The Lord Who Levels Up by Devouring - Chapter 41

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 41. The Dragon’s Wrath
Kai’s deep blue eyes gleamed with intensity.
They pursued the fleeing monsters without mercy.
The creatures trembled, consumed by terror.
Their movements grew clumsy and desperate.
Kai did not slow his pace—he accelerated, closing the distance with relentless speed.
I could not afford to let them escape.
They would return one day and threaten the Whitewolf Territory once more.
Of course, Adrian’s impossible display of prowess had already annihilated roughly half their numbers.
A feat so extraordinary that it seemed impossible for a single person to achieve.
Yet on the other hand, it meant approximately half of them still remained.
Normally, monsters never form legions.
They may gather in packs for survival, but they do not form organized armies.
This was a phenomenon I had never witnessed in all my time in the Whitewolf Territory—indeed, a phenomenon unseen across the entire Continent.
I did not fully understand how it was possible.
‘Someone is controlling the monsters.’
They moved with clear purpose and unified command.
Creatures that should have competed for survival in the wild now moved as a collective consciousness, enslaved to a single will.
This meant their breeding would accelerate exponentially.
The one commanding the legion need only force them to reproduce.
The monster army before me now was proof of this.
The Snowy Mountain could never naturally sustain such numbers.
The food chain naturally regulated their population through predation and death.
In other words, this was the result of forced breeding by someone’s hand.
Therefore, the monsters fleeing today would multiply exponentially within months, and another such legion assault was inevitable.
I could not let them escape.
Every last one had to be destroyed.
Within a few months, the monsters now fleeing would swell to staggering numbers and trample and devastate the entire Whitewolf Territory.
Kai’s blade, wreathed in brilliant azure aura, tore through Dermexus’s back as it fled.
Shhwack!
Dermexus shrieked in agony and collapsed. Kai did not pause. He lunged toward another monster, his blade flashing without restraint.
There was no mercy in his movements, no hesitation. As the monsters tried to flee, Kai pursued them relentlessly, cutting them down without quarter.
Some monsters turned to face him, lashing out with claws and fangs. Kai sidestepped with fluid grace, then swiftly drove his blade through their hearts and crushed their skulls.
His silver armor was repeatedly stained with blood, only to be cleansed by the swirling snow, in an endless cycle.
Chaos and screams echoed in my ears.
Adrian’s power was beyond belief, yet even he could only annihilate roughly half the monster legion.
Against overwhelming numbers, even a single warrior cannot stand alone.
There was only one being who could make such an impossible feat possible.
Seraphia.
Only she.
Among those Kai knew, Seraphia was the only one capable of such a feat.
This was possible because of the bitter cold inherent within Seraphia’s body—a force that was simultaneously a curse and an ability.
Yet a curse remained a curse, and it should never be wielded.
It was not that it could not be used.
It simply should not be used.
This time, only through Adrian’s intervention had I managed to overcome it.
But I could not afford to assume the next encounter would unfold the same way.
Therefore.
‘I will slaughter them all here.’
Kai’s blade grew increasingly savage and swift as it pierced through the hearts of monsters.
It was precisely as Kai’s sword shattered another monster’s heart that a single thought suddenly crystallized in his mind.
An abrupt realization seized him.
…Something felt wrong.
Thud.
Suddenly, his body refused to obey.
As if his entire frame had transformed into stone, every muscle hardened into rigidity.
The aura circulating through his body seized all at once, frozen in place.
He was not alone in this paralysis.
The entire legion of fleeing monsters had solidified like ice statues, their bodies locked in crystalline stillness.
Only then did Kai perceive the ‘something’ that had invaded the consciousness of himself and the monsters alike.
‘This is….’
Dragon Fear.
The same sensation as when he had confronted Gelu Drake….
No, wait.
This was more like….
The supreme sovereign reigning over all existence—a dragon.
It felt as though he stood before the very essence of dragonkind itself.
Though Kai had never actually encountered a dragon, he unmistakably felt this overwhelming pressure.
Of course, there was no dragon present in this place.
Gelu Drake was not here either.
Kai’s head turned slowly.
And there stood none other than Adrian.
Adrian remained motionless where he had been, his appearance unchanged from the last moment Kai had seen him.
Yet for some inexplicable reason, Adrian no longer seemed human to Kai.
His form and visage were unmistakably human, yet Kai perceived the silhouette of a dragon within him.
A ferocious dragon, suppressed to its absolute limit.
And that restraint—
was finally meeting its terrible liberation.
“No, wait—!”
Kai cried out in alarm, but it was already too late.
ROOOOOAAAAAARRRRR—!!!
Tremendous flames erupted from Adrian.
The bitter cold of the frozen peak suddenly blazed hot. The biting chill that had seared my flesh vanished in an instant. The scorching heat flooding into my lungs felt as though it would incinerate my entire body.
Kai hastily unfurled his aura. He deployed the aura blade far more intensely than when he had blocked the avalanche on Snowy Mountain.
And through dimming eyes, he stared ahead.
He could see it.
SCREEEEEEEEE—!!
The shattering fury of a dragon.
A colossal and savage dragon awakening from Adrian’s outstretched arms.
The dragon rose its massive form and swept forward. Its enormous and ferocious jaws opened wide with a crack, consuming all living things that existed upon the earth—
First of all.
Sound itself ignited.
Following that, the snow and ice accumulated throughout Whitewolf Territory erupted in flames from the dragon’s heat, evaporating entirely. Pale white steam shrouded all directions.
The melted water instantly transformed into vapor and scattered into the air.
The Snowy Plain, stripped of its moisture, cracked like a rice paddy dried by early drought, spider-web fractures etched across every direction.
As if the landscape of Snowy Mountain itself were collapsing.
An ancient inferno.
The frozen landscape burning.
…It was a power beyond the mortal realm.
This could never be called human.
How could one call human something that burned not merely cold, but the very season of bitter frost itself?
It was worthy of being called a dragon, and more.
ROOOOOAAAAAARRRRR—!!!!
All Kai could do was be consumed alongside the monster legion by the fury of that savage dragon.
* * *
The ancient inferno that had burned the frozen landscape.
As time passed and it subsided, it revealed its massive, scarlet wound.
The Snowy Plain, once blanketed in snow, was now covered in ash.
The ice crevasses of Snowy Mountain melted away, wisps of hazy steam rising from them.
The snow, melted in an instant, flowed like lava, laying bare the scars left by the inferno.
The monster legions that had fled were charred black, their scorched remains scattered on the wind.
Fractures etched across the Snowy Plain’s earth as if dried by early drought.
Between those fractures, red light flickered and still radiated its heat.
The air of Snowy Mountain, once so cold it froze the lungs, had become so hot it burned them.
The billowing steam not only obstructed vision but made breathing itself difficult.
“!!!!!”
“!!!!!”
“!!!!!”
The shock of soldiers and knights erupted across all of Whitewolf Territory.
The soldiers descending the Castle Wall, the knights commanding the soldiers, the soldiers opening the Castle Gate—not a single soul remained unshaken.
A scorched wasteland that rejected life itself, as if refusing the breath of living things.
“What… what did I just witness…?”
“Ughhhh…!!!”
Everyone who witnessed the dragon’s wrath stood paralyzed by shock.
It was as though time itself had ignited in those flames.
That was precisely when it happened.
“Cough…!!”
A pained groan suddenly pierced the air.
There, chasing the monster legion, stood Kai—the golden wolf—staggering.
Kai knelt on one knee, his sword driven into the ground before him.
“Kha…!”
Crimson blood cascaded from Kai’s lips like a waterfall, pouring without end.
His golden hair, once luminous as sunlight, was now charred black.
His silver armor, which had gleamed so brilliantly, was scorched pitch-black.
“Kha…!”
To any observer, Kai’s condition appeared dire.
Understandably so.
Kai had taken the dragon’s wrath head-on.
This made the soldiers’ shock all the more profound.
“He… he’s alive…?”
“And he took that directly…?!”
The fact that Kai had confronted the dragon’s wrath and remained alive.
