Chapter 212 — 용아병단(龍牙兵團)
Chapter 212
Dragonfang Legion
Charge that thing head-on and you die!
Every instinct screamed it louder than ever.
Even Hermann hadn’t put that brute down easily. He moved sluggishly, but anyone could see he was spilling two or three times more demonic energy than Reda. There was nothing to be gained by meeting him straight on.
So Elric pulled his ice spear back and yielded ground.
Belot skimmed past his nose by a hair.
“You…!”
“You… you’re… badly hurt.”
Instead of going for Elric again, Belot scooped the wobble-eyed Reda up in one arm and hammered his feet into the ground.
Kraaaang!
Like when he tried the body-slam charge, Belot hurled his bulk forward again, aiming to break out of the battlefield.
Slow and ponderous, he simply brute-forced speed out of raw power.
Elric thrust ice spears one after another to pin him down.
Ridges of frost exploded across Belot’s back in a flurry.
Riiip!
Rrrrip!
Deep furrows opened along that broad back, white bone showing through.
Ice-poison seeped deep, festering the wounds, yet Belot didn’t so much as flinch as he broke away.
Boom!
Thud! Boom-boom!
Like a frog leaping, he bounded in arcs again and again, clearing the field at speed.
He was so fast and ferocious that even when Elric flung out the Chains of Ruthlessness, they kept glancing off or slipping free.
In the end, Elric could only watch Belot dwindle to a dot and vanish.
“Elric! I’ll go after him, you—!”
A beat late, Hermann arrived, ready to give chase.
He too looked thrown by how Belot had cut and run mid-fight.
“Wait. Hold on.”
“Why?”
Elric caught Hermann by the arm.
Hermann stopped short.
An urgent moment—so why not hurry? The question flickered.
Then his eyes flew wide as Elric suddenly crumpled to the ground.
“Hurk!”
Elric went ashen and vomited a handful of blood onto the dirt.
“Y-you…? Are you alright?”
Only then did Hermann realize Elric had been hiding his injuries.
In truth, it was strange he’d managed to keep fighting at all.
He’d clashed with Reda again and again, read a dragon’s residual will in the midst of it, then swallowed a Dragon Heart and even tried to evolve into a dragon-fiend.
On top of that, he’d kept feeding mana so Hyul’s thought-form could rampage as it pleased.
His mind and body were bound to run dry.
He’d held on only because the battle was changing so fast he couldn’t afford to unclench.
Once even that hit its limit, he gave up the chase.
Crk, crk—
CRACK!
Even now, his body was still changing.
With awful pain, eating away at what strength he had left.
The small mercy was that the blood he spat wasn’t bright red but black and clotted.
Dead blood.
When he finished coughing it up and lifted his head, some color had returned.
Exhaustion still etched deep.
“First… secure the field. You don’t have to worry about them.”
Seeing the faint curve at Elric’s mouth, Hermann couldn’t help but smile back.
Clearly, Elric had another scheme for letting the two demon lords go.
‘Of course he does.’
Elric wasn’t the type to let marked prey escape.
So for now, best to do as he said.
“Got it. I’ll finish up. Get some rest.”
Hermann nodded, rose, and bellowed:
“The demon lords have fled! Continue pointless resistance and you’ll be cut down—surrender and your safety is guaranteed!”
His voice, backed by mana, rolled across the battlefield.
“Th-the demon lords actually left…?”
“No way! Stop the tricks, human!”
“B-but you saw it too! Lord Belot bolted off carrying Lord Reda…!”
“Damn it! What the hell is going on!”
The demon camp fell into chaos at once.
No wonder—both demon lords who’d been giving orders had bolted without so much as a retreat command.
The chain of command collapsed.
Some tried to resist anyway; even if they surrendered, who would believe the humans would spare them?
Even if the Imperial Army did, the Borfur tribe whose sanctuary they’d trampled would never let them live.
But without proper commanders, they couldn’t stand against the Imperial troops, who were already moving in coordinated encirclements.
With Hermann and Sailor quickly joining, the demon lines crumbled in a blink.
But before anyone noticed, there was nowhere—
—to be found the thought-form of Hyul, who should have been capering over demon corpses.
* * *
“Your body’s a complete rag, isn’t it.”
Mephisto folded his arms and smirked.
Elric waved weakly as if to say he had no energy to answer, but the ghost of a smile sharpened at his lips. All Authorities were suppressed, Nachtlam’s possession lifted. He spoke.
