Explosions endlessly echoed from Tallinn, the Capital’s westernmost city. Pillars of fire surged toward the sky, and the ground shook as if an earthquake were occurring. Dragons ran rampant in their true forms.
“Kill them all!”
“What did these weak creatures believe in to be so arrogant?”
“Destroy everything! We shall make them suffer nightmares just from hearing the name of Nivalis!”
Even among dragons, there were superior, intermediate, and inferior species. The hierarchy was as strict as the elven bloodlines.
“We wyverns will kill the most humans!” shouted a dragon roughly fifty meters long with giant wings, soaring above Tallinn.
They were on the smaller side among the superior dragons, but possessed the most mana and skills among them.
“Ahahaha! Destroy, destroy, destroy, almighty drakes!” said a dragon running wild like a wild beast on the ground.
They were as large as a mansion, resembling a feline beast covered in muscles and scales that appeared to have no gaps. Drakes had nowhere near as much mana as wyverns, but their physical strength and nearly impenetrable scales made up for that shortcoming.
Just then, a dragon resembling a snake, twenty meters in diameter and a hundred meters in length, burst from underground. They coiled around a large building and constricted with immense pressure, breaking it as if it were a stick.
“Wyrms... do not fall behind either,” the dragon remarked.
They were known as wyrms on land and serpents in water.
The wyverns, drakes, and wyrms made up the three representative superior dragons, each commanding intermediate dragons. Wyverns commanded amphipteres, also known as the winged serpent. Drakes commanded lindwurms, smaller than drakes and bipedal due to their short front legs. Wyrms commanded knuckers, lizard-like dragons with wings on each side of their torso and a dragon’s head.
The dragon army was also made up of countless inferior dragons. The parvus were swift thanks to their small size of only two meters. The tractus had hard scales and a mace at the end of their tail. The cornizers had spear-like horns. The necks of the engruvies were as long as that of a giraffe.
The welatus were only a meter long, with patagia like those of flying squirrels. The unguis tore their enemies apart with their sharp and long claws. The aperio swallowed their enemies whole with a mouth as large as a cave. The poa were poison dragons with a jelly-like body. There were also the earthborn, soldiers risen from the teeth of a dragon.
Many more inferior dragons made up the dragon army, with seemingly nothing common about them, but they had one thing in common: the mana engine known as the Dragon Heart. The Dragon Heart was a characteristic that made dragons who they were. It allowed them to use their secondary force, Draconic Mana, and bestowed them the honor of having the greatest mana capacity among the races.
The powerful dragon army razed Tallinn, the Capital’s westernmost city, and continued its march eastward. Amsterdam, Dakar, and Hakodate were in Tallinn’s vicinity. Although the cities also contained regions from other areas of Earth, they were named after those cities because the majority of the copy belonged to the corresponding city.
In the vicinity of those three cities were Jericho, Sheffield, Umbria, Muchinga, Coimbra, Darmstadt, and Adapazari. The humans living in those regions ran for their lives, and the Union established a defense line large enough to secure West Earth with their lives on the line. The only problem was that they were against an elite dragon army of Nivalis.
“The wyverns will head south!”
“We wyrms will... march from the east.”
“Ahahaha! I’m going north! Come with me if you’d like!”
The wyverns marched to Amsterdam, the wyrms marched to Dakar, and the drakes marched to Hakodate. Nothing remained of Tallinn after their rampage, and the corpses of countless humans filled the streets.
***
Explosions sounded from a distance. The sound was faint because it was so far away, but considering the distance, one could imagine the scale of the destruction.
“How unfortunate... my fellow humans,” mumbled a crying blond man with green eyes, wearing a mozzetta over white vestments and a zucchetto on his head. He was Lazarus, fifth in the human ranking and the leader of Clan Vatican. “This would never have happened if they had depended on Orbis... Why did they refuse to listen to me?”
Lazarus was sorrowful beyond imagination, pitying the countless humans who would die from this attack, and furious at the same time.
“That fool, Lee Kang-San, is to blame for this whole tragedy! This future was fixed from the moment he made that damn confederation, Underground!”
Humanity had hit a deadlock because it was misled by a man who did whatever he wanted. Just then, a silhouette appeared before Lazarus and got on one knee. He wore black vestments, and covering his face was a piece of cloth embroidered in gold with the mark of Clan Vatican, a cross with a circle on it.
“The seal has been undone, Your Excellency,” the subordinate said.
“Good work, Grand Inquisitor. Let us enter right away,” Lazarus remarked, looking forward at an imposing steel gate.
“As you command.” The Grand Inquisitor turned to roughly a hundred humans in black vestments and said, “Open it.”
The men grabbed the gate and pulled it open. Lazarus took the lead as voices sounded from each side. He walked along a dark hallway with cages on each side, holding prisoners.
“Hey! Whitey!”
“Let us outta here!”
“Do you know what’s happening out there?!”
“Hehehe! I can smell the destruction! Lemme out! I wanna go wild!”
“Tsk, tsk. Only the incorrigible are imprisoned in the Bastille. Dispose of them,” Lazarus commanded.
