Cultivators Appear (1) - Rebirth
“The dragon is mine...”
Blinded by greed, the human had come too close to the dragon’s corpse.
Lee Dohyun did not exhale.
His heart still beat, but only slowly, very slowly.
With his eyes closed, the gray world he had seen through the System gradually returned to natural color, and his field of vision began to narrow.
The pounding in his chest grew stronger.
His sense of the air sharpened.
The flow of the Dungeon could be felt in his hands.
Everything came back to him.
He timed the instant his body first registered itself once more.
The moment he reached out his hand, when the martial artist trying to touch him let his guard down completely.
He sprang up like a coiled spring, opened his jaws toward the right shoulder that held the sword, and bit down.
Crunch!
His teeth sank into flesh.
The sensation of striking bone came through with brutal clarity.
Hot blood flooded into his mouth.
The smell of iron came to him like perfume.
The martial artist jerked his shoulder hard.
Dohyun threw his body backward and ripped out a handful of the man’s shoulder meat.
The bitter taste of blood and flesh spread through his mouth.
The instant he hit the floor, Dohyun rolled away.
Only then did the scream come.
“Aaaagh!”
The martial artist’s eyes widened in disbelief.
The dead dragon had come back to life.
“Hhh... hhh...”
Even so, the man did not panic. He clamped down on the bleeding.
“That hurts. Who’d have thought the dragon would pretend to be dead?”
The smile faded from the man’s face as coldness settled over his features.
He checked his right arm at once.
His sensation seemed intact, but the pain made it hard to keep holding the sword.
“You think a wound like that is enough to beat me...”
The martial artist knew the dragon’s injury was worse than the loss of one of his own eyes.
As he studied the dragon’s form, something that should never have been there came into view.
“Impossible.”
Hearing that, Dohyun drew in the life force surging up from within.
Then the blade lodged in the dragon’s eye began to push itself out, slowly.
Clang.
The blade dropped to the floor.
Flesh twitched.
Inside the torn eye socket, red tissue slowly began to grow.
Like a worm crawling out, a new eye formed.
“...Huh...? It’s regenerating its eye? Is that what a dragon is...?”
Among yokai, only a great demon could regenerate an eye.
Watching what looked like a small dragon, not even a proper yokai, recover itself, the man felt pure admiration for its vitality.
At the same time, his greed only deepened.
“A dragon is a dragon.”
Dohyun’s gaze turned cold as he took stock of the cost.
250 HP consumed.
‘A total of 250 HP was consumed by the attack that drove through my eye and into my brain.’
He calculated his remaining resources with ruthless precision.
“Haha. Even with one arm, that’s enough.”
Black smoke began to drift from the man’s hand.
It’s a poison palm technique.
The smoke was certainly fast.
This palm art was something he had never seen before, and it seemed to be an area attack.
10 HP consumed.
‘I dodged it, but my life force still got drained.’
It isn’t a persistent field.
That was the good news, but it wasn’t good news only.
30 HP consumed.
It stacks.
Taking a direct hit would be dangerous.
He had wounded the arm that wielded the sword.
But the martial artist’s feet were still astonishingly quick.
He needed something to limit movement and serve as a shield.
Keeyek!
Kiiik!
The goblins appeared.
They moved in numbers that could not be compared to before.
“Damn it, those lowborn brutes!”
When the man flicked his hand, Dohyun’s eyes twitched for an instant.
Gehk...
Guk...
In a single instant, dozens of goblins clutched their throats and collapsed onto the ground.
Death settled over the clearing.
Keeyek...
One goblin staggered back to its feet.
Its chest was already burning away from the poison, but it did not retreat.
It simply stood in front of Dohyun.
That was no mistake.
The poison palm was stronger than expected.
It wasn’t poison smoke. It was more like hydrochloric gas.
...!
Seeing that, Dohyun understood that because the process had already begun, stopping now would only increase the damage.
He drove strength into his limbs, and his claws shot for the martial artist’s leg like arrows.
Blood burst from the man’s thigh.
When he tried to counterattack, Dohyun immediately slipped into the goblins’ midst and hid.
“Ghk... This dragon...”
Stacking was dangerous.
Kik...
Kek...
While he hid, Dohyun’s heart pounded wildly.
A goblin fell beside him.
Goblins that had been burned by the poison staggered forward.
They did not retreat.
They simply blocked the path to Dohyun.
They were protecting their master.
Knowing their sacrifice, Dohyun attacked without hesitation.
All I need to do is cut off his mobility.
If he severed the legs, the martial artist was finished.
Slowly, like preparing a meal.
He targeted the man’s legs.
The movement was chillingly cold.
“Heh, young, but a dragon after all.”
