That was only the beginning of the true disaster. Black dragon’s breath had the attribute of destroying and absorbing nearby mana and was detrimental to a magic-engineered civilisation.
Despite having lost her rationality, Myu was still crafty.
There was a reason for the direction of its breath – the two biggest mana power plants of Australia were destroyed in a straight line. Now, the mana circulation of Australia will be momentarily stopped.
Nonfunctioning power plants meant no electricity. It would limit communication and access to media as well as stop the production lines of factories. The electricity used to neutralise the pollution would disappear, stop the water supply and sewage systems, and make it difficult to have access to drinkable water.
All of the above was what Myu was aiming for.
On the days of the Apocalypse, in the span of a month that the dragons had spent destroying Earth, Yu Jitae had managed to kill 10 dragons. Each dragon had countless protective blessings and were thus difficult to kill. More time was needed to kill such enormous monsters.
However, he could not afford to do so right now. He had to kill it as soon as possible even if it came at a big cost.
Thanks to the black dragon being pushed back after shooting its breath, Yu Jitae was able to shorten the gap between them. He enlarged the range of his Shapeless Sword to the limit.
He had to sever its wings.
[Shapeless Sword (SS) – 3rd Form]
[Forked Lightning Form]
Like the twigs of a tree; like how lightning extended its reach by forking into little strands. Yu Jitae’s will to shred those wings to pieces was answered by his killing intent forking and stretching to all sides.
Like a spider web, it limited the dragon’s movements. The killing intent immediately shattered the blessings protecting the dragon’s body and seeped into its large wings.
Blood surged out like a fountain as the thin pair of wings ripped into little pieces.
[——!!]
Despite not being in the right state of mind, its scream still managed to reach Yu Jitae’s mind. After finally confronting him head-on, Myu noticed his power level and stuttered.
[How could a human have such…]
Meanwhile, balls of mana carrying the attributes of [suppression] and [pulverisation] surrounded Yu Jitae. It was possible to dodge but behind him was the city and he thus had to block it.
Hundreds of balls of mana swept towards him like a sandstorm. Kwagwagwagwang! They exploded simultaneously and caused his body to wobble a little.
After realising that it could not fight him head-on, the dragon began to avoid a frontal fight. Its instinct urged the dragon to avoid Yu Jitae while bombarding the regions nearby.
It was a troublesome situation.
The dragon did not fall despite its ripped wings. The unprecedented supply of mana still managed to allow the large body of the dragon to float and move in the air.
Thus, Yu Jitae continued flying towards its back, repeatedly tearing its wings and crushing its back scales with the [Forked Lightning Form].
In the meantime, dozens of spells endlessly fell towards him. A few of them were balls of flame, while some of them were blades of ice. Lightning occasionally struck him from the sky and contracted his muscles.
Each and every one of those spells was enough to immediately kill a ranker but Yu Jitae took all of it in with his body.
His blessings managed to offset half of the spells but could not do so for the remaining half. Dodging all those spells would cost more time so Yu Jitae persevered, in order to save as much of humanity as he could.
Yu Jitae, however, could not block the occasional large-scale spells that Myu was shooting at the world. Countless magic spells appeared in the air and fell down. A few of them travelled longer due to the strong condensation and either resulted in a rain of fist-sized rocks, or blades of wind that swept across the land.
And another dragon breath caused an immense explosion in the Asian region.
Crack!
During all that, Yu Jitae crushed a portion of the dragon’s scales and its spine. One of the bones of the large dragon that was 2.5 metres thick shattered from his strike.
The dragon fluttered its wings from pain. Soon, it was no longer able to sustain its large body in the air and gradually began to fall.
However, dragons were the rulers of mana.
It did not sit back doing nothing.
[Eradication (S)]
Black flames that scorched everything, whether it be a blessing, mana, an authority or an existence, soared up.
By using up the mana doping its wings, the flames soared towards Yu Jitae like the mouth of a beast. Yu Jitae did not dodge it. He received it from the front by crossing his arms in front of his body. The flame burned a portion of his clothes and seared his skin.
“…”
He endured the pain.
That was when countless magic circles appeared around the falling body of the black dragon.
[Teleportation: Bulk Exchange (SS)] – a grand spell that moves an entire location instead of an individual.
He hurriedly manipulated his killing intent to interfere with the magic circles.
But it didn’t work. The spell was already completed beforehand with [Memorise (S)]. It was ridiculous and completely outside common sense to prepare an SS-grade spell beforehand with an S-grade spell.
