CHAPTER 37

TO THE ABSOLUTE LIMIT

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Minos drove his sword deep into the earth. The moment he did, a foul, sickening aura seeped outward, making Minjun frown in natural disgust.

Around them, the severed void transformed into a blood-soaked battlefield littered with broken weapons and fallen corpses. Dark crimson energy rose from the firmly embedded blade, slowly taking the shape of soldiers.

‘I’ve seen these before,’ Minjun thought.

The swords, armor, horses, and even the saddles were identical to the ones he had seen in the recorded magic carved into the tomb walls. The dark-red smoke created soldier after soldier. Instead of fading away, the mist only grew thicker with every passing second.

Soon, the smoke expanded beyond human shapes and began forming massive monsters, including wyverns. Before long, an endless swarm of wyverns crowded together, completely blotting out the sky.

Minjun’s eyes trembled at the unbelievable sight. If every single one of those creatures attacked him with real hostility, there was no way he could survive.

As if reading his mind, Minos spoke to reassure him.

〈 Relax. You will neither die nor suffer any lasting injury. 〉

“What exactly… do you want from me?” Minjun asked.

Was this punishment for disturbing the owner of the tomb? But if that was Minos’s true goal, the other hunters should have been dragged into this space as well.

Emperor Minos shook his head. 〈 Didn’t I already tell you? I want to see a human body manifest complete Dragon Tongue. 〉

It was not a punishment at all. Minos simply wanted to witness someone else achieve the perfect Dragon Tongue that he himself had failed to master. His desire was genuine, but his method was entirely wrong.

“I understand what you’re saying, but why go this far?!” Minjun shouted.

Minos had suddenly trapped him here and declared that he could never leave until he manifested Dragon Tongue. And what were all these soldiers and wyverns supposed to achieve?

Minos gave no answer to Minjun’s angry protest. Instead, the soldiers answered for him with vicious sword strikes.

Minjun dodged their blades quickly and swung his sword in a wide horizontal arc. More than ten soldiers collapsed instantly, coughing blood. Yet their bodies dissolved right back into dark crimson smoke, reforming into soldiers once again before charging him.

‘Damn it.’

Just like the Sword Wraiths he had fought when he first entered the dungeon, these soldiers would rise again and point their blades at him no matter how many times he killed them. The same was almost certainly true for the wyverns filling the sky, which were already preparing to rain breath attacks down on him.

“This is insane,” Minjun muttered.

Individually, the soldiers were not particularly dangerous, but their numbers were absurd—and worse, they could never be permanently killed. The wyverns were an even bigger problem. At his current strength, there was no way Minjun could dodge or block every attack coming from the air.

“Ghk!”

He tried to dodge, but a large portion of the breath attacks still struck him directly.

If those wyverns had been real, even with all the protective artifacts he wore, Minjun would have suffered severe injuries at best. With bad luck, he might have died on the spot.

Yet, exactly as Minos had promised, Minjun did not die. He did not even keep a single physical scratch. Deep wounds closed almost immediately, and severed limbs regenerated with fresh flesh in seconds.

The pain, however, was completely real.

For the first time in his life, Minjun writhed under the horrific sensation of being burned alive, feeling his flesh tear open and be cut apart over and over again.

“What the hell do you expect me to do?!” Minjun screamed in frustration as the endless enemies continued reforming around him. No matter how many monsters he cut down, they rose like zombies and attacked again.

If nothing changed, he would be forced to suffer the feeling of his body being destroyed for all eternity.

‘I won’t let that happen.’

Whatever Minos’s reasons were for trapping him, Minjun was determined to escape this terrible place no matter what it took.

As countless soldiers pointed their swords at him once more, Minjun leaped high into the air to avoid their strike. It did not matter whether he killed a thousand soldiers or ten thousand. All he needed to do was follow Minos’s instructions: use Dragon Tongue to break this space apart and escape.

That meant there was no reason to waste his strength fighting the endless enemies charging at him.

Ignoring their attacks as much as possible, Minjun began pulling every artifact he owned out of his spatial storage.

“I’m not the only one who can rely on numbers.”

Using his artifacts, he suppressed the soldiers and wyverns one after another. Since he could not kill them permanently, he only needed to keep them far enough away so they could not interfere.

At the same time, Minjun removed the limiter Rokan had placed on him so he could properly prepare to attempt Dragon Tongue. Rokan had warned him to always wear it unless it was absolutely necessary, because removing it could cause his own power to consume him.

This was exactly the kind of unavoidable situation Rokan had meant.

Minjun had not worn the limiter for very long, so it had not accumulated a massive amount of energy yet. Even so, when trying to use Dragon Tongue, he could not afford to waste even the smallest drop of mana stored inside it.

Once everything was ready, Minjun gathered his entire willpower and tried to speak in Dragon Tongue.