Dohyun shoved himself through the fallen goblin corpses.
Then he tore into the martial artist’s right Achilles tendon with his teeth.
“Ugh...”
The man writhed in pain.
Dohyun did not rush.
He still had the other leg.
The goblins, marching densely even in death, were more than enough to serve as a shield.
He cut the other leg as well.
“Agh...”
Despair crept across the martial artist’s face.
“Lowborn... for something so weak, you’re insane.”
He had stacked corpses with his poison palm.
But now he could think only of defeat.
Dohyun liked that despair in his enemy.
He remained completely calm and took them apart one by one.
“Ghk... What a merciless bastard.”
He severed the arms, then ruined the limbs once more.
The martial artist collapsed on the ground like an insect, unable to move at all.
Dohyun paused for a moment.
“Heh, dragon, even if I die, someone else will come and kill you in the end. Now kill me! Dragon!!!”
He heard the man laugh as he shouted.
Dohyun gave the order with calm precision.
Kill him.
He would not finish the job himself.
At that command, the goblins surrounding them bared red eyes and rushed in.
“This is outrageous!!! Dragon!!! You won’t even finish it yourself?!”
The man’s voice echoed through the clearing, but it was swallowed almost immediately.
Kiek!
Keeek!
The goblins charged.
“Eat this!”
As Dohyun had expected, there was a sudden boom.
Black smoke surged thickly around the man, who still could not move his limbs.
The goblins that lunged at him died again.
Again.
But when Dohyun gave the order without any emotion, the surviving goblins charged once more.
“Cowardly bas---!”
The human’s scream was quickly drowned beneath the goblins’ roar and vanished.
They shredded the corpse as if by mutilation, tearing it apart.
Then they withdrew at last.
The cave fell silent for a brief moment.
The screams that had filled it a moment ago were gone, and only the goblins’ rough breathing remained.
And then there was only the corpse, so ruined it was hard to recognize as human.
Dohyun approached and said, “He’s dead.”
The smell of blood spread through the air.
He pushed the flesh left between his teeth aside and spat it out.
Tch.
His heart was still racing.
He looked around, trying to keep his thoughts as calm as possible.
Goblins hacked apart by swords here and there, goblins reduced to scraps of meat by the cultivator’s talismans, goblins whose skin had blackened under poison and died with their eyes open in agony.
The calculation was wrong.
The goblins were not troops suited for this kind of fight.
They had taken so much damage it was easier to count who was still alive than who had died.
Still, there were survivors.
As their eyes took in the mountain of corpses, fear rose in them, along with emotions that had never been there before.
Death.
This kind of death was the first since the Dungeon had come into being.
But in their eyes there was also the fact that they had won, and loyalty flowed there as well.
Dohyun looked at them for a moment, then turned away.
Just then, at the entrance...
Clank... clank...
A goblin dragged its injured body toward the battlefield.
Keeyek...
It moved as if crawling.
Its legs were already twisted, and one arm could barely be lifted.
The skin on its body had been torn apart as if tortured with knives.
It was obvious that killing it would spare it pain.
And yet, for some reason, different words came out of his mouth.
It’s alive. Heal it.
After saying that, Dohyun turned and headed for the Core Room.
He decided to leave the cleanup to the remaining goblins.
***
The Core Room.
“Dragon, you made it back alive.”
Heok-o looked at him with bright, intent eyes.
Yeah.
Dohyun paid it little mind, his face lost in thought.
“Dragon! I’ve got good news and bad news. Which do you want first?”
...The good news.
“Right! First, I stole the cultivator’s belongings.”
Heok-o said it proudly, as though pilfering from the battlefield had happened in some casual moment.
Dohyun’s brow twitched for a moment, but he stayed quiet, deciding to hear the full story before judging it.
“Dragon, look at this. This is a spatial bag. Pretty high-grade, too, but it’s got a seal on it.”
Seal meant a password.
He frowned slightly.
A seal? Then it’ll be hard to use.
“Nope! Dragon, I can break it.”
As he spoke, Heok-o opened the spatial bag like Santa Claus and pulled out several shining stones.
Hmm?
The small, luminous stones held a force similar to the Dungeon’s energy.
“These are Spiritual Stones, and then...”
He pulled a rectangular object made of jade from the spatial bag.
“Dragon, this is a treasure cultivators use to store information. There are other things besides this, too, and...”
The word information drew his attention a little.
Information about another world was always worth having.
Heok-o went on explaining the various spoils.
And the bad news?
“Ah, the fact that the cultivator couldn’t get here, you mean?”
Heok-o hesitated for a moment, then looked toward the forest.
“Hmm.”
A silence passed.
“Those bastards... Dragon, I think they’ve noticed you.”