A middle-aged man with glossy black hair, thick eyebrows, and resolute eyes looked down from above Middle Earth, where the sun was slowly setting over the Empire State Building. He was Lee Kang-San, his expression hardened. The Dual Dragon Swords at his waist rattled as if expressing his fury.
“You fucking lizards!” he shouted.
Everything had been going smoothly. He presented the case for Underground’s legitimacy at Justitia and received a positive reception from many. It had been the culmination of the unquantifiable effort he had put in, including the deal with Sefirot, developing an amicable relationship with Necrophilia, and various maneuvers, such as the deal with Faber that allowed humans to purchase dwarf-made items. However, a bunch of delinquents had come to destroy it all through violence.
“Yeah, I forgot that was the kind of world this was. A world where the strongest are the best!” Kang-San shouted.
“Hmm, it is not like you to say such a thing. Have you had a change of heart?” a languid voice asked from behind him.
Behind Kang-San was a handsome young man, his skin so pale that his blood vessels were almost visible, with one black and one green eye. One could tell only from his two small, sharp horns on his head that he was not human.
“The human capital was attacked. I believe it’s a fitting statement, Opukia,” Kang-San replied.
“Did you not call me for something similar before?”
“The goblins’ Clan Trophy doesn’t even hold a candle to the dragons’ Nivalis.” Kang-San remained silent momentarily and said, “Can I ask you for another favor, Opukia?”
“What is it?”
Kang-San turned to Opukia and requested, “Please go to Forestis and bring Elementum here.”
He had managed to arrive quickly from Justitia to the Capital thanks to the male demon. With Opukia’s warp ability that ignored force fields and distance, it would be a piece of cake for him to bring Elementum to the Capital in a flash.
However, Opukia smiled and shook his head. “I refuse. My contract is with you, Kang-San, not Elementum.”
“Opukia! Weren’t we friends?”
“Hm? Wasn’t a friend a term for useful individuals?”
Kang-San remained silent, realizing from looking at Opukia’s eyes that seemed to reflect everything, that there was no convincing him.
He turned westward and said, “I see... Thanks anyway.”
The defense line is holding. I’ll wipe them out in a flash! Kang-San thought as he was about to head west using the Contendo.
However, someone screamed from the ground, “KANG-SAN! NOT WEST! EAST! WE HAVE TO HEAD EAST!”
An iridescent wave was surging upward.
“Is that... Seong-Hwi?” Kang-San wondered.
Opukia was gone before Kang-San had realized it.
***
“Kurgh... Who... are you?” asked a middle-aged Arab man in a white ghutra and a black thobe covering his body, clenching his bleeding chest.
He stared at an individual of epicene yet unnatural beauty with silver hair and eyes, holding a silver sword that had pierced his chest.
“I bring the word of the Almighty God of Heaven, heretic. This is your last chance. Submit to the God of Heaven,” the handsome man said.
The Arab man groaned as he looked around. The heads of nearly a hundred guards had exploded. Rankers were among them, but they couldn’t even block a single attack of the monster before him, and neither could he.
It appears today is my last day, the man thought.
He was Abdul Ahmad, a force field specialist, a Ranker of Clan Salat, eighty-fifth in the human ranking. He was also the one who had activated Muhammad’s Embrace, playing a key role in the force field currently surrounding the Capital.
“What is your answer?” the silver-haired man asked.
“Hehe, inshallah—”
The silver sword decapitated Abdul.
“Fool,” the man said.
Once the core of the force field, Abdul, died, the man could feel the flow of mana that had been blocking warps vanishing. It had not been that impressive of a force field, but space manipulation skills were so sensitive and full of variables that even the tiniest of interference could place restrictions on them.
“With this, the elites should be able to pass,” the silver-haired man mumbled as he shook off the blood on his sword.
Just then, someone appeared out of thin air with the flash of dark light.
“Phew! Getting through that was so hard! Hey, Gabgab! What happened to your wings?” asked a blonde little girl in a pink dress and Mary Jane patent leather shoes.
“Dollores,” said Gabriel, the silver-haired man, as he sprouted the nine pairs of wings he had been hiding, and a golden halo appeared above his head. It was undoubtedly the form of an archangel. “Since you requested a meeting, I take it you received an answer?”
“Oh, Gabgab! Why are you in such a rush? The promised time is in a few days, you know?”
