Solo Leveling: Ragnarok - Chapter 147

A deafening noise filled the air, and the gigantic hand of the old man shattered like glass. The spatial distortions ceased, and the village’s scenery froze in its twisted state. The villains’ jaws dropped at the sight.

“Wh-what the hell is he?”

“How did he destroy the old man’s skill so easily?”

While they stood there, confused, a stern voice commanded from behind them, “Get your act together, all of you! A skill of that magnitude will have exhausted all his mana! If you go at him together right now, you can defeat him. Don’t just stand there!”

Hwang Dongsuk’s words jerked the villains back to reality. He had a point. The stronger the skill, the more mana it required—that much was a given. Even if the kid they were facing was a B-rank or even an A-rank, he would have squeezed out every last drop of mana to use a skill like that. A vicious gleam returned to the villains’ eyes.

“Th-that’s right! Let’s do this!”

“There’s only one of him!”

“Yeeeeeah!”

The villains all summoned their mana at the same time. Given their number, the resulting energy seemed to fill the air around them.

“That’s it, bastards! Don’t forget, we’ve even consumed top-grade stardust!” Dongsuk shouted pompously, boosting their morale even further.

Gray stepped down back onto the distorted ground, Suho on his back. That was when the villains attacked all at once.

“Kill him!”

As the villain in the lead shouted, Gray used his powerful teeth to tear off the man’s arm, then roared angrily. Screaming, the man was rocketed back even faster than he’d been charging at them.

Stardust? Suho’s eye twitched as he heard Dongsuk encouraging his men.

Beru stared up at the sky where the hand had been. “Young Monarch, I can’t sense the old man anymore!”

“You’re right. He’s probably run off,” Suho said, nodding as he recalled the moment his fist collided with the hand. Besides, he would have gotten a system message if the attack had been enough to destroy the hand’s owner. The old man was still alive, that was for certain. “But he can’t have gone far.”

“I agree with you,” Beru said. He narrowed his eyes, looking around at the oddly twisted scenery. “This illusion couldn’t be in effect if he’d gone a distance. He may be lurking nearby, biding his time and waiting for an opportunity.”

Beru began to describe what he’d seen of the same creatures during the Monarchs War. “Races from arcane worlds are cowards, but they are also treacherous. During the Monarchs War, even Yogumunt, the King of Demonic Spectres and Monarch of Transfiguration, hid behind the other Monarchs and only cast illusions or opened gates.” The shadow ant tutted as he recalled the event. It seemed that these demonic spirits were a hassle to deal with, war or no war.

“So, how did my father break their illusions?” Suho asked.

“Well… Power, of course.” Beru grinned and stared at the black energy covering Suho’s fist. “No matter what petty technique they attempted to wield against him, he tore them apart with absolute power and conviction.”

Suho banged his fists together and bared his teeth in a grin. “I like how simple that sounds.”

He turned to look at the countless villains who were coming at him. He’d never fought against humans before, and now he was facing a near legion. These were not all small fries, either. They made a formidable force, some of them being B-rank or even A-rank. The initial fight had gone well thanks to Taeshik, who could use concealment skills and was now his shadow soldier, but Suho was in no position to penetrate the defense of a B-rank tanker or above. On the surface, he was at a distinct disadvantage.

Strangely enough, however, he had a feeling he simply couldn’t lose. The villains’ advantage in numbers meant nothing, since Suho could utilize the dead as his soldiers. But he would refrain from summoning them at the moment, since the demonic spirit would be watching from his hiding spot not too far away. That old man could be in league with the Itarim, he thought.

Suho pondered his other options, then looked down at his shadow. “Esil, come out here for a second.”

The demon noble appeared. “Where is this place? You want me to fight all of a sudden?” She looked bewildered as she was faced with the horrid group rushing toward them from all sides. This did not last long, however. She gave a slight grin and held her hand to the side, a warlike expression on her face. “Lucky for you, I enjoy surprise battles,” she said, a long spear appearing in her hand.

Demons were, by nature, warlike. To a demon noble, who represented the pinnacle of their race, a battle was far more valuable than a conversation.

“I can kill all of them, right?” she asked. However, she didn’t stop to hear Suho’s answer. Her spear was already piercing through the hearts of the attackers.

Gray roared and rushed forward as well as if he was eager to not be outdone. Revealing his vicious fangs, he began to tear the villains’ limbs off.

Suho also drew Vulcan’s Horns in both hands and grinned broadly. “All right, then. Let’s wreak a bit of chaos, shall we?” They were still badly outnumbered, but he didn’t get the feeling that they were going to lose.

[Skill: “Storm Slash” has activated.]

A blade storm that blew forward from Suho’s double Vulcan’s Horns bore down on the villains.

