Chapter 177
Chapter 177
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 177
Chapter Title: Qinggan's Heavenly Lord 5
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“Be careful. Boss.”
Scott, saying that, disassembled the Corps Abomination he had dragged all the way to the forest and remade it into human-sized undead soldiers, which he personally controlled as they entered.
He said that if he let the undead move autonomously and follow, he would lose control of them here.
In other words, Scott was manually operating each of these undead one by one right now.
“Send the undead soldier forward first.”
“Yeah.”
Scott agreed with Azadin and sent forward the undead soldier armed with a wooden club.
At that moment, a pitch-black shadow dove down from above the dense trees, pouncing on the undead soldier.
-Pud!
With a single strike, the undead soldier’s head flew off. Seeing the hobgoblin’s skull shatter like a watermelon, it was a vicious blow that no human could have survived either.
“Damn it! I went to all that trouble to make it!”
Outraged at his undead soldier being so easily smashed, Scott manipulated the other undead soldiers.
But...
-Pud-pud-puk!
The black shadow that swooped down from the tree began swinging its front paws.
The undead soldiers couldn’t hold up and fell like autumn leaves in the wind.
“It’s huge.”
Shati marveled.
The one that had launched the diving attack from the tree was a massive black panther.
But its size was far larger than a normal panther, looking like a northern tiger or even bigger, and tree bark protruded from parts of its body like armor.
“What a fearsome monster. As expected...”
Azadin drew his bow and loosed an arrow.
He wondered if an arrow would have any effect on such a huge panther, but... the arrow Azadin fired pierced straight through the panther’s nostril and accurately penetrated its brain.
“Kraaang!”
The startled panther writhed in pain, swatting at the arrow stuck in its nose, but the arrow snapped midway.
The panther desperately tried several times to pull out the arrow, but each time, its brain matter only churned more, worsening the damage.
In the end, unable to endure, the panther collapsed and breathed its last.
“My word. The undead soldiers went down in one hit. And I even used Ogre Muscle on them.”
Scott grumbled as he cast a spell to take control of the panther that Azadin had felled.
“Send it again.”
“Got it.”
When Scott sent the undead panther forward, sure enough, the jungle reacted once more.
This time, a pack of calf-sized giant wolves appeared.
“Grrrrowl!”
The wolves, foaming at the mouth like they had rabies, all had tree bark-like protrusions on their bodies, just like the previous panther.
“This one too, huh.”
“I’ll handle this one.”
As Shati cast her spell, the grass grew thick and tough, entangling the wolves.
By the time the wolves pushed through the grass, their fur was plucked out, and their speeds varied, preventing them from attacking all at once.
“Nice!”
That alone gave Scott’s undead panther plenty of leeway. Scott controlled the undead panther to slam its front paw into the lead wolf’s head with full force and tore into its scruff, killing one.
The other wolves belatedly broke free from the vines and lunged at the undead panther, but the undead panther went berserk, swinging its front paws to fend them off, while Azadin fired arrows to attack as well.
“Oh, nice. Took them down without much damage?”
“It’s probably because trying to control multiple ones at once doesn’t work. Scott, control just one wolf and send it first.”
“Got it, Boss.”
Scott did as Azadin said and controlled a single wolf with necromancy to send it forward. Sure enough, the forest reacted again, and a massive spore monster emerged.
“A spore monster, huh. Nothing to see here.”
Scott charged the wolf forward, then used a timed explosion spell to blow it up, damaging the spore monster with the blast.
“Why?”
“Spore monsters’ bodies are tricky to turn into undead once they’re dead. And controlling multiple corpses at once weakens combat ability anyway, so might as well just use it up.”
Scott explained and sent another wolf, exploding the corpse again to completely shred the spore monster.
*********
After breaking through several layers of such defensive walls, Azadin’s group finally reached the swamp’s edge.
At the swamp’s waterline stood a tree in the shape of a person that was anything but ordinary. Red, translucent sap dripped like bloody tears from the part resembling a human face, falling to the ground and flowing into the swamp.
The beasts that drank the water mixed with this sap must have become Grimsrown’s kin, threatening those who approached.
“Is this Grimsrown’s body? The one that gave a revelation to the Qinggan Party’s Heavenly Lord?”
Grimsrown’s fragment tried to drag massive dead trees from the swamp again, perhaps to protect itself.
But Azadin kicked off the ground like the wind, accelerating in an instant to stand before Grimsrown.
“Is this the fragment of Grimsrown that gave teachings to the Heavenly Lord?”
As Azadin reached out toward Grimsrown, lightning suddenly struck him.
*********
“Well, foolish disciple. This is the language of the Nether. Don’t look at it carelessly.”
“Huh?”
Azadin suddenly looked up.
There was Kazas’s cabin. The place where Azadin had spent most of his childhood. The place where he had lived while training under Kazas was unfolding before him exactly as it had been that day.
“Huh?”
“Pretty amazing, right?”
Kazas showed Azadin the letters on the book he had opened.