“As you command,” the Grand Inquisitor answered as he bowed and gestured with his hand to the inquisitors.
The men in black vestments moved as if they were controlled like puppets. Screams echoed like a hymn behind Lazarus as he continued to walk along the hallway. They were in the Bastille, a prison in a classified location of North Earth. This prison was for the permanent imprisonment of Dark Humans who committed heinous crimes such as serial murder, and only a select few members of the Union knew where it was.
“I feel sorry for our fellow innocent humans who will die from this attack, but... it gave me the chance to carry out the orders of both Master Raphaela and Master Gabriel,” Lazarus said to himself as he entered the lowest floor of the Bastille.
A disgusting aura engulfed Lazarus as soon as he reached the floor, but his expression did not change whatsoever.
“O-ohhh! Pope! Have you come to save us?!”
“Lazarus! Our brother!”
The prisoners of the lowest floor outstretched their hands from between the cage bars, but Lazarus simply smiled coldly and said, “Who are you calling your brother, disgusting Chaos Humans?”
“What?!”
“Damn you, Lazarus! After all the help you’ve received from the organization!”
“You dare mention the organization with the same mouth you used to leak information about it, submitting to the fear of death and the pain of torture? This is the problem with the Reborn...” Lazarus clicked his tongue and commanded, “Grant them eternal silence.”
“As you command.”
The men in black vestments began to execute the Chaos Humans who had been captured by the Union and babbled all sorts of information to them.
“AHHHHH! LAZARUS—”
“SPARE M—KURGH!”
“THE ORGANIZATION WILL NOT STAND FOR THIS!”
Lazarus paid no mind to the screams as he continued to walk, stopping at a certain cage.
“Here it is. The eighty-second cage. Are you C.Y., the man who promised the information I want?”
“My name is... Carry... Yesterday,” said an old man, sitting cross-legged in a cage. He raised his head to stare at Lazarus with his dark eyes and said, “If you let me out of here... I will tell you... the Fourth Fiend’s whereabouts.”
“I accept,” Lazarus replied as he struck the cage with his cross staff decorated with gold, shattering it like glass.
Just then, an inarticulate voice sounded from the adjacent cage. “Carreh! Yeh avn’d fergoodn abud meh, rah? Yeh cudn’d av conacd im if ih werd fer mah muskrad!”
Lazarus turned to the adjacent cage and saw an Asian man with a severed right arm, no teeth, and atrophied legs due to paraplegia, crawling toward them with his left arm.
“Do you know him?” Lazarus asked Carry.
“He helped me... contact you... His name is Kim Seo-Gyeong,” Carry replied.
“Do you need him?”
“Not... anymore.”
“I see.”
“NUH! NUUUUUH! KURGH!”
A dagger had already pierced the forehead of the man, writhing from the betrayal, before he even realized it. With that, the former leader of Clan Earthly Branches and Seo-Yeon’s older brother, Kim Seo-Gyeong, who had become paraplegic due to Seong-Hwi, met a wretched end.
***
“Kill them!”
“Eat them up!”
“Ahaha! Their flesh is so soft!”
Around fifty parvus, a species of inferior dragons, massacred humans in Amsterdam, a city adjacent to Tallinn, specifically in a neighborhood called Zaanse Schans, known for its windmills.
“KYAAAAAH! HELP ME!”
“AHHHHH! RUN—KURGH!”
“DRAGONS! STOP THEM!”
“W-WE CAN’T! OUR SKILLS ARE INEFFECTIVE!”
Parvus were two meters tall and resembled ostriches. Their entire bodies were covered in hard scales, their tails were like whips, their front legs were like hooks, their mouths were as long as that of a crocodile, and they had shiny yellow reptilian eyes.
“Their meat’s pretty nice to chew!”
“I could get hooked on this!”
The parvus’ mouths were covered in blood. Their sharp teeth sank into the humans’ flesh and broke their bones all too easily.
“Urgh... We’re no match for them!”
“Run away!”
“Don’t! If they get past this defense line—”
Just then, a giant fire pillar surged toward the sky, heating the atmosphere.
“Ahaha! That’s damn hot!”
“Is that wyvern Master Delokera?”
“Kekek, is he even distinguishing between friend and foe?”
Seeing that the adjacent neighborhood had instantly become a sea of fire, the humans’ expressions were dyed with despair and fear. The humans making up the defense line started to run with their tails between their legs.
“Ahhhh!”
“I-I can’t do this!”
“I can’t even kill a Lapang-rank Chaos! How am I supposed to go against those monsters?!”
However, the parvus did not miss that chance, using their well-developed hind legs to accelerate instantaneously and quickly catch up to the humans.
“Don’t let them get away!”
“Master Biphatogenes ordered us to kill them all!”
“The goblins of Humilitas had a foul odor, but humans are so nice to eat!”
“Let’s dig in!”
“AHHHHH!” the rearmost human screamed as he was about to get devoured by the frontmost parvus.
However, an invisible attack beheaded the dragon, and voices sounded from nowhere.
