The Monarch's Final Stand
A brilliant white light swallowed the crimson fireballs whole.
Explosions rang out in rapid succession.
The flames that the light of annihilation failed to devour were caught in the shockwave and shattered into dozens of fragments.
Fwoosh. Crackle.
A rain of fire embroidered the sky.
Beneath it, monsters wreathed in flames advanced with spears held level.
“Kaaaaaooooo!”
Lexy reared her head high and unleashed a thunderous roar.
Nyx, riding on her back, raised curtains of darkness like surging waves.
“This must be what it feels like to witness the end of all things.”
From the veil of shadow, countless blades sprang forth and lashed out wildly.
Long spears were sliced apart like straw.
The burning soldiers who charged forward were shredded by the spinning blades.
Though they had been strengthened by division-level buffs,
before the fluid yet precise power of Polar Night, they were nothing but fodder.
“Grrrk!”
The spear-wielding burning soldiers fell back.
Shield-bearers stepped forward in their place.
“Grrk!”
At the signal, tower shields advanced in unison.
The darkness of night faltered before the wave of flames, its momentum weakening.
“An army, is it? Quite the entertaining diversion they’ve prepared.”
The darkness rippled and reassembled itself.
The wide curtain contracted, then blades began rising one by one.
Dark Shadow Soul-Chasing Sword
Without internal energy, it was a technique that could only be deployed through formulas alone. Yet Nyx, being darkness incarnate, wielded the blades with even greater precision than the original martial art.
“If there are no gaps, I shall simply create them.”
Clang-clang-clang!
Forged darkness slammed down onto the fiery shields.
Impacts erupted simultaneously from multiple directions.
The tightly linked shields even managed to block the blades infused with the profound principles of the Dark Shadow Soul-Chasing Sword.
Allowing only the tiniest of openings.
“Did you think you blocked it?”
That tiny gap was more than enough.
The blades abandoned their form and slipped between the shields of fire.
The power of Polar Night moved according to the user’s will, unbound by any fixed shape.
Just as a small crack in a dam would eventually bring down the entire structure,
the Polar Night that seeped through the gaps transformed into blades once more and sliced through the shield-bearers like vegetables.
“Kaaaaaooooo!”
Lexy trampled the broken shield formation.
Each heavy stomp sent soldiers standing on the ground tumbling down.
A sweep of her tail launched dozens of them into the air.
Crunch. Crack.
“Kaaaaaooooo!”
Lexy chewed up one of the burning soldiers and frowned, clearly displeased with the taste.
The moment Lexy widened the breach Nyx had created—
[Fatal Charge] Activated
I shook off the aftereffects of Giga Impact and charged straight in.
The shield-bearers formed a second line to block my path, but they were blasted away in all directions like bowling pins, accompanied by a heavy impact as if struck by artillery shells.
“Come at me all at once.”
Thunder God
Thunder Wings
Lightning poured down at point-blank range.
This time, even their precious shields were split apart. Let’s see how they like that.
The soldiers pierced by lightning collapsed to the ground.
A gap had opened in their forces in this sector.
With the enemy numbering in the tens of thousands, that vacancy would surely be filled in the blink of an eye.
“Goddess.”
“Lexy. Come here.”
Nyx understood my intent perfectly without needing further explanation.
She leapt onto Lexy’s back in a single bound and gathered Polar Night in front of us.
“The positions of soldiers are not fixed, I see.”
“Correct. They change every time.”
“The brief moment it takes for them to change. We cannot simply let it pass, can we?”
Shwaaaaaak!
The elongated darkness transformed into a greatsword over fifty meters long.
When Nyx swung her hand from above to below—
Kwaaaaaang! The black greatsword mercilessly crushed the densely packed soldiers.
“It would be disappointing if it ended so soon, would it not?”
Her lowered right hand flicked sideways.
The greatsword followed the same trajectory, bisecting the burning soldiers in its path.
Clang!
Soldiers who had switched their equipment to shields seized hold of the Polar Night.
“This should be the stage you desired.”
“More than enough.”
As I advanced along the path Nyx had carved, the space the black greatsword had cleared began filling up again at frightening speed.
Front, back, left, right.
A perfect encirclement had formed—one from which there was no escape unless I took to the air.
Or more accurately, I had walked right into their encirclement.
Multi-Spell activated.
Lightning Inferno x 3 activated.
Thunder God activated.
Thunder Wings activated.
Kukwakwakwakwa!
