Chapter 166
Chapter 166
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 166
Chapter Title: Ghosts of the Past, Ties of the Present (5)
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A bullet lodged in an empty eye socket that wasn't even its heart— the Skeleton Dragon could laugh that off.
Even if it was a 10.6mm round fired from an anti-materiel sniper rifle.
But a bullet brimming with divine blessing exploding inside its skull was an entirely different matter.
Boom! And then…
—Kraaaaaargh!!
Kahal Magdu spat out rage boiling from the depths of his soul instead of the breath he had been preparing.
How dare some bastard—
The moment the dragon lifted its head toward the sky from where the bullet had come.
Something descending toward him, backlit by the sun, entered his field of vision.
Enormous wings and tail, scales gleaming red.
The thing casting a shadow over his head was unmistakably…
—…A dragon?
Kahal Magdu immediately beat his wings. It was an instinct honed by long years of battle.
But his reaction, distracted by the bullet, was too slow, and the descending dragon was far too fast.
!!!
Bone clashed against scales. No, calling it a clash was a bit inaccurate.
The red dragon simply grabbed the Skeleton Dragon's wings and body mid-descent.
—Doing the same damn thing!
Kahal Magdu thrashed wildly to escape the dragon's grip, but it couldn't outpace gravity's acceleration.
Soon enough.
The two dragons crashed into the zombie-infested city.
Kwaaaaaang—!
The ground shuddered, and the entire city screamed. Buildings toppled like dominoes around the impact site.
Soon, the wails of crushed undead mixed with the screams of Ratkin and the sound of flying debris raining down.
“What the hell am I even looking at…?”
Neti muttered, staring at where the dragons had fallen. Dust clouds hid their forms, but it was already surreal enough.
But the gaze of Yeomyeong, standing beside her, was fixed somewhere else entirely.
High in the sky, two small dots that had fallen from the neck of the plummeting dragon moments ago.
“Neti, follow me.”
“Huh? Where… I'm coming with you, brother-in-law!”
Yeomyeong dashed without hesitation toward where the two dots were falling.
Not long after, Neti, who had been following in a daze, realized what her brother-in-law was heading for and widened her eyes.
A woman wearing a familiar eyepatch.
“…Saintess?”
Holding a massive anti-materiel sniper rifle in both hands, with a large bag on her back, she wasn't alone.
Perched on the Saintess's shoulder, a huge crow was frantically flapping its wings to slow their descent.
Of course, those flaps weren't helping much.
One Saintess might be light, but the bag she was carrying looked insanely heavy.
Just as the Saintess was about to crash onto a collapsed building.
Yeomyeong and Neti simultaneously unleashed psychokinesis to catch her.
Unlike the startled crow, the Saintess didn't panic and entrusted herself to the psychokinesis. Her relaxed attitude suggested she had anticipated this.
“Hey! Missed me?”
The Saintess's first words upon landing. Yeomyeong clamped his mouth shut, unsure how to respond.
A subtle, brief silence.
As Neti glanced around at the tense atmosphere, Yeomyeong asked with a sigh.
“Why'd you come in person? And bringing a dragon too… What the hell did you see?”
Precognition.
“I saw it flying across the sky.”
Nuclear weapon.
“…”
Their conversation lacked subjects. But that was enough.
It carried more certainty than a hundred words of explanation.
“Red Lord Redox. We beseech your gun. Grant this one your courage, and take away their recklessness.”
The Saintess placed a hand on Yeomyeong's shoulder and softly chanted a blessing. Red energy settled into his body, soon forming a thin membrane that enveloped him entirely.
“We'll catch up later. Finish this quick, got it?”
As if her words were a signal.
Kwaaaa—!
Two pillars of fire erupted from where the dragons had crashed.
The unmistakably draconic red and blue pillars intertwined, clashed, and burned away the surrounding dust.
Through the clearing dust emerged the two dragons.
The Skeleton Dragon and Red Dragon, tangled together, attacked with claws, tails, and teeth.
A brutal melee of massive reptiles straight out of a monster movie.
Yeomyeong launched himself toward the earth-shaking spectacle.
***
—Orse Tabul, black sheep of the Dragonscale Mountains! Have you gone from fledgling king to the Saintess's lapdog?
The skull dragon roared, swinging its tail. The red dragon countered with a swipe of its forelegs.
[Shut your trap, corpse.]
—Corpse? A fool rotting in a grave for decades on behalf of a furball lectures me about corpses. The irony of history!
Kahal Magdu cackled and unleashed his breath.
Not at the red dragon, but at the dozens of ice spears flying in from behind it.
Sssizzle—! So many ice spears that instead of vaporizing, an immense cloud of steam rose.
But the skull dragon's sharp vision pierced the steam to detect the two approaching figures beyond.
Cheon Yeomyeong shrouded in blessing, and the crow beastkin.
Where did the Saintess and that wench go? Kahal Magdu leaped back from the red dragon, grinding his teeth.
—Half-baked dragon and mage-level beastkin. My precious haul's ruined.
“The only thing I'm harvesting today is your life, from the start.”
Cheon Yeomyeong's reply as he closed the distance like a flying arrow through the steam. The skull dragon wove spells with both hands and responded.
—Don't count your chickens yet. Cheon Yeomyeong, have you forgotten I'm a necromancer?
Numbers mean nothing before a necromancer.
The moment Kahal Magdu whispered that, inky blackness erupted from both his hands. Blackness sticky like mud.
