Chapter 784

Shwoosh!

It was strange.

I’d only raised my spear. So where had that whistle cutting through the air beside my ear come from?

And what the hell gave those idiots the confidence to charge at me?

In that brief instant, split into even smaller fragments, I turned and brought my spearhead down.

Whooom. Kaang!

The pressure bursting along the spearhead knocked away a dozen or so daggers. At the same moment, two swords came slashing in from either side, aiming for my upper and lower body at once.

Shhk, slice!

It burned like I’d been scalded.

An alert sounded to tell me the durability of my Fire Dragon Armor had dropped, and a considerable stream of blood gushed from my thigh.

Still, that was a decent price for fending off a surprise attack by three S-rank Hunters.

Even more so if I’d given as good as I got, instead of being the only one to take a hit.

Pshaaa!

Blood sprayed belatedly, soaking the ground. A middle-aged man and woman stared wide-eyed as they saw their comrade collapse, his chest split wide open.

“When did you—!”

“No, Fernando!”

It had all happened so quickly that I hadn’t had time to see who they were. But now that I was facing them, I recognized them all too well.

S-rank Hunters who represented their respective countries and stood as symbols of humanity.

Or rather, who had.

“Well, look who it is. I know all of you.”

At my greeting, tinged with a hollow laugh, the middle-aged pair swallowed hard.

Fernando Lucas, Brazil’s S-rank Hunter, had made the reckless choice to aim for my chest. Even as he spilled an enormous amount of blood, he was fumbling for a potion with trembling hands.

He looked so desperate that I spoke to him in the warm voice of a romantic lead.

“Drink that, and I’ll kill you.”

“……!”

“But hold on until this is over and I’ll get you treated. I’ll even find you a nice prison. All right? Promise.”

Fernando Lucas stared at me as though he’d forgotten the pain.

Then he shoved the potion into his mouth with lightning speed.

Bottle and all, without even removing the cap.

Crunch! Thud!

Shattered glass and potion poured into his open mouth.

But even a Top-Grade Potion, capable of restoring torn organs in the blink of an eye, couldn’t bring back someone who was already dead.

“I told you not to drink it.”

I murmured to Fernando Lucas’s corpse, a hole through his forehead where my Finger Qi had struck.

The two middle-aged Hunters who’d survived him—slightly luckier and far more skilled—spoke with rigid faces.

“Did it really have to come to this?”

“It’s not too late, Jin. If you stop, we’ll withdraw. There’s no need for any more sacrifices, is there?”

Stop? No need for more sacrifices?

For a moment, I had no words. I looked around the National Assembly, where the floor was still being stained with blood, then at Michael Silbert, sprawled there and twitching like an insect.

Finally, I looked at the two people standing in front of him and thrust out my spear.

One of the few lessons I’d learned was that I didn’t have to answer every stupid thing people said.

Shhk!

They might not know martial arts, but they were S-rank Hunters with plenty of combat behind them.

They gasped and barely dodged the attack, landing in front of and behind me. The spearhead had come without warning, and their eyes had turned grave.

“So that’s your answer?”

“Wait. Don’t provoke him for no reason. Right now, we need to save Michael first—”

The woman had a much better grasp of the situation than the man, but she made me want to laugh just as much.

What the hell had they been doing all this time? How much had they done for things to come to this?

There’d been a time when I hadn’t known anything, either.

Back when I’d gone mechanically from Gates to my goshiwon¹ and back. I’d fought monsters for money, not out of some sense of duty as a Hunter, yet I’d still felt vaguely offended whenever I heard someone say Hunters had become corrupt.

But…… now I knew too much.

There was no going back.

I didn’t care what they’d accomplished or how valuable they might be in the war to come.

If we didn’t cut out the tumors rooted deep in society, humanity would collapse before it could fight the monsters.

Another Lee Jungryong. Another Go Jun. Another Michael Silbert. They were right in front of me.

The moment they’d turned their weapons against us despite the ugly truth being exposed, they’d become tumors that had to be cut out.

“I already gave you a chance. The choice…… was yours.”

I charged without hesitation at the people I’d once admired and respected.

Shweeeek!

It was ironic. Pain tormented people, yet as death drew near, they could no longer feel it.

And…… that numbness was more frightening than any terrible pain.

Ah.

Michael Silbert blinked blankly.

His lips were slightly parted, but he couldn’t even groan. The strength was draining from his arms and legs, from which powerful energy had surged without pause. The blood that had soaked his body and was now sloshing around him felt dull and distant.

Damn it.

If this was how he fell, what had he lived for?

Grrk. Cough.

