Chapter 168
Now that the seal was broken and Karin regained her ability to fly, the battlefield’s airspace belonged entirely to their side. Without giving the boss a chance to breathe, Do-Jin rained down magic from above.
With terrain like this, Karin doesn’t even need to step in. I might be able to finish this entire fight by myself.
His confidence lasted exactly three seconds. The boss’s regeneration kicked in so hard and so fast that Do-Jin nearly swore himself numb. “What the hell is that regeneration speed?”
“That looks as fast as me. Maybe even faster,” Karin added, genuinely startled.
Do-Jin burned it, sliced it, froze it, and blasted it, yet every wound sealed up as if someone kept hammering a rewind button on its flesh. It was absurd enough to shock even a princess from the kingdom of vampires.
“The end of all things is chosen by the Star. Our end has not been written, so how dare the likes of you attempt to decide it?” the old woman roared loud enough to rattle the entire mountain.
Do-Jin watched holes open all over her grotesque flesh. Sensing something vile swirling inside them, he shouted, “Watch out!”
A moment later, red beams fired from every gap in the creature’s body. A piercing whine cut through the air, followed by explosions that tore apart the cliffs and ground. Karin twisted through the sky with sharp, acrobatic movements and dodged the barrage aimed at them.
“Perhaps I am not yet used to this body.” The old woman scowled as if she was irritated that swatting a pair of flies was proving too difficult.
Do-Jin seized the opening and fired a bolt of lightning. Even while Karin maneuvered through air currents, the Lightning Spear hit its mark with perfect accuracy. Nearly a third of the old woman’s small, twisted body exploded outward in a burst of flesh and smoke.
“Aaaaargh!” She writhed and screamed in agony.
For a moment, Do-Jin felt hopeful, but he didn’t think they’d done it that easily. The hope died instantly as her body re-formed. The ruined flesh filled in with the same disgusting material as before, only thicker and tougher.
“May I try something?” Karin asked.
“Sure, whatever you want.”
The moment he gave permission, however, Karin paused in thought.
If I keep holding Do-Jin, I can’t use my full strength. But if I put him down, he will be vulnerable.
Her brows knit as she tried to find a solution, and her face eventually lit up. “Oh, that will work.”
Before Do-Jin could ask what she meant, Karin simply grabbed him with both hands and hurled him straight upward. For a moment, he couldn’t even understand what was happening. His body shot upward so fast that he honestly thought Karin had suddenly boosted their altitude at top speed.
While he hung in the air, with nothing but gravity waiting to drag him back down, Karin planted herself directly in front of the roaring boss. She moved so quickly that the old woman didn’t even register her approach.
“Please rest in peace.” Karin offered a polite goodbye and stretched out her hand.
A massive volume of blood blasted forward from her arm. It was a crude attack that relied entirely on pressure and brute force, but the destructive power was monstrous. With one strike, Karin shredded nearly a third of that gigantic lump of flesh.
Despite that, the boss didn’t die. The remaining meat sprouted writhing tentacles that tried to grab Karin, all while the destroyed parts regenerated at insane speed. She dodged the tentacles and shot back into the sky, catching Do-Jin mid-fall with perfect timing as he screamed on his way down.
“AHHH—hey! Are you out of your damn mind?!” Do-Jin yelled after being launched into the sky and dropped like a sack of bricks.
Karin flinched and spoke in a timid voice. “Was it not fun...”
Do-Jin choked for a second.
“Children in books seemed to enjoy it when their fathers threw them high into the air. That is what I read.”
No father on earth threw his child high enough to experience several seconds of freefall from the stratosphere. Do-Jin decided he would give this tactless vampire a long lecture on basic common sense later. Right now, something far worse was happening below.
“That regeneration is ridiculous. We definitely can’t kill it with any normal attacks... and there it goes firing lasers again.”
Even if the hag healed fast, she still felt pain. The old woman howled in rage as if she was being set on fire from the inside out. Her aim sharpened, and Karin’s flight path became even more frantic and complicated as she dodged the beams.
From Do-Jin’s perspective, being dragged around like luggage was a personal hell. Even so, he kept thinking and analyzing as fast as he could.
Nothing regenerates like that for free. Something is feeding her power.
The culprit had to be the relic, or maybe the relic had triggered the Sanctuary into waking up. Whatever that old woman had done, she was absorbing the Sanctuary’s energy and twisting it into her own power.
Destroying the relic to cut off the supply... no, that won’t work.
He had watched the relic tank a direct hit from the beams without so much as a scratch. There was no chance he could break it.
Do-Jin went back to the beginning and sorted every piece of information he had seen and heard. He recalled everything this mountain had shown him, especially what he saw while tracking the path of the missing half of the relic.
When he thought back to those illusions they saw in the fog, the people who had carried that relic away were not members of the Church of Ruin. They were people who tried to stop this disaster and escaped with it, so the other half must belong with them.
That means I need to bring this half to wherever they took the other one.
It was the only explanation that made sense and the one realistic way to bring down that overgrown pile of meat and clear this boss fight. If Karin hadn’t been here, Do-Jin would have already been vaporized into snow dust by that laser light show.
