Chapter 1164

It was a pillar of light, vast and dazzling.

Flash!

A brilliance that seized everyone’s attention in an instant.

Morgoth knew better than anyone what had descended from the distant sky. He simply couldn’t understand how it had become reality.

“How?”

Someone answered the question that slipped from his lips.

“Why are you so surprised?”

Jin Taekyung.

It was him.

Despite the exhaustion in his voice, a faint smile—one that hadn’t been there before—rested on his lips.

“Just accept it. The weather’s nice. Don’t overthink it.”

“……What?”

Morgoth instinctively looked up, following Jin Taekyung’s pointing finger. Only then did he realize what he’d overlooked.

It had split apart.

The dark clouds had blocked every trace of clear sky and bright sunlight. His magical power had cut everything off from the world as it was. But the Black Dragon’s vast territory, once almost another Demon Realm, had begun to lose its hold.

The rift had opened because of Morgoth’s own greed—and the sacrifice of someone willing to face even Erasure.

“I told you. He wasn’t some trophy.”

At Jin Taekyung’s low voice, Morgoth thought of the precious trophy he had just moved to his subspace.

No. The Skeleton King.

“Yes. Perhaps he wasn’t.”

Resolve had led to sacrifice, and sacrifice had brought about this upheaval. The tremendous explosion of power the Skeleton King had unleashed by throwing away his life had made all this possible.

That was the chief reason the Magic of an utterly insignificant human had dared encroach on the great Black Dragon’s domain.

But…

“What can a force that small possibly change?”

His voice steady, Morgoth looked toward the distant horizon. More precisely, toward the group coming into view beyond the fading flash.

BOOM!

Before the light had vanished, a thunderous boom shook heaven and earth.

The monster army charged at the humans who had suddenly appeared to block its retreat. Over the monsters’ heads poured an endless rain of fire, unleashed by humanity’s strongest War Mage.

“A Warp on this scale, and wide-area Magic. Quite impressive. A step above the human mage from a few days ago.”

Quite impressive.

That was all Morgoth had to say about Magic Johnson, but there wasn’t a trace of arrogance in his appraisal.

Dragons were mysterious creatures born for Magic—Magic itself, one might say—and Morgoth stood at the pinnacle of their kind. Before he had even reached adulthood, he had touched the limits of Magic. To him, the Magic of other races was little more than child’s play. That remained true even in this unfamiliar world called Earth.

Otherwise, Merlin—the Grand Mage who, after Siegfried Bassmann’s death, had been one of only two left alongside Magic Johnson—wouldn’t have chosen to blow himself up in the battle a few days ago.

“He caught on quickly. He saw me collecting his comrades’ bodies and chose death without hesitation.”

Morgoth had felt a little regret at losing such a rare trophy as a Grand Mage. Not anymore.

“I suppose I should thank you. I never expected you to give me such fine trophies.”

Greed he had held in check until now glinted in his obsidian eyes.

Of the thousands of humans closing in as they crushed the monster army, only two posed even the slightest threat to him.

But even Magic Johnson and Chuck Hagel were no more than trophies in Morgoth’s eyes. Jin Taekyung, already worn down by considerable fatigue, faced a wall of a thousand Dragon-tooth soldiers—each one practically a Named Monster in its own right.

The seven Guardians stood with them, reborn far more powerful than before.

“Nothing has changed. This battle is over.”

He was right.

Anyone would have thought so. The odds were overwhelmingly in Morgoth’s favor.

And yet…

If that was true, why was Jin Taekyung still smiling?

In Jin’s heat-shimmering eyes, Morgoth saw someone he barely recognized: himself, his face rigid despite the words he’d just spoken.

“What’s so funny?”

Unable to hold back, Morgoth demanded an answer. Jin Taekyung raised the spear he’d been leaning on like a staff.

“I just feel a little better.”

“……You feel better?”

“Yeah. I’ve been in situations like this plenty of times. Heard what you just said plenty of times, too.”

Jin Taekyung spat out the phlegm that had gathered in his mouth.

