Chapter 254: The Thousand Curse Dragon (6)

I'm Not a Regressor

Chapter 254: The Thousand Curse Dragon (6)

Twack—!

The dull thud of something impacting against a slab of meat accompanied Ohjin's fist, accelerated by Exceed, slamming into Barbatos's nose. The polymorphed dragon was sent tumbling back.

"Grrrr!" Riak sped toward the man before he could recover; the muscles in his right arm swelled shortly before he struck Barbatos in the stomach like a hammer striking a nail, abruptly ending his tumble and embedding him in the ground.

"Augh!" Barbatos vomited blood. "Eugh!" He raised his arm and sent a band of purple lights toward Riak, holding onto his stomach with his other hand.

"You're slow!" Riak deftly somersaulted backward to avoid the purple projectiles.

Barbatos stumbled to his feet and yelled, "Y-you bastaaard!!" His glare bore into Ohjin with furious hatred. Of course, he didn't ask something pathetic like, 'Why did you charge at 'one' instead of counting to 'three'?' The fact that he'd fallen for such a petty trick in the first place damaged his self-esteem.

"You managed to get the timing right!" Ohjin exclaimed toward Riak. He'd charged in without warning Riak because fooling your allies was the first step to fooling your enemies. Judging by how Riak reacted, though, he'd already expected Ohjin to do that.

"Who do you think I am?" Riak bared his teeth and snorted. "You'll never be able to catch up to my experience as a warrior, not even with 10 regressions."

"That's true." Still, Ohjin knew there were things he was better at.

"Don't say silly things. Focus on the battle, rookie."

"Yes," Ohjin answered briefly and turned his gaze back to Barbatos.

A shroud of purple light covered him. "Your childish tricks will no longer work!" Barbatos held his arms out wide and sprinkled purple light in every direction. There was no other way to approach him than straight through the cluster of curses.

"Well, then..." Ohjin ran toward the lights with Dantalian in his hand. "Let's see how powerful those curses of yours are." The moment he threw himself into the purple shroud...

"Ugh!" A sense of heaviness bore down on him, breathing became difficult, and it felt like he'd just finished a long march wearing dozens of kilos of military gear. He felt a strong desire to lie down and fall asleep.

"The Curse of Fatigue..." It was a curse he'd heard a lot about from Ha-eun.

Whoong—!

Blue light surged from Ohjin's pocket and wrapped around his body, filling him with the dreary feeling that he'd drank a cup of coffee while extremely tired. 'Is this the effect of the lucky charm Isabella gave me?' It didn't lift the curse perfectly, but it worked to weaken it to some extent.

"Huup!" He took a deep breath and continued forward. A horrible stench pierced his nostrils, the sound of the outside world faded, and his sight vanished. All sorts of curses assaulted him during his approach, but he continued right on through.

"You're not as bad as the rumors say," he said to the Thousand Curse Dragon, who was giving him a shocked look. "Blue Lightning."

Bzzzzzt—!

A blue storm stretched from the end of his spear and struck Barbatos, sending the polymorphed dragon rolling along the ground again.

"You seem to like crawling on the floor; maybe it's because you're a lizard bastard." Riak, who appeared from the other side, kicked Barbatos in the head, sending him rolling even farther.

"Arrrgggghhhh!!" Barbatos's face, which had maintained its good looks despite being covered in filth, was disastrously swollen.

'He's certainly terrible at close combat.' Although the curses were jarring, Barbatos's movements were much slower and clumsier than the strong opponents Ohjin had been dealing with.

"Hey, you little bastards..." Barbatos wiped the blood flowing from his nose and stared at Ojin and Riak with amber eyes. Soon, a group of purple lights wrapped around his body.

Whoong—!

As the crowd of lights gradually grew, Barbatos turned into his dragon form. Purple scales covered his whole body, his eyes shone an eerie amber color, and two black horns emerged from his forehead. It wasn't long until he was a 50-meter colossus of a monster, roaring at the sky.

"KaaaaaaaaaaaaRAAAAAAAAAAA!!" The dragon's roar shook their eardrums and seemed to even shake their souls. Did it also have a curse embedded in it?

Ohjin felt nausea and a terrible headache. "I told you your mouth smells like shit. What are you doing, yelling and screaming?" He suppressed the feeling and smirked. Since the Thousand Curse Dragon was back to his original appearance, it was time for the real fight to begin.

"For the crime of harming my divine body, you shall pay with your life!" Barbatos roared directly into Ohjin's head.

