Chapter 133
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Translator: 8uhl
Chapter: 133
Chapter Title: Calamity
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Jolt.
An illusion, I tell myself.
It’s what I naturally think.
A dark, gloomy space where nothing can be seen but the faint glow of a magic stone, and the rocking of a cramped carriage so old it reeks of must.
Above all, an experience I’ve seen repeated hundreds of times tells me with utmost clarity.
This is an old, old dream.
My most distant memory.
Jolt.
If you were to ask if that life was comfortable, I could never say yes.
I had to travel in a worn-out carriage pulled by a divine beast, my hands still as small as fiddleheads, doing everything from simple errands to heavy labor.
Still, the reason I sometimes miss those days is because, young as I was, those were my duties as a member of the caravan.
And perhaps because, though they might starve and beat me, there was a sliver of sentiment that kept them from selling off the daughter of a dead comrade.
…Though it might have just been that they never had the chance to sell me.
Jolt.
What rises through the slightly faded darkness is a changed landscape.
A shattered carriage.
Scattered corpses.
Even a blood-soaked divine beast.
The sight of the caravan, which just yesterday had been ecstatic about a newly discovered ruin, now reduced to a scattered mess of flesh, fragments, and wreckage, is too horrific to bear.
…And in the sense that I was the only one to survive the caravan’s annihilation.
And…
‘Is this the wench who returned from the Labyrinth alone?’
‘Th-this is?!’
‘Kuhahaha, I was right to use the goddess’s sanctuary just in case. It seems fortune is finally smiling upon our family.’
‘Rejoice, commoner.’
‘I will take you as my adopted daughter and allow you to enjoy a life of wealth and splendor you have never known.’
Do you have anywhere else to go?
There was no such question.
Like a true noble, he simply made a unilateral decision and informed me of it.
And since I had nowhere else to go anyway, my answer was already decided.
And so, I met my first father…
…and the true nightmare began.
***
Engulfed in a helplessness that left me unable to lift a single finger.
Atop a high, narrow canyon.
Pandora was watching.
In the crevice between past and present.
Between reality and illusion.
In despair.
All alone.
She watched as her curse blanketed the Labyrinth, bringing ruin to all.
‘…In the end, is this my destiny?’
She had prayed so earnestly.
She had resolved herself time and again.
That was why she had always tried.
To never see this sight again.
Vowing not to repeat that tragedy.
To be hated and shunned by all.
But to have reached this conclusion once more forced her to realize.
No matter how hard she tried.
No matter how much she yearned.
It was all meaningless.
In the end, this was a fate she could not escape since ‘that day.’
A curse she had to bear for the rest of her life, one that swallowed and destroyed everything.
Rumble…
That was why.
With a faint tremor.
Beyond the murky, fog-covered expanse.
Even when the massive shadow of a divine beast appeared in the distant canyon below, Pandora showed no reaction.
For something to approach her now, while her curse was running rampant, was impossible.
The most natural and logical thought was that this, too, was an illusion shown by ‘it.’
But…
A snicker.
“…”
Ominously.
Chillingly.
Along with the auditory hallucination that grazed her ears.
Feeling the cursed fog that filled the air churn even more violently.
Pandora thought.
Unlike the times before, which were always hallucinations.
This time, it might be real.
Faint though the laughter was, the malice contained within it was far too clear.
That was why she prayed.
If they had lost their way.
That they would flee, as quickly as possible.
…Even knowing it was a meaningless wish.
Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud!
Unfortunately, her prediction was correct.
As if possessed by the curse.
Or as if driven by something else.
Hundreds, thousands of monsters swarmed from all directions.
Flooding the narrow canyon, the sight of them surging toward the shadow was truly a flood of beasts.
A calamity that could reduce even a colossal divine beast to bone fragments in the blink of an eye, something a mere small or medium-sized territory could never hope to withstand.
Craaaash!!!
“…!”
But unlike before.
Her expectations were wrong.
The moment one side of the canyon collapsed, blocking the path ahead.
The ground beneath it crumbled into sand and began to flow in one direction.
Like a channel opened in a dam.
And the monster horde, their path already blocked by the debris, was swept aside by the flowing sand.
Seeing this sight.
Pandora was shaken.
No matter how many high-ranking Awakened Ones the Dogwiryeon and the anti-bandit coalition had.
There was only one mage in the entire Labyrinth who could use sand magic with such precision and delicacy.
“…Waryongjang.”
As if to prove her guess.