Instead of a hollow laugh, a bloody bubble welled in his mouth. His head tipped to the side as if he were collapsing, and he saw the corpse of a man frozen with his eyes wide open.

A familiar face.

Fernando Lucas.

Fernando had been a gang member since childhood, a delinquent who’d won fervent support among South America’s poor. Over the past ten years, Michael Silbert had done him various “favors.”

The public and the courts would, of course, call those favors something else.

It started small.

But time dulled everything, and each repetition made it snowball.

He’d eliminated a powerful rival and disguised the killing as an accident. He’d used a politician with the right connections to bury tax-evasion charges. He’d even kidnapped a brave journalist and his family when the man was preparing an article about how the hero of Brazil’s poor secretly ran a gang and made a fortune on the side.

The others spilling blood and dying for him throughout the chamber were no different.

No. They aren’t doing this for me.

Michael Silbert knew why they fought.

They fought for themselves. They knew there was too much to lose if they admitted and accepted everything now.

In the end, he and they were nothing but filth seething in the same pit.

But thanks to that—thanks to how long he’d indulged their greed and ambition—Michael Silbert had bought himself a little time.

Precious time to cast off the human bonds he’d clung to until the end and become the Demon King.

Slosh. Splash.

The blood that had filled the crater rippled like a wave. Through his blurred vision, he saw a spearhead flash through the air and graze the neck of a middle-aged man.

Slice!

A body fell with a wet thud. A head rolled toward him, its eyes meeting his.

The scent of blood rising from the blackened cut, as though it had been seared, smelled as sweet as chocolate. He doubted he was imagining it.

Heh-heh.

Michael Silbert laughed softly. Now that he could make a sound again, his five senses gradually sharpened.

His quickening heartbeat thundered in his ears.

Thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump-thump!

As his heart beat faster, the blood pooled in the crater surged toward its owner.

But it was no longer red.

Thick, gleaming green blood that no one could mistake for a human’s.

The same blood spilled by the unprecedented monster he’d encountered in Paris more than thirty years ago, when the city had overflowed with blood and corpses, filled Michael Silbert’s entire body.

Its endless magical power and Regeneration came with it.

Shhhh!

The blood was sucked deep into his body. Severed muscles rejoined. Broken bones and ruined organs mended.

A short scream rang out, as though to celebrate his return from the brink of death.

“Kh-erk!”

It was a victory cry announcing the resurrection of one life—and a death rattle announcing the end of another.

A middle-aged woman staggered backward with a hole through her chest.

A hero of the Great Cataclysm with an impressive record—and filth from the pit Michael Silbert had chosen—even at the brink of death, she drove a dagger into a gap in Jin Taekyung’s damaged armor. Her back arched like a bow.

Crunch. Pshaaa!

The spearhead came free, and blood spurted.

Thump.

In front of the corpse that had crumpled like a rotten log stood a young man, tall as an iron tower. Michael Silbert saw him.

—Jin Taekyung.

Michael Silbert looked at Jin Taekyung. No—Jin Taekyung looked at Michael Silbert.

At his eyes, swallowed by utter darkness, with none of their former gray or even their whites remaining.

And…… at the monster spreading enormous wings made of magical power.

Whooosh!

The National Assembly, with a radius of hundreds of meters,² fell silent. So did the fierce battle within it, just as it had been nearing its end.

Everyone was stunned into silence at the sight of Michael Silbert, who had lost all semblance of human form.

Scales covered his body. Two horns jutted from his forehead. At the sight of his vast, dark wings, the name of a monster flashed through their minds.

Someone voiced it in a near-groan.

“……Dragon.”

The origin and very embodiment of the dragonkin, born with nightmarish power.

The oldest and worst of monsters, with magical power that never ran dry, strength enough to tear heaven and earth apart, and tremendous Regeneration.

Then people remembered a fact they’d forgotten.

In the Great Battle of Paris more than thirty years ago—the battle that had made Michael Silbert who he was—the creature that had claimed a thousand lives, including four S-rank Hunters, had been a young Dragon. It hadn’t even reached full maturity.

And its Dragon Heart had never been found.

—Yes. Now do you understand?

Michael Silbert laughed aloud.

The roar shook the entire National Assembly, and several people seized by Fear turned deathly pale.

But one man did not.

Whoooom.

A dreadful mass of energy gathered around the two horns rising from Michael Silbert’s forehead. Jin Taekyung watched the Breath form without a trace of panic.

He merely looked on for a moment before tossing out a single word like a sigh.

“Fucking bastard. I’m already in bad shape……”

And the next moment—

Whooosh!

Immense darkness poured down, staining the whole world, and collided with blue-white flames swirling along the spearhead.

Gooooong.

At the end of it all came a blinding flash.