“The God of Heaven has honored every promise made with your organization. Because of that, Orbis is on the Sēmen’s watch list.”
“Hehe! I know, I know. We’re thankful to the angels for gathering causality by attacking Pollon Nest, Superficies, and Ferrum!” Dollores clapped as she twirled in midair. “On top of that, I heard you had those Reborns who’ve been blabbering about my Child sliced up real good! Fantastic!”
“My loyal devotee, Lazarus, fulfilled his role well.” Gabriel nodded as he brought his hand toward Dollores. “Now, give me the Entomancy Stone. The God of Heaven is waiting.”
“But the Entomancy Stone is just a rock with no substance now! It’s just a lump of energy! I’d feel bad if I had to give something like this to you, Gabgab...” Dollores beat around the bush as she fiddled with her dress.
Gabriel clenched his outstretched hand into a fist and shouted, “Enough games, Dollores. Hand it over!”
His beautiful face wrinkled heavily, becoming the epitome of rage.
“Kyaaah! You’re so scary, Gabgab! But seriously, it’s out of Dolly’s hands! That person said to hand it over once the war in the Capital is over!”
“What?”
“That person said that one story will end, and another will begin here! I was asked to confirm it!”
Gabriel remained silent. He did not know who the person Dollores was referring to was. The only person in Orbis who knew was the God of Heaven. However, he was certain that the individual was the leader of the Bachtsha-rank Chaos.
Gabriel covered his face with his white wings, then put them away, returning to his beautiful epicene face.
“Very well. I will wait until the Capital falls. After all, I won’t have to wait long. The beginning of a new story... was it? It must be referring to Orbis.”
***
Tallinn was the Capital’s westernmost city, and Ismailia was the easternmost. It was a port city in northeastern Egypt, on the west bank of the Suez Canal, which had also been copied to the Mirror World. The people who had gathered in the city to avoid the dragon army were in utter dismay.
“Move! Get the hell out of the way!”
“What the hell are you dawdling around for?! The dragons are coming!”
“The Capital is done for! We have to leave!”
“We’ll all die if we stay in the evacuation shelters!”
“Over here! This way!”
“Don’t let go of Daddy’s hand, okay? Hold on tight!”
Instead of evacuating to the shelters as the Union guided, the people wanted to escape the Capital. People pushed one another to get ahead, resulting in a significant number of people suffocating or being stomped to death. Those who lost their footing even fell into the Suez Canal.
“Hey! Let me on!”
“Fuck off! We’re already full!”
“I’ll give you a thousand—no, three thousand Coins!”
“Help! Help me!”
The two-hundred-meter-wide canal was already full of boats and rafts. One would only see the heads of struggling humans instead of water if one looked from the skies above Ismalia, which eleven individuals were doing as they chatted among themselves.
“Enough fry have gathered,” Biphatogenes remarked.
“Hehe, we would kill tens—no, hundreds of thousands just by randomly firing skills anywhere.”
“As timid as always, Shuten. You should be aiming to kill at least a million!”
“And you’re as tough as always, Uncle Vharagar.”
“I don’t know about Karma, but we’d definitely accomplish a feat if we kill that many.”
Just then, a wave of mana that they, who were highly sensitive to mana, could feel pulsed by them.
“Father!”
“It appears Gabriel fulfilled his role. There is a gap in the force field.”
“This should be enough for superior dragons to pass!”
“I’ll call them!”
“When can we run wild, Father?”
“Must we wait until the angels arrive?”
Biphatogenes smiled and shook his head. “We can’t share this feast with those white pigeons. All of you, return to your true forms.”
“Yahoo!”
“Finally!”
“Thank you for the meal!”
The ten dragons, aside from Biphatogenes, returned to their dragon forms. Ten dragons larger than the average building appeared from above Ismailia. Their beautiful and hard scales looked like sapphires, and their pairs of wings were as imposing and large as drawbridges.
“What is that shadow?”
“Gasp! What is that?!”
“C-could... that be...”
“AHHHHH! DRAGONS!!!”
“D-dragons...”
The humans on the ground simultaneously screamed. The dragons unleashed their Draconic Mana, which they had been suppressing. The sky was distorted from the mana pressure exuding from their Dragon Hearts.
“Ahhh! I feel so good!”
“Music to my ears!”
“I may be an ice dragon, but I like the color red better!”
