Chapter 73: Rotten Water (2)
Chapter 73: Rotten Water (2)
A brilliant golden light filled their sights.
The moment she pulled out the Spear of Corruption, the power of the dragon vein surged and covered the whole area.
“Gaaah!”
“My eyes! My eyes!”
The warriors of the Angry Bull tribe, who were already corrupted by the power of Belial, were tormented by the sacred power that had been unleashed from the dragon vein.
Jude turned to Cordelia, and she nodded.
They freed the power of the dragon vein by pulling out the Spear of Corruption, but they did not intend to stop there.
Cordelia looked back at where the Spear of Corruption had been thrust.
She chanted the spell as she faced the pulsating golden stream under the cracked ground that looked like it was ripped apart.
Then she completed it.
Thus, she made it explode!
“F*ck bang!”
The Spear of Calamity struck the dragon vein. It then exploded and completely made the dragon vein runaway, which had already gone out of control by half.
Baaaaaaaaang-!
There was a roar. The earth shook one after another, and what Cordelia had hoped for began to happen.
“Earthquake! It’s an earthquake!”
The warriors of the Angry Bull tribe screamed, and the ground that was really shaking began to crack altogether.
Jude and Cordelia tried to destroy the main camp itself by making the dragon vein run out of control.
“Yahoo!”
In the midst of the earthquake which cracked the ground and the runaway dragon vein soaring into the sky, Cordelia raised both of her arms up high and brightly laughed, and Jude sighed as he thought that this was his fault.
Because the moment he saw her, he imagined that she would look like a perfect gwang-nyeon-i if she put a flower in her hair, and that he thought she was pretty despite that.
T/N: Koreans have this superstition/presumption that if a woman puts a flower in her hair, it signifies that she is crazy, as in, mentally crazy, psychotic or a mentally disabled woman. They call these women ‘gwang-nyeon-i’, which means ‘crazy b*tch.’ How this originated is a mystery, but it still persists up to this day.
“Madam!”
“Dolswe!”
Despite the shaking of the earth, Jude could still use the Twenty-Four Gale Steps.
Jude used the gale to run at once towards Cordelia, and Cordelia leapt towards Jude.
“Merge!”
She wasn’t really serious.
As soon as he heard Cordelia’s shout, Jude turned his back, and Cordelia clung on Jude’s back and then slapped it.
T/N: ‘Merge’ used here can also be combine, unite, transform, fusion, etc. This word is commonly used in mecha/robot series, where multiple parts merge/combine into one giant robot. An example would be the series ‘Voltes V’, where the team shouts ‘let’s volt in!’ to merge into one big robot.
“Let’s run!”
Cordelia hugged Jude’s neck with one hand and shouted cheerfully, and Jude fixed Cordelia’s position before he started running again.
“Hold on tight!”
“I’m already holding on tightly!”
Baang!
Jude kicked the ground. Using the whirlwinds, he spurred on the cracked and shaking ground to escape from the Angry Bull tribe’s main camp.
There were various loud sounds heard everywhere, such as shattering, breaking, and collapsing, as well as the cries of the warriors of the Angry Bull tribe, but Cordelia, who was the main culprit of everything, merrily laughed.
“Yay, so exciting!”
They were then finally outside the impact zone of the earthquake.
From above a barren hill, they saw the main camp itself being destroyed and scattered in all directions.
“Mission clear.”
“Good job.”
At Jude’s praise, Cordelia cleared her throat and said as she stared at the Spear of Corruption in her right hand.
“Jude, Gentle Snow Breeze will regain her power now, right?”
“She’ll regain it. Or rather, I think her power’s restored now.”
With Cordelia on his back, Jude turned his gaze towards the direction of the basin of the Gentle Snow Breeze tribe.
And Cordelia saw it too.
A sacred blue light soared up high from that distant place.
***
Madgar saw it too.
And she realized.
The enemies had pulled out the Spear of Corruption that was blocking the power of the dragon vein.
They ignored the Essence of the Blue Moon and attacked the main camp instead.
What they needed was not the Essence of the Blue Moon, but the means to restore the power of Gentle Snow Breeze.
She confounded the means with the end. And as a result, Gentle Snow Breeze regained her power.
“…It can’t be.”
She thought on what the series of events mean.
Failure.
It was a disastrous and big failure.
Madgar herself failed.
She screwed up her mission.
“No.”
Madgar’s breathing became rough.
Her eyes turned bloodshot.
Madgar hugged her own shoulders as she muttered in a small voice.
“I can’t fail.”
She couldn’t fail.
Master Haraken would abandon me too.
He’ll abandon me like my master…no, that son of a b*tch that calls himself master.
I can’t fail.
I mustn’t fail.
She was as Jude and Cordelia had analyzed.