[Dimensional Step (S)]
Yu Jitae folded the nearby areas and immediately jumped through dimensions to enter the purple area that was about to be substituted with a different location.
He, who was not permitted by the spell, was treated as a foreign substance and mana turned into tens of thousands of needles to pierce through his body. An intense shock shook his body and made his head feel like exploding. His innards became a mess and blood flowed out of his eyes and ears but he endured all the pain.
[You truly are obstinate.]
“…”
[What’s wrong? Are you happy now that I’m doing this? I’m destroying the world like how you described our race so are you happy now?]
Soon, the black dragon and Yu Jitae both re-appeared in the air above East Asia – around 100 kilometres in the sky.
They were so far up that they could see the round shape of the Earth and the blue surrounding atmosphere with their naked eyes. The shape of each continent and ocean that one could see from a map was unveiled underneath them.
Dashing in, Yu Jitae used the [Chainsaw Form] to crush its scales and slash its neck. Half of the 4-metre long Shapeless Sword stabbed through its body and tore through its flesh.
He heard its mental scream of pain but the dragon did not stop.
[A mere human dares to show contempt to my race—!!]
Yu Jitae swung the sword again, this time aiming for the heart. The scales around the heart shattered as the bones crushed.
Right when the killing intent was about to reach its heart, a large explosion bursted out from its heart and pushed Yu Jitae away.
Immediately after that, the dragon used [Teleport: Bulk Exchange (SS)] yet again. But this time, the target was different. It tried to tear away the dimension where Yu Jitae was in so he distanced himself with all his might.
[Ahh, now I get it.]
[Here I was wondering how you were so strong…]
[Are you perhaps, that Oscar Brzenk?]
[Has Providence sent you to kill me?]
The black dragon appeared to be misunderstanding something, but Yu Jitae didn’t reply.
[This is why I wanted to live quietly in a nest.]
[I wanted to live like a human.]
[It was time for all the hard work to pay off and yet,]
[Why must Providence be so merciless on us, black dragons?]
As its will was conveyed to him all at once, Yu Jitae kicked off like a lightning strike to kill it. But that was when a resolute voice echoed through his mind.
[My Nemesis.]
[You resentful proxy of Providence.]
[Do you think I will be simply annihilated without any retaliation?]
The dragon began to drop towards the earth at a rapid speed, with a heart full of mana intended for a dragon breath.
It caught him off guard.
The dragon was trying to explode itself.
[Who could possibly dare kill me—!]
It was trying to sacrifice its entire dragon heart to destroy everything within sight!
Yu Jitae hurriedly began to follow suit. The mana that it forced out all the way from the Tower of Mages intertwined with its dragon heart to explosively increase its output.
No matter how much he increased his speed, he realised that it would be futile. It would somehow be possible to reach it, but he would not be able to stop the black dragon from touching the ground.
The condition of regression was the death of 95% of humanity.
This was like a ‘health bar’ that Yu Jitae had. If the entire East-Asian region were to be destroyed and the attributes of the dragon heart were to expand and absorb mana for years, the world would enter a great depression, and would inevitably cause humans to kill and extort other humans.
It would lead to the death of at least 20% of humanity.
The Long Nights had yet to even arrive and at that rate, humanity would never be able to work in harmony. They were suffering this much already from a single adult dragon and the approaching enemy at the level of 3 adult dragons would definitely be a catastrophe.
That was why Yu Jitae had to stop this from happening at all cost.
Fortunately, they were still high in the air and the dragon was not too far.
He had one last method that he could resort to.
Yu Jitae gazed down at the world. He could see at least 10 large fissures bigger than 40 metres in size that had yet to close.
He could deviate the falling trajectory of the black dragon and force it into the fissure as long as he had something powerful enough to make that happen…
And he did.
[Conceptualisation (SS)]
He resorted to the authority he stole by killing the head of the black race, ‘Lugiathan’. [Conceptualisation] – an ability that replaced aspects that were unable to be comprehended by an existence into an understandable concept.
It modified each of his killing intent into a concept that appeared in front of his eyes. They turned into 1,000 bright orbs and formed a dense layer in front of him looking like a night sky filled with stars.
Each of these were the ‘will to kill’ that Yu Jitae had personally collected and he soon consumed 150 of them without any hesitation.
Some time, somewhere, someone. As those emotions and desires to kill that people had faced him with while shedding tears of blood flashed like stars, Yu Jitae gathered them all into his hand.
Revealed by [Conceptualisation], it formed the shape of a long spear.
