Chapter 257
Chapter 257
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 257
Chapter Title: Heavenly Dragon (9)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Dawn was breaking, Barbatos felt.
Black storm clouds covered the night sky.
Beyond the pitch-black darkness where not even starlight could pierce, a red sun was rising.
Illuminating the deep darkness.
Brilliant and sublime.
“Drop dead, you lizard bastard.”
Ha-eun, clutching flames that burned like the sun, leaped high into the air.
Her fist, pulled back to its limit, was swung fiercely, like a cannonball being fired.
[Kugh!]
Barbatos swallowed a groan and glared at Ha-eun, who was right in front of him.
He hadn't expected her to break through the curtain of curses so easily, but.
‘With His grace, this should be nothing…!’
He focused his mind on the horn on his forehead.
A vast power flowed out from within it—.
[…Huh?]
It didn't.
As if he'd entered an area with no signal, the connection to his ‘Master’ was suddenly and completely severed.
[Why...?]
Barbatos looked up at the sky, his head raised high in disbelief.
Had it become evening already?
He trembled slightly as he gazed at the sky where darkness had fallen.
And then.
“Haaaaaaaaah!!”
*Fwooooosh!*
With a powerful shout, Ha-eun's fist, condensed with flames, brutally uppercut Barbatos's jaw.
[Kahaaaargh!]
“Damn, your breath really stinks like shit.”
Ha-eun scowled, glaring at Barbatos as he let out a pained scream.
The pungent stench made her stomach churn, but she couldn't miss this golden opportunity.
She aimed her fist at the Heavenly Dragon's open mouth.
“Let's see, a name for this technique... Yeah, that sounds good.”
To properly materialize the image, she needed a name that perfectly suited the technique.
The name of the new technique, decided after a brief moment of thought, was.
“*Ssib-ryong-bal-gwang*.”
The ten fire dragons condensed in her fist shot into Barbatos's mouth all at once.
No matter how tough a dragon's scales were, its insides couldn't be as durable.
The ten fire dragons flowed down the Heavenly Dragon's throat and erupted in a violent explosion inside its body.
[Kraaaaaaaaaaah!]
*CRASH!*
Barbatos let out a terrible scream and collapsed to the ground.
Acrid black smoke billowed from his open mouth.
“Hah, hah!”
Ha-eun landed on the ground, gasping for breath, and collapsed.
“God, I'm exhausted!”
Ha-eun flopped onto the ground, spread-eagled.
Perhaps because she'd used too much mana at once, her head was spinning.
As she lay on the ground, Oh-jin approached her.
“Good work, Nunna.”
Oh-jin took the sprawled-out Ha-eun's hand and helped her up.
“Hehe. See?! I told you I could handle him by myself!”
“Uh, yeah.”
But let's change that technique name. What the hell is *Ssib-ryong-bal-gwang*?
“Oh, and I reached 10-Star, Oh-jin-ah! Look at this!”
With a bright smile, Ha-eun pulled down the collar of her turtleneck.
The pale flesh encased in her black bra came into view.
While not comparable to Isabella, Ha-eun also boasted a voluptuous volume that would be difficult to cup in one hand.
Oh-jin, horrified, quickly pulled her shirt back up.
“Are you crazy? What are you doing out in the open?!”
For some reason.
The small mole on her cleavage caught his eye more than the tenth stroke engraved next to her Stigma.
He desperately resisted the urge to press the mole on her cleavage with the tip of his index finger.
They were lovers who had already seen everything of each other, so maybe he didn't need to hold back, but he couldn't do something so crazy with Vega and Isabella staring right at them.
“Aww, what's with this? You used to grope them like you were kneading dough, and now you're acting all shy?”
Does this woman truly have no sense of shame?
“...Just fix your clothes for now.”
“Hehe. Right, you can check later with your hands instead of your eyes. The Stigma, and other things too.”
Did she notice him staring at the mole on her cleavage?
Ha-eun gave him a suggestive smile and a wink.
Perhaps because she'd overcome her trauma and defeated the Heavenly Dragon, Ha-eun was several times more excited than usual.
“……”
Oh-jin narrowed his eyes and looked at the fallen Barbatos.
It was true that Ha-eun had gotten drastically stronger upon reaching 10-Star, but.
‘Even considering that, he went down too easily.’
The moment Ha-eun broke through the curtain of curses and jumped toward Barbatos.
He recalled how Barbatos had suddenly frozen, looking around in confusion.
[Kuh... *Cough!*]
Barbatos, still emitting black smoke from his mouth, coughed with difficulty.
“Huh, what? That bastard's still alive?”
Ha-eun frowned and created flames again.
“Wait a minute, Nunna.”
Oh-jin grabbed Ha-eun's shoulder and approached the fallen Barbatos.
There was something he needed to confirm before finishing the creature off.
[Why... Why have you... aban-doned me.]
The fallen Barbatos muttered in a voice full of despair.
‘Abandoned?’
In this situation, the only one who could abandon him was the being he called ‘Master’.
Turning his head to look at Barbatos's forehead, he saw that the black horn that had been there was completely gone.
‘So that's why he suddenly stopped moving.’
Oh-jin narrowed his eyes and spoke.
“Barbatos, what is the identity of this 'Master' of yours?”
[Ah, ugh, ahhh...]
Instead of answering, Barbatos just trembled, his face pale.
Oh-jin gently placed a hand on the head of the shocked Barbatos.
To converse with someone in such a state of panic, a high level of conversational skill was required.
“*Changnoe*.”
[Kraaaaaaaaaaaaaah!]
*Bzzzzzzzt!*
Blue lightning, spreading out wide like a fan, dug into Barbatos's body.