Among the five territories that faintly emerged through the fog, the one at the very front.
The territory that was originally hers.
But was now more famous for its new master.
Pandora let out a groan as she looked at the territory perched on the back of the giant lizard.
“Why, of all things…”
Anyone with eyes.
No, even someone without eyes.
Could not fail to know how terrible this curse was and that they needed to flee as quickly as possible to survive.
So why was the Waryongjang steadily approaching her, the source of the curse?
For a moment, she was dumbfounded by the incomprehensible situation.
Unconsciously.
Pandora opened her mouth.
“—You must not.”
“This place is dangerous.”
“Flee, before it is too late.”
Though she knew they couldn't possibly hear her from such a distance, Pandora couldn't hold back.
No matter how exceptional Dion was.
Even with his slave soldiers.
It was impossible to stop the curse that had already been unleashed.
That was why she prayed earnestly for them to escape now, but…
A snicker.
“Ah…”
With the sound of laughter once more, the curse stirred, and from within the fog emerged.
Seeing another massive shadow, Pandora realized.
No, she couldn't help but realize.
…It was already too late.
***
The five territories pushed their way up the canyon, fending off the onslaught of the monster horde with Dion's magic.
But monsters were living creatures.
Not flowing water.
Some of them trampled over each other, broke free from the stream of sand, and charged toward the territories.
Thwack-thwack-thwack!
…Or rather, they tried to charge.
But in the end, no monster could breach the territories.
The Forest Spiders had covered the territories in webs, and the Blood Wasps flew through the air, striking like lightning.
Tangled up by the hundreds of vassal beasts, the monsters were hacked to pieces by the slave soldiers and swallowed back into the monstrous tide.
The sight was truly that of an impregnable fortress.
A citadel that an army of thousands, even tens of thousands, could not hope to conquer.
“…Is the Calamity Princess really here?”
“Don’t state the obvious, Kael. The Lord said she’s here, so she must be.”
“I guess you’re right.”
“Anyway, I’m glad we found the Calamity Princess before we ran out of purification water. Now we just have to stop the curse, right?”
“Yeah, it looks like we were worried for nothing.”
Kael and Riya, who were commanding the vassal beasts alongside the Hara Clan, felt a wave of relief for this very reason.
Even for them, who had gone on an expedition with Dion and endured hellish training, the current situation was enough to make them uneasy.
They could handle the monsters one way or another.
But outside the territories, the curse was everywhere.
Not only were the vassal beasts afraid to leave the territories.
The purification water was also depleting at a frightening rate even as they defended their ground.
It was an especially nerve-wracking situation for the members of the 괴목장, whose consumption of purification water was the highest due to their large number of vassal beasts.
So, to finally find Pandora brought them immense relief.
If they could just solve the curse, they were confident they could handle any number of monsters.
Crack.
“Huh?”
“…What is that?”
But a moment later.
The two cousins of the Hara Clan were forced to forget their recent relief and stare in horror.
Within the cursed fog.
Monsters were rotting away.
Melting alive.
Or twisting into bizarre shapes.
But among them, some were undergoing a strange transformation.
Suddenly, their bodies would swell to several times their size, horns would sprout from their foreheads, or their colors would change.
And the Hara Clan, as Southerner experts on vassal beasts, knew all too well what this phenomenon meant.
“M-mutations?”
“Impossible! How can non-boss monsters become Named simultaneously like this?!”
Named.
Powerful, boss-level monsters.
Among them, variants that had mutated after living for many long years.
Such Named monsters each gained special unique traits, and depending on the case, a lower-tier Named could be even more dangerous than a higher-tier monster.
Yet so many monsters were mutating all at once.
Though percentage-wise, it was perhaps one in ten, with the rest rapidly perishing from the curse.
The fact that even one-tenth numbered in the hundreds made it a sight hard to believe even when seeing it with their own eyes.
But they did not know.
This was merely a taste of what was to come.
Thud, thud.
“…?!?!”
On the other side of the canyon, connected by a stone bridge.
The moment they saw the massive shadow emerge faintly through the cursed fog.
The two cousins of the Hara Clan were so shocked their eyes nearly popped out of their sockets.
And they weren't the only ones.
Arsha, who was commanding the slave soldiers.
Parsha, who was smashing monster heads.
Even Naru, who was diligently playing his lute, and the slave soldiers fighting fiercely—almost everyone stared blankly at the shadow.
They couldn't help it.
What had revealed itself was a giant both incredibly familiar and utterly alien to them.
