Ja-ryong’s Divine Might

Sophia’s sharp, blunt words left all five goddesses speechless.

“Aetas, Spatium, when you hadn’t even become superhuman yet, they were already reigning as superhumans of a different level. As for Mors and Genesis, that goes without saying. And though it was said to be the Creator’s consideration, they spent an immeasurable amount of time in the soul stone.”

“Th, what is that…“

Mors asked Sophia in a subdued voice. Sophia, wearing a sly smile as she looked at Mors, went on. No, she delivered a one-sided declaration.

“If right now you fought them one-on-one in the same mental world or world of consciousness, none of you would win. Even I couldn’t do it. And yet some tyrant who merely picked up the divine power Aetas tossed away? Ha!”

Sophia said that the tyrant had picked up the divine power Aetas threw away. What on earth was going on?

“This is actually good. Kim Han still hadn’t really gotten the hang of mental defense, and Kim Han seems to be the practical type, right? You’ll make good training material.”

“B-but… the tyrant…“

“Enough! What I say isn’t a lie. If you don’t believe me, go into Kim Han’s consciousness world with Ludicer and ask for a sparring match. They aren’t like transcendent beings trapped in the Battlefield of the Gods by Amor or Serpens, whose growth has stopped. Even in soul form, they’ve become stronger.”

Sophia’s words were full of certainty. She had not the slightest doubt. Rather, her eyes sparkled like a child’s waiting for a gift, as if this were a good thing.

“How dare you compare them to some tyrant? Hmph! I’m starting to feel annoyed again.”

“…That six-hero fangirl. Real sasaeng fans are a problem wherever they go.”

At Sophia’s mutter, Genesis muttered in a small voice.

Everyone seemed reassured by Sophia’s statistics-backed certainty, but one person—no, one goddess—still couldn’t hide her unease.

“I told you, the power I discarded is the problem…“

Aetas’s very small murmur didn’t spread far. It was so quiet that even Mors, who was right next to her, couldn’t hear it.

Why is the Ja-ryong called by the epithet of the dragon’s natural enemy?

That is partly because it was made that way, but also because the power of Ja-ryongs that appeared in history was tremendous.

A dragon that can wield breaths of every attribute without any limit on how many times from birth.

On top of that, a dragon with absurdly high resistance and defense against all kinds of attributes.

Though a dragon, it excels more at close combat than magic, and its magic resistance is also high.

And the first thing to remember is that it can use breaths of all attributes. Even dragons have mutual compatibility and opposition in attributes, like red and silver.

And then there is the Fear that instinctively affects dragons—or rather the dragonkin. The one that emits a Fear powerful enough to frighten a dragon that itself emits Fear is the Ja-ryong.

So if the power was equal, or even a little weaker, whenever a dragon and a Ja-ryong clashed, the Ja-ryong was always the winner.

If the dragon’s natural enemy, the Ja-ryong, were to face something that wasn’t a dragon? Need I say more?

“Ja-ryong, put some power into it.”

“Gyaa??”

“Wipe them out.”

“Gya-ha!!”

Flapping its wings, Ja-ryong took off and looked excited for once.

The small, cute, bird-sized Ja-ryong slowly rose into the air, releasing purple light from its body.

As Ja-ryong climbed higher into the sky, it moved farther away from us. Yet its body kept growing larger.

“Kraaaaaa!!”

Dragon Fear. More precisely, the Fear of a Ja-ryong that even dragons fear.

The momentum radiated by more than three thousand high-grade undead scattered in an instant. There was no trace of that majestic presence.

Ja-ryong’s chest swelled slightly as it displayed its majesty in the sky.

Flash!! Crash—!!

There were no sound effects like whoosh or slurp(?).

The first pure dragon breath I witnessed with my own eyes was light. The instant it flashed, a hot blaze surged up with the sound of the frozen riverbed cracking. Like the fire of hell.

Even though the flames didn’t rise very high, only to the height between knee and waist, they kept that height for a long time and didn’t go out. They endlessly burned the black land of death, as if fueled by divine power.

Where the flames finally disappeared after a long while.

Ja-ryong looked down regally at the spot, lifted its head as if satisfied, and let out a dragon roar.

With one breath, about 500 high-grade undead disappeared. If not for the defensive magic the lich had layered upon layer, more than twice that number would have turned into black dust and vanished.

As if waiting for the flames to vanish completely, Ja-ryong’s chest swelled again.

And this time, not only I but the entire Rebound unit, and even the undead, were watching closely.

Flash—! Crunch!!

Again, light fell. The result of the breath was completely the opposite.

As if it had concentrated on a narrow area, an ice chunk as tall as a person appeared.

Can undead be killed by cold? The answer is yes.

It wasn’t as if Ja-ryong knew science, but if you rapidly cool a heated object, it hardens suddenly and is destroyed from within.

Whether it’s a lich made of bones or a death knight made of armor.

It charges in with its massive body, shatters the ice covering the area, and finishes them off for good.

It’s not for nothing that dragons regard it as their natural enemy.

“Whoa… how much has that thing been pretending all this time?”

