There was no need for me to help them. I had entrusted Seong-Il with a task, and this group had enough skills to fulfill what I needed them to do.
The overall growth rate of Awakened was significantly faster than it had been in the past. This was a direct result of me modifying the System. The man who introduced himself as the group’s leader had clearly benefited from the change. Although he was trembling in fear at my skeleton dragon, the movements of his tiny muscles as they flinched were amazingly delicate. I was certain that it wasn’t something that could have ever been seen in someone at the beginning of the previous Act One, Stage Three. Countless Awakened in the past did their best to get to this skill level, but ended up dying in vain.
I shortened the distance between us. His shaking eyes betrayed the fact that he didn’t have enough insignias to escape the situation.
I said bluntly, “Let me say this again. There is no way for you guys to retreat.”
Usually, the general commander of a group used tactics instead of having the group charge recklessly after encountering the enemy. If they felt like they were capable of overwhelming the opponent, they often created a siege and destroyed their enemy’s territory.
I had run into flying monsters on my way here. Therefore, the blood and feathers stuck on my skin were obviously from the monsters and not my own.
Stomp, stomp.
I stopped in front of the man and swept the coagulated blood and feathers off me. The guy was busy tracking every single move that the skeleton dragon behind my back and I did. When the dragon began to straighten up its posture by flapping its wing bones, the man stepped back. However, I grabbed his collar and pulled him toward me.
“Eup!” the man yelped, and the stench of his breath hit my nose. “Who… who are you…”
I responded callously, “You can either follow my instructions or die here. Your decision will decide the fate of your group.”
The man seemed to have thought he could get away from me by relying on his strength, but the more he resisted, the more the ground he was standing on began to crumble. He only stopped resisting when a series of gate quests appeared on the notification window. However, there was a message that only popped up on our screens alone.
[The quest ‘Burning Demon’ has begun.]
[The quest ‘Close Combat’ has begun.]
…
[The quest ‘Noble Knights’ has begun.]
[The quest ‘The Death of the Commander-in-chief’ has begun.]
Naturally, the man widened his eyes at this.
[The Death of the Commander-in-chief (Quest)
Class: B
Mission: Kill the commander-in-chief
First-place completion reward: 1 challenger box
Second-place completion reward: 1 master box
Common reward: 100,000 points]
The rewards were splendid as it was the crown of the Final Stage. The man’s eyes quickly filled with greed, and his desperation vanished immediately as if it had never existed.
However, completing a quest like this was impossible for a group that was on the brink of annihilation. In fact, they had barely managed to maintain one district, and badly at that. This guy was rushing in without thinking. At that point, I let go of his collar and turned around, ignoring what they were doing. Since he had adapted to this world and always aspired to be stronger, it was obvious that he longed for a master box…
I thought I had no choice but to fight this battle with only Seong-Il at my side.
“Wait!” the man yelled at me, but it was too late.
Whoosh-
I landed on the back of the dragon and sat down.
To the sky!
The dragon responded to my nonverbal command, and it surged by tilting its body. I tried balancing myself by tensing my legs. The higher we soared up, the more the winds whistling from above buffeted me.
Even from the beginning, I had zero expectations for that man and his subordinates. If they had followed my orders, then more of them would have survived. However, by doing so, the man and his subordinates would have had no choice but to fight against the army that was under the direct control of the monster’s commander-in-chief.
A bunch of them were coming in from the darkness, so the key was figuring out which squad the commander-in-chief would take the lead in.
Oh? Do you want to start off?
I suddenly spotted a hairy monster rushing into the town streets. It was riding a vehicle with an execution ax in its hand. That was the commander-in-chief. I shouldn’t have hastily judged them by their appearance because they were warriors who had mastered short-distance attacks and magic. In fact, they were Kciphos with ice attributes. After the leader came in, all of its troops began appearing from the sides where the boundaries were, including the sky. Two units even flew through the border.
***
The System called them Kciphos Winged Soldiers. There were a total of one hundred twenty monsters split evenly into three units. They had enough soldiers to go against the skeleton dragon for a while, and they were the strongest units in the Final Stage of Act One.
However, they had overlooked me. In fact, instead of getting impaled by a bony spike from the dragon, I ended up sweeping them away with a blade. This would have been impossible if I hadn’t overcome the years of hardship in the Land of the Dead. Since the corrupted System couldn’t make me die there, it should have expected the current situation.
The beasts screamed in pain once their wings became cut off. The monsters who were riding vehicles weren’t the only ones collapsing on the ground. Those who had occupied the sky were also falling as the lightning streaks were smacking them.
