Chapter 95
Chapter 95
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 95
Chapter Title: Ancient Constellations (6)
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“Just where did this many fiends come from…”
Lee Woo-hyeok frowned, unable to comprehend.
It would make sense if there was a gate nearby.
But Guro-dong, where the fiends were now running rampant, didn't even have a common 1 or 2-star gate.
“I don't think these are ordinary monsters.”
Kim Seon-yeong, who had followed Lee Woo-hyeok, said calmly as she surveyed the area.
“If they're not ordinary monsters…”
“They're fiends. Artificially created ones, at that.”
Kim Seon-yeong pushed up her glasses, her eyes gleaming sharply.
“…The work of the Heukseonghoe.”
*Grind.*
Lee Woo-hyeok fiercely ground his teeth.
Only the Heukseonghoe could artificially create thousands of fiends.
“Damn bastards.”
He looked down at the corpses of those who hadn't escaped in time, torn to shreds by the fiends.
“……”
For a moment, the image of Lee Shin-hyeok overlapped with their brutally slaughtered bodies.
His precious.
His one and only family.
“…Brother.”
There was no answer to his sorrowful call.
“Hah.”
Lee Woo-hyeok barely suppressed the rage that threatened to erupt at any moment.
‘Revenge can wait.’
For now, dealing with the fiends indiscriminately attacking people was the priority.
“Seon-yeong. You evacuate the survivors first.”
“Yes, Guild Master.”
Kim Seon-yeong bowed respectfully and drew the two daggers sheathed on her thighs.
With the agility of a puma scaling a tree, she moved across the building debris toward the gathered survivors.
“Now then.”
Lee Woo-hyeok's eyes glinted fiercely.
The eight strokes engraved next to the Leo Stigma blazed brightly, and a sharp gale enveloped his body.
“Let's go.”
“Yeah!!”
“Let's wipe 'em all out, Boss!!!”
The Valhalla Guild members drew their weapons.
They charged without hesitation toward the fiends swarming like a tidal wave.
“Krrrrrrk!!!”
The fiends spread out wide, as if forming a crane-wing formation, and surrounded the Valhalla Guild members.
“How dare you.”
Lee Woo-hyeok swiftly charged toward one side of the encirclement.
Raising his sword high,
“Fiends like you think you can form a battle line?”
He swung down.
-KRRRRAAAAAACK!!!!
A gale erupted from his sword, spreading out in a straight line and sweeping away the fiends that were trying to form the encirclement.
As if torn by the claws of a savage beast, the fiends hit by the gale were sent flying, spraying blood.
“Hah.”
Lee Woo-hyeok cut through the fiends like a hot knife through butter, taking a slow breath.
He focused the Stigma's magic into his sword and took his stance.
“Whirlwind.”
The wind rose.
The sword energy, now a gale from overlapping, mingling, and swaying, swirled violently.
“Kuaaaaah!!”
“Kerk! Kerrek!”
A storm of death.
Chunks of the fiends' flesh, shredded as if in a blender, scattered into the air.
-Splat! Splaaaaat!
Like a wolf among sheep.
With a single sword strike, dozens of fiends were ground to pieces, and the encirclement was torn apart like paper.
“Wow.”
A short gasp escaped Oh-jin's lips as he watched the scene.
‘So that's the true power of the Black Lion, Lee Woo-hyeok.’
He had seen him fight Yujin once before, but Yujin had bolted before a real fight could even start, so he didn't get a good look.
‘No wonder they call him a candidate for the Chilseong.’
Rumor had it that the Black Lion, Lee Woo-hyeok, was at the peak of 8-star.
Just one step away from 9-star.
‘He's on a completely different level from Ha-eun.’
The difference in skill between Ha-eun, who had just reached 8-star, and Lee Woo-hyeok, at the peak of 8-star, was literally night and day.
Honestly, it was doubtful they were even in the same 8-star rank.
‘At this rate… I'll have a little breathing room.’
With the support of the Valhalla Guild and the Association members, the most immediate danger was handled.
Oh-jin took a step back and fired his wire shooter toward a nearby rooftop.
-Thwang!
After reaching the rooftop with the wire, he activated the Canes Venatici Stigma and surveyed the battlefield.
