Solo Leveling: Ragnarok - Chapter 125

[Shadow Elf – Level 1 – Knight Grade]

[Shadow Elf – Level 1 – Knight Grade]

[Shadow Elf – Level 1 – Knight Grade]

A unit of shadow archers appeared in front of Suho, standing confidently as dark steam wafted up from their bodies. They held shadow bows in their hands, immediately on Suho’s command, they began to fire at their enemies. The archers formed shadow arrows rapidly, creating multiple at a time as they attacked.

“My god!” Sirka, realizing what they were, couldn’t hide her shock. “You stole back the souls from the spirits!” The souls of the ice elves had finally received the freedom of true death.

Sirka suddenly realized the true meaning of the epithet “Cha Cha’s son.” The husband of Cha Cha—that is, Cha Haein—was Sung Jinwoo, a man who ruled over death itself. He was the “Monarch of Shadows,” and Sung Suho had inherited that man’s blood as well.

“Forward. All of you!” Suho commanded, and the shadow archers once again took aim.

***

While Suho was laying siege to the Echo Forest from the outside, the hunters of the Scavenger Guild who had entered the dungeon with him had long been wandering the same forest’s depths. Now, ice arrows were flying at them from every direction.

“There they come again, damn it!”

“Block them!”

“We can’t this time! There are too many of them!”

“Then let’s take cover behind those trees for now!”

Unlike Suho, who was separated from them when they fell, the rest of the party had found themselves in the Echo Forest from the start. Suho would likely have ended up in the same place if he hadn’t used Storm Slash to attempt to fly through the blizzard.

Though the Scavenger Guild hunters hadn’t used the same methods, they had still managed to stay calm and make a successful landing without losing anyone. These were the members of the biggest guild in the United States, and that very fact attested to their skill.

The safe landing, however, did not guarantee them any rest. The ice spirits had attacked from all sides the moment their feet hit the ground.

“Ice elves… possessed by spirits, huh?” Esil, who had fallen into the forest with them and fought beside them since then, tutted at the sight of the elves. She looked completely perplexed. “What a sight! The Snow Folk, swallowed up by some ice spirits? How weak were they when they were alive?”

The Monarch of Frost, the King of the Snow Folk, would probably turn in his grave at the sight, she thought sadly. “The Snow Folk are supposed to specialize in the manipulation of spirits. To think they’ve been consumed by their pawns!”

Esil, a demon noble, knew very well what made these “Snow Folk” frightening. The ice elf warriors who’d fought in the Monarchs War had always been protected by the ice spirits. No matter what weapon they carried, the attacks made using the spirits bore the Curse of Extreme Cold. Any limb hit with one of their arrows would freeze up, and if one was cut by their blade, the wound would instantly freeze without a splatter of blood. After a few of those frosty and brutal attacks, the target would find their entire body starting to grow sluggish and cold. This is what made ice elves all the more fearsome the longer one was fighting them.

I might have fallen to one of them myself, if it hadn’t been for the Ice Bear’s Robe from Suho… Esil contemplated.

There was a loud crack from near her. “Augh! My arm just broke off! Hey! Healer! Where’s the healer?”

“W-wait! I’m on my way—”

As it so happened, a hunter just had one of their limbs shatter after being hit by an arrow. Esil’s eyes flashed in response. A wound like that would be impossible to treat using ordinary methods. She quickly ran up to the hunter and tore into the wound in his shoulder with her hands.

“Goddamn it! That hurts!” the man screamed.

“Endure it. You can only be treated after the cold that has gotten into your veins is drawn out.”

Form bloodstone. As the hunter screamed in pain, Esil quickly pulled a frozen bloodstone from his wound. She then issued a command to the healer that had just arrived. “Now generate him a new arm! The same goes for the others! You can only heal the injuries after cutting away the affected parts entirely!”

“Y-yes! Understood!”

The demon noble’s charisma, which shone under such urgent circumstances, impressed the healer. He found himself obeying her without realizing it. This charisma bled over to the other hunters as well.

“Don’t let another arrow hit you, or even graze you! The moment the arrow tip touches your skin, the Curse of Extreme Cold will sink into your body!” Esil shouted. Because many Scavenger Guild members were physically tough, they had simply let most attacks hit them as they fought. But if a stray arrow penetrated their armor, it would prove fatal.

Esil set out to assemble the scattered hunters, encouraging those she came across who were in the midst of fighting. Some of them were A-rank and stronger than her, but they only had two years of experience at most.