Madgar was success-oriented and had an arrogant personality.
And the root of that personality was the pain of her past from being abandoned by her master.
She couldn’t fail, so she had to succeed in everything.
So that she wouldn’t become someone that would be abandoned.
So that she would be in a position where she wouldn’t be abandoned.
She armed herself with arrogance.
She sought perfection by doing everything in person.
“Failure.”
Madgar had a strong obsession with success.
So this much failure was unacceptable. She would do anything to prevent failure.
“Master Madgar?”
Her aide looked at Madgar with a worried look, and Madgar looked up and saw her aide.
Her words poured out.
“Sacrifice yourself for the great cause.”
“Master…Madgar?”
That was it.
Madgar’s hand touched her aide’s forehead. Before he could respond, Madgar chanted the spell to activate the technique she had prepared in advance.
“Ah? Aaah?!”
A dark red magic circle was drawn on the whole body of the aide with its center on the forehead.
And it wasn’t just the aide.
All the twenty or so warriors that Madgar had brought also screamed painfully.
“Master Madgar!”
“Wh-why!”
Madgar did not answer. She recited the spell and clenched her fists, and at that moment, her aide and other subordinates became pools of blood. They became sacrifices to the magic circle, to be offered to Belial’s altar.
Human offering.
It was the fastest and surest way to borrow the power of the demon.
Madgar closed her eyes. Dark red energy gathered in the place where her aide and subordinates stood, and the energy rushed forward towards Madgar.
“I can’t fail.”
I must succeed.
Although the dragon vein was liberated, it was only for now.
The time when Gentle Snow Breeze’s power was blocked was long. Belial’s power had harmed her little by little.
So Madgar still had an opportunity now.
She could still do it.
Madgar opened her eyes.
Her eyes shone red, as it changed into compound eyes like that of an insect. Large moth wings sprouted from her back.
Madgar flew.
She headed towards the basin of the Gentle Snow Breeze tribe.
***
Gentle Snow Breeze flew up into the sky. As she widely stretched out her snow-white wings that was like an angel’s wings, she released her power, and the demonic power that threatened the basin was cleansed in one fell swoop.
“Go forth, my children! My power shall be with you!”
Gentle Snow Breeze’s power permeated into her tribal warriors.
A blue wind wrapped around them, and each of them took their weapons and charged.
The Clear Snow and Fine Snow brothers helped the warriors by summoning gusts of wind.
“Sweep them away! Gusts of wind!”
“Run wild! Strong wind!”
A raging wind rose and pushed its way through the warriors of the Angry Bull tribe, and warriors of the Gentle Snow Breeze tribe followed it.
The warriors of the Angry Bull tribe outnumbered them several times, but the direct protection of a wild god was powerful.
Moreover, Gentle Snow Breeze did not just look around.
“Wind Shield! Wind Blades!”
High up in the sky, Gentle Snow Breeze continuously moved her hands. She protected her warriors with a wind barrier and attacked the Angry Bull tribe by directly swinging wind blades.
Like that, she tore up the enemy troops.
After they had driven out the Angry Bull tribe, they would join forces with the other tribes in the south.
A smile spread over Gentle Snow Breeze’s face.
She did not like to fight, but the moment the enemies tried to destroy her and her children, she brought down her punishment.
She put off being merciful for a while, and her accumulated anger burst out.
The two sides fought for a long time.
As if proving that they were the strongest warrior tribe in the wild land, the warriors of the Angry Bull tribe endured the onslaught of the Gentle Snow Breeze tribe, and a powerful energy suddenly drew near.
It was such a powerful and extreme energy that even she, a wild god, couldn’t ignore it.
“Master Madgar!”
“It’s Master Madgar!”
The warriors of the Angry Bull tribe shouted in joy.
Although her eyes became compound eyes and moth wings sprung out of her back, Madgar still had the form of a human.
Madgar saw her warriors. She looked back and spotted Gentle Snow Breeze before she wryly smiled.
“As expected, you’re weak.”
Gentle Snow Breeze was not in perfect condition yet.
So Madgar still had a chance.
Madgar raised her hand. Gentle Snow Breeze had an ominous feeling and hurriedly called forth the wind, but Madgar’s spell was faster.
“Sacrifice yourselves for the great cause.”
Magic circles were drawn, starting from the foreheads of the Angry Bull tribe’s warriors.
Her spell reached close to a hundred warriors out of the hundreds of warriors present.
“Master Madgar?”
It was another aide of hers.
The warriors of the Angry Bull tribe looked up at Madgar with stupefied faces, and Madgar did not hesitate.
She clenched her fist and made an offering again.
“Aaaaah!”
“Hiiii?!”
“Master Madgar?!”
“It’s the demon’s magic!”
