Shouts of celebration filled the vicinity. The attack squad members looked happily at those around them, knocking their weapons together and clasping one another’s hands. Among them, Diniel lowered her bow and let out a long sigh, and the Deputy Guild Master began to collect the empty vials scattered around.
Alma, who had dropped the final giant meteorite down on the Dragon, seemed unamused; she groaned, flicked her long hair, and turned away. House Babenberg re-engaged the barrier just in case, but they were a fair bit more relaxed now.
Explorers, soldiers, civilians — all of them had been frightened by the Devourer Dragon minutes ago, but now, they were utterly ecstatic. The logistical squad heaved a sigh, relieved that no one had been injured. The band proceeded to start playing a victory fanfare.
On the Guild’s side, Amy, Garm, and Camille were quite relieved as well. Especially Camille — she leaned against Tsutomu’s shoulder, apparently mentally drained from the Dragon’s intimidating presence.
“Camille, don’t let your guard down just yet.”
While everyone around him was filled with joy, Tsutomu was still uneasy. He warily kept an eye on the giant meteorite in the distance, while also calculating about how wide his <<Barrier>> must be for it to protect everyone in the Guild’s squads. Camille, seeing Tsutomu like that, moved her face in closer and said to him,
“Come on, relax. I don’t sense that Dragon’s… weird presence anymore. I’m good at telling this kind of thing, you know.”
“…I sure hope so.”
“What, don’t you trust me–“
Camille was about to poke Tsutomu’s cheek when she felt a jolt in her senses, as if her heart had skipped a beat. She immediately turned around to where the meteorite was.
There was no change in the meteorite. It laid in its crater, round and untouched.
A few moments later, however, a suspicious sound could be heard. The first one to realize that was a Conykin in an attack squad.
“Hey, is anyone hearing this?”
“Hmm? Hear what?” An Aelurkin man asked back.
“It’s like… a scraping sound…” The Conykin said and folded her rabbit ears down.
The Aelurkin tried listening carefully, and sure enough, she heard the sound in question — of something scraping stone. It grew louder and louder.
Now, the sound from inside the meteorite was similar to that of an eggshell being broken… eventually, white light emerged from the cracks, and then it exploded.
The Devourer Dragon’s roar returned, seeming as if it was echoing from the depths of the earth — as if it was being born again.
Then, the Dragon itself emerged from the scattered pieces of the meteorite… and its appearance, aside from size, was reminiscent of a newly-hatched chick.
The surface of its body was a fresh red, its skin seeming to have peeled off from the burn. Arrows stuck out from one of its eyes, and also various spots of its body, making it look almost like a hedgehog.
The front of its mouth had been blown apart, exposing its gums and chipped teeth, and its nostrils had been gouged out — all in all, it was a painful sight to behold. Even its legs did not fare much better, with its tendons torn off due to all the magic spells, especially the <<Meteor>> it had been hit with. It was clear that most of its bones had been broken, and three of its ribs were sticking out of its chest. The only part of it still fully intact was its arms, having been shielded by the rest of its body.
The Devourer Dragon was in no condition to move — in fact, it was barely limping by, despite it just blowing apart the meteorite. It did not seem like it could stand itself up at this point.
“D-damn, why you gotta spook me like that?”
The attack squads had been surprised by the meteorite’s sudden shattering, but now, they were relieved to see the Devourer Dragon was on the verge of death. All the others also breathed a sigh of relief. It was baffling that the monster had not been outright killed after eating hundreds of skills unleashed by hundreds of people, but now, it was apparent that it would die if left alone.
House Babenberg had been wary of the Devourer Dragon’s attacks since it seemed to be infused with some sort of magical energy, but in the end, they decided that the level of destructive power they had observed was a non-issue. Intending to finish it off as soon as possible, they told the attack squads to recover their mental energy with Blue Potions, and also to prepare the magic tools.
The Dragon was on the verge of death, true, but its heart was still beating steadily. Moreover, the Devourer Dragon had a special organ called the ‘magic sac,’ in which it stored the Magic Stones of the countless monsters it had eaten. Right now, the magic sac of this Dragon still holds an enormous amount of energy.
This energy, generated from the Magic Stones, served as the Devourer Dragon’s power source. It would not stop moving until its body was completely destroyed or the contents of its magic sac were exhausted.
While the attack squads were preparing, the staggering Devourer Dragon opened its mouth as if seeking food. Its throat was revealed to be barely hanging, and behind it, white light began leaking from its throat.
“What in the…”
It was a mass of pure energy, extracted from the tons over tons of Magic Stones of the monsters the Devourer Dragon had eaten, both in its original Dungeon and the ones from the Dungeons nearby. Drawing its power from that pool of energy, the Dragon was about ready to spit it all out.
The energy was immense; the nobility, being the ones who handled magic spells that consumed Magic Stones, knew exactly how devastating it was. The eldest daughter gasped, and the head of the house broke into a cold sweat. Even the head of the house had never seen such a high density of magic energy. He could imagine that without the barrier, if it was unleashed onto the Dungeon City, the whole area would disappear.
“Stack the remaining barrier sections together! Every one of them! I’ll get the full barrier up as soon as I can!”
“Y-yes!”
Under their father’s direction, the eldest son and daughter hurried to do their thing, with the intent to shift the defense entirely to the north. The head of the house then started putting up more barriers in between Dungeon City and the Dragon.