My skills are even more effective with groups of enemies, Suho thought. He broke their formation with his wide-range skills, then Gray barged into enemy lines, using his vast bulk to crash into them or confuse them with direct attacks from his paws. In the meantime, Esil pierced the hearts of every enemy that the wolf had befuddled, playing the part of a lancer. They were reminiscent of a well-balanced assault team.

Esil cocked her head. “Wait, who’s beheading them?” There was also an unseen shadow soldier who hadn’t stopped for a moment, continuing to slash at the necks of the enemies. “What an interesting addition to your army,” she remarked. She looked genuinely amused as she swung her spear. “Suho! There’s a ton of them, but they’re all rabble! They don’t even know how to use their power properly!”

Suho had just come to this realization as well. Judging from the movements of these villains broken from Jisan Prison, they were lacking in battle experience, regardless of their rank or skills. It seemed that even the villains themselves had noticed this during the fight.

“W-we surrender!”

“Please spare us!”

Those who’d run out of mana began to put up their hands. Some of them cried, begging to be spared, and fell flat on their faces.

Would you look at that? As he realized what was happening, Suho noticed something odd. He suddenly stopped in his tracks and shouted viciously at the many villains around him, “Kneel! All of you!”

[Skill: “Bloodlust” has activated.]

Some of them were capable of resisting this skill, of course. But what about this? Suho let out an immense amount of malicious energy and shouted again, “Look around! Your boss has run away!”

“Th-that hairy bastard!”

The villains were confounded.

***

After driving all his men forward, Hwang Dongsuk had turned his back and immediately broken into a run.

Those fools!Did you morons really think you could win? He was laughing at the idiots for falling for his empty encouragement so easily. This is why those with no experience are so easy to trick.

The world knew Jisan Prison as an infamous establishment where only the worst offenders were gathered, but Dongsuk, who’d reigned as a king within it, thought it was nonsense. What?Villains, the worst possible superhuman criminals?F*ck that. It’s all bullsh*t. They might be called “villains,” but how many of them had actually gotten into a real fight using their powers? Most of them were captured by Woo Jinchul before they could even try.

Jinchul was an impressive man, to be sure. He somehow seemed to know exactly when the villains were about to launch into criminal activity in earnest, since that was right when he showed up to take them in. He always had the S-rank hunter Choi Jongin with him, as well. Dongsuk’s brother, Hwang Dongsoo, had at least been able to run away, as an S-rank himself.

Of course, most were unable to even resist, and it was these people who had ended up in Jisan Prison. That was why the villains in Jisan were completely inexperienced. Not only did they not know how to make proper use of their powers, they had no ability to gauge the power of others. If they had, they couldn’t have fallen for Dongsuk’s nonsensical claim that numbers could defeat anybody—unless it was an S-rank hunter like Choi Jongin, naturally.

Those idiots!Though I suppose it was their foolishness that let me take advantage of them so far. That was at an end now, however. Over fifty of them were dead already. Dongsuk had brought out no less than five hundred, but a tenth had been killed in a single day. If he chose to see things in a positive light, he still had the other ninety percent left, but this wasn’t strictly true. Sixty percent of them—that is, about three hundred and fifty—had rebelled and left the night before. That meant he only had about two hundred men left, and that number was what had just been reduced by fifty. They were still dying even at this moment.

So I only have around a hundred and fifty left, and at this rate, they’ll be wiped out today. It was a real headache.

This was bound to happen at some point, of course. The reason that he’d been able to reign supreme at Jisan Prison was all thanks to his brother’s name. It had also been Dongsoo’s reputation that enabled him to bring five hundred prisoners together and convince them to escape. He had lied to the villains in the prison in order to get out.

“Once we escape, my brother will come and join us!”

“Wow!Does that mean we’ll be serving an S-rank villain?”

“Of course! It’s obvious, isn’t it?”

The S-rank villain Hwang Dongsoo was supposed to give them his support. This lie had convinced every villain in Jisan to join Dongsuk, and all of them had escaped with him, without exception.

Butthere’s no way Dongsoo, that bastard, will actually come to save me, Dongsuk thought. It had already been two days since the chaotic escape, but Hwang Dongsoo had not shown up in Pocheon. Doubt began to spread among the villains, who had come this far on the belief that Dongsoo would help them, but he showed no signs of coming. They were slowly losing their trust in Dongsuk. The fact that he had been charged with fraud before he became a villain had an impact on their opinions as well.

Then last night, a group of villains had decided they would part ways with Dongsuk and strike out on their own. He had been unable to convince them otherwise. He didn’t have the power, either. Dongsuk was merely a C-rank villain, without the clout that his brother’s name represented.

No matter. Dongsuk smiled cockily and opened the door to the hiding place where the old man was residing. “Hey! We have a situation— Yikes!”

He froze. The old man wasn’t the only person inside—he was with a swarm of innumerable bees, clumped together into the shape of a woman.