Screams and shouts, and voices filled with fear were heard everywhere, regardless of enemies or allies.
Madgar ignored everything.
She simply accepted the temporary power that she gained from offering a hundred sacrifices.
“Haha! Hahahaha!”
It was too much a power for her mid-ranking demonic human body to accept.
Therefore, Madgar’s body enlarged.
Her upper body was covered with an animal’s tough skin, and her legs transformed into numerous spider legs. Her arms turned into sharp blades like the arms of a praying mantis.
Moth wings widely spread out on her back, and numerous horns sprouted instead of hair.
She had become a monster and was no longer a human.
She had become a demon.
But Madgar felt ecstatic.
She was thrilled by the demonic power that filled her body.
“Gentle Snow Breeze.”
Madgar crazily smiled. She had become a giant of nearly a dozen meters tall, and she charged towards Gentle Snow Breeze.
“Wind Barrier!”
Gentle Snow Breeze urgently cried and created dozens of wind barriers.
Madgar didn’t care. She wildly swung her arms and tore the wind barriers. She moved step by step as she headed towards Gentle Snow Breeze.
The clear blue sky turned black.
Madgar’s eyes turned dark red.
Every time a wind barrier was torn, Gentle Snow Breeze let out painful groans.
The demonic energy overwhelmed everyone.
The Angry Bull tribe as well as the Gentle Snow Breeze tribe could do nothing but just look.
They just watched the clash between the wild god and the demon.
But there were two people.
They were two people who did not just watch.
***
“Wow, is this for real? Isn’t that a Demon Prince?”
“It’s crude like the original. As expected of Madgar. It’s the same as last time.”
Demon Prince.
They were strong lords of hell.
It wasn’t a demon prince that appeared right now. Madgar forcibly raised her power through human sacrifices, and it was just a temporary monster that would eventually disappear over time.
But it was still powerful.
“You have to hold out for 15 minutes in the original story, right?”
“Because she’ll lose that state in 15 minutes.”
“Gentle Snow Breeze won’t last 15 minutes, right?”
“You think she can’t hold out for long?”
“Yes, she basically can’t fight.”
Even now, she was just standing there and only creating barriers.
If it continued like this, Gentle Snow Breeze would be crushed by Madgar in less than 3 minutes, let alone last for 15 minutes.
“She has no particular weakness.”
Jude’s eyes narrowed as he looked at Madgar.
Even in the original story, Madgar couldn’t be defeated while in that state.
The strategy was to just hold out and buy some time.
But this place was real.
Moreover, there was a wild god called Gentle Snow Breeze.
So perhaps there was something that they could do. Perhaps there was a side that they could stab.
When Jude began to worry about it, Cordelia didn’t think much. She took out a hair tie and neatly gathered and tied her long voluminous hair together.
“Put your brain to work. That’s why you aren’t number one.”
“Hey, I’m number one.”
Jude hadn’t mentioned it recently about he himself being first place, and Cordelia being permanently second place.
But Cordelia scornfully laughed.
Even if she was permanently 2nd place, there was one area where she was ranked first.
“I’m first place in hunting.”
Moreover, it wasn’t just that.
“Gentle Snow Breeze is there. It is easier to deal with if it’s such a big monster type rather than a human type. And…”
“And?”
“Because you’re here too.”
Cordelia had a nice smile, and Jude unconsciously looked at Cordelia with a stunned face.
“Shall we go then?”
Cordelia laughed again. In order to fight doping, she doped herself by taking out the medicine bottle she had kept in her waist and gulped down the liquid inside at once.
The Tomb Guardian.
The blood of a beast-type angel.
In the game, it was a useless item.
However, this was reality, and after various experiments, Jude was able to find out where to use it.
The angelic blood flowed down Cordelia’s throat.
The angel’s power spread all over her body, and temporarily awakened the power that was long asleep in her blood.
Cordelia’s hair, which had turned black because of the Witch Transformation, remained the same.
However, her body gained new powers. Her teeth grew into fangs like a beast, and the pupils in both of her blue eyes changed like those of a cat.
If one had to name her status, it was the Beast Mode.
“You’re like a real beast.”
Because Cordelia was wearing the rabbit ears and tail too.
As Jude softly muttered, he opened the second door of Ninth Heaven’s Nine Doors.
He raised his golden sacred battle aura to boost the power of his whole body.
“What the…wasn’t the second door passive?”
“No, I thought that I had to do something too.”
Cordelia blinked at Jude’s reply, and soon laughed. She then looked at their front again.
Before she knew it, more than half of the wind barriers had been destroyed, and wild god, who was not good at fighting, was about to cry.
“Let’s go.”
They both said together.
The two rotten waters looked back at each other for the last time before they rushed towards the demon.