hwa, Professor Atra, Daera, and Lee Ha-sol were spraying potions with pale faces; the spirits, having finished off the undead in the area, wanted to fly over immediately; Lee Ji-yeon and Lee Seo-yul ran over with horrified faces.
Ellia flew over, her body entrusted to a Wind Spirit.
Ariel, unable to leave the Floating Island, cast recovery magic from afar, at a loss...
'It's tough...'
After thinking that far, Lee Ha-yul relaxed his strength. The staggering dragon collapsed with a flop.
- Thud!
The massive dragon's body slumped down. His eyes, which he didn't need to keep open due to the haziness, closed.
"Gyaaaaaagh─!"
Hong Yeon-hwa, her eyes flipping over, foamed at the mouth.
* * *
It had been only a few days since it was announced that a Tower had appeared in the Changhae territory.
The incident that occurred in the Taesan family's territory was enough to inflame a world already turned upside down.
A wide-area Spatial Isolation covering the entire territory. The sharp increase in naturally spawning undead within it. The dead rising in droves without any catalyst.
The Tower and Tower Master who caused this incident. The invasion, the war, and the repulsion.
Anyone could tell the world was in an uproar over the information being announced in a way that minimized chaos as much as possible.
Especially the Taesan family was in turmoil.
They were the power directly hit by this invasion and catastrophe, and naturally spawning undead still remained.
Just as the family head Lee Ji-ah was sealed for a disgraceful matter, Lee Ji-yeon was also busier than ever, without a moment to sleep.
"You sleep well."
But even as the world was in such an uproar, some people had put all else aside and gathered in one place.
A building temporarily erected in a corner of the Floating Island.
The women gathered in one room looked down at the floor with subtle expressions.
Two children could be seen, fast asleep, lying on a fluffy futon and covered with a soft blanket.
Hair even whiter than the blanket and pillow, and clear skin.
It was Lee Ha-yul, who was at the center of the incident that had set the world in an uproar.
Without a clue about the chaos in the world, he was sleeping soundly.
'......'
It wasn't referring to just one person.
Both children were Lee Ha-yul.
One was the body of Lee Ha-yul, who had grown younger. The other was the soul of Lee Ha-yul, who had been a dragon and returned as a human... no, a fairy, and had also grown younger.
'What nonsense am I even spouting.'
Every time she thought about souls and bodies, her rooted common sense was grabbed by the hair and shaken.
But since this was the truth, she had no choice but to accept it.
Hong Yeon-hwa, letting out a deep sigh, turned on her smartwatch's photo function.
A noiselessly captured photo of the two Lee Ha-yuls went into an important folder.
She didn't feel any guilt. Hong Yeon-hwa could bet her life that everyone here had captured this scene in a photo.
After thinking that far, Hong Yeon-hwa turned her head.
- Click
A shutter sound that wasn't hidden in time. The person who took the photo flinched under the gazes directed at her.
Hong Yeon-hwa's expression turned subtle.
"What are you doing?"
"...Ahem, excuse me. I am not accustomed to the latest devices..."
A woman with pure white hair softly cascading down.
The Tower Master of Knowledge. The primary contributor who led this Floating Island and aided Lee Ha-yul.
Ariel elegantly gave a fake cough and deactivated the hologram.
But the peculiar gazes clinging to Ariel didn't disperse.
"......."
With twitching eyebrows, Hong Yeon-hwa dropped her gaze slightly.
His face left her field of vision, and a voluptuous mass came into view.
Her wariness shot up.
For Lee Ha-yul, she had to be more wary of maternal love than a beautiful face.