Chapter 175

Adgon (6)

Right after Rosuelen told an unexpected story...

Rumbleeee! Rumble!

As if there was an earthquake, the entire Grave of Incarnations shook.

The two Darions expressed anxiety without understanding what was happening.

I explained it to them.

"The Adgons must have revealed their true colors."

Their faces were colored with more baffled expressions.

"What do you mean?"

I explained what I assumed.

"I think the Adgons' true purpose is to prevent the resurrection of the god."

"No way!"

The pupils of the bishop shook.

"But they helped us locate the incarnation candidate! That's Rosuelen right here!"

"And as soon as they found Rosuelen, the oracle came down. The prophecy that if she stayed where she was, she would be killed."

"I mean, why would they help find her if they would do that anyway?"

Briam's body, as he was raising his concern, froze.

His thought had intersected with what I was trying to say.

What if the reason the Adgons went on a search with Bishop Briam was to make it easier to find and kill her?

Although it was after they left the world that she hid away...

"What if there were Adgons that stayed behind after the official team returned to their home dimension?"

What if they planned to kill Rosuelen, who was left defenseless?

What would have happened after the official team left, having fulfilled their duties, was no longer the Adgon species' responsibility.

They were securing an alibi, an excuse for immunity.

I spoke to the bishop, who was in disbelief.

"First of all, let's try to get in touch with the outside force."

I tried to send telepathy beyond the tomb.

It was to check on the current status and Genograche.

But it failed.

"This tomb seems to be a kind of boundary. Effects of magic can't extend beyond the walls."

When telepathy didn't work, I tried to teleport out of the tomb in an instant, but nothing happened.

Regardless if it was magic embodied through my own Mana or the divine energy borrowing the power of Igras-Sho, the story remained the same.

Briam nodded as if he knew that would happen.

"Thanks to that function, this place has been able to avoid being looted thus far."

In the current era wherein the planet's civilization had already practically collapsed, the relics of its prime would've been a good target for pillagers.

Although there was a condition that only those who served the god of war could enter, it wasn't necessary to enter peacefully through the front door.

Some would have devised a way to destroy the entire tomb and then rummage through the rubble.

Others had probably put it into practice, but the interior remained intact despite that.

The tomb still standing to that day was evidence that no one had succeeded.

The bishop continued.

"The Grave of Incarnations is a mysterious place. There's a constant stream of divine power, but its source remained unidentifiable even now that a long time has passed since the incarnation returned to the deity's side. Nothing works unless you enter with the official permission of our god."

That could only mean that it had the strongest barrier that existed on the planet.

'Wait a minute.'

The moment I heard his words, an idea passed through my head.

"Oh, really? Then..."

I took them to the Grave of Incarnations' door.

*

The Adgons hiding on the planet were all top-tier warriors comparable to the Union's elite warriors.

Their onslaught rained down on Genograche.

However, the commissioner underestimated the opponent.

He seemed to be a devil that had existed for a very long time, but it looked like the King of Gold sealed him in the armor for unknown reasons.

The most abundant type of Main Quest was the annihilation of the devils. The Adgons, who had been interacting with the System longer than anyone else, naturally had a deep and wide knowledge about demons.

That type of armor had a limit to its Mana capacity and ability.

It didn't matter how outstanding the ancient devil was. In other words, even if the software were remarkably superior, it wouldn't be able to overcome the limitations of the hardware.

However, the battle was taking longer than he expected.

"What the hell is taking so long!"

The commissioner yelled with a look of dissatisfaction.

"Hey! How much longer will it take you all to take care of only one devil...?"

Of course, no answers from the warriors in the battle returned.

They were about to go crazy right at that moment, after all.

Genograche moved like flowing water and fierce winds.

The armor, which had a golden glow, maneuvered without pauses or intervals.

And the swordsmanship techniques he executed were so free-spirited and diverse that if one thought they had grown accustomed to a sword flow, he would immediately launch an attack using a completely different trajectory and form.

Meanwhile, the Adgon warriors, who were clearly superior in numbers, weren't even able to knock down their opponent, let alone deliver a decisive blow.

"Those stupid idiots!"

The moment the commissioner shouted angrily...

- Shh!

Grave of Incarnations' stone gate, which had been tightly closed, opened without any notice.

Most of the top-tier fighters, the commissioner, and most of the party escorting him, were distracted by the battle, preventing them from noticing it.

Only one Adgon, tasked with observing the Grave of Incarnations in case of such an instance, was aware of what just happened.

"I-it's op...!"

But the sentence couldn't be finished.

"He's running away!"

There was another individual that saw the door open.

It was Genograche who was being driven around as if he was the target of a fox hunt.

When he found a gap created on the stone door, he immediately soared into the sky.

"What a fool!"

In that situation, jumping into the air without any object to take cover would turn him into an easy target to aim at.

Everyone immediately switched to a gun-type artifact and pointed it towards the sky.

Beyond the stone gate, someone recited a spell.

[Ray Blast (Rank: EX)]

Zoom!

The beam thundered through faster than the sound it made.

A colorless light was fired from the small crack in the doorway.

Even the Adgon that was monitoring it couldn't have thought that it was a ray of light.

Only the blazing air trailing its trajectory suggested that something had blasted forth.

At that moment-

Boosh!

The door opening and an Adgon turning into a pile of ashes happened almost simultaneously.

"W-what is-!"

The frightened commissioner backed away when his escort evaporated in an instant.

"What's going on here?!"

His scream caught everyone's attention.

The Adgon's ashes scattered in the wind, the only remaining part of him being his ankles.

The stone door closed quietly again afterward.

Seo Jin-Wook created an opening, shot a beam of light, and sealed the entrance once more.