Kugugugung—–
Amidst the fall, the atmosphere resonated with Yu Jitae’s mana.
[Shapeless Sword (SS) – 5th Form]
[Punishment]
He threw the spear.
The mightiest output of killing intent that Yu Jitae could create turned into a falling spear.
It flickered dozens of times a second and flashed. It would sometimes stop as if it was being repressed by the earth, and would sometimes spring off again. Whenever it did travel, it travelled through several kilometres in the blink of an eye.
At last, it pierced through the dragon’s back and altered the direction of its fall.
[———–!!!]
Ignoring the sharp scream ringing his mind, he concentrated on the falling body of the black dragon. Its large body fell and was soon absorbed into a fissure located in the southern oceans of China.
Yu Jitae threw his body into the fissure and followed it.
There was a rocky mountain inside and the fissure was one that had already been cleared. After going inside, he found the black dragon stuck in a pile of rocks.
The large flying beast reaching 40 metres in height, that was as big as three basketball courts combined, was lying on the ground.
Even though it was an adult dragon, and even though it was a mutant that had been doped with the mana of the greatest mages of the Tower, the strike that Yu Jitae forced out by permanently sacrificing a portion of his strength was nonetheless deadly.
It was all over, and he simply had to end its life now.
Kuruk, kuruk…
Myu gasped for breath.
Yu Jitae also had to endure a fair bit of fatigue as he climbed onto its stomach. He then paced across the shattered scales and headed for the heart.
“…”
But,
That was when something strange entered his sight.
“…”
For a second, Yu Jitae doubted his eyes.
Something completely unbelievable was beside the shattered scales of the black dragon’s heart.
“How could…”
His astonishment made his body freeze on the spot.
The Regressor had never been this surprised in the 7th iteration.
*
There was a big hole on the black dragon that went all the way from its back to the chest. Plus, the area near the dragon heart had suffered from Yu Jitae’s attack and the heart was therefore barely holding on to its previous shape.
Next to the shattered dragon heart was the Origin Fragment. It was natural because every dragon had it and the black race was not an exception to that rule.
However, Myu’s [Origin Fragment] had a slightly different shape.
The usual [Origin Fragment] resembled the crystal shape of a gem, and revolving around the gem was an ash-coloured ball. Like a moon revolving around Earth, it rotated and obstructed outside interference to protect the data that were inside the fragment.
Its name was [Will of the Ancient One] and was something Yu Jitae could not break through no matter what he did. It was because it was an authority personally crafted by the mythical creature, Ancient One.
A few experiments would have done it.
Through repetitive research, he understood the principle behind how the fragment functioned and how it recorded data. However, the [Will of the Ancient One] always obstructed him from conducting an actual experiment.
He had enough data and reference. If only he could conduct an experiment on how to activate it, he would have been able to use the Origin Fragment to immediately activate the [Emergency Summon] that would usually be activated on its own after 20 years.
However, he could not carry out any experiments.
It drove him crazy.
Using thousands of methods, he tried to remove the Will of the Ancient One but it stubbornly remained and even Vintage Clock stated that it was impossible to break it apart.
Experiments would be enough to end it all, and yet he simply could not conduct any experiment.
Yu Jitae had to go through unimaginable mental torment when he powerlessly had to end his long-time research.
And yet…
“…”
Lowering his body, Yu Jitae gazed at the heart of the black dragon. The Origin Fragment of the black dragon Myu had a cracked [Will of the Ancient One].
It felt as if a bucket of cold ice had been casted on his head.
His heart raced like crazy.
Licking his dried lips, Yu Jitae wetted his lips and gazed down at it once again.
“…”
The ‘experimentable and dissectable Origin Fragment’ that he had long desired was at last placed in front of his eyes.
It all felt unrealistic and the world seemingly wavered around him.
That was when he quickly came to himself.
Kuruk, kuruk…
Sensing the shallow breaths of the black dragon within the dark fissure, Yu Jitae opened [Shallows of the Abyss (S)] in a panic and hurriedly took out an elixir to pour over the black dragon’s heart.
He could not let this dragon die. Ever.
He could never let this dragon ever die. Never.
Thinking that, he was healing the dragon that was about to die but that was when he felt a commotion in the mana outside the fissure.
Yu Jitae gritted his teeth.
The fight against the black dragon was too impactful. The damage Myu had inflicted all over the world was enormous and the superhumans of each nation were thus not going to sit back and do nothing.
Closing his eyes, he extended his sixth sense and felt the auras of the approaching top rankers.
They were coming to kill the black dragon.