‘Even with this, there are so many casualties.’
He supposed it couldn't be helped, with thousands of fiends suddenly appearing in the middle of the city.
For the unawakened who weren't chosen by a Constellation, this must have been like a natural disaster.
“‘Don't touch the unawakened,’ my ass.”
Oh-jin frowned and clicked his tongue.
It wasn't certain if this was under Cheon Do-yoon's orders, but since he was the one effectively leading the 'Owl' faction, it was unlikely he had nothing to do with this plan.
‘I'll think about why they did this later.’
Right now, there was something more pressing.
[My child. Will you not help them?]
“Just a moment.”
Oh-jin used the heightened senses from his Canes Venatici Stigma to scan the battlefield.
The endlessly surging fiends.
They were crudely forming ranks as they charged the Awakened.
‘Just as I thought.’
It seemed they deliberately made it look crude to hide it, but…
‘Someone is controlling the fiends from behind the scenes.’
It wasn't that there were no monsters with high intelligence.
But the fiends currently rampaging through Guro-dong didn't seem to possess the intelligence to form something like a ‘battle formation.’
‘I have to find him.’
He was probably the culprit behind this whole incident.
‘Where is he?’
He wasn't anywhere Oh-jin could see with his naked eye.
Even when he tried to sense his energy through Heukcheon, the area was so saturated with the energy of the 'Black Star' that he couldn't tell where he was hiding.
“Ugh.”
The battle was spread out over several kilometers.
For him, at least, there was no way to pinpoint someone controlling fiends over an area too vast to take in at a glance.
‘In that case.’
Oh-jin turned his head toward Vega.
“Vega, that unsettling energy from before. You can still feel it, right?”
[Indeed. A foul energy overflows in all directions.]
Vega frowned and shook her head.
“Is there a place where the energy feels the strongest?”
At least when it came to sensing the Black Star's energy, Vega was several times better than him.
Even with her power constrained, she was the Constellation of Polaris, to whom even other Constellations bowed their heads.
[Hmm. Wait a moment.]
A bright, silvery aura enveloped her body, gradually expanding.
[Hah.]
Returning to her true form, Vega slowly raised her hand.
She extended her index finger, as if pointing at something.
*Crackle, crackle.*
Blue lightning gathered at the tip of her outstretched finger.
As she slowly moved her finger, which seemed to divide heaven and earth,
[Black Star, reveal your hideous form.]
—A tidal wave of lightning blanketed the earth.
“…What is this?”
It was lightning so faint it was impossible to see with the naked eye, but…
Oh-jin could feel it clearly.
In the blink of an eye, the land for several kilometers around was covered in blue lightning.
‘Crazy.’
She spread lightning across all of Guro-dong with just a single, casual gesture?
‘If her power hadn't been constrained.’
Right now, the lightning was so faint that only Oh-jin could perceive it, but…
Just imagining what would have happened if all that lightning had been real, lethal lightning sent a chill down his spine.
‘Thousands of fiends would have been annihilated with a single gesture.’
It was a stark reminder of just how absurdly powerful a transcendent being like a Constellation was.
[Ugh….]
Vega winced and cried out in pain, as if the Law's constraint had begun.
But it was only for a moment.
[I have found it.]
Vega extended her hand and pointed to a spot.
The place she pointed to was one of the locations from which the fiends were endlessly crawling out.
It was the top floor of a skyscraper dozens of stories high.
‘So he was hiding inside the building.’
A pretty good choice, considering the area was full of buildings.
“…Well then.”
Now that he knew where he was hiding, all he had to do was go there and kill him.
The problem was, he didn't have a good way to get there.
The building was too high to use the wire shooter, and there were too many fiends to go inside and climb up.
“This is a pain.”
If he had learned the ‘Lightning Step’ Vega mentioned before, he could have flown through the air.
But as it was, he had no skill that allowed him to fly freely.
“Brat! What are you doing just standing there!”
Lyarc, who had been fighting the fiends, leaped nimbly onto the rooftop and frowned.
“Ah.”
*Snap.*
Spotting Lyarc, Oh-jin snapped his fingers as if he'd just had an idea.
“Lyarc. I have a favor to ask.”