[They’ll lead the way nicely, won’t they?]
“If they don’t? With injuries that bad, there are only so many places they can go.”
Elric hadn’t let Reda slip away unguarded.
When Belot barged in, he’d judged in that heartbeat that finishing Reda here was impossible.
So he changed the plan midstream.
Let them run—and make sure he knew exactly where they’d go.
The last blast of frost he’d carved into Belot’s back hid a mana receiver—a tracer to track their trail.
His mind’s eye told him—
they were fleeing northwest at speed.
“Leaving bait’s a fine idea, but you plan to leave that twin-blade eyesore alone? Next time you meet, he’ll be a royal pain.”
When beings who’ve lived as rulers all their lives are badly broken, they tend to react in two ways.
Either they nosedive to the bottom—or take it as a spur and soar higher.
In Mephisto’s eyes, Reda was the latter.
He’d been a frog thriving under the Grigori umbrella, but once he learned the sky was bigger, he’d jump higher.
Heal up and return, and he’d be a nasty obstacle.
But—
[Are you crazy?]
Elric answered with a snort.
[Bait is bait. You think I’d let something I’ve already caught go?]
“Knew it. You left something.”
Mephisto shook his head, unsurprised.
Clearly, Grigori’s worst misfortune was trying to resurrect during the era when Elric was in his prime.
* * *
Boom!
Boom!
No one was chasing anymore—
—yet Belot still pummeled the ground and tore across it. Each stomp sent him vaulting ridgeline after ridgeline; wherever the earth sank, pillars of sand geysered up.
“Put me down! I said put me down! Mervinger! Mervinger is still there!”
“You’re… in no shape… We return… first.”
Belot ignored Reda’s orders entirely.
Even at his best he couldn’t beat the brute by force; with a mangled body, struggling was useless.
“Gods-dammit!”
Reda felt fit to burst.
This sorry sight was never what he wanted.
He’d pictured returning to the main altar with a dragon’s heart in hand, striding in triumph, then inheriting Azazel’s crown. That was the future he’d dreamed of.
As he was now, he could do nothing.
“I’ll kill you… I’ll kill you, Mervinger…!”
So Reda chewed over Elric’s face again and again, the one who’d given him this disgrace.
Next time they met, he’d repay this humiliation, no matter what. He swore it over and over.
The thought cooled him by degrees.
A spark of anger stayed, but not enough to scorch his reason.
Which let other worries billow up.
“…If I return like this, the High Priest will be furious.”
More than furious—punishment was likely.
Losing the Dragon Heart—the keystone to Azazel’s resurrection—was a sin among sins.
And they’d lost the troops assigned to them besides…
Even so—
—something else nettled Reda more.
‘…Lapis Lazuli. Thinking of those bitches harping on this for ages already pisses me off.’
Those twins never liked another bishop taking credit. They only wanted amusements for themselves.
Grigori’s wishes or ideals meant nothing to them. Less avatars of great Azazel, more Lilith of obscene orgies.
Being looked down on by the likes of them—that was the true humiliation.
So Reda kept rethinking.
‘What if I don’t return to the main altar yet, and wait for them to let their guard down…?’
He glanced sidelong at Belot.
Once something’s imprinted in this brute’s head, it rarely changes. Hard to persuade—but win him over and he’s a huge help.
So he opened his mouth to voice his idea—
Sorry.
That’s not happening.
A voice rang in his ear.
Reda stiffened.
“Why… what’s wrong…?”
“Didn’t you hear that just now?”
“Hear… what…?”
At Belot’s puzzled reply, Reda’s face went hard.
Was he so drained he was hearing things? He could have sworn he’d heard that bizarre shadow-beast’s voice…
Unable to settle, he looked around.
He sharpened his senses—nothing.
‘Just… nonsense, then.’
Maybe he’d taken so much from Mervinger he’d grown neurotic, hearing voices tied to the man.
Common sense said Hyul, bound to Elric, couldn’t possibly show up way out here—
I called you a maggot, didn’t I?
Consider it returned.
But Reda’s thought didn’t last.
Kwoaaang!
Hyul’s thought-form popped out of the shadow under Reda.
And—
Crunch!
It tore a massive bite out of the Sigil of Renown etched on Reda’s right wing-base.
The Mage Who Devoured Talent