Chapter 213: Snake’s Head (6)
‘You can’t be serious.’
She couldn’t go down alone.
Ohjin glared at Ha-eun with resentment as she continued her detailed account of what the two demonic beasts were doing.
[M-My child…]
The unbelievable scene also seemed to have shocked Vega. She swayed left and right while supporting herself on his head.
[I-I don’t feel so good.]
“Same.”
Witnessing a brutal bloodbath would’ve been better.
He would have never imagined the beasts attacking them with such an unthinkable method.
“Fuu.”
Still, he needed to find out what the two monsters that looked like bosses were planning. He took a deep breath and gathered his resolve before moving his gaze to the two demonic beasts.
“Urgh.”
As Ha-eun had said, there was an egg about the size of a basketball rolling down from the demonic beast on the bottom.
As if one wasn’t enough, a second egg started to emerge from the beast’s butt.
“Ohjin! I can roast these fucks, right?!”
“Kill them in one sweep.”
They needed to make their move before the demonic beasts did something serious.
Ha-eun nodded and took off her eyepatch before fumbling around her left eye.
Fierce light shone from her Dragon Eye, and veiny, root-like veins ran down her neck.
“Fuuuuu.”
She extended her arm forward and opened her hand. An incredible flame condensed into a red marble the size of a fist.
The Dragon Bead, the bead of annihilation that would destroy anything it came into contact with, was aimed at the demonic beasts.
“Die!”
It shot forward with hardly a sound.
The moment the Dragon Bead penetrated the two demonic beasts that had yellow eyes reminiscent of a snake’s, they turned to ash and disappeared.
The ending was too anticlimactic, considering the demonic beasts had been arrogantly looking down at the battle from the start like bosses of some sort.
“Eh…? Are they really finished with that?”
Ha-eun’s eyes widened as she looked at the ashy remains of the demonic beasts.
It was true that the Dragon Bead contained immense power in exchange for being difficult to aim, but it still felt strange.
“…That was anticlimactic.”
She didn’t expect them to die so easily.
“Wait. There’s still one thing left…”
“Hm? What thing?”
“That egg.”
Ohjin raised his spear and pulled back his arm.
He was aiming at the basket-ball sized egg the two demonic beasts had produced from their disgusting deed. It had silently rolled down and was stuck between two stalagmites.
One might have wondered if a new egg was worth making such a fuss over, however…
‘We should always eliminate any potential threats.’
The two demonic beasts illogically deciding to make an egg out of the blue gave Ohjin a bad feeling.
The moment he was about to finish things—
Crack—
—the surface of the egg began to split apart.
‘What are they, zerglings?’
The egg was hatching when it hadn’t even been thirty seconds since it left its mother’s womb.
Ohjin launched his spear forward without hesitation.
Boom!—
A thunder-like boom accompanied the spear as it shot forward and penetrated the egg.
“Shrieeeeeeeek!”
The thing’s scream rang out through the cracks in the egg.
Its first cry was its last, and the newborn beast was fried by lightning before it could even see the light of the world.
[Hm…]
Vega sat in silence with a troubled expression.
[I know that it had to be done, but it still weighs on my mind.]
It might have been done to eliminate a potential threat, but she couldn’t help but feel instinctively repulsed when she saw a newborn getting fried before it even had the chance to do anything.
“I’m sorry. I had no choice.”
[No, this is not something you should apologize for. I would have done the same if I were in your position.]
Vega flew over and landed on top of his head.
[I’m a little tired.]
“You used a lot of your power.”
[Still, I think that I should be able to stay materialized for around thirty more minutes.]
“Then we’ll have to hurry up and find the exit.”
Finding the exit would only be easy with Vega’s exceptional ability to detect fissures.
“Ugh. That was horrible.”
After finishing off the rest of the beasts, Ha-eun swept back her drenched hair and looked through the gap in the stalagmites with a bitter expression.
Cheon Sanggil’s body was lying there with the left side of his chest ruptured.
His death felt excessively meaningless and petty for a great person who was called the ‘First Star’ and had countless heroic achievements.
“…Gramps.” Ha-eun bit her lip and clenched her fists.
She hadn’t even had time to mourn in the midst of battle. It felt like knives were digging into her chest as she silently looked at his corpse.
“Let’s go, Ha-eun.”
Instead of trying to cheer her up, Ohjin pulled on her arm.
He would have liked to recover Sanggil’s body, but they didn’t have that luxury.
“Isabella, how’s the situation on that side?”
Ohjin approached Isabella, who had fended off the front tunnel.
There were hundreds of demonic beasts piled up in mountains around her, almost more than double the amount Ohjin, Ha-eun, and Vega dealt with.
‘She went through that many of them on her own?’
Ohjin felt chills on his back as he neared her.
“Ah, has that side been handled?”
Isabella’s face was haggard. It looked like even she found it tough to kill that many of them.
“Yeah. We’re finished.”
“Come to think of it, did you see them here too?”
“They?”
“Demonic beasts with ‘eyes’.”
“Hm?” Isabella tilted her head in confusion. “No. I don’t believe so. Did something happen on that side?”