“Karin, can you drop me somewhere near that spot?”
She followed the direction he pointed, and practically jumped in fear. “What do you mean near that? It’s right next to the monster.”
“I have a plan.”
“It is difficult. If I fly too close, I might lose my ability to fly again like earlier.”
The only place that still kept its blue glow in this entire area was the space around the relic. That was why Karin kept avoiding that direction while flying.
“Then...” Do-Jin calculated in his head, factoring in the boss, the relic, and the route he needed to take upward. “Listen carefully. You’re going to follow my instructions exactly.”
“I will listen first and decide later. If it sounds dangerous, I will kidnap you and fly away.”
“Okay... First, fly as close as you can without losing your wings. Then throw me in that direction, not hard enough to kill me, but hard enough to get me there. After that, you hit that old hag with the biggest attack you have so she loses her combat strength for a moment.”
“What do I do after?”
“You keep her from interfering with me. I am taking the relic back to the place where I found the other half. There has to be something there. Nothing else makes sense. Can you hold out long enough?”
“You want me to make sure she can’t bother you? That part is easy!” Karin nodded confidently. “Blocking is something I can do.”
“Go ahead!”
Since he’d be leaving the battlefield, Karin agreed to the plan without another word. She dodged the incoming beams and soared toward the relic before tossing him down. Do-Jin rolled across the snow, using Psychokinesis to soften the impact as the momentum from being thrown carried him forward. Soon, the relic was right in front of him.
“So you’ve finally come down!”
The old woman snarled with the irritation of someone swatting at a mosquito that refused to die, but her excitement didn’t last long.
“Hiya!” Karin let out an exaggerated shout as she drove straight down and body-slammed the old woman. With both arms extended forward, she looked almost exactly like Superman flying through the air.
“Stop! Stop at once!”
While the boss shrieked, Do-Jin grabbed the relic and sprinted away. The cliff ahead had collapsed earlier, leaving a steep but climbable path. It was the one stroke of luck in this entire nightmare.
I am counting on you, Karin.
She tore huge chunks out of the boss’s body, pounding and shredding everything that tried to chase Do-Jin. Thanks to her, Do-Jin made it up the slope intact and reached the snowfield he had seen before.
“Anemone!”
Anemone appeared and immediately shook her head as she looked down at the writhing lump of meat below. Her eyes were clearly judging him for causing yet another disaster today.
She snorted as her hooves hit the snow. “Get on.”
Do-Jin hopped on and dashed across the snowfield. This stretch was originally supposed to be a brutal chase with the meat-hag boss tearing after him, but thanks to Karin, he crossed the most dangerous part of the zone without anyone clawing at his throat.
I found it somewhere around here.
He reached the area where he had discovered the first half of the disc, but nothing stood out now.
This entire mountain got smashed and twisted out of shape, so I guess it’s not in its original spot.
He had no choice but to dig around some more. Do-Jin pushed his Farsight to its limit and widened the search radius. He eventually spotted a pillar half-buried in the ground at a slanted angle.
“Anemone, that way.” Do-Jin circled the area around the pillar, then spotted a massive flat circular structure that looked like part of an ancient altar.
The moment he approached, the relic vibrated violently in his hand. Do-Jin climbed onto the remains of the altar and lifted it toward the sky. However, nothing happened.
Clicking his tongue, he dropped the idea instantly and pulled the Starlight Soul Ingot out of his inventory.
“Right. It is always the quest item.”
If something refused to activate, rubbing a quest item on it usually did the trick. Soon enough, the ingot began to shimmer with a bright glow.
“Ahhh...!” A chorus of ecstatic voices burst out from inside the ingot. “O Star above... we have returned to you... we finally return to you...”
[The Star’s gaze falls upon the world for the first time in many ages.]
The blue light pouring out of the relic froze, replaced by a single beam descending from the sky. It trembled with a sad, hesitant pulse. Like the little helper light from earlier, this beam carried emotion.
“I am sure you have a tragic backstory, but this is not the time for that. Your temple is blowing the hell up down there,” he said, so the souls trapped in the ingot and whatever celestial being was watching from above would move things along.
The blue light rippled in response. Do-Jin sensed a thread of conflict running through the beam linking heaven and earth. The hesitation vanished in an instant, replaced by something like resolve. The unstable glow tightened, then burst outward and swept across the entire mountain before fading away.
As a mage, Do-Jin immediately understood what had just happened. Bella’s power and Laves’ power are both gone.
Every trace of energy vanished at once. The old equilibrium shattered completely, which meant this place was no longer a Sanctuary. The boss that had been twisting the Sanctuary’s power into her own was now an empty can.
He quickly set the Starlight Soul Ingot down on the altar and turned to leave. The believers inside can enjoy their emotional reunion with their god or Star or whatever. I’m heading back.
Suddenly, the Starlight called to him, “Return when your work is finished. We will wait. You deserve a reward.”
The end of the quest was finally in sight. If the Star itself intended to hand him a reward, though, he needed to survive long enough to collect it.