Chapter 755

The Skeleton King was like a demonic sword.

A blade sharp enough to cut through anything, with killing power to match—yet one that had to remain sheathed.

A demonic sword that had to be drawn and wielded only when absolutely necessary, and only where no one was watching.

In that sense, the deep sea, swallowed by darkness on every side, was the perfect place.

Shwoooooosh!

A wave of bones surged and churned through the water.

The remains of sea creatures that had accumulated over hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years awoke at a single being’s call.

The moment they opened their eyes, countless bones raced toward one another, obeying commands that bound their souls like chains.

Crack. Clatter-clatter!

They joined, gathered, and at last took shape: a massive gateway of bones blocking the entrance to the deep sea. A sturdy shield of wraiths that would let nothing living pass.

At the center of it all stood the king who had roused the wraiths sleeping deep beneath the seabed.

—Stop.

Fwoooooosh.

A tremendous force swelled.

Brilliant blond hair swayed with the current. Above his bare forehead, a faint silver light appeared and took shape.

A crown.

It was the mark of one who had claimed a throne for himself, and the power shining from it was far too brilliant to be called mere magical power.

—This is a royal command.

His voice held authority; his gaze, arrogance.

As those shining golden eyes fixed on Leviathan, it realized the true identity of the traitor who had dared turn against his own kind.

The Skeleton King…!

The king of wraiths.

One of the lords of the seventy-two legions sworn to the Demon King Asmodeus. He had led an immortal legion that rose again and again to fight humanity, until he himself met Erasure.

But the crowned traitor blocking Leviathan’s path was not the Skeleton King it remembered.

How?

Where there was Erasure, there could also be birth. Someone else taking a vacant throne was only natural.

But this new king of wraiths was different. Far too different.

—How can you possess so much magical power and still side with mere humans?!

Leviathan’s cry rang with bewilderment and rage. Its enormous body, hundreds of meters¹ across, shot forward like a beam of light.

Kwaaaaaa!

Violent whirlpools spun in every direction.

Leviathan rushed toward the wall of white bones without a moment’s hesitation.

No—it had no other choice.

It had to break through. If it could pass that wall and reach deeper water, it would survive.

Leviathan had first opened its eyes in the deep sea. In those pitch-black depths, where no one could intrude, it was certain it could win.

At least, that was what it believed until a quiet voice came with a fresh stab of agony.

“Where are you off to in such a hurry? We haven’t even settled the bill yet.”

Crunch!

—GRAAAAAAAH!

Leviathan’s massive body, which had been shooting forward like a ray of light, writhed violently.

Jin Taekyung gripped the spear shaft buried deep in the monster’s brow with one hand. With the other, he drove a sword—drawn from who knew where—into its enormous eye.

He spoke almost in a whisper.

“At one hit per person, we’d be here for three days and four nights. Let’s round it off at a thousand.”

Less than a day had passed, and the confirmed casualties already exceeded a hundred thousand.

They were strangers whose faces and names Jin did not know, but as he stared into the writhing Leviathan’s eyes, his own gaze burned with cold fury.

“We have to collect the blood debt, don’t we?”

Monsters and humans. Humans and monsters.

Their fate had been set the moment the Demon King Asmodeus first stepped onto this land more than thirty years ago.

Jin, once a boy whose father had gone away one day and never returned, remembered him clearly. He knew the pain of those this disaster had left in the same position.

Inventory open. Summon.

Spears, swords, axes.

It didn’t matter.

Countless weapons he had shoved deep into his Inventory whenever he had the chance flashed into his hands one after another, then plunged toward their targets in the blink of an eye.

Thrust-thrust-thrust! Crunch!

Scales shattered. Bone and flesh crumpled.

The precise circulation of internal energy he usually employed was nowhere to be seen, but even that was enough.

The mythical monster that had reigned as a calamity of the sea all its life writhed in agony unlike anything it had ever known.