“You know, the usual crap. ‘I’m different from everyone else.’ ‘I never let my guard down.’ ‘I’ll kill you for sure.’ ‘It’s all over.’ And so on.”

All those times he’d hovered between life and death.

They were memories so awful Jin Taekyung never wanted to revisit them. But right now, remembering them felt different.

Why?

Simple.

“The weird thing is, not one of those bastards ever followed through on what they said.”

It was true. He’d fought every one of them, and he’d beaten every one of them.

Even with his arms and legs crushed, his insides churned to mush, and death at his heels, he had survived.

But perhaps the deepest reason he’d won so many hopeless battles wasn’t just his strange power, the System.

“Why was that? Some of them really could’ve killed me. So why did they waste time talking and doing pointless things? Why leave themselves open?”

He was afraid.

Always. At every moment.

In battle, and even in the quiet moments of everyday life.

He feared that someday a powerful enemy would kill him. It tormented him that he might have to get back on his feet at the cost of someone else’s life.

So whenever he faced an enemy, he hurled insults. He piled on every kind of abuse, then dragged up even the smallest scraps of anger and grief buried deep inside him to smother his fear.

He had to make himself stronger somehow.

People called him a hero, but he knew he was far too weak to carry that burden.

Looking back, though, he hadn’t been the only one afraid of the person across from him.

“Then, all of a sudden, I started feeling better.”

Jin Taekyung had finally realized something.

“The guys I beat were afraid of me, too.”

“……!”

“All that crap they said came from fear. Just like yours does now.”

Jin Taekyung smiled faintly at Morgoth’s suddenly frozen face.

“What, did I hit a nerve?”

Morgoth didn’t answer.

No—he couldn’t. Everything Jin Taekyung had said was true. His pride and insight were too great for him to deny it.

“……Fear.”

He’d forgotten it. Or rather, he’d tried to forget the one time he had ever felt that pathetic emotion.

But at last, Morgoth had no choice but to admit that what he felt toward Jin Taekyung was more than caution.

“Yes. I see. I was a little afraid of you, too.”

The strength of their fear might differ, but its nature was the same.

Muttering in a low voice, Morgoth looked at the tiny human who had dared to make him feel afraid.

“But I swear one thing to you.”

Vwooom.

The wind stopped. The air around them shuddered.

“I will be different from anyone you’ve ever faced.”

At that moment—

Fwoosh!

Darkness erupted around Morgoth, engulfed his body, and swelled. It rose as high as the spire that now lay in ruins and spread as wide as a fortress wall.

Jin Taekyung instinctively understood what the phenomenon before him meant.

Polymorph.

Would the world look like this if the sun vanished without a trace?

The Black Dragon finally shed his human skin. Darkness surrounded him, blackening the sky overhead and the battlefield for hundreds of meters¹ around him.

As if announcing the end of the world.

But Jin Taekyung’s gaze didn’t waver. Not even as the darkness, its work done, slowly dissipated and a thousand Dragon-tooth soldiers charged toward him at their master’s command.

It’s coming. It has to.

He knew that just as darkness existed wherever there was light, a new light awaited beyond this darkness.

And his faith was rewarded.

Just as Jin Taekyung had once answered the voice of someone crying out for salvation.

Flash!

In an instant, the world lit up.

The horizon, sinking into darkness like an extinguished campfire, and the land, being swallowed by an even deeper gloom, were bathed in light.

Dozens, then hundreds of pillars of it.

The hearts of those who had crossed thousands—tens of thousands—of kilometers,² again and again, to answer the call.

“……What is this?”

Countless Warp Magic Formations set the horizon ablaze. At Morgoth’s groan, rumbling like thunder from high in the distant sky, Jin Taekyung spoke.

“I’ll swear one thing, too.”

His low voice carried on the wind. He stepped forward and leveled his spear at the enemies bearing down on him.

“You’ll end up just like them.”

Fwoosh—slice!

As fierce flames rose like dawn and lit the battlefield, a mighty roar raced along the horizon and shook the field of battle.