Chapter 1166

Fwoooosh.

For an instant, time slowed.

The sounds around him faded into the distance, and his heartbeat thundered in his ears.

At the same time, instinct and reason whispered in unison.

Now.

His senses sharpened until every hair on his body stood on end. Jin Taekyung shot upward on the explosive force of Flamefire Path and brought his spear down with all his strength.

Toward the Black Dragon’s eye—larger than Jin’s entire body, and blacker than anything else.

Fwoosh—KABOOM!

A line of fire split the air.

No—the countless seams hidden within it.

Shhhhk.

A chillingly low, faint whistle.

That was all.

Nothing else could be seen or heard.

Even if someone else had been standing right there, watching it all unfold, they would never have understood what had happened.

But the two beings who had finally come face-to-face knew.

That single strike had cut through dozens of layers of the highest-grade defensive magic at once.

I cut it.

A shiver ran up Jin Taekyung’s spine.

It worked.

As his insight deepened and his martial prowess grew, he had begun to sense the flow of qi more and more clearly. Now he could sense it in the monster before him, too.

But the spearhead that had torn through the defensive magic never reached its target.

Rrrumble—!

An immense force suddenly fell on him from above.

And the force humanity called gravity was faster and heavier than Jin Taekyung had expected.

Whoooosh—BAM!

A cloud of dust rose in the wake of his body as it slammed down at tremendous speed.

Just as Jin Taekyung had cut through the defensive magic with a single attack, Morgoth had sent him crashing to the ground with overwhelming gravity. The Black Dragon muttered in a low voice.

“Did you think I wouldn’t anticipate even this?”

The words slipping between the Black Dragon’s teeth were more than mere sound.

“Wind Cutter.”

The magic within the Dragon’s words stirred. Countless blades of wind formed, then tore through the cloud of dust.

BOOM!

The thick dust cloud burst apart. Jin Taekyung raced over ground sliced through like tofu, dodging as Morgoth unleashed one spell after another.

Morgoth’s voice continued, almost as if he were talking to himself.

“Thank you. Thanks to you, I’ve finally realized something important.”

Until now, fear had seemed to a great being like Morgoth nothing more than a weak emotion.

So he had tried to forget it.

He simply hadn’t been able to.

But today, watching one human, he had glimpsed a great truth he had been refusing to face.

“If you fully acknowledge and accept the fear lurking in your heart, you can no longer call it fear.”

Yes.

Morgoth believed that was why Jin Taekyung—and humans—could be strong.

Their lives were absurdly short, their bodies fragile.

Humans were undeniably weak. They had neither the long lives of elves, nor the dwarves’ strength, nor monsters’ ability to reproduce quickly.

But because they knew their own weakness and fear, they spent their lives struggling to grow stronger, each in their own way.

Like the person fighting his way through a curtain of magic that now surrounded him on all sides, closing in without a gap, relying on nothing but a single spear.

“And so, I too will grow stronger.”

Morgoth dropped the barest courtesy he had maintained for the sake of his own dignity, not his opponent’s. He let go of the last sliver of arrogance that remained. Then he added quietly:

“Because I’m… afraid of you, you bastard.”

At that moment—

CRACK—KABOOM!

The ground caved in within a radius of a hundred meters¹ around Jin Taekyung. Countless thorny vines burst through the cracks and surged toward him.

Shwaaa!

A sharp whistle rang out from every direction.

This was no ordinary binding spell, nor were these common thorny vines.

Their stems were as thick as the trunks of mature trees, covered from end to end in enormous thorns.

They had drunk their fill of the Black Dragon’s magical power instead of sunlight. Each one was strong enough to crush a human body in an instant, and Jin Taekyung could feel the power within them.

He also knew there was only one way to escape this tenacious magical prison closing in from every direction.

Grit.

He steadied his breathing. Clenched his teeth.

He planted a step with the weight of a thousand geun² and used that foot as his pivot, gathering the internal energy he had left—not even half of what he’d started with—and pouring it into the tip of White Flame.

Then—

He swung.

A storm that swept everything away, and hellfire capable of burning anything.

Whoooooosh!

Fire Dragon’s Single Tail.

In the midst of a life-or-death struggle, the first form of the Blazing Flame Divine Spear, at last reaching the edge of its realm, flowed along the spearhead.

The fiery storm spread beyond a single line into a vast circle, hungrily devouring everything in its path.

The ice and lightning that had ceaselessly blanketed the sky and rained down.

The thorny vines that surged from every direction, seeming to swim through the ground.

KABOOOOOM!

White ash and embers that had not yet gone out drifted like snowflakes, brushing past Jin Taekyung as he stood alone and upright in the heat haze rising from the ground.