—GRAAAAAAAH!

Ruuuuumble!

Magical power erupted from Leviathan, shaking the sea.

Marine creatures swept in by the waves succumbed to its overwhelming Fear. Their eyes rolled back—and then a quiet voice breathed new souls into their dead bodies.

—Rise.

The fin of a blue whale that had been slowly sinking twitched. Dozens of sturgeon, torn apart for the monster’s meal only hours earlier, bared their sawlike teeth.

—Grrrrrrr.

—Grk. Grk.

Dead, yet not dead.

The countless marine creatures that had finally become a single legion moved as one body. And at their head stood the king of wraiths who had awakened them.

—My legion!

Craaaaaack!

At the Skeleton King’s cry, the wall of bones collapsed.

No. It became a single enormous monster of bones and charged at Leviathan.

Kwaaaaaa!

Through a haze of green blood, Leviathan saw the Skeleton Legion rushing at it as one and roared.

—How dare you, you worthless things!

Gooooong. Boom!

Compressed seawater fired through the depths like cannonballs. Hundreds of blasts smashed countless bones apart.

But even Leviathan, calamity of the sea, could not control everything.

This vast ocean belonged entirely to it, but the countless deaths and wraiths flowing within the waves followed only the owner of the crown.

—Open your eyes.

Magical power surged around the Skeleton King. Amid the churning currents, wraiths on the verge of Erasure raised their heads.

—Raise Skeleton.

Clatter-clatter-clatter!

Leviathan opened wide the eye Jin Taekyung had half-crushed.

—…!

Bones scattered by the blasts gathered again. Broken pieces reassembled into new shapes and clung to Leviathan’s enormous body.

They seeped through the cracks in its strength and clung to the monster’s magical power, which still had not run dry, draining it like leeches.

Shhhhhhh!

What the hell…?

Leviathan was stunned. Even the Skeleton King of the past could not have rebuilt his legion so quickly and easily.

Where had this wealth of magical power come from? How could he command his legion to attack Leviathan, a monster plainly above them?

And there was something else.

My magical power has no effect on him.

Among monsters, power governed everything.

Yet this Skeleton King—the traitor newly seated on the throne of wraiths—was different. He might fear Leviathan, but its magical power did not control him. If anything, the deeper they went, the more freely he fought.

How?

Had Leviathan fully regained its former strength, or simply kept its composure, it might have understood.

The Skeleton King’s power was different in nature from ordinary magical power. And after defeating the Arch Lich and Behemoth, both named S-rank monsters, and absorbing so much magical power, his standing was not far below Leviathan’s.

But Leviathan had awoken from its long sleep only days ago. Now it was gravely wounded and exhausted. Everything happening around it seemed impossibly confusing.

Confusing enough to make it forget reality for one brief moment.

Then a terrible burning pain jolted it back to its senses.

Fwoosh. Sizzle-sizzle!

Leviathan clenched what remained of its teeth. Half were already gone.

It had fought countless humans called Hunters during the Great Cataclysm, but it had never felt pain like this. Blades wreathed in aura had barely stung, and even its worst injuries had soon healed after it absorbed another monster’s magical power and rested.

But the flames tearing through its enormous head even now, turning flesh and bone to ash, were different.

That tiny human was different.

“Fifty. Fifty-one. Fifty-two. Fifty-three…”

Thrust-thrust-thrust!

He was nothing like the humans Leviathan had fought before. He was on another level.

He kept muttering without pause as he drove weapons of unknown origin into various parts of Leviathan’s body and twisted them around. There was even a madness in his muttering that not even monsters could approach.

“We’re halfway there already. Come on, let’s keep it up a little longer.”

“Sir, just one more set.”

“Hold still. You’ll break a bone.”

“Of course, it’ll break even if you don’t. Go ahead and fuck around if you want to die in even more pain.”

—GRAAAAAAAAAH!

Leviathan let out a horrible cry.

