Chapter 703

Kwoooooong…!

I couldn’t breathe.

The roar still hadn’t faded. Its endless reverberations sounded impossibly distant.

And yet the System notifications rang clearly in my ears.

System

Beep! Beep-beep!

• Status Effect: Severe Internal Injury has been applied!

• Status Effect: Severe Exhaustion has been applied!

• Status Effect: Severe Muscle Rupture has been applied!

• Status Effect: …

System

Beep! Beep-beep!

• Status Effect: Severe Internal Injury has been applied!

• Status Effect: Severe Exhaustion has been applied!

• Status Effect: Severe Muscle Tear has been applied!

• Status Effect: …

The notifications—or rather, the warning sounds—kept coming, itemizing just how bad my condition was.

If the System were a doctor, it would probably look at me with a grave expression and say:

Patient, I hate to tell you this, but… you’re really fucked this time. Why the hell do you keep using One Annihilation? Is dying young on your bucket list?

How considerate.

Just imagining it should have made me feel like shit. Strangely, it didn’t change my mood much. The reason was simple: reality was even shittier than anything I could imagine.

“Cough.”

Splatter. Drip, drip.

Blood burst from my mouth and scattered across the ground. I’d felt a few chunks in it, too. Pieces of my organs, no doubt. One Annihilation really gave you your money’s worth—

Fuck. It’s not a convenience-store lunchbox.

Damn it.

My vision blurred. Senses that had been sharp enough to rival a divine weapon moments ago were now as dull as an ax abandoned in a ruined cabin. White Flame, which I’d always swung around like a pinwheel, had become the heaviest thing in the world.

But one thing still worked well enough: I could feel the pain in my forearm.

Crunch. Crunch.

I stared at it through my blurred vision.

It kept chewing my flesh with teeth that jutted out like an animal’s, swallowing the blood. Its eyes held nothing but greed and madness.

It was hard to believe it had once been human, like me.

“Good?”

Crunch.

“Yeah. Guess it is.”

I didn’t know why I was talking to it when I knew it couldn’t understand me anymore. Or why I was letting the bastard livestream an eating show with my wrist.

Maybe I selfishly wanted someone else to do what had to be done. Or maybe I still felt a last shred of pity for something that had once been human.

Shwaaak! Slash!

Crunch…

Something sliced through the air, and the teeth that had been chewing so fiercely went slack.

I was staring at the young man, frozen with his red eyes wide, when a silver mane caked in blood and dust swept across my vision.

—Human. You don’t look all right.

The guardian spirit. The moment I recognized it, my legs gave out. I caught hold of its mane and answered weakly.

“Don’t people usually ask if someone’s all right first?”

—I’m not human. You clearly weren’t all right, so there was no need to ask.

“I like that about you. What about that pitch-black bastard?”

—I killed him. For the fourth time.

“What?”

—He kept getting back up. Each time, he recovered faster and grew stronger. This time may be no different.

The rift. More precisely, the demonic qi flowing from it.

And as the Masked Man grew stronger under its influence, the guardian spirit must have been growing weaker. Just like the sacred stone in its mouth, which could no longer give off the great radiance it had before.

The guardian spirit shares its power with the sacred stone.

Only now did I notice the deep wounds all over its body, its heaving shoulders and ragged breaths.

It must have caught me looking. It turned its massive body to hide the wounds.

“I’m sorry.”

The guardian spirit studied me with its blue-white eyes, then shook its head.

—You did all you could.

“At the end…”

—I know. If those things hadn’t interfered, you would have succeeded.

I looked around weakly. Torn corpses lay everywhere.

They were the mutants that had finished transforming first and rushed me at the guardian spirit’s warning, just as I was about to unleash One Annihilation.

I didn’t see them coming.

No. I hadn’t had the chance to watch for them. I’d been too hard-pressed even to look around, and the mutants had charged straight at me.

And died.

What awaited roughly one hundred of them was the immense vortex created by One Annihilation.

But in that brief instant, split into smaller and smaller fractions of time, the mutants had instinctively stopped me and fulfilled their mission.

They’d bitten my forearm and turned my attack aside, blocked my view, and thrown themselves in front of a force they couldn’t stop.

And that was how one person survived.

“Southern Heaven Demon Empress.”

My voice came out almost as a groan. A figure standing amid the hazy dust took a step forward.

Scuff.

Everything in that section of the palace had been erased by the aftermath of One Annihilation. From its very center emerged the only monster to survive, her red eyes glowing.

Red. Everything was red.

The sky. The ground. Everything between them.

At the same time, things that should never have been visible came into view.

Ah.

The Southern Heaven Demon Empress stared blankly at her hand.

The smooth, snow-white hand she had gained by taking several jiazi¹ worth of internal energy and countless measures of vital essence was gone. In its place was a hand covered in fine wrinkles and age spots, as dry and thin as the branch of a dying tree.

“Ah. Aah…”

Tears welled in her eyes, red with burst blood vessels.

This couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t.

