Galaxy’s First Ruler - Chapter 286

…

Meuric’s voice had weight, but the shout itself was empty.

The Skill, Summon, allowed a Dreamer to call on a magical beast. Whether the beast would answer the call was an entirely different matter. Especially when the beast had yet to see the proof of the summoner’s worthiness.

-The contracted magical beasts are like women. All have a different standard for their men. Some are satisfied with being timid but gentle. Some won’t even look at the brave, but rough. Unless they get exactly what they want, a magical beast won’t submit to the wishes of the summoner.-

The paragraph was underlined by the author himself in the infamous book, MANA and RECORD: a philosophical theory.

The simple acceptance of Fire-Back Baboon had nothing to do with the wishes of the Thunder Boa. It didn’t come as a surprise to Aldrich when the beast hadn’t responded to Meuric’s call.

‘Let’s see for how long it will remain silent.’

Aldrich wasn’t worried about the beast’s unresponsiveness. He knew later if not sooner, the beast would come out. It was just a matter of time, not the lack of Meuric’s determination. The only reason Aldrich could think of Meuric being unworthy was his innate nature of pity.

‘The Pain is masking his fear well. But it’s not enough to rub all the traces off. Hmm…’ Aldrich contemplated for a feasible reason and saw Meuric’s disappointed look, getting distorted with a painful rage.

Meuric reached the three nobles, who were rubbing their eyes to make sense of their surroundings. The Rare Ranked Dreamer was still fine, with only tears streaming down from the corner of his eyes. The rest of the two Common Dreamers had their eyes shut, almost as if someone had sewn their eyelids together. Painful grunts kept coming out of their mouth like someone was puncturing their eyes with needles.

Meuric must have noticed how their feet were stumbling to make sure they were even standing. This was his moment. His hand reached out like a python and grabbed the neck of the bull-like beast’s summoner. Before the Dreamer could differentiate the pain in his eyes from the pain in his neck, Meuric slammed him on top of the Level 11 Rare Ranked Dreamer.

With Meuric’s towering figure, it looked like he was hammering a nail onto the ground.

Cough!

Crunch!

The Common noble coughed out a mouthful of blood, and a crunching sound came out of the werewolf’s Summoner. There was no time to waste. Meuric crouched, ignoring the broken rib entering his flesh, and lunged at the third Common Dreamer.

Pain was pain. It had no flavor, nor it had any substance. But to Meuric it must have felt like a flavor of blood, and sticky, unlike any liquid. Drops of blood flung out from his closed mouth, escaping through the gap between his teeth. His right hand flailed as it was the tail of a beast who had no control over it.

But his jump was like a panther and had an elasticity of invertebrates, despite his size. Meuric’s foot covered the entire chest of the third Dreamer and sent him flying like a bullet.

“SUMMON.”

…

No response.

Aldrich could tell Meuric had lost control of his strength when the young boy had tried to not kill the Common Ranked Dreamers in one blow. The repercussions weren’t as merciful as the mercy he had shown. Because of his toned-down smash and kick, none of the Dreamers had lost consciousness, despite them being in a motionless state. If they had, their magical beast would have unsummoned automatically.

But there they were, walking towards Meuric like zombies.

The boar-headed, horned beast had died, his body was still with a pond of blood under it. The other two hadn’t gone unscathed, either. But they were beasts, and none needed to mask their fear with pain.

The black mantis had lost half of its body, yet it still crawled its way towards Meuric using the enormous scythe-like claws. The dwarf werewolf had its lower jaw hacked off, and a half bloody, slimy tongue dangled out of its mouth, licking the flesh underneath.

Whoosh!

Suddenly, a fist-size gray-spotted white disk rocketed towards the sky. The Level 11 Dreamer shoved the noble off him and stood up. His left hand was clutching his right collarbone, and his right hand was raised high towards the disc he had thrown just now.

Meuric must have sensed something off for him to snap his head back. Before he could comprehend what had gone wrong for the beasts to not disappear, a milky-white beam fell on the dwarf werewolf.

Enhanced Full Moon Blessing!

Aawooooo!!!

The werewolf howled with its half mouth and spread out its hands. In just the blink of an eye, his size changed and reached Meuric’s height. Its fur darkened and now felt blacker than the Mantis’ outer covering. Its eyes became a copied image of the moon disc hovering high in the air.

