It wasn’t a simple thrust.
More precisely, it was something beyond attack or defense.
Why should it be either?
The question surfaced through Jin Taekyung’s hazy consciousness. He tilted the White Flame’s spearhead, wreathed in blue-black fire, upward.
Toward the Dragon’s Breath pouring down to blanket the sky.
Like a fool trying to stop a waterfall with an umbrella that had no fabric.
Shh.
A movement so simple it could hardly be called a form.
But what that tiny movement did next was beyond even an Ancient Dragon of unprecedented power and knowledge to predict.
Rrrrrumble!
Morgoth’s pupils widened.
As time resumed its rapid flow, his eyes flew wide before he even realized it.
What is this…?!
It was splitting apart.
A massive pillar of magical power, several meters1 in diameter, was splitting into dozens of streams the moment it touched the spearhead.
Even now, it continued to split.
How is that possible?
Morgoth had lived for thousands of years.
Sometimes as a human, an elf, or a dwarf. Sometimes wearing the hide of a monster. He had enjoyed the pleasures only the strong could afford and amassed countless experiences and knowledge.
That was precisely why Morgoth found this all the harder to understand.
How was such a thing possible?
How could a human smaller than his claw read the flow of energy within Dragon Breath?
But Morgoth’s questions were no more than empty echoes.
Even Jin Taekyung, lost in Trance, couldn’t properly answer them.
No—his consciousness had retreated somewhere so deep and distant that he didn’t even know what he was doing.
He simply followed what he saw.
Rrrrrumble!
Dark. Pitch-black in every direction.
A muffled roar filled his ears. The magical power diverted up, down, left, and right by the spearhead had unwittingly formed a rounded barrier around Jin Taekyung alone.
At least, that was how it looked from the outside.
Fwoooosh.
Why?
It was bright. Radiant.
Though darkness seemed to have swallowed the world, Jin Taekyung’s blue-black eyes saw countless lights glittering before him.
Beautiful.
He gazed at the strands of color filling his vision.
Some were red, others blue.
Some shone a dazzling white. Others held a darkness so pure he couldn’t fathom its depth.
The dozens of kinds of Magic that arrived a step behind the Breath were just like that.
Water, fire, ice, gusts of wind, lightning.
Each was powerful enough to kill thousands. All had been cast for one purpose: to erase a single person from this world. Jin Taekyung was grateful that person was him.
Had those spells been aimed at his allies instead, they would have died horribly.
Inventory open. Summon.
It all happened in an instant.
An old iron spear appeared in midair, and at the same moment, Jin Taekyung instinctively drew up the energy in his Middle Dantian.
Fwoosh!
It was swift and powerful.
More so than ever before since he had opened his Middle Dantian.
Wreathed in flame, the iron spear streaked through space like a bolt of lightning. It pierced the core of every spell in its path before finally losing all its power.
KABOOOOOM!
Sky and earth shook.
The spells, which had exploded before reaching their target, painted the sky in a dazzling display. Witnessing the unbelievable sight, the Black Dragon opened his enormous jaws wide.
He drew even more power from the vast magical force dormant within his Dragon Heart.
Rrrrrumble!
An immense pressure came through the spearhead.
And then, beneath the Dragon’s Breath pouring down harder and harder without pause, Jin Taekyung raised the knee buried deep in the ground.
I have to get up.
One thought filled his mind.
He had to go. There was no other choice.
And for now, he could forget everything else.
The pain of his bones slipping out of place.
The horrifying mass of magical power that threatened to swallow his body and spearhead at any moment.
The thorny vines constricting his entire body, and the immense gravity pressing down on both shoulders.
Crack!
His foot came forward, as unsteady as a child taking its first step.
But as the deep footprint showed, Jin Taekyung’s strength and Will carried more weight than ever before.
More than mere Magic could hold back.
Crack!
The thorny vines wrapped around him like chains tore apart, and the gravity that had weighed on him like a ten-thousand-geun2 boulder began to weaken.
Crack.
One step.
Crack.
Another.
Slowly, without hesitation, Jin Taekyung advanced.
Toward the enormous shadow in his dream-blurred vision, with the spearhead shining alone at the center of the pitch-black Breath to light his way like a torch.
And behind him stood a comrade willing to brave any danger for his sake.