Some of them showed outstanding acrobatics as they jumped over their fellow beasts who were falling. Some landed properly on my dragon’s back, and some managed to survive by grabbing onto my dragon’s bones. Meanwhile, my dragon became enraged that there were still flying monsters with wings in the air, so it began to target them. Its tail smacked everything in its way, and it held up victims in its claws before popping off their heads. Despite my dragon’s obvious ferocity, the monsters that couldn’t fly continued to try to climb up to kill us. Although the skeleton dragon had decimated many of the flying ones, six of them managed to land safely on the ground and were getting closer to us one step at a time.
Then, a message showed up, stating the Kciphos that crashed had died.
[Noble Knights: Exterminate Winged Soldiers 6/50]
More notification messages continued to appear.
[Noble Knights: Exterminate Winged Soldiers 50/50]
[Your party member ‘Kwon Seong-Il’ is not within the reward distribution distance.]
[You are the first one to complete the quest ‘Noble Knights.’]
[You have obtained a ‘diamond box’ for being the first one to complete the quest.]
[Please select the box.]
I delayed in making a box choice and instead looked at the beasts that were approaching me by climbing the dragon. Perhaps they were under the misunderstanding that the dragon had sliced off their fellows’ wings and not me. That was probably why they still pursued the idea of killing me. I didn’t get up from my seat on the dragon. Instead, I was just looking at them since I had a skill that could exterminate them. Hanuman’s Tail was an amazing ability that gave me an extra body part.
[You have used Hanuman’s Tail.]
I called the sensation of using a skill and the System ‘sixth sense,’ so having a flaming tail felt like I had a ‘seventh sense.’ When the enemy entered my attack range, fire wrapped around them immediately. They must have never thought that such a long, huge flame would suddenly gulp them down. The astonishment on their faces quickly turned into agony. The smell of their burning fur disappeared with the gusty wind.
There was a valid reason why the quest was titled ‘Noble Knights’ as these creatures didn’t scream even while burning. Their eyes which had been filled with desperation to behead me were now full of pain. In fact, they tried throwing themselves at me even while the flame tail was wrapped around them. However, they were too far from me. They were able to overcome the power of the tail for a short moment, but they soon struggled again.
I threw them to the ground, and they still didn’t scream even in the midst of falling into a fire pit. A few more succeeded in climbing up the dragon, but the results were the same. Following that, the remaining soldiers began to run away. I put more strength into my legs to support myself because the dragon began chasing the monsters that were flying away higher.
The blue sky looked like an ocean. The beasts who were showing their backs to us had become fugitives who had thrown themselves desperately into the deep sea. When I felt the rising excitement of the dragon, I stopped it from attacking further. Part of me also wanted to destroy them with a dark breath from my beast, but my dragon needed to save energy for the boss.
***
The skeleton dragon eventually chased and ripped seven more winged beasts to death. After it quenched its thirst a little, the enemy soldiers who had succeeded in escaping were already swaggering about on the ground. They had enough numbers to make one unit, and they acted aggressively as if they were angry they had been beaten by us one-sidedly. Each time they crashed on the ground, the majority of the Awakened bounced away, and the rest who managed to avoid them were decapitated by the soldiers who came in on vehicles.
I heard the scream of the last surviving Kciphos, and then I saw the commander-in-chief looking up at me, the owner of the skeleton dragon. As soon as I raised my Sense to the highest class, I could finally see his gaze clearly. Two furious eyes were staring at me, which was to be expected. After all, I had been killing a number of its blood relatives, so it likely knew about me for a long time.
The Kciphos Corp had known of me and Woo Yeon-Hee for quite some time. In fact, we were infamous for many other monster species. Those who shared memories already knew what our faces looked like, and those who shared smells kept the smell of our flesh in their minds. The Kciphos were the latter as they were sensitive to smells. There must have been a relative among the boss monsters that Woo Yeon-Hee and I had killed as the commander-in-chief was enraged to a great extent.
You are the intruders, not us.
While slapping down at the neck bone of the dragon, I opined, “That furry guy wants to be smacked.”
My low voice inflamed my dragon.
Dddddd-
The dragon's body wriggled as soon as I gave it the order. Its bones pounded against my butt in a rather massaging motion, and pitch-black energy filled the space between the bones of the skeleton dragon. The dragon had actually gotten this skill a while ago, but it usually didn't use it. Therefore, the energy seemed more dangerous as it filled the dragon-like contaminated blood.
The dragon lowered its head to the ground, and the black energy became concentrated in one direction. It was flowing across the bones under my hip, towards the head of its skull! The skeleton dragon’s mouth was finally opening.
Crack. Craaaack-