Chapter 137

VMMMM...!!

Juter had fallen, but the array was still churning violently.

An enormous torrent of information poured in like the tide. It was every bit the alchemical formula one would expect a dragon to create.

"Hah... hah..."

With her hand extended over the wavering black shape, Setsuna concentrated, struggling for breath. Without [Speed Reading] and [Analysis], she might already have collapsed from the overload.

"W-we have to get away!! It's going to explode any second!!!"

She shouted as she pushed the black shape back into the array. It kept trying to burst free as though it were alive.

"You don't think you can control it?"

Woojin kicked Juter's severed head aside and approached Setsuna.

[SCREEEEEECH!!!]

Woojin looked at the black shape.

A chill ran through him. Merely looking at it made him feel as though he were suffocating.

[Death].

Astonishingly, the moment he saw that shape, no other word came to mind.

'Did he really... create death?'

Woojin trembled.

"In alchemy, the result changes depending on the ingredients. But... the ingredients that went into this are utterly insane."

As Setsuna said, Juter had shoved all manner of horrors from his pouch into the array. But the most horrific ingredient of all must have been his own blood.

"Isn't there any way to control it?"

"See for yourself."

Setsuna took Woojin's hand.

"...!!"

At that moment, his vision went dark.

Darkness in which he could see nothing.

And then—

[SCREEEEEECH!!!]

With that roar, his vision returned to normal. His entire body was drenched in sweat.

"Th-this is..."

It was something he had never experienced before. Nothing like death in the game.

Real death.

Formless death had been given existence through alchemy. Merely facing it seemed enough to tell him what death was.

"... What a truly horrific creation."

Woojin gritted his teeth, trying to shake off the tingling that ran through his entire body.

"Just let it go."

That was when it happened.

Incredibly, Juter's severed head was speaking to Woojin.

THUD. THUD.

A Dragonfang Soldier walked in, lifted Juter's fallen body, and stood it beside his head. The other Dragonfang Soldiers fitted his head onto his neck as though assembling a mannequin.

He looked grotesque, his neck shoved halfway in, but he did not seem to care. He simply took another vial from his pouch and drank it.

"The alchemical formula has already begun. Suppressing it like that will only make it push back harder, you know?"

The instant he emptied the vial, his severed neck regenerated.

"Phew!"

Juter took off his mask as though it were stifling him.

The face beneath it was horrifying. His skin was distorted as though it had melted, with white layers peeling up like a snake's sloughed skin.

CRACK...

His skin split. Eyeballs began appearing all over his face, coated in mucus as though caked with discharge.

There was something familiar about his appearance.

A Human Golem.

'Did he experiment on his own body?'

Still, at least the golems died when their heads were cut off...

"What in the..."

Goun froze, speechless at the impossible sight.

"Tsk. Interrupting me at such a crucial moment... You, elf. Just you wait. You won't get off merely crippled this time."

With his head fitted back in place, Juter walked toward Goun.

"You should have known your place instead of interfering."

WHAAAM!!!

Juter reached out, and his arm grew enormous as it struck Goun.

"... Gah!"

Goun flew several meters, slammed into the wall, and collapsed.

Juter walked toward Woojin, dragging an arm that had grown as large as he was tall.

It scraped along the floor.

The arm had transformed into something like a dragon's foreleg, covered in black scales, with sharp talons jutting from every finger.

"Don't waste your time."

Juter looked annoyed as he watched Ruen draw her bow and Irurin prepare a spell.

WHOOSH!!

But a warning from him was hardly going to stop them.

KRA-KA-KA-BOOM!!

The arrow blazed with light as it left the bowstring.

It was [Arcane Arrow], one of her master skills.

[ROAAAR!!]

But at that instant, a Dragonfang Soldier spread its arms and stepped in front of Juter.

CRUNCH-CRUNCH-CRUNCH...!!

Despite the tremendous power of the attack, the Dragonfang Soldier doggedly devoured Ruen's mana.

"... Damn it."

Irurin ground her teeth at the sight. If it could devour Arcane Arrow, her magic would be useless.

'Should I use the spell I found earlier...?'

Her thoughts grew tangled.

After entering the treasury, she had kept a wary eye on Juter and fortunately discovered a display of spellbooks. There were many different books, but the one that had caught her eye was the grade-one spellbook [Spatial Distortion].

A spell that warped the space around its target.

As a top-tier, grade-one spell, its destructive power was, needless to say, tremendous. The problem was that a spell so powerful inflicted equally tremendous backlash on its caster.

'Would sacrificing an arm be enough...?'

It truly was a spell that traded flesh to take bone.

She swallowed, considering even the worst-case scenario.

'Right. I was going to turn this place into a stronghold with the Rift Stone anyway.'

Becoming a dungeon's boss.

She had not said so, but that also meant being bound to the dungeon itself.

Forever.

"Hey, you. Didn't I tell you not to waste your time?"

Sensing the shift in the air around her, Juter reached out without hesitation. His enormous arm seized her in an instant.

"Aaaaagh...!!!"

Irurin screamed as pain threatened to crush her bones.

"Stop...!!!"

Ruen unleashed arrows at Juter. But the Dragonfang Soldiers guarding him erased every one of the dozens of volleys.

[ROAAAAAR!!!]

Instead, having devoured the mana, they roared even more fiercely and began charging at her.

"Hmm-hmm."

Even in this situation, Juter hummed as he hurled Irurin with all his strength.

WHAM!!

She slammed into the wall and crumpled, seemingly unconscious.

Goun, body crushed. Irurin, unconscious. And Ruen, surrounded by Dragonfang Soldiers.

In an instant, the situation had taken the worst possible turn.

"Oh, honestly. If you'd just quietly done as I said, I really was going to let you go, you know?"

Juter shrugged and looked at Woojin.

"I really wasn't interested in you lot. I only wanted to experiment on that tiny little thing, but you keep provoking me. Now you've made me change my mind."

He shook his head as though regretful, but the corners of his mouth refused to drop.

A pathetic performance.

He had never intended to let them leave.

"... Let's do it."

So they had no choice but to push ahead with their original plan, too.

"But... we don't have any suitable ingredients!"

"An ogre's eyeball, a minotaur's horn, a chimera's head. Hmm, what else was there...?"

As though he had heard Setsuna, Juter began listing the ingredients he had put into the formula, almost boastfully.

"Oh, right. That arm I put in. It belonged to someone awfully famous... The Sword Emperor, was it? