Book 11 Chapter 25

Outer Story, Episode 5.

The Forgotten War, Extermination of the Spider Monarch (5)

"I don't understand. Everything went according to plan, didn't it? Wasn't the battle supposed to start soon after Rein arrived in the secret chamber?"

Rem wiped away cold sweat as he spoke.

Just then, Balensidis, wielding Kashasur, which had absorbed the power of the Key Spider, tore open a dimension.

"We must hurry back."

"What? Rein? Miria?"

"We must inform everyone of what has happened. Otherwise, humanity will perish before this season ends."

Then Kasena, barely emerging from a state of panic, stammered with a look of dismay.

"Are you saying we should leave Rein behind?"

"His presence has completely vanished. Rein is dead."

"He's not dead! We have to go help him now!"

"He's not dead, he's not dead, he's not dead."

"Snap out of it! We must assume the worst-case scenario to deal with rapidly changing situations. If Rein is alive, that would be a bonus. But now is not the time!"

Then Pipi flew onto Balensidis's shoulder and bit his cheek frantically.

"Not dead, not dead, not dead."

"Stop wishing and face reality. Hurry and enter the dimensional rift! The King is coming!"

"Balensidis is right. This is reality. Rein couldn't finish anything. The King has awakened. And the gods are gone."

"I can't believe it. Both Miria and Rein are dead? That crazy old man and woman?"

"Rem, I don't think Rein is dead either. But something went wrong, and it's clear we can't do anything right now."

"What should we do?"

"First, we must tell the Emperor, then the Water Dragon Yeriserika, and also the Five Pillars of the Papal State. The sealed old nobles will also be released one by one. There's no time."

Rem rubbed his face as if tearing it with his gloved hands, then sighed and threw himself into the dimensional rift.

Bart followed him, but Kasena was still looking at the distant Cheonsugung Palace.

Just as Balensidis was about to forcibly grab her by the nape of her neck.

A wave (波動).

An evil wave began from Cheonsugung Palace and spread across the entire Mountain Range of Madness.

The dimensional rift twisted as if screaming, and mad groans swept across the entire Arctic region.

And snow (雪)…

A blizzard, so thick one couldn't see even a step ahead, swirled white and began to sweep down the mountain range.

The mountain range was paying homage to the King's return.

"We have to get out. Come quickly!"

But the dimensional rift was already entangled and broken by a more powerful entity.

Damn it…

Only after dragging Kasena into the rift did Balensidis realize this fact, and for a moment, he had to frantically spin his head.

Coordinate calculation.

Coordinate calculation.

Coordinate calculation.

Even a slight delay, even a slight mistake, would lead them to a bizarre coordinate.

They could be teleported between walls and be cut in half, or to a distant place deep underground.

His mind went blank, cold sweat streamed down his entire body, an eternal moment of extreme tension.

"Kuk…!"

"Ah…!"

Balensidis and Kasena tumbled roughly several times in the snow, barely stopping their rotation.

Among the three, only Pipi, who had flown up at the moment of transfer, was unharmed.

Kasena could hear the booming of cannons and screams ringing in his head.

'Cannon fire? Frisvia wouldn't have deciphered the <The Arrived>'s cannon technology yet.'

Startled, he got up, and a familiar landscape leaped into his eyes.

This was the Battleship Base.

Originally a stranded battleship of <The Arrived>, but a place converted and used as a forward base.

"Pipi knows, knows here, knows."

The cannon barrels of the Battleship Base moved this way and that, slaughtering the endlessly swarming spiders.

"Hmph, I wondered which scoundrel managed to get in here, avoiding the crossfire, and it's a little pig carrying a man. And on top of that, an animal."

It was then that Frisvia suddenly appeared in his line of sight.

Steam hissed from every joint of her steam-powered armor, which she had developed while deciphering <The Arrived>'s technology.

Her optical technology helmet, which emitted a faint single beam of light from its eyeholes, modulated her voice into a robotic sound.

Pipi pecked at the helmet with her beak in protest.

"Not animal. Not animal. Pipi is Pipi."

"Master, what happened?"

"Hmph, can't you tell? A full-scale attack has begun. Hmph, looking at your unsightly face, it seems that little brat failed."

At those words, Kasena felt a piercing pain in his chest.

"No! He didn't fail! Failure is…"

But standing before Frisvia, who stared intently at him, there was no way to deny it. Only logic and facts worked with her.

"To bring the legendary demi-human Hwacha unit all the way to this Arctic land, indeed worthy of the Princess of Kinterland."

Balensidis said.

In addition to the members wearing the same armor as Frisvia, special weapons called Hwachas (fire carts), developed by chief tinkerer Nils Blantz, were indiscriminately firing arrows.

When arrows, three or four times larger and thicker than normal arrows, struck their bodies, the spiders let out tearing screams.

The artillery unit operating the Hwachas numbered roughly over 5,000.

"What I asked wasn't about the situation. Why didn't you evade? You shouldn't be here!"

For some reason, Frisvia seemed reluctant to answer.

"Hmph, we couldn't avoid it."

"Why?"

"Isla's condition is not stable. If we take her out now, she will die soon."

Isla was a half-dragon created by combining the genetic material of the Red Dragon Alakish, Frisvia, and Kasena.

Although she was still sleeping in a test tube, hugging her knees, Frisvia clearly felt a kind of maternal love for the child.

Her attitude towards others had softened noticeably since the successful cultivation of Isla.

"Such…"

"So I had high hopes for you and that insolent brat, but, hmph, you failed spectacularly."

"By the way, if a large-scale offensive has begun, there's no way you can stop it with that broken battleship and 5,000 troops."

Frisvia certainly must have harbored such realistic doubts.

"Hmph, there are three possibilities. Either they don't have enough troops to deploy to this humble place, or they've postponed it, or…"

Frisvia pointed towards a dimly visible ancient tomb amidst the falling spiders, northeast of the Battleship Base.

"Or there's something so powerful that they don't need to send many numbers."

It was a tomb.

The Resting Place of Sacrifice.

The tearful seed where a dragon, who had protected the world for a thousand years, sacrificed its life to seal an ancient noble.

The flower that grew from that seed was made of bone and spread wide, and now those bones were rattling and moving.

Rattle, rattle, rattle…

From the bridge of the Battleship Base, an emergency message, [EMERGENCY: APPEARANCE OF THREATENING ABYSSAL ENTITY], was frantically displayed.

But even without seeing that message, Kasena could understand what was about to happen before his eyes.

He had understood.

No.

No, it can't be.

The reason he came to this Arctic land as an adult was partly to train under Frisvia.

But the most important reason was the desire to care for the land that Alakish had protected with his life, however inadequately.

Without even giving him time to recall the miserable yet equally brilliant memories he shared with Alakish.

Boom!

The next moment, the bone tomb exploded, scattering bone fragments in all directions.

The explosion was so powerful that the surrounding spiders were blown away, and the magic bullets and arrows that had been attacking had their trajectories broken in mid-air.

"Ah…"

Madness, the dragon's bones fragmented into pieces, fluttering like ashes.

Fury, a sudden surge of coldness as snow began to blanket the vision.

Insanity, amid the chaos where demi-human engineers screamed for no reason and spiders prostrated themselves low as if in submission.

With dark blue hair and elegant flowing robes, the ancient Earl was raising his noble body.

Kasena, mesmerized by the horror, uttered the name of the object of hatred deeply etched in his soul since childhood.

"Count Baek, Shar'khas…"

* * *

"Where in the world is this…?"

When he came to, he was standing in a dark space where a cold, cosmic blizzard raged.

In a space where cobweb-like ice spread in countless strands to the invisible horizon.

"Be careful, Rein. It's so narrow, barely enough to place one foot."

And beneath those cobwebs.

"Ugh…"

"Uh…"

"Uwaaaah…"

In the nauseatingly bubbling swamp, the submerged dead groaned, extending their hands and feet.

Fear trembled down his spine.

If he slipped, would he become one with them?

And spiders, moving with unnerving skill on the cobwebs, persistently targeted them from the darkness.

"Quick, open a dimension! It's too disadvantageous to fight! The foothold is too narrow!"

"I'm trying! I keep trying!"

Every time he tried to create ground with magic, something interfered.

He instinctively knew that this was a space governed by some evil providence he had never known before.

Similarly, when he tried to open a dimension, it wouldn't open.

And the air… it's hard to breathe unless he creates the atmosphere itself with magic.

Amidst his increasingly labored breathing, he muttered blankly.

"Could this be, perhaps, we've been pulled into a completely different dimension?"

As if to deny that ominous conjecture, Miria scattered dazzling light and brandished her Shirpen.

Spatio-Temporal Slash (時空殲).

A secret art that transcends time and space to tear dimensions, but the space, which should have trembled as usual, showed no abnormality.

"What? No way, this can't be."

Miria swung her sword repeatedly as if she couldn't believe it, but it was a meaningless struggle.

She had only exposed a weakness.

A monstrous entity, never seen before, beyond the realm of light and darkness.

A pure white ancient spider, clumped together in the cold storm, then scattering back into coldness upon death.

"Miria!"

He later learned that the name of this land was Cheonnyeonseol-ok (千年雪獄), the Thousand-Year Snow Prison.

No, not a land, but the name of a dimension. A fiefdom of the outer universe bestowed upon the Spider Monarch Ashuron by the Lord of the Abyss.

The Abyss was a space that extremely suppressed the power of creation, which was why neither he nor Miria could exert great power.

His dimensional knowledge had not yet reached the universe, so there was no way to escape from there on his own.

And their existence, trapped and wandering there, was soon detected by something from the outer universe.

* * *

Humanity held an overwhelming advantage in the <Snow Barrier Fortress> siege battle.

As soon as the abyssal entities touched the barrier, their bodies were burned in holy fire.

And the golden age of magic, revived and led by the Dragon Sage Rein Ludwig, had mages born in that era stationed at each strategic point.

"Alright, shall I warm up after a long time?"

Krista Eijin.

Each time she waved her hand as if conducting an orchestra, hundreds of sand soldiers slaughtered spiders beneath the barrier.

"Come forth, Flame Serpent."

Lillian Karain's fire snake, from the Karain clan of Rivendell and commanding the Special Operations Department, burned the spiders.

"Wind Book Fine Dust (風書纖塵)."

Hubert, the top disciple of the Lohwynum School and associate professor of <Delaiten>.

"Water Disaster Axe (水禍生鉞)."

And Nora Redon, the young elder of Melev, butchered and swept away spiders with wind and water.

Among the golden generation who spent their school days with the Dragon Sage, Logan was the only one not actively participating!

Excluding Caden, who uses sonic magic and is not a combat class!

"Kuk, damn it! Lillian is working so hard, and I have to wait here doing muscle training!"

Logan, diligently exercising with magic-created dumbbells, then caught a glance from Lillian.

"Don't just talk, why don't you throw a rock? With that ignorant strength of yours."

"Ah!"

Besides the members of the golden generation, important figures of the magic world, such as the Magus Houses and the Seven Great Schools, were all gathered in one place.

The Ludwig family, represented by Scarlge Ludwig, Madelia Page, former chief professor Marhena, and Doran Slade, etc.

The swordsmanship schools, led by the Ilsungchilgeom, had to idly watch the overwhelmingly favorable battle situation.

Then, a blizzard, thicker than fog, suddenly enveloped their vision, and everything changed.

Starting with Nora Redon, who was in charge of the Central Section.

For a moment, her vision went dark, and then bubbles painfully swelled inside her body, and her entire physical form exploded.

"Huh…?"

Was it only Nora?

The bodies of 10,000 troops, who were in charge of the Central Section located between the Backbone, the center of the <Snow Barrier Fortress>, and the East Changdongmun Gate, exploded simultaneously.

