Chapter 191: Starzone Monsters (2)
Just how large was it?
300 or 500 kilometers?
No…
It might have been over 1km tall.
Compared to its monstrous size, its appearance was extremely simple.
It was a slime made of cloudy, dark-red mucus that was reminiscent of lava flowing down from an erupted volcano.
Arms? Legs? Facial features? There were none of those things.
It looked as if a single-cell organism had focused only on increasing its size to the extreme.
Appearance-wise, it didn’t look threatening at all, but the problem was its overwhelming size.
“What the fuck is that?”
He had seen many monsters to date, but it was his first time feeling intimidated by nothing other than a monster's size.
“Shit… a monster that big exists?”
Ha-eun stepped back reflexively.
It was excessively simple, but the sheer difference of ‘mass’ was significant when it came to fighting.
Imagine having a lightweight go up against a heavyweight in boxing.
No, there wasn’t even a need to think so far.
From that gigantic monster’s point of view, humans were nothing but ants.
“What are we supposed to do, throw oil on it and light it up?”
“There is nothing as good as fire when it comes to facing large foes, but…”
Ohjin narrowed his eyes.
He felt an intense heat despite being located incredibly far away from the monster.
If the monster’s influence was the reason why the water for several dozen kilometers was heated like a hot spring…
“There’s a high chance that it’s extremely resistant to fire.”
“…Th-Then how are we supposed to face it?”
“Give me a sec.”
Ohjin chewed his lips and touched the pendant on his neck.
Owooong!—
Vega and Riak appeared with a radiant blast of silver light.
[That’s…]
Vega narrowed her eyes while looking at the gigantic monster outside the window.
“S-Something that huge suddenly came out of the water!!” Ha-eun while grasping Vega’s body with both hands.
“Hmpf. Something that huge?” Riak chuckled as his eyes shone.
“Come to your senses and look properly, lizard woman. That thing isn’t a ‘huge monster’.”
“What?”
“Do you call a mass of ants a huge ant?”
“What do you…? Ah.” Ha-eun exclaimed and looked at the massive monster rising from the sea.
Red eyes appeared from the monster’s body that consisted of dark-red mucus.
It wasn’t just one pair of eyes…
Hundreds… thousands… tens of thousands…
An uncountable number of eyes densely covered the massive monster’s body like the stars that filled the night sky.
“I see, so that’s what it is.”
Ohjin held back his laughter and stared at the monster.
As Riak said, it wasn’t a ‘huge monster’.
‘It’s a mass of monsters.’
They were in the form of a bacterial colony and consisted of an astronomical number of monsters.
Roaaaaaaaaar!!!—
A morbid cry was heard from the window.
Just like simultaneous yells from the crowd in a stadium, an uncountable number of noises overlapped and transformed into a single, loud roar.
Rumbleeeeeee!!!—
Monsters poured down from the kilometer-tall mass of monsters like an avalanche.
Monsters crossed San Fruttuoso’s sea in an instant and charged to the shore. They were running like crazy to the village built alongside the beach.
“Ha-eun, hold my arm.”
“Huh? Wh-What are you planning to do?”
“We’ll be too late if we run there.”
Only wearing his swimming pants, he slid on his wire shooter and opened the window.
The hot sea winds raged and crashed along the bottom of the cliff.
“Wh-What are you doing?!”
“Hold tight.”
Ohjin pulled in Ha-eun’s waist as she clung to his arm, and they jumped off the window and headed down.
“Aaaaaahhhhh!!!”
Ha-eun’s shriek attacked his ears.
‘Lightning Step.’
He changed direction mid-air by creating a platform of lightning and reached out his hand to a gap in the cliff.
Bang!—
The wire stuck to the stone wall lengthened quickly and assisted their fall.
[People are gathered over there!]
Vega was on top of Ohjin’s head and raised her tiny hands to indicate the town square.
It appeared that they gathered after hearing the commotion because hundreds of people were in the square near the beach, panicking and screaming.
“Fuu.”
Ohjin took in a light breath and bent his body.
The stigma of Lyra engraved on the left side of his chest gave off a bright light while a vast amount of mana spread to every part of his body.
‘Nice.’
His internal injuries had fully healed.
He wasn’t able to experiment with the Black Heaven and stigma of Lyra that had been enhanced after the seventh awakening because of his injury, but it was finally his opportunity.
Crackle!—
Blue lightning that was even brighter than before spread out like stairs.
Ohjin roughly stepped on the lightning and headed down to the town square.
* * *
Translator - Maccas
Proofreader - ilafy
* * *
“Roaaaaar!!”
“Grrrrrrrrrrr!!”
Monsters rushed in like waves.
He wasn’t able to tell when they were united, but he could see that the monsters’ appearances resembled wolves like Riak.
—Wolves that had a hard shell covering their body.
Ohjin was very familiar with that type of monster.
‘Ant-horns.’
—A low-rank monster that had the appearance of a wolf and the exoskeleton of an ant.