Aldrich saw Meuric’s face clear as day amid this storm of howls and the surrounding enemies. He was tired. His legs were shaking, not because of fear, but because of the accumulated weariness. The boy had yet to get any SP potion from Aldrich after the second round of the Pain transfer. And it was showing its result vividly now.

He could fall any moment. But he didn’t.

What was keeping him up? None knew.

But one could see the young boy was looking at Aldrich, past the hulking wolf and menacing mantis.

Aldrich stood there like a statue, almost as if all had forgotten about him after the last word he had uttered out, unknown by everyone.

Meuric licked his lips. His back crunched as he straightened it. He took a last breath as if going for a deep swim and let out a shout.

“FOR BOID!”

Meuric and the Werewolf lunged at each other. The Mantis used one of its claws as a pivot and jumped towards them, too. The wolf clawed at Meuric with its long, dull but sharp claws. Three claws ripped open Meuric’s chest like paper, and the boy’s thundering fist entered the werewolf, opening a hole as wide as his arm.

The mantis hacked at Meuric’s right arm, cutting it in half from elbow to palm. At the same time, the arm stuck into the werewolf’s chest vanished, and blasted off the mantis’ ugly face in a juicy pulp.

The three fell over the rocks and rolled away from each other.

Two dead, and the third might as well be deader than dead.

The lead Dreamer finally came out of the blast’s area, rubbing away the dirt off his white uniform. His face had blackened and there were burn-marks here and there. But a single fire-arrow wasn’t enough to give him serious injuries.

The two commoners had also stood up by now, ignoring their wounds. One had a hole in his eye, and the other was almost out of breath. All the nobles gathered one by one, too. As Baron Siwan had said, none who had come here was a fool. As the six Dreamers had time to think about it, they immediately got to know something had gone wrong amid the fight.

Aldrich knew a time would come when this would happen. And that time would be the most disastrous and the most decisive moment for Meuric.

“Fuck all Boids. Fucking whore-bred idiots, all of them! Fuck!”

The leader cursed and snapped his head towards Aldrich. There was an absolute rage in his eyes, and Aldrich could tell the Level 12 Dreamer wanted to do nothing but rip him in pieces. But what happened next made all the Dreamers let out a gasping sound.

Slowly, stumbling but surely, Meuric stood up. No blood was coming out of his chest wound, and even the flesh of his right hand looked abnormally yellow.

“This monster… Fire!”

The leader commanded, and the one-eyed archer let go of a blazing arrow at the same time. The arrow entered the hole in Meuric’s right shoulder, burning his flesh, and came out of his back, almost separating his right hand from his body. But the boy didn’t utter a squeal from the pain.

Aldrich felt a monstrous amount of self-pity returning to Meuric’s heart. As if a volcano had erupted because of the buried lava from ages ago. But unlike the past, Meuric didn’t feel shame because of it. He accepted all the self-pity and its every burning drop.

For the first time, Meuric could feel the pain of his heart. Aldrich knew it. The boy held his head up high and looked at Aldrich.

“So this is Pain…”

It wasn’t the entire truth, but Aldrich knew the boy was standing at a blurry boundary.

-“Say it.”-

Meuric let out a smile, innocent, and free of all the burdens.

“Master, thank you.”

-“Bring it out”-

BOOM!!!

Crack-Crackkkk!

Bolts of lightning appeared around Meuric like a cage. Thunder snapped and cracked, and it lingered on his body, licking his flesh.

The Boids were fearless. It was known.

But the reason for even the nobles to fear them was something else.

Meuric opened his mouth, and the Dreamers shivered in fear, remembering the stories.

“SUMMON.”

Hisssssss-rackkk!!!!

A bolt of lightning descended from the cloudless sky and coiled around Meuric. Strange hissing and crackling sounds kept coming out from this lightning bolt. Sometimes it was the size of an earthworm, and sometimes it was more than hundreds of ft long.

Hissss!

The rocks hurled outwards as the bolt hissed again and stopped at a height of 15 ft from the ground. There was no skin on it, and one could see no hint of flesh. It was lightning, and it was thunder.

This was one of the most unique creatures in the Galaxy.

An unmatched, pure thunder-attributed magical beast.

THUNDER BOA.