In that explosion, parasitic cobwebs writhed and danced.

Another 3,000 exploded and died.

Madness, frenzy, insanity.

Mortal bodies dared not confront the King.

Their flesh and soul could not endure the King's wrath.

Followed by 4,500 more.

Before that sound ended, another 3,000.

Wherever the Spider Monarch Ashuron briefly appeared, only screams of nightmare filled the air.

Another 6,000 followed.

Then another 8,700.

Those who dared to inhale the mist spewed by the King paid the price of his wrath.

In the fleeting moment it took to move to the Backbone, where the Emperor and commander were located.

Approximately 35,000 Imperial and feudal troops were torn into blood clots without even a single scream before the King's transcendent majesty.

Another 2,200 continued.

That great body of the King.

That disgusting, nauseating form that human perception could not and should not comprehend.

Those who dared to see that noble body and survived went mad and became lunatics.

Instinctively sensing this overwhelming threat, Logan grabbed Lillian and leaped down below the barrier.

The next moment, everyone who remained at that spot died.

Another 1,400.

As that great body swept by, the <Snow Barrier Fortress> dared to resist but ultimately crumbled.

Spiders poured in through the crumbling gaps.

Among those spiders, fully grown ones carried palanquins, from which a woman, seven feet tall with a face colder than hoarfrost, knelt before the King.

"Your Majesty Zayun, it is truly boundless grace to meet the true King, Your Majesty, again."

The old King acknowledged the greeting with just a glance, and the young male attendant Alkuta, who assisted the King, showed respect to his superior with an elegant bow.

"General Hushing, lead your forces as such and reclaim the northern lands south of the barrier. This is the will of Your Majesty."

The old King's slaughter stopped only upon reaching the Backbone.

Not all died, but just as it should be, instinctively, they knelt, pressed their foreheads to the ground, and bowed.

"Fear not. I am the Monarch Ashuron, the true and rightful ruler of this land."

Laida Eijin too.

Seigan and Kiran Blad, siblings.

Sword Saint Brinden Belchester too.

"With utmost mercy, I personally recite the language of the 'gui chu' to admonish you: let he who wears the crown come forth now."

Emperor Laida Eijin, as if possessed, stumbled forward and knelt before the old King.

"You dared to usurp the title of king and fill this land with a misguided generation, so you rightfully deserve to die. However, by the grace of the true King, I will give you a choice."

"Forgive… Forgive me…"

"Select 2,000 men and women. I will raise them as new humans to serve Ashuron. But the rest shall all be submerged in the Abyss for the sin of serving false gods."

In that nightmarish fear, where every fiber of their being instinctively submitted, Krista Eijin was the only one who staggered to her feet.

"You… You… This ridiculous… Bull… Nonsense! Shut up!"

Ashuron cast a sidelong glance, as if amused by her behavior, but his loyal subordinate Alkuta would not overlook such blasphemy.

A cobweb extended from Alkuta's hand and wrapped around Krista's body.

The pressure of the cobweb intensified for a moment, on the verge of causing her a painful death by ripping out her organs and eyes from her body.

"Oufari (water).

Asrai (warmly).

Bertas (envelop)."

At that moment, precisely at that moment.

The blizzard, dense as fog, that had encroached upon the <Snow Barrier Fortress> was swept away by a warm current of water.

A sacred current that washed away the Abyss that gnawed at flesh, and moreover, the soul. Everyone regained their sanity.

A frown appeared on the beautiful brow of the young male attendant Alkuta.

"This…!"

With a magnificent flapping of wings, thirty-three white dragons appeared in the sky.

And far up in the heavens, a luminous body, as if representing the sun hidden by darkness, scattered light across the world.

The rainbow-colored light of life emanating from its entire being, everything that had been submerged in darkness returned to light.

"Ashura…?!"

The sole female among the Three Divine Dragons.

A part of the miracle nurtured by the black sun Karenden as if her own child. And now, the only miracle remaining in this land abandoned by the gods.

Her name, Water Dragon Yeriserika.