Cultivator Emergence (4) - Death
The explosion subsided.
The cultivator saw it.
There, in the center of it all, stood a being.
Green scales.
Claws that shone like jewels.
And with every breath it drew, the spiritual energy in the air trembled and swayed.
It was almost strange that they had failed to find it until now.
Small as it was, its form matched the dragon recorded in the family chronicles exactly.
"It's a dragon!"
The cultivator's eyes flipped with greed.
"I-it's a real dragon!!!!"
He shouted at the martial artists.
"You there...! Absolutely do not let it bleed to the point that the dragon blood is damaged!"
"Yes, sir."
The martial artists moved in.
"The heavens haven't abandoned me!!"
While the cultivator screamed in a frenzy, Dohyun barely managed to settle the impact wracking his body and glared at the martial artists.
As one of them drew his sword, Dohyun's body rolled across the ground exactly as the earlier intelligence had predicted.
The blade flashed.
Scrreeecht-!
Scales were sliced away.
"You idiots! Don't damage the body!"
The martial artists showed no reaction, but the cultivator was in an uproar.
He stomped around behind them, barking orders.
"It's a dragon! A dragon! Minimize the damage to the scales!"
He kept barking absurd commands, yet said them as if they were perfectly reasonable.
Jang Musa and the other martial artists also moved with grave seriousness as they listened.
Swish-
Watching this, Dohyun believed that if he timed it well, he could land a decisive blow.
That was when it happened.
The goblins surged in.
There were still many left.
The cultivator's slaughter had simply been so swift that the space had been empty for an instant.
Even in the midst of the carnage, the goblins moved without fear.
Because there, at the most dangerous place of all, was their master.
Jang Musa had only heard of dragons in passing, so he did not know their worth.
But hearing the family head speak, he understood that it was far from ordinary.
Still,
"Stop scratching the family treasure!!!"
That lunatic.
Watching the cultivator, Jang Musa could tell just how precious the thing was.
He was furious inside, but he held it in.
The dragon's claws were sharp, and he could feel that it was anticipating the path of his sword.
Jang Musa's gaze
fell on his right arm, which had already been torn open.
It was a ruined arm.
There was no reason to hesitate.
Riiip-!
The sound of flesh tearing rang out.
"That hurts."
Blood streamed from his right hand.
The skin of his arm had been split open in a long gash, and the bleeding was severe.
But he seized the dragon by the nape.
For an instant, Jang Musa met the dragon's eyes.
Even at the moment of its death, those eyes remained cold and calm.
"Die!"
Along with the thought that it was a vile feeling.
Thunk-!
A chill sensation pierced his eye.
The sword blade coldly churned through his brain.
The world
went dark.
Dohyun's body collapsed like a light bulb with the current cut off.
The cultivator's face turned red.
"You idiot! Dragon eyes are a precious material for top-grade treasures!"
As if regretting it, he rushed over in a few steps and checked the dragon's body.
"Hah-hahaha! It's a dragon! A dragon!!! A dragon that can make a Golden Elixir expert!!!"
Clutching the cooling corpse, the cultivator was drunk on madness.
Jang Musa looked at that sight and thought:
So this was the end.
So now he would finally go home.
And then.
A shiver ran down his spine.
When the cultivator, who had been admiring and rejoicing over the dragon's corpse, glanced slightly behind him, the eyes he saw were cold.
He was excited, but those eyes were filled with something else, something hidden deep within.
Jang Musa realized it.
He plans to kill us.
***
Gray.
Everything was gray.
He could see his body.
The dragon sprawled on the ground.
My body.
To think I'd be taken out before the goblins even arrived.
The sword path the goblin had shown as it died.
He had calculated that he could exploit the opening.
He had been wrong.
Calculation error.
Was this death?
There was no cold, no heat, no sensation in his limbs, only a gray field of vision.
So this is death...
Just as he was about to accept it with a sense of emptiness,
[HP: 23000/23000]
[You have suffered a critical injury.]
[Healing the wound with HP.]
Looking at the notification for a moment, he understood.
I'm not dead yet.
That meant there was a second round.
For a moment, he felt a thick, life-laden force moving through him from within his body.
Wait.
As he sent out his will, the life force flowing from the core stopped.
Hmm.
In that gray field of vision, he could see it clearly.
The savage smile blooming at the corner of the cultivator's mouth, full of ecstasy.
If this works... I might not even have to lift a finger.
***
There was only one thought in the cultivator's head.
This is a dragon!!!
That alone was enough.
It could even become a ticket straight into the inner circle of a higher sect.
The family was already ruined.
So something like this, he could take for himself alone and vanish.
Later, after a hundred years, he would become a high-ranking cultivator and prove that he had been right.
Only,
the martial artists behind him were a problem.
