TDGHR 70

Chapter 70

Turning the Tables

Minjun had experienced all kinds of battles as a Hunter, but even he had never taken part in an aerial battle on this scale before.

He had once faced wyverns in the Garden of Dragon Swords, but there was no comparing that encounter to what was happening now.

From the moment he confirmed the existence of the wyvern legion with his own eyes until the enormous barrier surrounding Elysium came down, Minjun began devising a strategy.

‘Objectively speaking, it’ll be hard for me to take on even one wyvern by myself.’

Minjun was only B-rank, while mini wyverns were classified as A-rank monsters and full-grown wyverns as S-rank monsters.

‘One-on-one would be tough.’

Still, if he made proper use of his artifacts and divided the work effectively, Minjun should be able to pull his weight.

The enemy had wyverns, but Elysium had the powerful legacy left behind by Bellium, the dragon who had founded the city.

According to Estelle, Bellium had left behind all sorts of things, from near-permanent protective magic covering the city to anti-monster artifacts.

Perhaps because the Elysium army had so much experience responding to monster invasions, they certainly did not look like pushovers at first glance.

If Minjun had to identify their greatest weakness, however, it would probably be their ability to respond to aerial attacks.

After taking stock of the weapons and artifacts installed along the walls, Minjun realized that the Elysium army was relatively vulnerable in the air compared to every other area of combat.

That meant simply drawing the wyverns’ attention in the skies, where Elysium was weakest, would be enough to help.

The cannons and archers already seemed to have more than enough firepower.

‘In theory, it’s not a bad plan.’

The problem was figuring out how to distract the wyverns without getting hurt himself.

There was also the possibility of getting caught in allied bombardment while fighting in midair if his luck turned bad.

It might have been different if he had trained with these people before and knew how they fought, but he had not.

While Minjun was still thinking it over, a wyvern with a body incomparably larger than a human’s closed in right in front of him, and an idea suddenly came to mind.

‘What if I use the wyvern as a meat shield?’

Wyverns were dangerous, but their skin itself was not.

Their hides were tough, but they did not have needle-like spines jutting out of them, nor was their skin coated in poison.

On top of that, while Minjun was clinging to one wyvern, the chances of the others attacking him would decrease.

They might be monsters, but they were not so stupid that they would recklessly attack one of their own just to kill a single human.

Dodging the wyvern’s breath attacks as he flew, Minjun pulled a sturdy grappling hook from his spatial storage.

The moment the hook was in his hand, Minjun changed direction and drove it deep into the nearest wyvern.

After securing the line so he would not be separated from the beast, Minjun began stabbing the wyvern mercilessly with his sword.

SCREEEECH!

After being stabbed several times, the wyvern let out a pained shriek and began thrashing violently.

The grappling hook Minjun had first lodged in its body had not hurt much, but the Dragon Bone Sword he was using at close range was sharp enough to bite deep through the wyvern’s thick hide.

Soon the leatherlike skin split and blood began pouring out, causing the wyvern to stagger in the air.

At the same time, the hook connecting Minjun to the wyvern tore free.

The hook simply was not as sharp as the Dragon Bone Sword.

The instant it came loose, Minjun quickly disengaged from the wyvern, and a moment later the creature was struck by a fire spell from one of the mages and lost consciousness, plunging toward the ground.

‘I can keep doing something like this.’

He had not been sure how it would work the first time, but after succeeding once, Minjun began to get the hang of it.

Even so, hooking onto a wyvern and clinging to it was not as easy as he had imagined.

Minjun decided to modify the strategy slightly.

He descended to the wall for a moment to reorganize, put the grappling hook back into his spatial storage, and pulled out another Dragon Bone Sword instead.

It was the very same Dragon Bone Sword that had shattered during the conquest of the Garden of Dragon Swords and had never recovered its original performance.

After Sia gave him a new Dragon Bone Sword, he no longer had any reason to use the old one, but Minjun had kept it in his spatial storage just in case.

Now he decided to use that old Dragon Bone Sword as a substitute for the grappling hook.

Even if it could not compare to the sword he currently wielded, it should still penetrate a wyvern’s tough hide much more easily than an ordinary hook.

After fastening a wire to the sword, Minjun took to the air once more and flew toward the wyverns.

The basic strategy remained the same.

The only real differences were that he was using a sword instead of a hook and, rather than pushing each wyvern to the brink of death himself, he focused more heavily on getting on their nerves.

Strike and retreat, strike and retreat.

As he became more accustomed to controlling his artificial wings, Minjun began flying faster and truly started harassing the wyverns in earnest.

He was like a mosquito that simply refused to go away.

Ignoring him was irritating, but focusing on him meant exposing themselves to the powerful spells, arrows, cannon fire, and everything else pouring in from the city walls.

Worse, if they carelessly fired their breath attacks at Minjun, there was a risk of hitting other wyverns instead.

From the wyverns’ perspective, he was nothing but a headache.

Minjun’s performance continued to make a meaningful difference, but even then, no one could say the battle was turning in Elysium’s favor yet.

Hadn’t Estelle said that this monster offensive was the strongest she had seen in nearly fifty years?

The residents of Elysium had expected from the very beginning that they would be at a disadvantage.

They had stepped onto the battlefield despite knowing it was an unfavorable fight because they wanted to protect their home.

“Aaaagh!”

“We’ve got a critically wounded soldier over here!”

“Why are the potions taking so long to get here?!”

“This is the best we can do right now!”