“May the flames of hell consume our enemies—”
The Grand Mage’s cry rang through the din like a roar.
Fwoooosh!
The sky flushed red. A dozen or so fireballs emerged from between the storm clouds and took aim at the Black Dragon’s head.
“Hell Fire!”
Rrrrrumble!
The spell was complete. A fierce heat rushed in, scorching the sky.
But Morgoth wasn’t even slightly startled by this sudden attack.
No—when he saw that it was Magic, not a blade, coming for him, he sneered in anger.
He was no one but a Dragon.
Born of wonder, one of the species that ruled Magic—and once the Dragon Lord who had led all his kind from the highest place.
Disappear.
He didn’t even need to speak.
Morgoth possessed a powerful will and magical power greater still. His Magic existed in a realm beyond the reach of any other species, humans included.
PAAAM!
Anti Magic.
The Dragon’s magical power devoured the human’s mana.
Ash and embers scattered through the air. Far away, Magic Johnson—who had risked intervening while fighting the Guardians—coughed up blood and fell to his knees.
Mana Backlash.
The deadliest injury a mage could suffer.
Yet a gentle smile had formed on the Grand Mage’s blood-soaked lips.
Because the brief opening he had created gave someone else a chance, even if only for a moment, to escape the gravity.
“Go, Jin.”
His lips barely moved around the faint words.
Fwoosh.
Flames surged from the tip of Jin Taekyung’s foot as it touched down.
Heat strong enough to overcome the momentarily weakened gravity and carry him beyond the range of the Magic surrounding a radius of dozens of meters.3
KABOOM!
Energy compressed, then exploded.
And then—
A charge.
Whooooosh!
Jin Taekyung raced forward, cutting through the Dragon Breath that stretched ahead in a single line.
The closer he came—and the more danger Morgoth sensed—the fiercer the Breath pouring toward the ground became. It didn’t matter.
If anything, the rougher it grew, the more clearly he could follow the flow of its power.
Leaving behind the countless roars and screams blanketing the battlefield.
Without a moment’s hesitation, he pressed on. Forward, and farther forward.
At last, as the Dragon’s enormous shadow loomed over him like a mountain, Jin Taekyung instinctively knew what he had to do.
Fire Dragon Divine Spear, Second Form.
Heavenly Strike.
Rrrrrumble!
No one there had ever seen anything like it.
The spearhead, wreathed in blue-black flame, rose through the colossal pillar of darkness, cleaving it in two.
Like a dragon soaring into the sky.
Becoming the fire dragon itself.
It all began and ended in an instant.
Fwoooosh!
The darkness scattered. The Dragon’s Breath had finally spent its power.
And a human had done it.
As Morgoth watched the unbelievable sight, he wondered where it had all gone wrong.
Had the arrogance and complacency deep in his heart grown into a snowball large enough to come crashing down on him like this?
Or—
Had the strength and will of a mortal with barely a hundred years to live truly surpassed his own?
No. That can’t be.
His name was Morgoth.
Master of the lofty Silver Mountains. Archduke of the Demon Realm.
The ancient Black Dragon muttered to himself, alone in the slowed world, and spread his enormous wings.
Then he dove toward the small figure shooting skyward once more, cutting through the heavens.
PAAAM!
Compressed air exploded.
From sky to ground.
From ground to sky.
Two shadows shot toward each other.
The Dragon’s claw, wrapped in pitch-black magical power, and the spearhead filled with blue-black fire tore through space.
As if they had lived for this moment alone.
“I—I…!”
Beyond the howling wind, Morgoth let out a fierce cry and put everything he had into a slash of his massive claw.
At that same instant, he realized something.
The foreleg he had just swung had already been cut by someone else.
And the wound remained even now, after he had returned to his true form.
The Skeleton King.
A shallow wound, but one that had never healed.
To some, he had been no more than a trophy. To someone else, he had been a friend. Perhaps it was Morgoth’s instinct that made him remember, at that very moment, the final trace of the Skeleton King’s stubborn resolve.
Perhaps.
Just perhaps.
The long game he had played for thousands of years might finally be coming to an end.
And ominous instincts were never wrong.
Shhk.
A low, sharp slicing sound.
The spearhead, carrying its wielder’s Will, cut into the last trace his friend had left behind.
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