Esil had lived in the dog-eat-dog environment that was the demon realm since birth, and her leadership ability was many leagues beyond that of human hunters. As the hunters joined forces and their numbers grew, they finally began to gain a measure of stability, instead of being forced to flee for their lives as they had been at first.

“I think we’re starting to get used to this!”

“So we just destroy them, right?”

“Where is our guild master, anyway?”

“Thomas! Thomas Andre! Can you hear us?”

As they began to find their pace, they began to seriously search for Thomas, who was their most important asset. It proved to be anything but easy. The snow and wind disrupted their senses.

“Where in the world did Suho fall?” Rather than Thomas, Esil was looking for Suho. As she did, she suddenly felt a chill that set her hair on end. Her head shot up.

“Wh-what the hell?” The group of Scavenger hunters had been wandering through the forest at random, and they had come to a location where the snow falling from above was partially gray.

“Gray snow…?” Esil’s eyes widened. No… It’s not snow! As a demon, she had a fundamental familiarity with blood and bodies, and she recognized the substance. “These are… ashes! The ashes of burnt bodies have mixed with the snow!”

How can bodies burn in this terrible cold? she wondered. But that was beside the point. The energy that these tiny bits of ash carried instilled a fear in her heart that was impossible to describe.

“Don’t tell me… It’s a dragon?” She sensed the energy of dragons in the ashes. Realizing this with a start, she urgently studied her surroundings. She saw nothing, but there seemed to be only one possibility. She spun around and faced the area where the ashes were the thickest, staring as hard as she could into the blizzard.

“A dimensional breach has opened up in that direction! And it leads to the world of the dragons…” Or perhaps a different place entirely.

The war between Sung Jinwoo’s shadow army and the Monarchs had followed the dimensional rifts into all sorts of different worlds. The only person she could think of who could kill dragons, and burn them to ash, was Jinwoo. It seemed impossible that the dragons had fought among themselves, after all.

This is not good… Esil thought. Among all the races living in the various dimensions, two could be deemed the most dangerous—the dragons and the giants. The dragons were armed with extremely large amounts of mana and powerful abilities, making their remains powerful treasures in their own right.

And their bodies are being sprayed across the land as ashes? This simply did not bode well for the hunters. I can’t believe the curse of dead dragons is being scattered over the soil!

Esil urgently turned to the hunters, who were still fighting the spirits of the forest. “We’re going back the way we came! We need to get out of here as fast as possible!”

“What? What’s this about, all of a sudden?”

“This forest is cursed! This gray snow—” Just as she gave the warning, it appeared. It was a momentary flicker, but a dark form flitted past her field of vision, beyond the ashen snow. Her eyes widened in shock. “It’s a dragon!” She’d just seen a gigantic dragon flapping its open wings beyond the blizzard.

The hunters were naturally also in shock.

“Holy sh*t.”

“Th-the heck is that?”

“A dragon!”

In the past two years, dragons had not once appeared on Earth. There had been gargoyles, which were somewhat similar in shape, but no gargoyle could match the size of a dragon.

“W-we need to get out of here!”

“Oh god… Where’s Thomas when we need him?”

“Retreat! Retreat!”

“We can’t handle a dragon by ourselves!”

The hunters scurried back before Esil had even finished barking the order. The sight of the dragon had made them realize that the Ice Golems were nothing.

They had made a racket in the process of reaching this part of the forest. While they were locked in a struggle to survive, it seemed that they had riled up a dragon sleeping in the depths of the forest.

“Goddamn it…” Esil thought, retreating with her eyes still on the dragon. She gulped down air.

The creature, which had been flying beyond the blizzard, had suddenly turned toward them. It opened its mouth wide and gave a hair-raising roar. The roar stunned them, and their breaths couldn’t escape their throats.

It was Dragon’s Fear. The bloodlust in the roar gripped their very beings, and they were rooted to the spot where they stood. The realization sunk in that they were mere frogs crouching before a snake—helpless prey before that formidable creature.

As the hunters awaited what appeared to be certain doom, a new dragon flew in and crashed into the other, which had been moving in for the kill. A massive explosion resulted, and the shockwaves sent the hunters flying off like grains of pollen in the wind.

Esil had managed to stay alert even through the chaos and clearly saw what was happening. Suddenly, her eyes bulged.

“W-wait… this can’t be!” The second dragon’s entire body seemed to be giving off black steam. And more than that…

Do my eyes deceive me? She thought she saw someone riding on its back. The distance was too great and the snow too heavy to make out their face—but she saw that it was the silhouette of a woman with a dagger in each hand.