However, when the observer was about to relay what just happened-

Swoosh!

The next phenomenon that took place brought them all back to reality.

The attack just then wasn't intended to kill an Adgon, and its power definitely didn't end there.

The blazing heat began to fill the spot where the Adgon died and disappeared.

At the same time, it drew in the air around it and created a strong suction wind.

The atmosphere shook violently around the burnt ankle.

"!"

In an instant, the flaming sphere expanded its area and consumed its surroundings.

The light indwelled with extreme heat burned through every inch it could reach.

The Awakened beings protected their bodies with superhuman reflexes, unfolding Mana Barrier instinctively.

The commissioner, who wasn't an outstanding warrior, avoided immediate death due to the activation of the plastered artifact on his body. At the same time, many of their troops rushed to protect him.

Boosh!

A small sun seemed to have bloomed within the planet.

Shock waves and tidal-wave-like flames stormed in, seemingly pulverizing everything in its path.

The surrounding was dyed with scarlet and blood.

"K-aaargh!"

"Hold on! Hold on!"

Everything the fire swallowed melted, the earth boiled up, and the ruins surrounding the Grave of Incarnations turned into pebbles and broke down into sands before finally evaporating into nothingness.

The Awakened Adgons did their best to hold on.

"Damn it, what kind of devil's magic..."

Soon, even such cries died down.

That was because the storm showed no signs of stopping.

It was different from normal explosions.

Considering the energy it contained, the flames were more than strong enough to consume a much larger area. However, they were kept within a certain radius around the Grave of Incarnations instead.

Its condensed energy was intense, and it allowed for its duration to become longer.

Meanwhile, the Adgons found something wrong with their body.

"!"

They had endured both heat and shock waves separately so far.

That was only natural since they had been to many different dimensions.

At that moment, however, attacks had been attempting to assault their physiques in two different forms.

"K-heup!"

The first ones to fall were those dispatched to hide after the Adgons left for the first time.

Those who escorted the commissioner and the top-tier fighters remained.

However, their skin had melted, and they trembled and vomited blood.

Even their blood clumps and organ fragments were swept away by the heat and evaporated in no time.

"Krrrrrrrrrrr!"

Among the heat and shock waves, an invisible murder weapon hid, invisible to their eyes.

It's a cruel gamma-ray that even Mana Barrier couldn't completely block.

From the heart of the incinerating temperature, death waves that could tear the cells of all living things apart were coursing through them.

"No!"

After the camouflage escort had fallen, the top-tier warriors also died on their knees one by one.

Their bodies, after their Mana Barriers had disappeared, were engulfed by the flames hot enough to incinerate them almost instantaneously.

A long duration passed after that.

"Huff... Huff...!"

On the land where most of the enemies had died and disappeared, lava boiled up.

There was one Adgon who was still alive.

He was the most vulnerable in terms of battle force, the commissioner.

- As expected, he's alive.

Through a cloud of dust covering the sky, Genograche identified the survivor through Perspective.

Seo Jin-Wook, who identified the survivor through his Mana's movements, informed him that the level of items that the commissioner was equipped with wasn't normal.

That showed that he was shouldering a heavy responsibility.

Swoosh!

Genograche landed on the ground.

Around the Grave of Incarnations, hell unfolded that would immediately kill any sentient beings through heat and radiation.

But Genograche's body was technically not alive.

He walked fine even under radiation that destroyed DNA and cellular tissue.

He took one step at a time on the melted earth.

Likewise, despite the devastation, the Grave of Incarnations was still intact.

Shh!

The stone door opened again.

Seo Jin-Wook, Briam, and Rosuelen left the Grave of Incarnations' walls, which served as a bunker.

The faces of the two behind Seo Jin-Wook were distorted by surprise when they saw the surroundings.

"W-what in the heavens is..."

Seo Jin-Wook performed heat resistance magic, deflecting the harmful waves that stormed them using the power granted by the magic of light.

That magic was based on the principle of refraction of electromagnetic waves.

Genograche spoke bluntly.

- What kind of magic is this? I've never seen such magic even when I was alive and even after being sealed in a sword.

It had reached a point that they would be shocked and would question if an actual sun had been newly created just a while ago.

It was fortunate that Seo Jin-Wook told him how to act through telepathy when the door opened for a moment.

If he hadn't flown high enough, his armor might have melted already since the fierce heat would have caught him at the time of the explosion.

It was a precious body that he worked hard to obtain.

"This?"

Seo Jin-Wook spoke calmly.

"I've mixed light-type magic and flame-type magic."

- ... It's a spell that hadn't existed before?

"Yes, thanks to the divine power, which doesn't suffer from the constraining format of skills, I was able to imagine a bunch of things. Honestly, it's my first time using it like this."

He had an indifferent expression even though he essentially caused a thermonuclear explosion and limited its range.

Of course, if it weren't for the Grave of Incarnations, he wouldn't have attempted such a dangerous experiment.

"Ghhhhh...!"

Seo Jin-wook looked at the commissioner floating on the lava unyieldingly while wrapped with the light of an artifact.

Motioning to him, he floated in the air through psychokinesis.

"Now, evidence is secured."

And the first action he took was to make sure he didn't die in vain.

He removed harmful substances from his body, which had already become a radioactive mass, and healed him just enough to prevent his imminent death.

"Khhhhhh!"

The Adgon looked around after regaining his energy and expressed his shock mixed with terrible horror.

Then, he glared at Seo Jin-Wook, who seemed like a villain, as he spoke.

"You, devil!"

Looking into the eyes of the commissioner, Seo Jin-Wook replied apathetically.

"Now, then, tell me. What kind of dirty plot do you have planned?"