Chapter 360: The Isagi Who Will Not Disappear (Patreon)

Isagi and Ais had both seen the [Black Dragon] before, but only in a fleeting glimpse. Now, they were about to see its true form!

The Dragon Valley was far vaster than they'd imagined — so boundless it gave the illusion of standing in an entirely different world.

Transformed into a golden-yellow orb of lightning, the [Soul Teardrop] shot straight toward the depths of the mist. Even when a few Great Dragons tried to block its path along the way, most of them were simply smashed to pieces on impact.

Just as Isagi had expected.

Now that he was past Lv.8, he'd undergone a qualitative shift — ordinary Great Dragon Monsters, even Lv.5 or Lv.6 ones, simply weren't worth taking seriously anymore.

So, encountering almost no resistance at all,

the Soul Teardrop drew closer and closer to the depths of the mist — toward the colossal being at the Dragon Valley's core—

First, what filled the boy's and girl's vision was a single, immense golden eye, vast enough to swallow their entire field of view.

Before they knew it, the Soul Teardrop seemed to have arrived right before the [Black Dragon].

Even watching through the [Eye Crystal], even though [Teardrop Big Bro] under their control was entirely a construct of Magic, Isagi and Ais could still feel an overwhelming, immense sense of terror.

It was like the instant before the world's destruction.

Everything, absolutely everything, lost all meaning — an immense Despair surged over them, blotting out the sky.

That feeling of Despair, crushing enough to utterly break a person, was something beyond description. It was—

[The End of All Ends].

"Ha... ha..." Ais's breath came ragged.

As if some memory had surfaced, all color drained from her pretty face.

If this Despair was real, then she must have lived through it before.

And she truly had.

"It's all right." The boy's voice came from beside her, familiar and steady, and it gave Ais a small warmth.

Even in the deepest terror and Despair, courage and hope still existed without fail.

Isagi's gaze remained steady.

It seemed to give Ais the courage to finally look again at what the [Eye Crystal] was showing.

And then, she realized with a start—

That immense "dragon eye" they'd seen just now wasn't the [Black Dragon] itself — or rather, the [Black Dragon] before them was no longer the [Black Dragon], because—

When the mist finally cleared, what stood before the Soul Teardrop was something colossal beyond measure, vast enough to blot out heaven and earth.

Hundreds of meters? Or a thousand?

No — there was no end in sight at all. It dwarfed every towering mountain range either of them had ever seen in their lives.

Its jet-black scales stretched out endlessly, like the depths of night.

And within that darkness, inside that unimaginably vast form, something was beating — a heartbeat.

This was the [Black Dragon]'s body — but at that moment, it was also a "heart," nurturing something within.

Through that boundless darkness,

Isagi and Ais could both make out a shape — impossibly tiny, yet undeniably there, radiating an indescribable aura of terror and danger. A "human form."

The [Black Dragon]. It was becoming "human."

"!!!" Just as he'd suspected, the [Black Dragon] possessed the ability to learn and evolve.

Long ago, a thousand years past, after being defeated by humans, the answer it had arrived at was to become human itself.

Isagi took a deep breath. Within the darkness before him, he could sense something achingly familiar.

There was no mistaking it — it was the scent of the [Dungeon] itself.

That "darkness" was identical, matched perfectly to the darkness he had once seen, brooding at the very depths of the [Dungeon].

"Got you!" A sudden, boisterous voice rang out behind him, and even the Soul Teardrop under Isagi's control turned to look back on reflex.

Right after, that "shattering glass" sound rang out all around once more.

In that instant, the space itself shifted.

A square, boxed-in world — as if heaven and earth had been compressed — appeared clearly before him, and the [Black Dragon] from a moment ago vanished completely.

"Well done! Leave the rest to me!!"

"For now I can only let you inside — that all right?"

"That's plenty!!"

The boisterous dragon-man seemed to be talking with someone outside the "box."

It hollered loudly, its eyes swirling with molten orange lava, as if ready to erupt at any moment.

The Soul Teardrop had been trapped by some kind of barrier.