Sensing ill omen, the red dragon leaped back as the blackness tore through space, opening a door to a special subspace.
The Gate of Death.
The darkness connected to the subspace where Kahal Magdu's Death Knights slumbered yawned wide, and dozens of corpses burst forth.
Humans, dwarves, orcs, beastkin, even elves.
Dozens of superhuman undead bearing twisted mana beneath their pallid corpse skin landed on the ground.
Kahal Magdu's specially crafted toys, made with painstaking care.
Blue ghostfire bloomed above the dozens of pairs of eyes, identical to his own.
—Turnaround time.
The skull dragon said that and beat its wings.
The steam and dust obscuring vision were swept away, clearing the surroundings.
The red dragon and crow beastkin revealed themselves, but for some reason, Cheon Yeomyeong was nowhere to be seen.
No way?
Kahal Magdu flinched. He retreated on instinct and shouted to his Death Knights.
—Spread your mana! Find him!
The next instant, the skull dragon gaped in horror at the light surging from the ruins he himself had crumbled.
Sword ki bearing the light of stars, Comet Sword.
—Block it!
Before Kahal Magdu could scream, the Death Knights had already unleashed sword ki and spells at the Comet Sword.
Attacks woefully insufficient to block it, but enough to weaken its power.
Craaaack—!
Yet even diminished, the Comet Sword shredded the barriers and carved a long gash across Kahal Magdu's ribs.
A blow that would have been fatal if even a moment later.
No reaction until the sword ki was right in front of him?
Kahal Magdu realized why as he saw Yeomyeong bursting from the ruins.
—Illusion magic…?
Magic that could fool a dragon's senses, no less. To encounter such sorcery not in pre-collapse Soviet labs, but in this garbage city.
—Well played. One more bit of intel to extract from the corpse.
At those words as a signal, dozens of Death Knights charged toward Yeomyeong.
***
The moment the skull dragon took to the air and the Death Knights began to move.
“South America's Salvador, Candido, Heberu… even Pansui missing from Manchuria? You insane lizard bastard.”
Corvus couldn't shut his beak at the lineup of Death Knights filling the alley.
Every one was a famous superhuman reported missing or KIA.
[Can you win?]
Corvus shook his head at the red dragon's question.
A holy sword, nemesis of undead, might manage, but dozens of superhuman undead—so-called Death Knights—was impossible.
Especially with the mana-endless Skeleton Dragon right there.
[You can buy time, at least.]
“About ten minutes. It'll be tight.”
Corvus answered, drawing a palm wood staff from between his wings.
His gaze wasn't on Kahal Magdu ascending to the sky, but on Yeomyeong battling the Death Knights.
[Cheon Yeomyeong and I will take down Kahal Magdu. Hold those guys off alone until then.]
“Crazy plan.”
[…]
“Well, take good care of the kid.”
With those final words, Corvus leaped from the dragon's shoulder.
Immense mana rippled from his falling staff.
The moment the Death Knights surrounding Yeomyeong sensed something amiss and turned.
“Look—at—me!”
Countless ice blades bloomed above the crow's head. Sunlight reflected off them, scattering dazzling light.
The Death Knights' reaction was immediate. They broke the encirclement around Yeomyeong, retreating or slashing at the ice blades with their swords.
And that was exactly what Corvus wanted.
[Now, Cheon Yeomyeong!]
As Orse Tabul roared while ascending, Yeomyeong leaped high.
Snap—! The tail caught his body, and the dragon's wings flapped, slicing through the sky.
Sharp wind grazed Yeomyeong's cheek, and the city below shrank in an instant.
—How does one who became a dragon stoop to rug duty himself?
As the red dragon climbed into the sky, Kahal Magdu, already airborne, mocked.
Orse Tabul answered with breath.
The massive fire pillar from the dragon's maw dyed the sky red, narrowly grazing the skull dragon.
—Hahaha! Yes, that's the dragon way!
The two dragons wove spells almost simultaneously.
Mana so vast it roiled the atmosphere surged. Moments later, dozens of spells lit the sky.
Ice spears clashing with fireballs.
Fire pillars blocking lightning.
Psychokinesis suppressing flame bursts.
Even their breaths colliding.
The dragons' aerial battle, spells crashing and exploding, resembled a massive fireworks display.
Yeomyeong's ice spears occasionally mixed in, but Kahal Magdu sneered each time.
—Human rug, I can feel your stamina bottoming out. How far did you fly carrying the Saintess? A week? Two? Or have you even recovered from sixty years of wounds first?
As the skull dragon said, the scales of victory tipped ever more toward him. The gap between endless-stamina undead and a living being already spent.
Only the man on the dragon's back could close it, but Kahal Magdu allowed no room for Cheon Yeomyeong to shine.
Humans couldn't fly, after all.
—The day I add a kin's corpse to my collection. Orse Ranal will wail!
As their spells exploded once more, Kahal Magdu sensed a subtle wrongness.
Cheon Yeomyeong, that human wouldn't just give up like this.
The guy who chased him to the sky by climbing trees in Manchuria.
For him to just poke with ice spears and psychokinesis? He was surely hiding something—
Then.
Kahal Magdu realized the ice spears Yeomyeong had fired were lined up straight above his head.
Like a cloud bridge.
—You mad bastard.
The dragon belatedly looked up, but the realization came too late.
Yeomyeong was already leaping down toward his head, using the ice spears as a bridge.
“Time to end this, Magdu.”
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