Chapter 177
Chapter 177
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 177
Chapter Title: Painting the Dragon's Pupil
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'Hold on.'
I froze.
A strange realization—or more like the precursor to enlightenment, something akin to static electricity lightly rubbing against the folds of my brain.
'From Leviathan's perspective... Yo-hwa is nothing more than a bug crawling into its eyeball, a mere mosquito pupa?'
Eye. Bug. Mosquito.
A sequence of oddly familiar keywords. It felt like a great idea was just on the verge of surfacing.
If I could sit calmly in a cafe with a nice view and down an Americano, I'd snag that idea in no time!
But unfortunately, the current situation wasn't leisurely enough to scout for a cafe with a scenic outlook.
"Ah, all my fingers have turned into bugs... Teacher. It feels like I'm gonna slip inside this eye. See you in the next life."
"No, Yo-hwa!"
Snap! I unleashed Air Stride and dashed over, grabbing Cheon Yo-hwa's hand. She clamped onto my hand with both of hers as if she'd been waiting.
Then she pulled, but it didn't budge an inch—like her torso was wedged in a wall crevice.
"Eeeek! Teacher, my arm! It's getting pulled off!"
"No, what the hell is it caught on? What's even there?"
"Bugs! This eyeball right here—it's crawling with bugs! Millions of water bugs clinging to my thighs and calves, dragging me down!"
It was true.
Wriggle, wriggle, wriggle—.
Transparent bugs the size of human forearms slithered and bubbled, relentlessly pulling Cheon Yo-hwa downward.
That's right. Leviathan wasn't just its massive body— even its organs like the eyeball were composed entirely of water-like bugs.
Deep inside the eyeball, an antlion pit yawned wide in the bugs' maw, as if vowing not to let Cheon Yo-hwa, who had dared to intrude without permission, escape.
I shouted urgently.
"Just release the Infinite Void's seal!"
"I've already tried negotiating! But that bastard Infinite Void wants six hours a day from me as payment for lending his power!"
"No way! In a previous turn, it started at six hours, then jumped to twelve, and then to 23 hours, 59 minutes, 59 seconds!"
"You're right... Ah, it's really sucking me in. It's devouring my aura too. Maybe just getting sucked in together with you like a suicide pact..."
"Hey, aren't you Infinite Void yet?"
"Not yet?"
Boom!
My foot stomped down in a True Step.
I unleashed aura, turning Leviathan's eye socket into a real hole.
-Kraaaaaargh!
Leviathan writhed in agony.
But the original goal of rescuing Cheon Yo-hwa failed. The moment the water bugs vaporized under my aura, they were instantly replaced by others.
The number of water bugs comprising the Storm Dragon's colossal form was overwhelmingly vast—like seawater itself.
"Tch."
I drew my cane sword Doha and tried severing Leviathan's neck.
Slaaaash!
The neck was sliced. But bugs immediately swarmed from the cross-section, reattaching the body and head.
No end in sight.
To save Cheon Yo-hwa, I might have to burn Leviathan's entire body at this rate.
"Teacher, maybe it's better to just hand over six hours or so to Infinite Void—"
Instead of answering, I gripped Cheon Yo-hwa's hand tightly. The hot pressure made her stop mid-sentence.
I couldn't let that happen.
Once Infinite Void took over Cheon Yo-hwa's body, it would shamelessly impersonate her, winning over her friends, comrades, and subordinates.
Cheon Yo-hwa would be forced to watch from the depths of her consciousness, like a prisoner in an endless abyss, as Infinite Void replaced her.
There had been a turn where that happened.
'Think, Undertaker.'
I kept burning the seemingly endless water bugs with aura, delaying Cheon Yo-hwa's fall into the eyeball's cliff by even a second longer.
Futile thrashing.
In this sluggish flow where time itself seemed stretched, I racked my brain for a strategy.
'Think. Why is Leviathan so desperately guarding its eyeball?'
'Did it sense Infinite Void dormant inside Cheon Yo-hwa? Is it trying to digest him?'
'Does Leviathan have the ability to devour even Outer God-level anomalies? No, that can't be. If so, Infinite Void wouldn't be casually upping the ante...'
Then.
Thud—.
Footsteps echoed.
Thud.
It was bizarre.
Leviathan's thrashing had unleashed tsunamis crashing everywhere. The roar of tidal waves and storms swallowed all other noise.
Even Cheon Yo-hwa and I would struggle to converse without amplifying our voices with aura.
Yet amid this chaos, the footsteps rang crystal clear against my eardrums.
Thud. Thud. Thud—.
The strangeness wasn't just the sound.
The surroundings froze solid.
Cheon Yo-hwa clutching my hand, the Baekhwa Girls' High School guild members bombarding in real-time to save their guild leader, the ocean spray hurled skyward by Leviathan's back—all halted.
"―――."
I was no exception.
I stood frozen, eyes wide. Consciousness and thought flowed fine, but even blinking was impossible.
No matter how much my perception of time slows when focusing intensely, this was too extreme.
Thud, thud. Thud—.
Only the footsteps approaching from behind pierced through transparently.
Unable to turn my head toward the sound, I could only listen.
Thud.
The footsteps stopped right by my head.
A small shadow enveloped me.
『Guild Leader.』
A sickly sweet scent wafted over—like an apple rotten from too much sugar.
Go Yo-ri's fragrance.
『I told you, didn't I?』
Arms extended from behind, cupping my face. Five fingers intertwined with five others, weaving a spiderweb over my features.
Through the mangled vision of the spiderweb fingers, Leviathan's eyeball flickered briefly.