The family elders still could not ignore them.
Old fogeys who don't know the times.
From his position as family head, it was natural that he disliked those who kept saying this wasn't allowed and that wasn't allowed.
And if they reported the dragon's existence, no, he couldn't even say with certainty they wouldn't betray him before that.
It was a dragon, after all.
The cultivator's thought reached its period.
He quietly took out a bracelet and put it on.
It was a magic artifact containing a spell used to control the martial artists under the family head.
"Ahem. You have all worked hard. When we return to the family, you will be sufficiently rewarded."
While slowly slipping the bracelet on from behind, he had to make eye contact to activate it.
The moment he turned his head and began tracing hand seals, trying to operate the artifact to subdue the martial artists,
Jang Musa's body vanished in an instant.
At the same time, the cultivator screamed as agony exploded from his wrist.
"Gaaahhh!!!! M-my h-hand!!!"
Holding a short sword with blood dripping from it, Jang Musa said,
"So it was true, Family Head. You intended to betray us?"
On the severed forearm, Jang Musa saw the artifact he recognized well.
Among the family's martial artists, there was no one who did not know about the bracelet bound by a restriction spell.
"W-what are you doing!!! To attack the family head! Do you want to die?!?"
"No. I attacked because I want to live."
"You, you rebel...! Hey! You there, stop this bastard!"
He shouted at the other martial artists.
"Family Head, do you even know our names?"
"What?"
"You don't, do you. And besides, that thing doesn't allow user registration."
The artifact had light still burning in it. Clear proof that it had been started and then stopped.
At the martial artist's words, the cultivator's face went pale as he shouted,
"I-if I die, you'll all be expelled from the family and won't be able to take spirit pills, and then you'll die!"
Jang Musa pointed at the dragon's corpse.
"Do you really think the ones who get that will expel me?"
The cultivator tried to object to that, but
the sword flashed.
And his head fell.
Watching the cultivator die so emptily, Jang Musa said with a hollow laugh,
"Idiot. That's what the defensive talisman is for."
It was not easy for a martial artist to cut down a cultivator this effortlessly.
Unless the fool who called himself family head was actually a fool.
After witnessing the death, he looked at the two martial artists and said,
"Now cover this up and we return. Just having the dragon's corpse here is enough to make the family head's death look like an accident, and since we've accomplished a great feat, the family will treat us more generously."
After speaking to the two martial artists, Jang Musa turned to move the dragon's corpse.
Thunk-!
Two blades sprang up from Jang Musa's body as he turned.
"Cough... b-betrayal?"
The blades had pierced his heart and lungs.
They struck the two vital points of Okdanghyeol and Jagunghyeol with perfect precision.
The two martial artists replied.
"No. This is only natural."
"We killed the traitor who murdered the family head."
They spoke as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
But beneath their words, greed flickered in both their eyes.
"Kuh... I... I was keeping beasts..."
Jang Musa lamented after seeing their eyes,
but
their swords ruthlessly cut off his life.
"Jung-gyeok, I didn't think you'd make that choice."
"Haha, Jin-ban. What choice do you mean I made?"
"Then... shall we divide up the dragon? It would be better to split it in half."
"Fine."
The two laughed and agreed.
As Jung-gyeok said he trusted him and first slid his sword back into its sheath before making a gesture again,
Jin-ban also gathered his own sword in his hand.
Together, they stood beside the dragon's corpse.
"So this is a dragon..."
"A real dragon. The source from which the dragon forms that cultivators so desperately want to learn are born."
The two stared at the corpse.
At the same time,
Dohyun was staring at them too.
The most troublesome ones are dead.
As he calculated his chances, he thought that removing the two remaining humans would be difficult, but possible.
Hmm...?
For Dohyun, a favorable variable had just appeared.
The two had drawn their swords on each other. One was expressionless, and the other was smiling.
A clash erupted before his eyes in an instant.
What is this?
For a moment, his calculations stopped. No matter how much humans were creatures of greed, there were still goblins left over there, so why were they fighting each other...?
"Khk. Corpse Poison Demon Palm! So you were a spy for the Baekgol Jin family!"
"A spy? I've been a member of the Baekgol Jin family from the start."
A suspicious black palm-shaped wisp of smoke shot out.
The expressionless man twisted his face aside and spat blood.
But he had inhaled some of the smoke, and with a pained expression, black veins began to rise beneath his skin.
It looked like poisoning.
"Just you wait!"
The expressionless man turned and fled without hesitation.
"Haha, that's not very scary."
The smiling man did not give chase.
Instead, he looked down at the dragon's corpse.
"If only I have you..."
At that moment.
Thump.
The man's eyes froze.
Thump.
Thump.
The dragon's heart, which had been still, began to beat again.