Like a boyfriend seeing his girlfriend’s bare face without makeup for the first time, Arun’s voice held both bewilderment and betrayal. Several of the members also agreed with Arun.

Especially Merus, whose body had stiffened the moment Ja-ryong revealed its true form, couldn’t move even a finger. Just nodding fiercely in that state was almost pitiable.

“Companion…“

Did Ja-ryong feel the gazes shifting from itself to me? It began moving again.

Flipping gracefully in the air, it fell quickly. How it could move so lightly and nimbly with such a huge body, I didn’t know; like a swallow skimming the ground, the weak(?) liches were reduced to dust by Ja-ryong’s wings.

In close combat, the creature—one that looked to be well over 10 meters from head to tail—moved as agile as a full-bodied swallow, and at times as nimble as a land beast.

Like a martial artist using divine movement, it flipped its enormous body in the air, spun around, and crushed skeletons with its sharpened wings.

The murky black sword energy swung by the death knight flew toward Ja-ryong’s wings.

The dozens of sword energies looked like needle-thin hidden weapons compared to Ja-ryong’s body.

Ja-ryong glanced at the incoming sword energy, snorted, and lifted its body into the air.

Its speed was so fast that it left an afterimage, and the murky sword energy sliced through that afterimage as it passed.

Ja-ryong, which had shot up into the air, fell again and used that force as it was to crush the insolent death knight that had attacked it.

Thud— Crunch—! Crunch—!

It stomped it flat with its feet and chomped it whole with its big mouth.

“I told you not to eat just anything. Spit it out.”

Ptooey— plop plop— plop.

As if Ja-ryong itself remembered the day-drinking incident, it spat out what it had in its mouth with a ‘ptooey’ sound.

Rolling around were pieces of the death knight’s armor, helmet, skull, staff, and so on.

It was truly the movement of a fish in water, like the swagger of a con artist who had found an easy mark.

From the start, Ja-ryong, the dragon-slaying dragon, the Ja-ryong, was a being born for ‘battle’ or ‘slaughter.’

“Kwararararara!!”

Ja-ryong’s body, which had been ravaging the undead on the ground, rose into the air again. There was no one who didn’t know what that meant. Not even the undead.

The undead immediately scattered in all directions or began coating themselves with layers of defense magic.

But there was no way our Ja-ryong would do something stupid like launching such an obvious attack—even Arun wouldn’t do that.

As expected, its chest swelled; that part was the same. The flash of light was the same too.

However, unlike before, there was no flickering fire or freezing ice.

Divine power that collided with the ground burst outward and spread rapidly in all directions.

“Huh?”

“My body… recovered?”

“This…“

The members touched their own bodies with baffled expressions. And the members who had recovered even a little were getting back to their feet.

After looking over each other’s bodies with amazed expressions, they all turned their eyes to where the breath had struck, as if by agreement.

There, a scene of undead ‘suffering’ was unfolding.

A horde of undead writhed in agony as if hit by a deadly poison.

Liches and death knights, with black smoke pouring from their entire bodies, trembled like aspen leaves. Not mere skeletons, but high-ranking undead had dropped their weapons in pain.

“Divine Breath…?”

There is a dragon among dragons that exists only one per generation.

A dragon that does not appear before humans or indulge in play.

A being that, though a dragon, lives a more devout life than any priest. The only dragon the Ja-ryong does not regard as an enemy.

That dragon only intervenes in battle enough to breathe when a being using tainted divine power threatens the dimension.

And that dragon’s breath grants healing to humans and other created beings, while giving unbearable pain to beings tainted by evil.

That wondrous dragon is therefore called a divine dragon, or a holy dragon.

And that dragon’s breath is called Divine Breath.

“C-crazy! The master was a monster, and now, taking after the master, even the tiny pet is a monster?!”

Arun’s silly remark was shut down by Hazel, who had clearly recovered her strength, by splitting space itself and throwing him backward.

Sadly, there were only ‘a few’ people who paid any mind to Arun as he flew away screaming unheard.

The scene had been somewhat cleaned up by a single Divine Breath. But this wasn’t why I told Ja-ryong to use its power.

I spoke to the cute little thing, which was looking down from the air at the undead horde on the verge of annihilation and acting very proud.

“Ja-ryong, the real one is coming. Over there.”

Ja-ryong, which could understand my words perfectly, turned its head, stared intently at one place, and let out a rough roar. As if it had met a sworn enemy.

If until now Ja-ryong had only grown bigger while remaining playful, now it was the perfect form of the dragon-slaying Ja-ryong.

“Uh, why is it acting like that?”

Arun, who had been blown backward, had somehow come close and asked.

The other members, especially the women, looked back and forth between me and Ja-ryong with worried faces.

“Why else? Just imagine Unos appearing alive right in front of you.”

“…What?”

Arun also glared at the place Ja-ryong was growling at.

After a while, a black dot appeared in the air, and that dot gradually grew larger.

A being exuding an ominous aura all over, black from head to toe.

A dragon with dark, murky black smoke rising from its entire body, made of nothing but bones and no flesh at all. It was so enormous that the enlarged Ja-ryong looked like a younger sibling.

‘Bone Dragon’ had appeared.