Biphatogenes smiled faintly as he watched his kin return to their dragon forms and commanded, “Wipe them out.”
The ten dragons released immense amounts of Draconic Mana from their Dragon Hearts and unleashed the most destructive signature skill of dragons that required astronomical amounts of mana.
[Activating Race Skill: Dragon Breath.]
[Activating Race Skill: Dragon Breath.]
[Activating Race Skill: Dragon Breath.]
...
Ten blue breaths fell from the sky like giant pillars. They were of the ice element, and the blade-like ice crystals inside their breath were known to tear apart anything that they touched. The humans foresaw their deaths once they saw the ten blue pillars combine into one.
“Ah...”
“Damn... it all...”
“It’s over...”
They did not run or push each other since their actions would not change the outcome. Just then, twelve blood-red panokseons rose toward the sky to clash with the breath, destroying the warships. A thunderous boom echoed throughout Ishmailia and the adjacent cities.
“Urgh...Huh?”
“A-are we alive?”
“How?”
The humans looked up blankly as fine, ground ice crystals fell like snow and soon realized what had saved them.
Gruuuuu!
Hisssss!
It was Lee Kang-Il, the Black Tortoise, the all-too-famous D Weapon of the Tortoise Emperor, Lee Kang-San. Biphatogenes’s kin stared at the tortoise in disbelief.
“What’s that?”
“A turtle?”
“How could a turtle have blocked our breaths? It’s impossible!”
Biphatogenes looked up and saw a dark green star with white borders, shining brightly.
“Lee Kang-San... How did he return from Justitia so quickly? And why is he in the east, not the west?” he mumbled.
Just then, the Black Tortoise shrank, revealing those behind it. Thirty-six large golden pentacles were connected, and on them were dozens of human Rankers and High Rankers.
“It really was a feint operation!”
“RB was right!”
“We were almost had!”
At the front of the group were Kang-San, in battle position with his Dual Dragon Swords, and Seong-Hwi with his fourteen iridescent wings.
“Your quick judgment saved millions of people,” Kang-San remarked.
“You’re the one who saved them,” Seong-Hwi replied as he looked up at the blue dragons in the sky and remarked, “Let’s save the flattery for later and get to work.”
“Sounds good. Let’s talk some more once this war is over. I have some questions about the caliber I can feel from you.” Kang-San then looked up at Biphatogenes and shouted, “Coward! You dare pull this kind of shit while I’m away?!”
“Watch yourself, Gula’s plaything,” Biphatogenes said.
“I’ll cut off your head and send it to Regnator as a gift, you fucking ice lizard!”
The dragons expressed rage at Kang-San.
“The gall of that human!”
“How dare he insult Father and the Dragon King?”
“He must die!”
Biphatogenes raised his hand and said, “I am glad you are here. I will kill you and prove to the Readers that my story is much closer to the main plot than yours!” He then pointed at the ground with the same hand and commanded, “Kill as many humans as possible! Make a mountain with their corpses and a river with their blood!”
“Yes, Father!”
“As you command!”
“Let’s go!”
The ten dragons scattered and flew down toward the ground.
“Ahahahaha! Nothing has changed despite your arrogance! This entire city is your weakness!” Biphatogenes shouted mockingly.
Just then, bright lights flashed from everywhere on the ground like streetlights simultaneously illuminating a dark street.
“Those are...” Biphatogenes mumbled, ceasing his laughter. “Warp gates?”
“Don’t look down on humanity, you fucking reptile,” Kang-San said with a smile, seeing his capable junior’s preparations coming through. “It’s nothing like back when I had to shoulder everything by myself.”
Humanity was strong; they were no longer the bottom of the barrel in the Mirror World. Kang-San no longer had to shoulder everything, since everyone remained faithful to their roles in their own positions.
“I only need to do one thing: to have your head!” Kang-San shouted as he activated his skill.
[Activating Unique Skill: Divine Beastification.]
[Black Tortoise.]
Kang-San combined with Kang-Il. Dark green tortoise armor wrapped his entire body, and a white snake floated behind him like a celestial raiment.
“Bastard!” Biphatogenes shouted as he sensed the number of presences he could feel rapidly decrease, and quickly returned to his true form. A giant dragon, far bigger than the average dragon, appeared. He shouted, “I WILL NOT LET A SINGLE PREY ESCAPE!”
The battle between two World Rankers commenced.
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