[Shatter.]

He wanted this hateful world that dared to trap him to break apart completely without leaving a trace behind. He shouted with greater determination than ever before.

Yet, despite his intense focus, nothing changed.

To make matters worse, several wyverns took advantage of the opening. They broke through the defensive barriers created by his artifacts and crushed him under their heavy bodies.

“Gahk!”

If this had been reality, every bone in his body would have shattered and his organs would have burst from the impact. But Minjun knew this scene was an illusion and that he could not die here.

A deep groan escaped his mouth as terrible pain twisted through his body. Still, he gathered his strength once again and shouted into the chaos.

[Shatter!]

Once again, nothing happened. As if mocking his attempt, the soldiers flooded through the opening made by the wyverns.

Minjun swung his sword and managed to fight back to some extent, but the enemy numbers were far beyond what a single person could handle. Infantry knocked him to the ground while mounted soldiers rode their horses directly over his fallen body.

“Aaaaaagh!”

His physical body remained intact, but every bit of the agony reached his mind clearly. The pain was so terrible that he feared his consciousness might shut down entirely from the shock.

Even while twisting in agony, Minjun forced himself back onto his feet and gripped his sword once more. He looked completely unharmed from the outside, but the pain was so overwhelming that simply standing was difficult, let alone holding a weapon.

‘I never expected to succeed on the first try anyway.’

There was no chance that using Dragon Tongue would be easy.

The same cycle repeated again and again. Minjun failed to activate Dragon Tongue, the soldiers and wyverns attacked during the gap in his defenses, and he writhed in agony before picking himself up to try once more.

His body never kept a wound, but the pain continued to pile up inside his mind. Slowly, his consciousness began to blur.

At times, he was tempted to surrender to the darkness and pass out just to escape the pain. But every single time, Minjun tightened his grip on his sword and refused to fall.

Gritting his teeth, he poured his fierce will into another attempt at Dragon Tongue.

[Shatter!!!]

He had changed one tactical detail from his first try. Now, every time he tried to manifest Dragon Tongue, he also struck the sword Minos had driven into the ground.

Everything in this space had started after that blade was planted there. Maybe pulling it free or breaking it would trigger a change—and right now, any change at all could be helpful.

Like a man possessed, Minjun repeatedly attacked Minos’s sword while attempting Dragon Tongue.

The sword Minjun held was easily a masterpiece, but Minos’s weapon was made from Dragon Bone. The blade embedded in the ground refused to break. Instead, every time their weapons collided, a painful, ringing vibration shot through Minjun’s head.

Then, after countless repeated strikes, a faint, aurora-colored light began to glow from Minos’s sword whenever their blades clashed.

‘That light…’

The glow felt instantly familiar. Minjun’s own sword had released the exact same brilliant, aurora-colored light when he fought the villains inside the Gate.

Strictly speaking, however, the light coming from Minos’s sword was not completely identical. It was beautiful, but compared to the color that had once bloomed from the tip of Minjun’s own blade, it was noticeably dimmer and had fewer colors.

As the light gradually spread outward from Minos’s weapon, Minjun began to feel something strange. The pain had not gone away, but the strange energy filling this world started pouring directly into his body. Tremendous power began to boil through every part of him.

The sensation was extraordinary—unlike anything he had ever experienced before.

His entire body overflowed with strength far more intense and vast than what he had felt when defeating the villains inside the Gate.

‘Could this be related to dragons?’

Until now, Minjun had only heard the words dragon power without truly understanding what they meant. But in this state, he finally felt like he was beginning to grasp it.

Even through the unbearable pain, a wave of soaring excitement and boundless confidence washed over him. He felt as though everything in existence could be forced to obey his command. His senses expanded into something completely unfamiliar—a level of perception no ordinary human could ever experience.

‘If I’m like this right now…’

Maybe the miracle of truly manifesting Dragon Tongue could actually happen.

Even as the intense pain made his vision blur, Minjun refused to let go of his sword and screamed with everything he had left.

[Shatter to pieces without leaving a trace!]

He had no idea how many times he had shouted those words by now. His throat was completely hoarse, and he hated the sound of his own ragged voice. Yet despite his total exhaustion, one conviction remained stronger than everything else.

‘I’m almost there.’

The world around him had not visibly changed yet, but Minjun could feel it instinctively. If he pushed just a little bit harder—just a tiny bit more—he would finally produce true Dragon Tongue.

Minjun gathered every last drop of dragon power stored inside his body, squeezing out the final bit of strength he possessed, and brought his sword crashing down onto Minos’s blade.

[Shatter to pieces without leaving a trace!!!]

In that split second, the entire space shook violently and exploded with aurora-colored light.

Slowly, cracks began to spread across the cloudless blue sky.

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