She had been more beautiful than anyone in the world. She was supposed to be beautiful.

But the great art she had cultivated for nearly a century had been broken, and her old, ugly appearance had returned like a curse.

Trembling with shock and rage, she realized that the aging she had kept at bay was not the only curse to come upon her.

It hurts.

Only when sudden agony made her look down at herself did she understand.

Flesh had been torn from her side as though an invisible beast had bitten it away. One arm was gone entirely. And half her face had melted in the tremendous heat.

“…!”

Her eyes flew wide. It was impossible. It should never have happened.

The wound in her side could heal. A skilled enough practitioner could even reattach her arm without leaving a scar.

But not her face. Unless she followed the same path as the Blood Lord she so despised, those terrible burns would leave their mark.

“No. This… this can’t…”

The Southern Heaven Demon Empress stopped short. Someone had appeared in her blood-red eyes, now wet with tears.

Jin Taekyung.

She could see him. And feel him.

After the dazzling flash that had erased everything, he was left with no strength, little more than an empty shell. That insignificant creature had stolen her youth and beauty.

A single thought seized her.

Kill him.

At that moment, her mind, muddled by countless emotions, turned cold.

The monster who had lived for an age wrapped herself in darkness and moved forward without hesitation.

Scuff. Scuff.

Crack.

With every step, the energy pouring from her body crushed everything around her.

She had lost her youth, but she still had the strength to kill him. The bleeding from her side and arm had stopped, and her battered insides were slowly settling.

If the sudden return of age was a curse, then the demonic qi pouring from the rift, growing denser by the moment, was a blessing.

It would let her tear apart Jin Taekyung, who could barely stand, and the reeking old beast in front of him.

—Stop.

Ssssss.

Light spread from the guardian spirit as its thought rang out. The thousand mutants packed around it crouched low, but the Southern Heaven Demon Empress kept walking.

Bang!

A palm strike shot forward without the slightest hesitation. Darkness mixed with blood-red Force pressed down on the sacred stone’s light and engulfed Jin Taekyung.

Boom!

The ground burst apart with a deafening crash. In that instant, the guardian spirit bit Jin Taekyung by the nape and darted away like lightning, releasing a low growl.

—The sacred stone…

It left the thought unfinished, but the truth was cruelly clear.

Rumble…

A faint trembling came from inside its mouth. Like an old man facing a young man in his prime, the sacred stone was losing strength even now.

So was the White Tiger that had guarded it for so many years.

Even the spiritual energy left by the imugi wasn’t enough?

The guardian spirit hadn’t expected that energy to restore all its former strength. The Water God Dragon’s earlier mutation had left it with little energy to give.

The demonic qi is too strong. Strong enough to suppress even the sacred stone’s power.

The demonic qi had already spread beyond the Inner Palace and was encroaching on the Outer Palace.

The guardian spirit had brought the beasts of the Sacred Land with it. But if they, too, fell under the demonic qi’s influence while the sacred stone weakened, the situation would spiral out of control.

No. It was already as bad as it could get.

Nearly a thousand mutants, wholly under the demonic qi’s influence, surrounded them without leaving a gap. And the Southern Heaven Demon Empress had survived to come after them.

At this rate…

The guardian spirit’s expression darkened. Then Jin Taekyung spoke, his voice weak.

“Go.”

—What?

“You’ve worked hard. You’ve been through enough.”

—…!

Jin Taekyung met its wide blue-white eyes and struggled to his feet, using White Flame as a cane.

“That’s enough. Get out and save the people. Get them as far away from this goddamn place as you can, as fast as you can.”

—How can you say that now…?

“I guarantee it. No matter how fast you are, I won’t last long if you take me with you. I’ll probably start whining for you to put me down in less than half a shichen². I’ll die if I don’t circulate my qi.”

The words were playful, but the judgment behind them wasn’t. The guardian spirit fell silent.

Jin Taekyung grinned.

“So go. Before it’s too late.”

He turned to face the Southern Heaven Demon Empress. His eyes looked ready to go dark at any moment; hers burned blood-red with fury.

“All right. I’ll come quietly, so let’s stop this. Lord of Heaven or some dogshit lord, let’s go see him.”

Instead of answering, she raised her hand.

Swish, spit!

Finger Qi shot toward him like a beam of light and tore the back of his neck. Jin Taekyung shrugged as if it were nothing.

“If you’re angry, just say so. I’ve lost enough blood already. What if I die on the way?”

“That would be troublesome,” she said coldly.

“Now we’re finally talking—”

“You mustn’t die that easily. I’m going to tear you apart slowly with my own hands.”

“……I guess we’re not exactly communicating. What are you planning to do about the fallout?”

“It’ll be fine. The Lord of Heaven will be pleased if I bring him the divine artifact. The White Tiger’s pelt will be a bonus.”

The Southern Heaven Demon Empress smiled brightly and opened her hand.

Kwoooong—!

A tremendous rumble swept across the Nanman Beast Palace.