At the same time, Morgoth instinctively knew.

Now that Jin Taekyung had poured out all the strength he had left at once, this was the moment he had been waiting for.

It was why he had waged a relentless war of attrition, using tens of thousands of monsters—and even the thousand Dragon-tooth soldiers he had spent so long creating—as bait.

“Dark Vine.”

CRRACK!

Black thorny vines erupted again and surged toward Jin Taekyung.

And that wasn’t all.

Rrrrumble!

“Gravity.”

A force far beyond the bounds of ordinary gravity magic shook the sky. Magic spells of devastating power filled the gaps, each one as powerful as the dazzling flashes they produced.

All in one direction, for one purpose.

And this time, nothing unexpected happened.

BOOM! Shrrrk!

His knees buckled first under a weight of dozens of metric tons.³ Thick thorny vines slithered over him like living snakes and bound his whole body.

At the same time, dozens of spells converged in the air, shining down on one human like a small sun.

Jin Taekyung.

As Morgoth watched him, bound like a criminal and waiting for death to come, a thought suddenly crossed his mind.

If he hadn’t been a Dragon.

Or if Jin Taekyung had possessed a Dragon Heart, brimming with power almost without limit like his own, perhaps Jin Taekyung would be the one standing there now instead of him.

But…

At least today, I was stronger.

It was the difference in what they had been born with.

The size of the vessel that could contain their power, the total amount of strength they possessed—those were different.

Morgoth and Jin Taekyung.

Jin Taekyung and Morgoth.

The two beings were different in every way, and each had fought the other with everything they had. But Morgoth’s vessel of power was deeper and larger than Jin Taekyung’s.

That was all.

That was the sole reason this battle—and, beyond it, the fate of the world—had been decided.

Meeting you was the greatest amusement I have ever experienced.

With the highest praise he could offer, the Black Dragon opened his enormous jaws.

Vwooom.

The Dragon’s heart, deep within his body, shuddered.

No matter how much he emptied and poured out, pure magical power continued to fill him without end. Its chillingly low rumble swirled between the Dragon’s teeth, dark as a cave.

Dragon Breath.

A supreme power granted only to dragonkin.

Because he feared harming the Dragon-tooth soldiers, and because he had so little time to release it, its range and destructive power fell far short of their usual level.

But it was more than enough.

His only purpose was to erase a single human from this world without leaving a trace.

Jin Taekyung. The weakest of humans, and yet a hero more resilient than anyone.

Gooooong.

His chest suddenly swelled.

At the same time, the immense magical power flowing from the Dragon Heart—the purest, deepest darkness—finally became a single flash and shot forward.

Carrying heartfelt respect, and a murderous intent heavier still.

This is the end.

At that moment—

KABOOOOOM!

A beam of darkness, black enough to swallow the sun, tore through space like a bolt of lightning.

The world stopped.

Or at least, that was how it seemed to Jin Taekyung.

But his eyes, dimmer than usual, weren’t fixed on the countless spells coloring the air, or the Dragon’s breath, which held more power than all of them combined.

So this is what it was.

Jin Taekyung gazed clearly—not with his eyes, but with his mind.

At himself, thoroughly bound and forced to his knees.

At the enormous Black Dragon looking down on him with haughty disdain.

And at this world, and the secrets it had hidden.

It was a sensation that had come to him after another life-or-death struggle, one he had already experienced once in the not-so-distant past.

“People often fail to believe the truth, even when it’s right in front of them, and pass it by. It’s truly a pity.”

The voice echoed from his memory, belonging to the old man who had served as his Helper in the Tutorial, the Martial God without equal in all history—or the savior of humanity.

“You saw what cannot be seen, and avoided what cannot be avoided. So why can’t you believe what you did yourself?”

In another space, one that existed in neither dream nor reality, the Absolute One had asked him that question.

Back then, Jin Taekyung hadn’t answered.

No—he couldn’t.

He had been caught in a sensation that ruled his body and flesh.

Just like now.

Ding. Ding. Ding.

He heard it, but didn’t hear it.

System

Martial arts are built through endless training and pain, and perfected in battles fought on the brink between life and death.

Congratulations. The Fire Dragon Divine Spear has reached Great Completion.

You have gained a tremendous amount of EXP and Fame as a reward.

Level Up!

Status effect Trance applied.

He saw it, but didn’t see it.

No-self.

True to the meaning of those two characters, Jin Taekyung forgot everything.

His memories up to that point. The many emotions lurking like thorns in his mind and heart.

Even Jin Taekyung himself.

And yet his pupils, now tinged with a deep blue-black light, were reading everything in the world.

Mind’s Eye.

Feeling something he hadn’t experienced since that day, Jin Taekyung lifted his spear as if entranced.