The lightning bursting from my wings intertwined with the newly released lightning spell, amplifying its power.
Both abilities originated from the essence of the Thunder Bird.
One was a racial trait that generated lightning storms during flight.
The other was magic, but their source was identical.
The lightning surged toward the soldiers who had just blocked Nyx’s assault and were attempting to switch to the offensive.
There was no need to adjust the angle of discharge.
Thanks to their own encirclement, no matter which direction I fired, I would hit something.
I maintained maximum output.
Every soldier struck by the wildly scattered lightning was reduced to ash.
A downpour of flaming arrows.
Only a fool would fall for the same trick twice.
Shadow Dominion
My wings continued pouring out lightning.
Using Multi-Spell creatively, I rearranged my mana on the fly and released additional Lightning Infernos.
At the same time,
darkness from the elongated shadows knocked the flaming arrows out of the air.
“No matter how many arrows you fire, not all of them will hit.”
How likely was it for thousands of arrows fired simultaneously to all strike a single target?
Even Korea’s Olympic archers couldn’t pull that off.
Well… maybe they could?
But these burning soldiers were hardly master marksmen.
In reality, they only managed to block around a hundred.
Even while deploying Thunder Wings, rearranging mana, and spreading Polar Night, I could still block them.
Through perfect coordination with Nyx, we ground down thousands upon thousands of soldiers.
“Hoo…”
My head was burning hot.
I had woven too many spells in a short time.
I also had to control my mana output.
Even so.
Despite putting on this tearful one-man show, I had only eliminated about one-tenth of them.
I’d have to push myself a little harder.
“Let’s see who wins a battle of attrition.”
I shouted boldly at the soldiers who could only make wet, gurgling noises.
* * *
The wave of burning soldiers filled the vast plain to the horizon.
I couldn’t even remember how long I had been standing firm like a breakwater against the fiery tide.
“Kao……”
Lexy, hammered repeatedly by siege weapons due to her massive size, was the first to withdraw from the battlefield.
Even True Dragon Armor and her sturdy primordial body couldn’t withstand that firepower.
–I should have been of more help. I am sorry.
Nyx returned to her spirit form and settled onto my shoulder.
The homunculus body was only at the level of an ordinary player.
She had leveled up rapidly by my side, but even so, her specs were merely diamond-rank.
Without an ability like Devour to raise her stats,
no matter how efficient Polar Night was,
and no matter how outstanding the Goddess’s control,
there was bound to be a limit if she fought a war of attrition for hours without rest.
***
“Take a little break.”
–If it becomes dangerous, we shall merge.
“Yeah. I’ll let you know if it gets too hard.”
In truth, it was already incredibly difficult.
The blazing flames hammered my body relentlessly.
Every so often, siege weapons made of fire rained down on my head.
With both of my allies retired,
the division-level soldiers’ firepower was now focused entirely on me.
Still, it was a relief that even they couldn’t handle more than ten thousand hands at once.
“Hoo…”
Martial arts, magic, Polar Night, draconic abilities—everything I could use, I had to use just to hold on.
Seon Magic – Wind, Flower, Snow, Moon
Energy stabilized.
If not for the Seon Magic I learned from Sun Wukong, this would have been far more difficult.
Otherwise, I wouldn’t have had any leeway to chat with Nyx.
“Huuuuup.”
When I took a deep breath, the heat came in with it.
It felt like my lungs were burning.
It wasn’t just from overexertion—breathing the air of this land of fire for so long had wrecked my insides as well.
If not for Ultra Regeneration, even my organs would have been evenly cooked.
Breath
Kwaaaaaaaa!
With thirty seconds left on Dragon Form, I poured mana to its absolute limit and unleashed it forward in a breath attack.
–That makes six times now.
“Already?”
I hadn’t even realized that more than half a day had passed since the battle began.
–It seems we have sent about half of them back to the earth.
“Half, huh.”
Then.
It was worth a try.
The wave of soldiers split apart like the miracle of Moses.
I used Fatal Charge to sprint desperately through the gap.
Kwajik!
I rammed into a nearby soldier to cancel the skill’s penalty.
Shrink
I folded space and leapt toward the center of the enemy formation.
–Are you trying to settle this once and for all?
“Yeah. And I’ll collect the compensation fee while I’m at it.”
The condition for a division commander was ten thousand or more troops.
In other words,
once the number of burning soldiers fell below that, even a ten-thousand commander would be reduced to a one-thousand commander.