“All forces, retreat! Get as far away from the barrier as you can!”
The Explorers and the military, upon receiving their urgent-sounding command, began to get away from the barrier in a panic. This manner of barrier deployment had never happened before, and the nobility was clearly not calm. Everyone, even those who could not sense magical energy well, began to realize how bad the situation was.
Finally, the barrier sections around the city began folding toward the north, layers upon layers gathering at one point.
Everyone gulped as the band’s tune resounded with the skills to support the nobility. Most of the non-nobles had moved quite far back from their original positions, and were now watching the Devourer Dragon as it glowed with white light. Among the people, only the attack squads and the military gathered as far forward as possible, ready to attack at any time.
And then, something dreadful happened. The enormous mass of energy in the Devourer Dragon’s magic sac transferred to its mouth, compressed and condensed into a sphere, and then it was shot out.
Space distorted. The ground disintegrated, and the clouds in the sky dispersed.
The white blast tore through the barriers like paper. House Babenberg’s barrier magic had a certain restriction: the caster must have their senses linked with the barriers they created. The outermost layers had been made by the head of the house, and as they were destroyed, his body was injured from within. And once his barrier layers were all gone, it was down to the sections from around the city to stop the energy blast.
They had stacked together into tens of layers, but the blast continued to bite a hole through them. And for each layer it broke, a caster was harmed — training could dull their perception of pain, but it would never change the actual damage done to their bodies. At the end of the day, it would still hurt, and if it continued to built up, it could lead to some substantial injuries.
“Sorry, dad, I’m all out…”
The eldest daughter, the least experienced among the three in command when it came to barrier magic, coughed up blood and fainted. Her father took over the maintenance of the rest of her barriers. The eldest son was also dripping blood from the edge of his mouth.
The white blast never stopped. It busted through layer twenty, then nineteen, eighteen, seventeen — and each time, the eldest son felt as if his body was smashed from the inside out, eventually resulting in a bloody coughing fit.
“Enough, son. Back away.”
“…I am to be the household’s next leader! I must protect the people! Otherwise, I won’t be worthy of leading them!”
His internal organs were practically screaming on their own, having almost reached their limits; the man himself could fall unconscious at any moment now. Still, he held up his barriers, driven by the pride of House Babenberg in his heart. All the while, he was still losing one layer after another.
By now, the barriers were down to ten layers. The white blast was losing power as it broke its way through, too, but it was still insanely powerful. Nine, eight, seven, six — it busted its way through. Five, four, three — now only a mere two layers were left. The energy mass had weakened greatly, but it was still trying to break through.
Eventually, a small crack appeared; the blast screwed its way through, expanding the hole and shattering the whole thing. Only one barrier remained.
The white energy, now reduced to a mere shard of the blast it had started as, scattered sparks as it shaved through the last barrier. The head of the house and the eldest son held their hands forward, reinforcing their defense the best they could.
“JUST A LITTLE MORE!!” The eldest son shouted, his throat full of blood.
And at the same time, the fragment finally died out. Once he saw that for certain, the eldest son let himself fall asleep.
The last layer of the barrier could not hold itself together, either; it had a gaping hole in the middle where the energy blast had once been. And from that hole came intense shockwaves and gusts of wind. The impact rippled all over the place from the center point. Like a gigantic air cannon, the wind was so strong that it could easily blow a person away — and so it did, scattering the people close to the barrier like paper scraps.
The Explorers and soldiers on the front line were all on high levels; even those whose Jobs had low VIT specifications still had ratings of at least a C-. At that rating, one would be substantially tougher than a normal person. Even if they were to be blown away and hit a brick wall, they would only be slightly injured if they protected their vital points.
The same was not true for the civilians and low-level Explorers, especially Attackers and Healers. If a gust of wind blew at them hard enough, they could be seriously injured at best, or killed outright if unlucky. The civilians nearer to the hole in the barrier were blown so hard that, once they hit another surface, their bodies instantly splattered into paste.
The ones who died easily were not only the civilians whose VIT ratings were the lowest, but also the low and medium-level non-Tank Explorers. High-level Explorers were blown away as well, hitting walls and the ground — and as more and more of them crashed, more buildings were also destroyed as a result.
Those on the front lines were still lucky, relatively speaking. Once another blast of wind came, the debris from the damaged buildings on the front was blown back, striking the people on the rear lines like arrows. Explorers screamed upon being stabbed by sharp shards on their faces, being one of the vital points where the protection of VIT did not apply. A front line Explorer got their spear knocked out of their hands, and the spear ended up thrusting through the abdomen of a civilian woman — one who was carrying a child, no less — and pinning her to a wall.
The people’s screams were drowned out by the shockwaves and the wind. Visibility was poor in the dust storm, so there was no way to avoid the objects flying at high speed. The defending force’s rear lines were stained with the blood of countless casualties.
The impact eventually subsided, replaced by a deathly silent air all over the area.
High-level Explorers, mostly safe in the midst of it, crawled out from under the rubble. They pushed aside the debris above them, held together their aching bodies, and looked forward only to find despair.
“This can’t be…”
House Babenberg’s barrier had been breached, a gaping hole opening in the center of the last layer. The rest of those who were safe, be it the Explorers, soldiers, or Security officers, could only look on, utterly dumbfounded.
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