It was one of the most common monsters and was evaluated to be the ‘weakest’ among the large variety of monsters.
‘Despite that, it’s the monster that has undoubtedly killed the most people.’
Before the appearance of gates, which animal would have killed the most humans throughout all of mankind?
Lions? Tigers? Sharks?
No.
The animal that killed several dozen times the accumulated count of those animals were mosquitoes.
The same went for Ant-horns.
They didn’t act as one whole group usually, but their insane reproduction rate and population made them the monster that caused the most human casualties.
‘On top of that, they don’t seem like normal Ant-horns.’
They contained heat that could be felt from a distance and dark-red exoskeletons that looked like cooled lava.
Though they had the appearance of Ant-horns, he wondered if they were an entirely different species.
“Kyaaaa!”
“Ahh! Kugh!”
“Wh-What kind of Ant-horns are this strong?!”
Unsurprisingly, there were a lot of armed bodyguards since the vacation spot was frequented by individuals with authority, but they were overwhelmed without even being able to put up a fight.
Horrendous screams and cries rang out on the beach.
“Ohjin!”
“Yeah.”
Ohjin took out a small folding knife from his swimming pants pocket.
Skrrr, clack!—
The knife turned into the shape of a black spear in an instant, and blue lightning gathered at the tip of the spear and blazed fiercely.
‘Thunder Fall.’
He fell from over a dozen meters in the air at a frightening speed.
A pillar of blue lightning crashed into the wave of Ant-horns like lightning raining down from the sky.
Bzzzzzzzzzzzzt!!—
Like throwing a stone into a calm lake, lightning spread out in a circular shape and blew away hundreds of Ant-horns in every direction.
However, that only lasted for a moment.
Several times the number that was blown away occupied that empty area in a heartbeat and continued their march.
“Just how many are there?”
Ha-eun looked at the tsunami of Ant-horns with her mouth agape.
“I’ll take care of this, so you should head over there to help people evacuate.”
“Wouldn’t it be better for me to fend them off?”
She stretched her body and turned to face the herd of monsters.
“But fire won’t—”
“—work against them?”
Ha-eun smirked and raised her hand, and a gigantic ball of fire floated on top of her palm.
“Irachaaaa!!”
“Krrrrrr?”
The fireball gave off an intense heat that was several times hotter than what the Ant-horns emitted.
The Ant-horns that appeared to be resistant to fire were helplessly reduced to ashes in an instant.
“How about now?”
“…”
Ohjin dumbfoundedly looked at Ha-eun.
Her way of facing monsters innately resistant to fire was to ignorantly hit them with even stronger fire that they couldn’t endure.
‘How typical of her.’
He chuckled and nodded his head.
If their resistance to fire wasn’t a problem, it would indeed be better for Ha-eun to take care of large numbers of enemies.
“Alright. Then fend them off as much as you can.”
“Believe in me.”
Ha-eun slapped Ohjin’s butt and turned to face the Ant-horns.
She took out a packet of cigarettes from a waterproof pack and put a cigarette between her fingers.
“Flames.”
Sizzle!—
A frightening wave of flames burned from the tip of the cigarette and twisted around her body.
“Fucking blaze.”
Fwoooosh!—
Massive flames swept away the Ant-horns that were rushing in like a tsunami.
“Vega and Riak, help Ha-eun block the Ant-horns!”
[I understand!]
“Hmpf! The nerve of them to rely on their numbers.”
Vega started shooting lightning after flying up into the air, and Riak changed into his werewolf form as he charged at the monsters.
‘I’ve bought time for now.’
Ohjin narrowed his eyes and observed the surroundings after using his wire shooters to scale a tall building.
He did earn some time thanks to Ha-eun, Vega, and Riak’s help, however…
‘We probably won’t last long.’
There were way too many of them.
Just like how you couldn’t block rain using your hands, fending off that many Ant-horns with such a small group was impossible.
“Isabella is…”
He looked around in search of Isabella, but he couldn’t figure out where she was since the entire place was a mess.
‘It can’t be helped.’
Stopping the Ant-horns from causing more damage was the first priority.
“…Though I don’t know how I’m supposed to stop them.”
He sighed deeply and looked at the endless wave of Ant-horns.
How many were there?
Thousands? Tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands?
There were so many that counting was meaningless.
‘There’s no way so many monsters grouped up naturally.’
In that case, there had to be something that could cause such a strange phenomenon.
‘A starzone alone isn’t enough to warrant it…’
At that moment, Vega’s words crossed his mind.
-There just might be… a dragon vein flowing here.
—Dragon Vein.
A location with an unnaturally large amount of mana flowing through it…
The power of a dragon vein could be the cause of such a strange phenomenon.
“In that case…”
There was a single method to solving everything.
“I just have to devour it all.”
Ohjin smirked and looked at the Ant-horns covering the sea.
Bzzt!—
He created lightning in the air and shot into the sky.
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