Even through the deafening noise of the battlefield, Minjun could hear cries that sounded almost like screams coming from nearby.

‘Is this not enough?’

The strategy was sound, but their overall strength was not.

Horrific screams continued to rise from the walls in real time, and the defensive line the soldiers had built with their own blood looked ready to collapse at any moment.

They needed another decisive blow, something strong enough to overturn the atmosphere of the entire battlefield.

However, removing the Limiter on a whim carried enormous risks for Minjun’s side as well.

If the side effect Rokan had warned him about occurred after he removed it, he might end up causing even greater damage.

Pulling more artifacts from his spatial storage was another option, but that alone did not seem like it would be enough.

Minjun was trapped between two equally bad choices, and just as he continued turning the problem over and over in his mind, a strange sensation suddenly ran through him.

‘…What is this?’

Minjun turned around and discovered that his body seemed to be bound to something intangible.

‘A cord?’

To be precise, it was not actually a cord.

If he had to describe it, something between Aura and light would be more accurate.

He had no idea when it had appeared or what it truly was, but there was at least one thing he could guess.

He could tell where this strange cord was connected.

Judging by its direction and the surrounding circumstances, there was a high probability that it was linked to the statue of Bellium at the center of the city.

There was something else as well. Ever since the long, intangible cord of unknown origin had appeared, Minjun had begun to feel an uplifting sensation, as though strength were surging through every part of his body.

He had experienced this feeling several times before.

The difference was that this time, the sensation felt more comfortable and familiar than it had in the past.

At the same time, the Aura coating Minjun’s Dragon Bone Sword began changing color.

It looked like a dull night sky faintly mixed with an aurora.

Minjun knew very well what that meant.

He kicked off the ground and charged toward the wyverns, and at the same moment, the intangible cord connecting him to the statue began to ripple.

‘Move faster and drive in lethal strikes.’

With movements lighter than before, Minjun closed in on a nearby wyvern and immediately drove the Dragon Bone Sword deep into its body.

He only had to thrust the blade in deeply once or twice before the wyvern lost consciousness and began plummeting from the sky.

‘It worked.’

That became the signal for the counterattack.

The aerial battle had been making little progress, but Minjun’s sudden awakening caused the number of wyverns to begin dropping rapidly. That advantage snowballed, and the number of ground monsters crushed to death beneath falling wyvern corpses began increasing at an explosive rate as well.

Minjun pushed his speed even further, harassing the wyvern swarm with greater speed and persistence until the wyvern legion could no longer afford to ignore him.

He had become the single highest-priority target.

The wyverns that had been mercilessly swarming the soldiers on the walls and the ones that had been trying to cross the wall and destroy the barrier protecting the city’s safe zone all turned around and began flying toward Minjun.

“Damn.”

He had succeeded in drawing the wyverns’ attention exactly as planned.

The problem was that he had succeeded too well.

He had only meant to attract as much attention as he could reasonably handle, but the impact of his recent performance had been so overwhelming that every wyvern’s attention was beginning to converge on him.

He had the mysterious Aura believed to have extended from Bellium’s statue, along with support from the ground forces.

Even so, how was he supposed to evade and fight this many wyverns when all of them were charging at him with murderous intent?

Whether he tried to run, throw off their pursuit, or block their attacks, there was a limit to what one person could do.

‘How many of them are there?’

For an instant, Minjun felt the fear that he might actually die like this.

The feeling did not last long.

‘I’ve already been through plenty of situations like this, haven’t I?’

Ever since Sia returned, Minjun had faced a strangely high number of life-or-death crises, yet he had overcome every single one of them in the end.

At first, he had thought each survival was a miracle, but if a miracle kept repeating itself, then it was no longer a miracle. It was ability.

There had to be a way for him to survive this crisis as well.

He simply had not thought of it yet.

At the very moment it seemed as though the wyvern swarm would tear him apart, Minjun began drawing out all the mana in his body and releasing it as though entranced.

The mana he released was mixed with the mysterious energy that had just flowed into him through the Aura.

For the first time in a very long while, the wyvern legion struck directly by Minjun’s energy began experiencing an unfamiliar emotion they had not felt before.

It was an overwhelming degree of fear, so intense that even breathing became difficult.

The energy Minjun released closely resembled the Dragon Fear used by dragons.

‘Don’t tell me… Did I just use Dragon Fear?’

Minjun had managed to use Dragon Tongue several times before, but this was his first time ever producing Dragon Fear, so even he was deeply shocked.

When the wyverns that had been charging at him with terrifying momentum flinched, Minjun gained confidence and released Dragon Fear over a wide area once again.

His Dragon Fear reached more than half of the wyverns.

The wyverns struck directly by it lost their will to fight and began retreating.

“The wyverns are falling back!”

“Waaaaah!”

“Push harder! Hit them with everything we’ve got!”

“It’s time we started dealing with the monsters on the ground too!”

Whatever the reason, the tide that had been against them only moments earlier had changed in an instant.

The moment the wyverns began retreating, the Elysium army seized the opportunity and unleashed everything they had.

Minjun rode the momentum as well, driving the wyverns back while continuing to release his energy.

At the same time, he swung the Dragon Bone Sword, whose Aura grew deeper with every passing moment, and steadily expanded the defensive perimeter.

The cheers of the volunteer soldiers, the thunderous crashes of enormous stones hurled by catapults striking the ground, the explosive sounds of magic, and the screams of wyverns and other monsters all blended together across the battlefield.

The entire battle was turning on its head.