"Oh, I'm scared shitless. What should I do, I'm scared~" Ohjin laughed at Barbatos's lines, which seemed to have been drawn from the most cliche villain lines in history. In fact, hearing such cheesy lines even made him feel relaxed.

"Krrrrrr!"

Whoong! Whoong—!

Barbatos flapped his two giant wings and soared into the air, darkening the surroundings with the shade of his massive body.

"Oh, what? I thought you couldn't fly," Ohjin said. Ha-eun had said the dragon couldn't fly, but the dragon took flight for the first time in six years right in front of him.

"Now that I have 'their' blessing, even my rotten wings cannot constrain me!" Barbatos screamed in an arrogant tone.

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Translator - Rainypup

Proofreader - ilafy

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'That person's blessing, huh?' Ohjin narrowed his eyes and looked up at the black horns on Barbatos's head. The horns hadn't existed in Shinhyuk's memory... Was it proof of the 'blessing' Barbatos had mentioned?

"Crawl on the ground like a bug and struggle in pain!" Barbatos's scales emitted clusters of purple light and poured down like rain as he flew.

"Hmm. So you can fly..." Ohjin mumbled. Being able to fly in battle was a great merit. There was no need to ask if the Air Force would win a war since it was a surety—they could drop artillery from a distance you couldn't reach, so you would have to give in, no matter how powerful you were.

"Riak, I'll go left."

"Then I'll go right."

The great merit of 'flying' was not a weapon that worked against Ohjin and Riak.

Boom—!

Ohjin and Riak leaped into the air at the same time. No matter how great they were, they couldn't jump to where the Thousand Curse Dragon was flying, hundreds of meters in the air.

'Lightning Shadow Steps.'

Tadadadada—!

They ran through the air itself. The two were perfectly in sync as they rushed toward the Thousand Curse Dragon.

"What...?!" Barbatos screamed in frustration at the sight of the two running through the empty air as if it were nothing.

"Keuhuk!" Barbatos hastily changed the direction of his curse. He could only aim at one person since Ohjin and Riak were running toward him from opposite directions, and he chose Ohjin. "I will let you feel all the extreme pain a human can suffer from!"

Barbatos's scales glowed in a dreary purple, and Ohjin was hit with a pain akin to being cut by a blade before having boiling oil poured into the wound. The curse of pain... Among the 1,000 curses Barbatos could use, it was one of the handful that were overpowered—it could cause so much pain that the victim went insane or died of shock.

Usually, terrible screams would follow the curse, but Ohjin continued without care, climbed onto the dragon's wings, and reversed his spear before stabbing it down and smiling, his eyes burning with a blue flame. "You picked the wrong target."

"What...?" Barbatos gave Ohjin an incredulous look. Had the curse not worked? No, that wasn't it... He could clearly see Ohjin biting his lips and looking at him through bloodshot eyes as he trembled in great pain.

Barbatos had overlooked two things... One, the charm in Ohjin's pocket was weakening the effect of the curse, and two...

"You should have used it on Riak, not me." For Ohjin, 'pain' was not a big deal.

Kzzzzzzt—!

Blue lightning rampaged at the end of his spear before he slashed it down and pierced the dragon's left wing, spreading lightning over the appendage.

"Grrraaaaaaa!" Barbatos screamed and twisted in pain as his wing was severed and he tumbled down toward the ground.

"Hmph! Even if he cast the curse at me, the result would have been the same, rookie." Below the falling Barbatos, Riak bared his teeth.

Kzzzt—!

Riak's nails shone with blue lightning. "Flashing Thunder." He turned into a streak of lightning and tore his nails across Barbatos's chest, sending blood cascading down.

"Grraaaaaa!"

Crash—!

Barbatos's huge form crashed into the ground. "Huk, huk!" Pained gasps left his mouth. 'Wh-what the hell are these monsters?! There were no monsters like these six years ago!' He inwardly screamed and looked around to see a vulnerable-looking woman with platinum-blond hair.

"Krrrr!" He quickly dragged himself over to Isabella before Ohjin and Riak reached him and lifted her in his huge hand. "Stop! If you come closer, I'll kill her!" He abandoned his pride

Barbatos held the weak woman hostage, abandoning his pride as a dragon. To be more exact... He held a 'weak-looking' woman hostage.

"Oh, my..." Isabella's eyes went wide. "I was caught?"

A deep smile formed on her face.