Of course, he was far from unscathed.
Yet the mere fact that he endured by coughing blood was nothing short of miraculous and awe-inspiring.
And because of this, the soldiers’ greatest astonishment was directed elsewhere.
Another man alive in the wasteland alongside Kai.
The black wolf that had prowled among the flocks.
And Adrian—who had transformed the Snowy Mountain into this barren wasteland, like a dragon himself.
Adrian had stood upright at first. Yet his condition was far more severe than Kai’s.
Adrian’s entire body was ravaged, swaying unsteadily.
But both his arms were nowhere to be seen.
Thud.
Adrian staggered and collapsed to the ground. He did not move again.
It was at that very moment that Seraphia’s consciousness snapped back.
“Brother!!!”
Seraphia rushed toward Adrian like a madwoman. And as she drew closer, her complexion grew increasingly pale.
Adrian lay before her like black ash, as though he had been pulled from a raging inferno.
Most horrifyingly, his missing arms—nowhere to be found—left deep cavities that extended to his shoulders, creating a grotesque and nightmarish sight.
By any measure… he did not appear to be alive.
Seraphia’s crimson eyes widened in a moment of devastating shock.
My lips trembled, quivering uncontrollably.
I wanted to say something, anything, but no words would escape my mouth.
“Ah, ahhh…!”
My throat constricted, my heart feeling as though it were being torn apart.
The pain was so overwhelming that I could barely breathe.
Adrian—he had sacrificed himself to save the people of my territory, to save them all.
If I had known, if I had seen this coming, I would not have hesitated to use my power.
I should have been the one to sacrifice myself instead.
My legs gave way beneath me, and I collapsed where I stood.
My shoulders, trembling violently, could no longer bear the weight and crumbled inward.
Just as thick tears began to fall, one after another—
“Over there…”
A voice, faint and barely audible.
My head snapped up in an instant.
My tear-stained face turned toward the direction of that voice.
And then.
I could see it.
“Shove some monster into my mouth, will you?”
…A corpse was speaking.
A corpse without arms, thrashing about wildly, convulsing.
How grotesque a sight this was.
Thud.
I lost consciousness on the spot.
* * *
…The power was far greater than I had anticipated.
Though I had extracted the dragon’s genetic factor and manifested the dragon’s authority through it, I never expected it to be this potent.
‘This is insane.’
It was utterly insane.
Authority was no joke, after all.
Of course, since it was merely an ‘extraction’, it could not compare to a true dragon’s breath authority.
But compared to the ice breath that Gelu Drake had wielded?
Wrath of the Dragon [E] was far superior.
The recoil I received was devastating.
Both my arms, which had fired Wrath of the Dragon [E], had not merely torn apart—they had disintegrated entirely. The backlash had ruptured every organ in my body.
Fortunately, the flames had cauterized the wounds, preventing blood from spilling out.
My regeneration, which had evolved to [B+] rank this time.
As long as my heart and brain remained intact, I could regenerate anything.
But I needed to regenerate quickly, or this wouldn’t end well.
Yet my calories were depleted.
My arms had disintegrated—there was nothing I could do.
My inventory is completely empty.
“There… just shove some monster into my mouth.”
I couldn’t do anything by myself.
At least my vocal cords hadn’t burned away, so I could still produce sound, but truthfully, I didn’t have time to lie here like this.
I needed to find the entity commanding the monster legion.
Perhaps.
An existence that might be the Beast Lord itself.
And I had just gained two certainties.
‘The Quest hasn’t been cleared.’
The sudden Quest remained incomplete.
It meant there were more monsters in the legion.
What just happened was merely the first wave, which simultaneously meant there existed an entity commanding the legion.
Perhaps an existence that might be the Beast Lord itself.
And the other certainty was that I could face the Beast Lord if I utilized combination skills.
No matter how formidable the Beast Lord was, the power of Dragon’s Wrath [E] would surely be effective.
So I had to regenerate as quickly as possible and track down the Beast Lord.
Fortunately, Seraphia came rushing over.
But what was this.
Thud.
She collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut, and showed no sign of getting up.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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