Not that it mattered — Isagi had already achieved his goal. He'd seen the [Black Dragon]'s true form, and gathered more than enough intelligence about the Dragon Valley.

And now, facing a single dragon-man alone was, if anything, a good thing.

Because this meant even more intel.

He began studying the thing in front of him carefully. It had appeared abruptly, but overall, it really wasn't so different from a "human."

It stood somewhere between two and three meters tall — factor in the long, jagged horn jutting from its brow, and it easily topped three meters.

It wasn't particularly muscular — if anything, it looked almost slight and thin — but a "dragon's" body was certainly different from a real human's, so he couldn't just jump to conclusions about its Strength, Endurance, and other stats.

Otherwise it looked almost human — one nose, two eyes, two arms, two legs — except its hands and feet still took the shape of "claws," slender, razor-sharp, and considerably larger than a human's.

Ais recalled the [Miracle Twin-Headed Dragon] she'd faced before — it had looked much the same.

As for its face, though, it was frankly unremarkable — dragon-type Monsters probably didn't share human standards of beauty.

As for its body, crimson scales had hardened into armor across most of its skin, leaving the rest bare — its chest left half-open in a bold, unrestrained display.

It had no wings, yet it hovered easily in midair — though perhaps that was just a quirk of this particular space.

It carried no weapon either, simply watching with keen interest as the Soul Teardrop stood before it, greatsword in hand.

Then fierce flame ignited between its claws, and from within it a greatsword took shape — forged entirely of what looked like solid hardened stone, cast into being by the fire itself. The blade glowed crimson, heated to its absolute limit, wreathed in swirling, pure-white mist.

Did this thing feel no heat at all?

"Come on then. Seems like you're a lot stronger than last time — you didn't get taken out in one hit."

"Come to think of it, weren't you... um... what was it again... I forget......"

"Care to introduce yourself?"

"As for my name—"

The dragon-man turned out to be quite the chatterbox — and, in stark contrast to its careless, easygoing manner, even as it spoke it had already slipped into the Soul Teardrop's blind spot, swinging its blade down.

A sly, underhanded thing, Isagi thought.

At the same moment, its name surfaced in both their minds.

[Courage of the End · Miracle Manifestation · Hassel].

Wreathed in boundless flame, the dragon-man swung its greatsword — unremarkable in appearance, yet every swing thundered with roaring explosions.

Smoke and fire billowed together,

and the shockwave of the explosion struck in the blink of an eye, throwing the Soul Teardrop's body completely out of control.

But the [Dragon's Feast] — the new armor Cecil had forged for him — still retained its ability to fight autonomously.

Even though this version had been recreated purely from Magic, the same held true.

What's more, the Soul Teardrop felt no pain, and certainly no fear.

So the answer it gave to this treacherous fire dragon was a strike of its own, erupting with boundless flame to match.

Beneath its dragon-shaped armor, molten lava erupted in full — countless meteor showers of fire rained down with the Soul Teardrop at their center, no different from the end of the world.

And the dragon-man, standing right at the center of the catastrophe, naturally bore the brunt of it.

"!!!"

It was sent flying — hammered clean off its feet by raw Strength alone, while the sheer, overwhelming Magic surging outward even made the sealed "box" itself begin to tremble and buckle.

The space nearly collapsed outright.

This was the power of Lv.8 — utterly unlike Lv.7, a gulf as vast as heaven and earth.

Even in pure numbers alone, it was enough to crush his former self.

"Ahh—" As if it had spotted something fascinating.

An expression of pure astonishment crossed the fire dragon's face — its meaning unmistakable. In a thousand years, this was only the second time it had encountered someone like this.

That was, of course, an enormously happy thing!!

Because it had genuinely believed there would never be another one!

After all, it had waited nearly a thousand years just for one like this to come along!!

The Dragon Valley. As the final stage of the world-famous Three Great Quests, of course more than just Zeus Familia and Hera Familia had come here over the past thousand years.

Famous and obscure Familias and adventurers alike.

Some confident, some foolish, some utterly fearless, some simply treating it as their final destination before death.

The Dragon Valley stood right here, at the very edge of the north. Any adventurer with a high enough level could travel there — anyone could enter.