Barbatos twitched and convulsed violently.
“There's no need to be scared, Barbatos. It's okay. Everything is... okay now.”
He spoke in the gentlest voice he could manage.
The important thing in an interrogation is to ease the mind of the other party, who is in a state of extreme tension and panic.
Empathy and understanding were the basics of the art of conversation.
[Gyaaaaaaaargh! S-Stop! Stooooop!]
Had Oh-jin's sincerity gotten through?
Barbatos, who had been staring blankly into space, turned his gaze toward Oh-jin.
As expected.
In a conversation, nothing was more important than a single, heartfelt word.
“Finally... you're looking this way.”
Oh-jin gently stroked the head of Barbatos, whose eyes had rolled back into his head and was foaming at the mouth.
His hand brushed over the scales, which had returned to their purple hue.
Was it because the touch tickled?
Every time Oh-jin's hand brushed against him, Barbatos twisted and convulsed violently.
[I-I'll talk! I'll talk, so please...!]
“You don't have to force yourself. If you don't want to talk, you don't have to.”
Oh-jin shook his head with a worried expression.
Look at Barbatos's face right now.
He didn't know who his master was, but he couldn't force an answer from someone so terrified.
[The Cheonma! The one who bestowed grace upon me was Lord Cheonma!]
“...What?”
Oh-jin's hand, which had been stroking Barbatos's head, froze.
‘The Cheonma?’
Oh-jin asked urgently.
“When did you receive this grace?”
[I-It wasn't that long ago.]
“When exactly?”
[About a month ago... He came to me while I was hiding in my lair, in hibernation.]
That was around the same time the named monsters had started to become active again.
“……”
For a moment, he wondered if Cassia had done it on her own, but she was currently on her way to South America under his orders to deal with the Musca faction.
She wouldn't have just randomly given power to the Heavenly Dragon.
‘In that case.’
If the ‘Cheonma's Grace’ was bestowed upon the Heavenly Dragon, even though he hadn't done it...
There was only one possible explanation.
‘The real Cheonma... has started to move?’
Oh-jin's expression hardened.
***
The humid rainforests of South America.
A man with thin glasses was running urgently down a forest path, clutching his bleeding chest.
“Ugh!”
Was it because his wound was so severe?
He didn't get far before he tumbled to the ground.
“Hah, hah!”
Leaning his back against a tree, he gasped for breath.
*Slither, slither.*
An eerie sound, like a snake slithering, came from the path he had fled down.
“Have you given up now?”
Appearing with a clear voice was a woman in a jet-black dress.
She had the slender body of a girl, but with a faint smile on her face, her appearance was far too bewitching to be described as merely a ‘girl’.
“...Yes, it seems this is as far as I go.”
The man in glasses nodded with a self-deprecating smile.
He looked up at Cassia with calm, subdued eyes.
“May I ask one thing?”
“By all means.”
“Why... did you attack us?”
“Hmph.”
Cassia stuck out her long, snake-like tongue and licked her lips.
“Lord Cheonma said the buzzing of flies was bothering him.”
“...Ha.”
A hollow laugh escaped the man's lips.
For such a trivial reason.
Was everything he had built up until now destroyed in an instant?
The man let out another hollow laugh and leaned against the tree.
“Truly... a life like a fly, just like my Stigma. That's all I am to you.”
“Do you want to live, Adel?”
Cassia asked, looking down at the man in glasses, Adel.
Oh-jin had ordered her to eliminate him, but if he pledged his loyalty to the Cheonma, she was willing to let him live for now.
“Haha. Do I want to live, you ask…”
Adel chuckled and fiddled with the pendant around his neck.
After gazing blankly at the photo of a woman inside the pendant, he slowly raised his head.
“It's not a question of whether I want to live.”
The Musca Stigma engraved on his left chest emitted a black light.
“I... must live. No matter what.”
*Rustle, rustle!*
The bushes rustled, and strange, loud cries echoed from all around.
*Gwoooooooooh!*
Corpses reeking of a terrible stench burst through the dense bushes and swarmed forward.
“Hmm... For someone who says that, you don't seem very keen on living.”
Cassia looked at the swarming corpses and clicked her tongue, as if her excitement had waned.
“I'll squash you like the fly you ar—”
Just as she was about to lightly wave her hand at the approaching swarm of creatures, emitting the sinister light of the Serpens Stigma—
*Rumble...*
A black crack appeared in mid-air, and dark storm clouds flowed out from it.
The sky, which had been under the bright sun, instantly became as dark as a pitch-black night.
“What is...?”
Both Cassia and Adel looked up at the suddenly appearing black storm clouds with surprised expressions.
The dark storm clouds, constantly shifting and changing.
From within the storm clouds, which flared like fire as they bloomed and faded, a low voice emerged.
[It has been a while.]
As if it didn't even see Adel.
The black storm cloud approached Cassia.
“...The Cheonma?”
Adel looked up at the black storm cloud and softly uttered the name.
[That is correct.]
The black storm cloud moved up and down, as if nodding.
“You... are Lord Cheonma?”
Cassia narrowed her eyes and examined the black storm cloud.
After scrutinizing the cloud as if appraising a finely crafted replica, she let out a chuckle.
“A lie.”
It looked like a clumsy imitation of his form, but.
She could tell.
“You are not Lord Cheonma.”
Cassia's snake-like, vertically slit eyes gleamed as she radiated a chilling killing intent.
Towards the unidentified being who dared to impersonate the Cheonma, she flicked a finger, and a snake shot out from her shadow, launching itself at the black storm cloud.
[Hmm...?]
A bewildered voice came from the black storm cloud.