After suffering this much,
***
I had to claim the essence of the ten-thousand commander, didn’t I?
Since their numbers had been halved,
now was the perfect time to take down the ten-thousand commander.
–If that were possible, we could have targeted the enemy’s leadership from the beginning.
“Another one will just become the new ten-thousand commander anyway.”
Even if I killed the current one, one of the burning soldiers would randomly be promoted shortly after.
What mattered was the total number of troops in the legion.
“Grrrrrrk!”
The burning soldiers’ ten-thousand commander leveled its spear at me.
Burning Spear
The spear blade flew through the air.
It carried the full power of a diamond-rank entity.
Taeng!
I didn’t even need to lift a hand. A flick of my Dragon’s Wings deflected it.
“Thanks for telling me exactly where you are.”
Giant Dragon Transformation
A skill added after upgrading to the Giant Divine Dragon’s Factor.
I was already well-versed in transformation.
The moment it activated, immense power flooded through my entire body.
Crack! Crunch!
It was even greater than when I had reflected the essence with Void Mirror.
My senses expanded as my body swelled.
Ten meters.
Twenty meters.
No—fifty meters.
When I had manifested the primordial species essence, it had only been thirty meters.
–You have grown nearly twice as large.
Wings had also sprouted from my back, increasing my mobility.
“Krrrrrrrrraaaaa!”
A monstrous roar escaped me from the boiling fighting spirit.
Dragon Fear
I hadn’t roared with the debuff in mind, but the result was good, so it didn’t matter.
Whoosh!
A single flap of my wings carried me nearly a kilometer in an instant.
“Grrrrk!”
With their numbers reduced, their firepower had also dropped by half.
However,
since my own surface area had increased, the destructive power of their barrage had actually grown.
Red ropes dangled from the arrows and missiles embedded in my scales.
***
“Grrrrk!”
Over a thousand burning soldiers pulled on the ropes.
Because my hitbox had grown larger, more monsters than before were hanging on.
But I didn’t even need to use brute strength. I simply pressed forward.
“Grrk?”
“Grrrrrk!”
The soldiers were launched into the sky like dried fish on a line.
The number of soldiers lifted into the air far exceeded the hundreds.
Reverse Scale
Aura Blade
Flying low enough to nearly skim the ground,
I swung my arms, legs, and tail wildly.
Precise forms?
What need was there for such things?
Overwhelming power was enough.
The scorching heat that melted the earth,
the various flaming weapons—
none of them could harm my body under Giant Dragon Transformation.
Breaking through their interference to reach the center of their formation was not difficult.
“Grrk!”
The burning soldiers’ ten-thousand commander swung its spear in a desperate frenzy.
Clang. The spear shattered against my scales without leaving so much as a scratch.
“Lexy said you tasted bad. Maybe you’ll be different.”
Kwajik!
I swallowed the burning soldiers’ ten-thousand commander whole.
It tasted like chewing sand. Absolutely terrible.
Even after killing the ten-thousand commander, the division-level buff did not disappear.
The reinforcement was still in effect.
However,
Giant Dragon Transformation still had time remaining.
Let’s rampage a little more.
Reverse Scale
The wave of power unleashed by my tail swept across the ground, reducing hundreds of burning soldiers to pieces.
Boom! Boom!
Every movement brought forth catastrophe.
The burning soldiers, now facing a natural disaster, swung their weapons in desperation, but they were helplessly swept away.
–The number of skulls above has decreased by one.
Proof that the burning soldiers’ numbers had fallen into the thousands.
Giant Dragon Transformation was also nearing its end.
“I still have one shot left.”
Huuuuuuuuup!
Breath
A wave of destruction incomparable to Dragon Form.
***
Instead of focusing it into a single point, I spread it out in a wide radial pattern.
Yet the burning soldiers were still helplessly caught in the breath and exploded one after another.
Roughly ten thousand.
That was the number of soldiers I had swept away while using Giant Dragon Transformation.
Giant Dragon Transformation has ended.
The skill ended at the same time as the breath attack.
Crack! Crunch!
My swollen body returned to its original size.
The good news was that, unlike Void Mirror, there were no aftereffects.
Since I was manifesting it through the Giant Divine Dragon’s Factor rather than projecting another form with void energy, I remained perfectly fine.
Good.
Then I could keep using it without worrying about backlash.
“I still have one shot left.”
Dragon Form
This tiresome battle.
It was time to end it.