“Kill these motherfuckers!”
“Hide! Keep the skill active!”
“Halloween! Bind them!”
Halloween’s D Weapon, Jack-o’-Lantern, shone with an orange light in midair.
[Activating Unique Skill: Trick or Treat.]
Little specters flew out of the jack-o’-lantern and latched onto the parvus, shouting, “Trick or treat! Trick or treat! Trick or treat!”
The parvus remained wary of the specters that appeared out of nowhere.
“What the hell are these things?”
“Use a detection skill! They’re using an invisibility skill!”
“I’ll cancel it!” one of them shouted, activating a skill.
[Activating Skill: Emerge Impact.]
A turquoise light flashed, revealing six individuals in black robes. A silver brooch with the letters CH was on their chests.
“The Concealing Cloak was canceled! I will reactivate it!” a boy wielding a kukri shouted.
“It’s okay, Hide! I got them!” the short, robed man shouted, holding a blazing jack-o’-lantern. “If you don’t give us candy, we’ll play a trick on you!”
The little specters that had flown out of the jack-o’-lantern simultaneously exploded.
[Applying Debuff: Confusion.]
[Applying Debuff: Hallucination.]
[Applying Debuff: Blackout.]
...
The parvus fell into panic from getting hit by Trick or Treat.
“Dammit!”
“Which way is forward?!”
“Don’t bite me!”
“Slice them up!” shouted Cutter, a man wielding a box cutter.
“I’ll bore holes through you all!” shouted High Heel, a woman in red high heels.
[Activating Unique Skill: Cutter Slice.]
Cutter slashed the confused Parvus with his box cutter, shouting, “Argh! They sure are hard to cut through!”
“Move, Cutter! Stabbing should be more effective!” High Heel shouted.
Cutter stopped after cutting down four parvus, and High Heel raced toward the remaining parvus. She elegantly raised her leg and kicked at the parvus about a dozen times while wearing her D Weapon, Blazing High Heels of Passion.
[Activating Unique Skill: Zapateado - Tacon.]
The zapateado was a Spanish Flamenco dance, and the tacon was a tap made with just the heel. The parvus screeched, holes made throughout their body.
High Heel, covered in dragon blood, mocked, “Hah! You’re finally making sounds befitting a lizard!”
However, there were still over twenty of the parvus left.
“Damn you, inferior creatures!”
“Don’t get cocky just because of some lucky blows!”
They drew out Draconic Mana from their Dragon Hearts to cancel the debuffs and surrounded Cutter and High Heel.
“Blow them away with a breath!” the parvus shouted, simultaneously opening their mouths as blue Draconic Mana gathered inside.
High Heel and Cutter could feel cold sweats trickling down their backs, sensing the immensely dense mana flow.
“Team Leader!”
“Tiger! Help me!”
A large, robed man leaped above the parvus. Behind him was a terrifying creature that resembled a tiger with crimson skin, a wide mouth, sharp teeth, and covered in long, smooth white fur.
“Duck!” the man shouted as he activated a skill.
[Activating Unique Skill: Mythical Beastification.]
[Jangsanbeom][1]
The man completed Mythical Beastification, now resembling a tiger beastfolk, spun rapidly in midair, then struck the air with his front legs. The space was distorted, and the heads of the parvus, who were about to release their breath attacks, simultaneously exploded.
The robed man did not stop there and manipulated the long, smooth fur that was revealed beneath his robe, becoming as long as whips. The white fur wrapped around the dragons’ mouths, shutting them tightly. The man landed on the ground, his eyes flashing gold.
“Grrrr! Roar, you motherfucking lizards!”
“Mmrp! Mmmmrp!”
The parvus were unable to release their breath attacks due to their closed mouths, and their own attack either blew their heads off or melted them.
“I’d expect nothing less from you, Team Leader!” Cutter shouted.
“The man with the most luscious hair of the Executionary Corps!” High Heel added.
“Shut up and keep moving, Cutter and High Heel,” the team leader said.
Cutter and High Heel, now free from danger, dashed between the bound parvuses to kill them.
As victory seemed to be guaranteed, a slender, robed man released the line of his kite reel and shouted, “Tiger! They saw us!”
A stingray kite made of mana was flying above the man’s head.
“What?”
“Goddammit!”
The Executionary Corps members cursed as they received Stingray’s report and looked up. The blue wyvern, Delokera, had turned their head toward the members from the sky.
“Hide! Activate Concealing Cloak! We’re getting out of here!” Tiger quickly ordered, believing it was more important to conserve their stamina and mana to help other humans than fight the wyvern.
“That’s... not necessary,” Chaya said.
“What are you talking about? Hurry—Huh?” Cutter said as he looked up.
An iridescent light flashed blindingly from the sky, higher than the wyvern.
Seeing the colorful light resembling stained glass, Chaya shouted, “Hyung-nim!”
1. The Jangsanbeom (장산범) is a mythical creature in modern Korean folklore, said to resemble a distorted tiger or dog with long limbs and long white fur. ☜
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