Nether script writhed alive on the book’s surface.
“The letters are changing. Don’t stare at the changes too much. Those with weak minds can go mad just from looking.”
“This is when I was learning Nether script...”
Azadin started to say it was when he was learning Nether script, but Kazas seemed to interpret his words differently.
“Yeah. It’s a book for learning Nether script. What’s written here isn’t the language of our dimension. Look, at the shadow cast by this tree...”
“?”
“In our world, that tree is the essence, and this shadow is the essence projected onto a lower dimension, a two-dimensional world. Similarly, the Nether languages written here are fragments of shadows cast by their essence. But if you properly recognize that dimension and pronounce it...”
Saying that, Kazas pronounced the Nether language.
At that moment, part of Kazas’s tongue transformed into a worm.
Kazas immediately sliced the grown worm from his tongue with the obsidian blade he carried and flung it to the ground, crushing and grinding it underfoot.
“Amazing. Are you okay?”
Kazas was surprised to see Azadin watching the scene calmly.
“Of course.”
Azadin wasn’t experiencing this for the first time. Long ago, when he had been dragged by Kazas to help with Nether research, he had already gone through it.
Back then, he had been shocked and trembled in fear at the evil power of the Nether language Kazas pronounced. It had been painful.
But to the current Azadin, that level of Nether language was no challenge.
“Remarkable. Azadin. Your anti-magic resistance seems beyond my expectations.”
“Master. Is this a dream?”
“...Ah, maybe not? You’re hallucinating. You okay?”
Kazas thought Azadin was hallucinating due to the Nether language.
‘Seeing this reaction, it doesn’t seem like just a dream.’
As Azadin fell into thought, Kazas panicked.
“If you’re not feeling well, want to rest? You’re not going mad already, are you?”
“I’m fine. No, more than that.”
Azadin perfectly mimicked and pronounced the Nether language that Kazas had uttered.
“!?”
Nether power tried to invade Azadin’s tongue as well, but Azadin blocked the intrusion with the King’s Radiance dwelling in his body, the power of the Divine King Scripture.
Even Kazas had to slice his own tongue with an obsidian blade, yet Azadin was unscathed.
“My god. You? What are you? A genius? Something like that?”
“No way. More importantly, Master. I have a question.”
“...What?”
“What’s the ‘Magic Tome-Eating Demon King’?”
The Magic Tome-Eating Demon King. That’s what people in the world called Kazas.
“Ah, where’d you hear that? Why do you know? Hm. I see. Aldis must have told you ahead of time?”
Kazas shrugged at the unexpected question from Azadin.
“Yeah. I was one who devoured humans under the Naga Empire. I could absorb the magic tomes of those I ate, and through that, I mastered all sorts of magic. Before long, even the Nagas came to fear me, and I gathered many forces myself. I taught magic to many mages and made their achievements my own. People feared me and called me the Demon King.”
“What kinds of magic did you research?”
“The first was blood magic. I taught blood magic to many humans and helped them escape the Naga Empire. Some became my followers even after escaping, and I became their king. That’s when they started calling me the Demon King. After that, many challenged me, and as I researched blood magic, I killed those challengers, ate them, and grew stronger.”
“How did that end?”
“When the Naga Empire fell, my little kingdom of mages fell too. I decided blood magic had its limits and learned necromancy and Nethermancy.”
“How did that end?”
“I was defeated by the Emperor and his followers. The Aragasas deemed my knowledge of various magics useful and dragged me along, making me consult on their magic research.”
“Then when did you become an elder?”
“When Two-Leader Hatir took the lead among the Aragasas. He freed me as promised and gave me the chance to research Nether magic. Of course, it’s more accurate to say he forced me to research Nether magic. I wandered various places, devouring those researching Nether magic and stealing their magic tomes. I extended my life by clashing the miscellaneous tomes stored in my body against the Nether’s power to erase them while researching Nether magic.”
Kazas answered and suddenly jolted in surprise.
“Amazing. Why am I telling you all this? You’re... not the you from this time!”
“...Yes.”
As Azadin nodded, Kazas stepped back and drew his dagger.
“My god! Kid. What... are you?”
“Who knows?”
Azadin heard a Nether voice echoing from infinitely far away. Speaking in the Nether tongue, it was probably Grimsrown’s voice.
“This must be some kind of heavenly will or karma or whatever.”
Azadin gave a wry smile and woke from the dream.
*********
“A-Are you okay? Boss?”
“Hey.”
Scott and Shati approached Azadin, pale with fear.
Meanwhile, wasn’t Jis bowing toward Azadin?
“L-Lord Heavenly Lord!”
“Hm?”
Azadin noticed that the tree, said to be Grimsrown’s fragment, had hardened in front of him.
Just moments ago, it had looked like a person shedding bloody tears. The tree, which had been as lifelike as a living statue rivaling a real human, now vaguely resembled a human shape. It was a distorted form that only the severely nearsighted might mistake for a human.
Instead, in Azadin’s hand was an unfamiliar chunk of wood.