The only catch: no one had ever come out again once they went in.

So [Courage of the End · Miracle Manifestation · Hassel] had seen countless adventurers by now, but only a rare handful had ever managed to catch its interest.

What a genuine surprise this was!

What's more, judging by how quickly he'd come back after being "taken out" last time — and how much stronger he'd grown besides—

Could it be that he'd come back even stronger next time too?

Fascinating. Truly fascinating!

What did the outside world look like now? It really wanted to go see for itself!!

The Great Dragon armor wrapped around the Soul Teardrop had burned to its absolute peak, and now the fiery dragon-man had begun to burn as well.

The sky formed from the "box" itself had begun, impossibly, to melt away — a sight that made the dragon-man who'd just cast the "seal" frown slightly, though there was nothing it could do about it.

After all, the seal itself was, at its core, still Magic.

Naturally, once the Magic inside the "box" reached the very limit of what it could contain, the Magic sustaining the seal was bound to break down — there was nothing to be done about it.

Clearly, it hadn't expected things to turn out this way either — could this lone intruder really be that powerful?

If that was the case... surely what happened before wouldn't happen again.

Would some of them actually get taken out?

Outside the "box," another dragon-man looked coldly at the one trapped within — [Courage of the End · Miracle Manifestation · Hassel].

Would it become the fourth failed specimen to be taken out?

Inside the square, boxed-in space, two blazing infernos collided and burned against each other!

It was ferocious, pure — a raw contest of Strength, Endurance, and Magic with all technique abandoned entirely. The instant either side tried to "dodge" anything, it would be utterly swallowed by the other.

And that suited the Soul Teardrop perfectly — right in its comfort zone.

As always, being a pure construct of Magic, it had no mind, no sense of pain — it simply carried out, faithfully, the commands of Isagi, who was far outside the Dragon Valley at that very moment.

And because it was a Magic construct, replenishing its Magic was the same as replenishing its "life" — which, to Isagi's eyes right now, made Teardrop Big Bro essentially "undying and indestructible."

That wasn't only because of the battery — that mysterious Mystery-construct he'd long possessed, able to store Mental Strength anywhere, anytime, and burn through its own Magic in his stead to cast spells at critical moments.

There was also what came after leveling up to Lv.8.

What he now had a grasp on — no, had only just begun to touch, to become aware existed, and to use even a fraction of — was the power of wishes.

When manifested, its defining trait was this—

[It never disappears].

Countless deaths, countless revivals, countless attempts, countless failures, countless returns, an endless cycle repeating over and over...

Forever and ever.

The core of what they called a "soul" was simply never giving up.

And so long as one never gave up, one would always exist — always have another chance to try again.

Its very foundation of existence lay in one's own conviction.

As long as he hadn't given up, he would, without fail, absolutely continue to exist — this was the power of wishes that Isagi, since reaching Lv.8, had gradually begun to grasp.

Utterly absurd.

But then he thought of Ais's side of things — "casting Magic that only she could release," "turning into boundless wind to appear anywhere," and all her other abilities — and figured this was fair enough.

Everyone's got their cheats these days. Him running some kind of "unkillable" hack? Only fair, right?

Besides, this ability did have one well-known weakness.

Namely, one's spirit — or willpower — had to be strong enough. The moment the thought "give up" surfaced in one's mind, it was game over, no exceptions.

But then again — sharp readers had probably already realized — put this ability on something with absolutely no sense of pain and no emotions at all, like Teardrop Big Bro, and it became flat-out invincible.

Right now, in a certain sense, the Soul Teardrop truly was undying and indestructible.

It existed eternally — unless Isagi himself made it "disappear," nothing could kill it.

It was like exploiting some absurd "bug."

But that was completely normal, wasn't it? It wasn't a bug at all — it was a feature!

Meanwhile, the battle inside the Dragon Valley dragged on and on.

For Great Dragons that had already lived a thousand years, this stretch of time meant nothing at all. And for the boy and girl now relaxing comfortably by a campfire outside the Dragon Valley, of course, it meant nothing either...