It was no roar. It was a scream.

The Fear that had once made the shores beyond the five oceans tremble had become fear in the plainest sense, binding Leviathan itself.

All because of one human, impossibly small beside it.

Die? I’m going to die? Me?

An instinct for survival, forgotten over a lifetime as a predator, awoke.

One eye was so badly mangled that Leviathan could no longer make out its surroundings. Its body drew closer to death by the moment.

As its pain slowly dulled, Leviathan assessed its situation.

One chance. I need one opening to shake them off and flee as far as I can.

There was still hope.

Its tenacious vitality. The half of its magical power it had yet to spend. And its enemies were no longer as they had been when it first met them.

Especially that human who had dealt it such devastating damage with a single attack the day before.

If he could use that power again, I’d already be dead. Something must have happened to him.

Leviathan was a highly intelligent monster. Its assessment was shrewd, and it made its life-or-death decision at once.

—Kwoooooo!

Its massive body, hundreds of meters¹ in diameter, writhed with all its strength and released its magical power. A tremendous force surged outward like something inflating, pushing away everything around it.

Kwaaaaaa!

Dozens of whirlpools formed under the tremendous water pressure.

Leviathan shook off the Skeletons draining its magical power like leeches and charged in one direction.

Whoooooosh!

The water flowing over its enormous body became violent whirlpools and churned wildly.

The Skeleton King missed it by a hair and shouted, his voice close to a scream.

—Human! Get out of the way!

Too late.

Leviathan kept that thought to itself and drove forward with all its strength—toward a cliff rooted deep in the seabed for thousands of years.

It would scrape that wretched human off.

And then—

Ruuuuumble!

The collision sent a tremendous shock through the sea.

I tried to get out of the way. I could have made it.

I’d just forgotten one important thing in the heat of battle.

Some of my powers had an expiration date.

Beep.

System

• The duration of the Aquatic Rescue Worker Title has ended!
• The effects of the Aquatic Rescue Worker Title have disappeared!
• The Webbed Feet of the Aquatic Rescue Worker have disappeared!
• The Gills of the Aquatic Rescue Worker have disappeared!
• Reactivation will be possible in 6 days 23 hours 59 seconds!

System

• The duration of the Water Rescue Worker Title has ended!
• The effects of the Water Rescue Worker Title have disappeared!
• The Water Rescue Worker’s Webbing has disappeared!
• The Water Rescue Worker’s Gills have disappeared!
• Reactivation will be possible in 6 days 23 hours 59 seconds!

Damn it.

Before I could even spit out that single curse, a massive boulder covered in green moss and seaweed had come up right behind me.

Crack!

“Guh!”

A powerful impact. Then pain squeezed my entire body.

Through the momentarily whitened field of vision, I saw Leviathan’s back as it staggered toward the surface, fleeing despite being unable to fully absorb the force of the collision.

I also saw the Skeleton King chasing after it while riding a half-dismembered shark.

Clatter-clatter-clatter!

Bone Binding.

A net of bones shot across the current and blocked the enormous body, but it could not restrain the monster thrashing with a desperate will to survive.

Crunch!

The bones shattered and scattered in every direction.

But it wasn’t over.

I fought the water pressure bearing down on me and tightened my grip on the spear shaft.

Craaaaack.

Cold, dark seawater crept toward my mouth and nose. That was fine.

My sharpened senses were still fixed on the target. So was the blue-white hellfire gathered along the transparent spearhead. So were my muscles, every fiber drawn taut toward the enormous monster fleeing in the distance.

Shhhhhhh.

Every nerve in my body came alive.

It was the same situation as yesterday. But this time would be different. I knew it with my whole body.

There won’t be a second time.

Trusting myself, intent on killing it, I hurled the spear with all my strength.

Shhwaaaak!

A single streak of flame crossed the sea. At its end came the scream I had been waiting for.

—GRAAAAAAAAAH!

The hunt was over.