“What is it?”
“I need to get to the top floor of that building over there, see?”
“You mean that building?”
Lyarc looked up at the skyscraper and clicked his tongue.
“Sorry, but I can't take you there. The Law's constraint is less severe on me than on Lady Vega, but it's still not weak enough for me to use Lightning Step outside a Sanctuary.”
“I know.”
“…Huh? You know? Then how do you plan on getting there?”
Lyarc tilted his head and asked.
“Lyarc, you've seen a baseball game on TV before, right?”
“I have, but why are you bringing that up now… Wait.”
Lyarc's jaw dropped.
“A-Are you insane?”
“Can you do it or not?”
“What kind of crazy…”
He shook his head in disbelief.
[What is this method you speak of?]
Vega looked back and forth between Oh-jin and Lyarc, still not understanding.
“I'll explain later. Lyarc, don't tell me you don't have the strength?”
“Grrr! Who do you take me for? This is nothing for the Spirit of Vega!”
“Heh. Then I'm counting on you.”
Oh-jin grinned and walked forward.
‘The straight-line distance is probably about five hundred meters.’
He wanted to get closer, but…
There were just too many fiends swarming below.
“Well… fine. If that's what you want, I'll play along!”
*CRACK! CRUNCH!*
Lyarc transformed into his werewolf form.
With his sharp claws, he cut into the floor and brutally tore out a steel rebar.
“Get ready, brat!!”
*Whoosh! Whoosh!*
He menacingly swung the rebar, which he had twisted into a bat, through the air.
“Alright! I'll go on the count of three!”
[Wait. Surely you're not….]
Finally understanding what Oh-jin was thinking, Vega's jaw dropped, her face pale.
[M-My child!! No matter what, this is!!]
“Ooooone!!!”
Ignoring her words,
Oh-jin lowered his stance.
“Grrr!!! Don't you fall and die, brat!!!”
“Instead of worrying about that, put some more muscle into it, you bastard!!!”
“I'm already at full power!!!”
Lyarc raised the rebar bat high.
The triceps of the arm holding the bat bulged as if they would burst.
“Kughh!!”
A pained groan escaped his lips as the Law's constraint began.
“Khahahahargh!!!”
*BOOOOM!!*
Lyarc stomped his foot violently and let out a savage roar.
“This much—pain is nothiiiiing!!!!”
Ignoring the horrific pain, as if his entire body was being torn to shreds.
He drew upon all his magical power.
-Crackle!! Crackle-crackle!!
Blue sparks flared violently amidst his silver fur.
“Kuaaaaaah!!”
Capillaries burst, and blood trickled from his eyes.
*Crack,* his skin fractured like glass hit by a steel ball.
Blood vessels and flesh burst and flowed from the cracks.
But.
Even so.
“I, Lyarc—will never again surrender to pain!!!”
The past where he was blocked by the wall of enlightenment for hundreds of years, wasting each day meaninglessly.
The days spent rotting, crushed by a vast sense of powerlessness and defeat.
‘It's different now.’
He still hadn't overcome the wall of enlightenment, but…
A human who, despite experiencing the pain of death dozens of times, would stagger back to his feet.
The Star of Rebellion, shining brilliantly in the black sky.
—had changed him.
Yes.
Since that day, he had been reborn.
“Twoooooo!!!”
“Haaaaah!!!!”
[W-Wait!! There must be another way!!]
Oh-jin curled into a ball.
After wrapping his legs in lightning to maximize his jumping power,
“Threeeeeeeee!!!!”
He jumped lightly and landed on the bat.
And then.
“Gooooooooo!!!!! Braaaaaat!!!!!!”
*KWAAANG!!!*
With a sound like the air exploding.
Oh-jin's body was launched into the air like a cannonball.
“Aaaaaaaaaah!!!!!”
The harsh wind grazing his cheeks.
The dizzying sensation of defying gravity.
“I'm flyiiiing! I'm flyiiiiiing!!! You son of a biiiiiiiitch!!!”
Over the battlefield teeming with thousands of fiends.
Cutting through the sky covered in ash and dust.
A blue bolt of lightning struck the top of the skyscraper where the Heukseonghoe was hiding.