Then the scent drew closer, whispering right into my ear.
『That's a dragon.』
—With that whisper.
The world's stasis shattered like a lie.
Cheon Yo-hwa thrashed. Baekhwa Girls' High School guild members fought on. The towering waves crashed repeatedly onto the ark's deck.
Splaash!
I got doused too. After the icy seawater soaked my face and dripped off, I whirled around.
Go Yo-ri was gone.
Perhaps she never was there.
"......"
I gaped blankly.
Enlightenment spilled from my parted lips.
"...Eye."
"Yes? Teacher?"
"Yes. The eye!"
I shouted.
"Leviathan—this monstrous sea dragon—had to protect its eye because it's a dragon!"
Painting the Dragon's Pupil.
Legend tells of a master painter who drew four white dragons on a temple wall.
The artwork was so masterful that all who saw it praised it endlessly, yet strangely, the painter left the dragons' eyes undone, deeming it incomplete.
When asked why he wouldn't finish it.
-The moment I paint the eyes, the dragons will fly to the heavens.
He replied.
Skeptical, people pressed him, so he painted eyes on two of the dragons.
Sure enough, the two white dragons writhed free from the wall and soared into the sky.
From a modern view, 'the seal containing the anomalies broke.'
'A blind white dragon can no longer take flight!'
The eye signifies perception.
A blind existence unable to recognize its location or identity could never break earthly bonds and soar into the vast sky.
And if this tale applied to the dragon before us.
'A dragon stripped of its "eye of the storm" would plummet from divine beast to mere mural.'
"Saintess!"
[Yes?]
"Are you at the Yongsan-dong study right now? Do you have Kafka's [The Metamorphosis]?"
[Yes? Oh, I do...]
"Don't ask why! Hurry and grab Kafka's [The Metamorphosis] and read it to Yo-hwa! Not a single word skipped!"
[I have it now.]
She replied in under a second. She'd frozen time briefly to fetch it.
My instructions weren't over. I looked down at Cheon Yo-hwa.
"Yo-hwa! The Saintess is about to read a passage to you. Recite it after her. From start to finish."
Even in this perilous moment where she might get sucked into Leviathan's eyeball, casually mentioning suicide pacts showed her iron nerves.
Unfazed by my abrupt order, Cheon Yo-hwa's expression and voice turned ice-cold instantly.
"Should I read loudly?"
"Volume doesn't matter. Just keep reciting without breaks."
"Got it, Teacher."
While the Saintess and Cheon Yo-hwa synced privately, I raised my left hand skyward.
Then I unfurled dark aura.
Not the piercing burn to gouge the eyeball like before.
The opposite.
I spread an aura 'barrier,' enveloping the dragon's entire eyeball.
Like an eyelid.
-......!
My rippling dark aura swiftly shrouded the eye.
Not just one—I extended to the opposite eye too. Aura bands wrapped Leviathan's eye sockets like a blindfold.
Completely isolated from the outside world.
Cheon Yo-hwa and I plunged into darkness too.
-Kraaaaaargh!
Leviathan wailed.
Far too desperate for mere blocked vision.
Moreover.
[......!]
[The enemy's movements are slowing!]
The anomaly, rampaging like a bucking bronco until now, weakened rapidly.
Sizzle, sizzle, sizzle—.
The bugs gripping Cheon Yo-hwa's legs thrashed tails and surged up.
They hurled themselves at my 'eyelid' to tear it apart.
Useless. Just as I couldn't incinerate Leviathan's whole body, it couldn't devour my aura instantly.
"Urgh."
Bugs gnawing the eyelid turned on me.
Crawling into my eyes, mouth, between fingers—any gap, devouring relentlessly.
I summoned protective aura to repel their loathsome assaults. Splatter, splatter! The bugs, facing their own doom under the sealed 'eye,' fought desperately.
[One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke]
"One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke"
And.
[from a troubled dream]
"from a troubled dream"
The Saintess's emotionless voice and Cheon Yo-hwa's clear tones wove a duet echoing from the bug pit abyss.
Grrrrr!
The bugs biting me whipped heads toward Cheon Yo-hwa, swarming her in vast hordes.
But I couldn't let them.
I surged aura to dangerous heights, incinerating them. Keeping the anomaly from Cheon Yo-hwa at all costs.
Grrrr! Grrrk!
Yet the seawater-endless bugs charged her madly without tiring.
In the pitch-black heart of the eyelid curtain, blocking sunlight.
My faint dark hue endlessly repelled the bug legion's suicide assaults.
'If this deluge anomaly is tied to bugs somehow.'
My aura reserves plummeted.
'What happened to the Saintess must happen to this anomaly too.'
The Saintess merely walked a street, got a 'bug in her eye,' and turned into a potato.
I didn't know the full truth of these 'bug'-related anomalies.
One certainty.
'Anomalies can never reject their own essence.'
No double standards for anomalies.
If transforming humans is its power, placed in the same situation, the anomaly meets the same fate.
Deluge, Leviathan, Jörmungandr.
This merciless white dragon treated us humans invading its body as parasites.
So when that 'parasite' entered its 'eye.'
'Leviathan too must transform like the Saintess—not a potato, but something inescapably bug-like!'
Bugs strained to seal Cheon Yo-hwa's mouth; I strained to shield her from them.
As unstoppable spear clashed unyielding shield.
The incantation completed.
[he found himself transformed]
"he found himself transformed"
[in his bed into a monstrous vermin.]
"into a monstrous—"
That instant.
"—vermin."
Heaven and earth shook.