“Forget I asked.”
He had no need to go out of his way to explain that disturbing scene.
* * *
* * *
“Let’s hurry up and find a way out of here.”
Ohjin headed toward where the Doppelganger had pointed.
Behind the tall stalagmites were several narrow roads, each around five meters wide.
“How about it, Vega? Do you sense anything?”
[Hmm. Wait a moment.] Vega closed her eyes and put her fingers near her temples. [Ah.] A short exclamation left her mouth. [Th-There it is! I found a fissure nearby that leads to Earth!]
Ohjin exhaled a breath of relief as he heard her excited voice.
[However… its presence is very weak.]
“Weak?”
[Like a candle flame in the wind, it’s in a very feeble state.]
“We need to hurry up. Where is it?”
[Give me a moment. It’s so weak that it’s a bit hard to pinpoint.]
Vega touched her temples once again and concentrated.
[Hm?]
“Did you find it?”
[No… not that.]
She furrowed her brow and faced somewhere else.
Rather than facing in the direction of the split paths, she turned to where Ohjin’s party had come from—where they’d fought against the demonic beasts moments before.
[A Star Spirit…?]
“What?”
[Why do I feel a Star Spirit’s presence from there?]
Vega looked back at the path with confused eyes.
[It’s not just any Star Spirit. It’s incredibly dark… and ominous.]
As if… it was the Star Spirit of a Black Star.
She shut her eyes and focused.
[Gasp!]
Vega’s eyes suddenly snapped wide open, and she shouted, [W-We have to run!]
“What?”
[Immediately!]
As her urgent cry rang out—
Kerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!—
—the ground trembled.
The earth’s foundation tore apart, and the tall stalagmites started to collapse and crumble.
“Ohjin!”
“Ugh!”
“Ahhhh!”
Ohjin quickly bolted after grabbing Isabella and Ha-eun. The ground they’d been standing on just moments before collapsed and fell several hundred meters.
Crackle!—
He jumped through the air using Lightning Step and turned his head to face the direction of the sound.
There, he saw—
“What the hell…?”
—an unreasonably massive and unacceptably atrocious monster.
It was exactly the same as the monsters from earlier, but several thousand times bigger.
“Ohjin, could that be…?”
“…”
Right, if the demonic beasts Ohjin fought until then had a ‘mother’, it would be that monster.
Rumble! Boom!—
The hundreds-of-meters tall demonic beast broke through the ground and swiveled its massive head around in search of something.
Unlike the special demonic beasts he encountered earlier, the mother demonic beast didn’t have a yellow ‘eye’ that was reminiscent of a snake’s.
However, it looked like it developed other senses instead of sight. It flared its nostrils, and one of the tentacles sticking out of its back picked something up from the ground.
The lightning-crisped egg crumbled to pieces and fell into the bottomless hole beneath.
“Ker, ker, ker.”
The mother demonic beast jiggled its body up and down with a bizarre cry and then flared its nostrils again.
It swiveled its head and stopped to face… right toward Ohjin.
————————!
A cry beyond a human’s range of hearing caused the surrounding area to tremble.
Rumble! Bang!—
The monstrosity destroyed the ground and charged at Ohjin in a straight line as the tens of thousands of tentacles on its back shot at him.
“Oh-Ohjin!”
“Damn it!”
Ohjin urgently turned around and stepped on thin air. However, it appeared that holding onto both Ha-eun and Isabella at the same time with Lightning Step was too much. He was much slower than usual.
“Let me down, Ohjin!”
“Oh-Ohjin! There’s still some ground left there!”
Ohjin nodded and landed on the ground.
Swish!—
Dozens of the tentacles closed in on him.
“No, you don’t.”
“Fuck off!”
Isabella and Ha-eun slashed and burned the tentacles.
“Vega! In which direction is the exit you mentioned earlier?”
[O-Over there!] Vega extended her small hand to point in a certain direction.
Ohjin saw a black fissure about one meter in size concealed among the stalagmites.
“Ahh!”
“Ha-eun!”
At that moment, Ha-eun was hit by a tentacle and sent flying into the ground.
“Ugh…!” She let out a painful groan, as if her ribs were broken.
“Ha-eun!” Ohjin headed to the fissure with Ha-eun in his hands while the tentacles relentlessly pursued him.
‘Damn it!’
It was difficult to avoid them.
“Vega! Go through with Ha-eun first for me!”
[Understood!]
Vega wrapped Ha-eun in blue lightning and flew towards the black fissure.
“Over here, you fuckers!”
Ohjin used that opportunity to act as bait and draw the tentacles’ attention.
[You have to catch up without delay!]
“I got it!”
Vega arrived at the fissure and crossed over with Ha-eun.
‘Good. Now I just need Isabella to go through and we’re—’
He thought that it’d be over soon, however…
“Huh?”
The black fissure suddenly shrank to around fifty centimeters after Ha-eun went through it.
Ohjin bit his lip.
Even if Vega was considered an exception because of her small size, the fissure had shrunk to half its size after just one person crossed over.
In other words…
“…Goddammit.”
It was either him or Isabella.
Only one of them could make it out.
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