“Puri, fication water.”
“…!”
“Give, me, the purification water! Right, now!!!”
“D-don’t tell me… the Lord of Dogwiryeon?”
His already near-five-meter frame had grown several times larger, rivaling that of a high-tier divine beast.
His two heads had multiplied to six, and even now, a seventh was sprouting.
Looking at Lar Arga, who could no longer even be considered a Twin-Headed Troll, Kael felt his blood run cold.
That bizarrely twisted form.
And unlike Lar's head, which still retained some reason.
The eyes of Arga, filled with nothing but ferocious wildness and gluttony, evoked a terrible sense of déjá vu.
The nightmare from the Great Hunt of the past.
The one that had nearly finished off the already cornered 괴목장.
The most terrifying and dreaded existence among the Labyrinth’s many monsters, including the Named.
“A Transcendent Awakened One mutated?!”
“Good heavens…!”
It hadn't even been a few dozen minutes since the dungeon break occurred.
Everyone was dumbfounded at the sight of the high noble who led the massive organization known as Dogwiryeon being reduced to a half-monster in such a short time.
“Hmm, this has gotten interesting.”
But one person.
Dion alone was not surprised.
He had known from the moment the Transcendent Awakened One dared to try and counter Pandora’s curse that Lar Arga wouldn’t escape unscathed.
That was why his lips curled.
A smile gracing his features.
The white-masked boy spoke in a voice filled with utter delight.
“Well, I did have a debt to repay to the troll mister.”
***
—Purification water.
I need purification water.
It was not a rational judgment.
To restore a body that twisted as it grew, a consciousness that clouded as its heads multiplied…
No, to at least stop it from getting worse, I must wash away this ‘curse’ with purification water now.
His own instincts.
And the voice that whispered to him.
Were telling him this with clarity.
“Intelligent species, eat. Labyrinth, protect.”
“Shut, up, Arga!”
In that sense.
Arga’s constantly chattering head was the main culprit driving Lar’s stress to its limit.
It was his own head, yet unlike him who was desperately holding on, its face had already grotesquely mutated.
And its gluttony and destructive urges, even more distorted than its appearance, were affecting him as well.
It was all driving Lar mad.
“Give me the purification water, now!!!”
That was why he bellowed at the territory that had just appeared before him, his voice laced with impatience and fury.
He didn't care whose territory it was.
Or how much purification water they had left.
If he didn't use every last drop of it, he wasn't confident he could maintain his sanity.
And if that meant everyone in that territory was cursed and brought to ruin, that was none of his damn business.
“I’m afraid I can’t let you do that.”
“…!”
But immediately after.
Lar froze.
The Basilisk, the divine beast leading the five territories, and the Waryongjang.
The masked boy who appeared atop it made sparks fly in his eyes, even as he suffered from the curse.
“White-Masked Young Master!?”
“Long time no see, troll mister. I’d ask how you’ve been, but you’re not looking so good.”
“What are you, doing here…!”
“I don’t think we’re on such familiar terms that I need to tell you.”
“…To dare speak so insolently before me, you must be dying to be eaten.”
“Who knows. I might be a tasty nutritional supplement, but eating me won’t be easy.”
What in the world was he trusting in?
The boy stood boldly before him, not only revealing himself but even smiling.
The source of that confidence was quickly revealed.
Ssssk.
Whoosh.
Like an army defending a fortress, hundreds of spiders and wasps appeared one by one atop the five territories under the command of the Hara Clan.
An expressionless maid, a smirking twin-tailed vassal, and a growling Lycanthrope girl.
Most of all, with the dark elf chieftain exuding a silvery spiritual power at their center, the white-masked slave soldiers stood in orderly ranks behind him.
Dion smiled warmly.
“—A lot has changed since last time, you see.”
The boy’s demeanor, suggesting they’d be in for a rude awakening if they took them as lightly as before, was utterly laughable.
It was something to be scoffed at, but…
Why his attitude, too natural and confident to be a bluff, made his anger surge.
Lar did not try to find out.
Only two things mattered.
That the boy was an enemy he wanted to chew up and swallow as much as Urk, and that he was an obstacle to be removed to get the purification water.
That was why Lar, for the first time since being afflicted by the curse, aligned his will with Arga’s and radiated killing intent.
“Brat, I will chew, you up and swallow you.”
“Krrk! Enemy, eat!”
And so…
The giant, tens of meters tall.
The five territories led by the White-Masked Young Master.
The siege battle that was not a siege battle between them had begun.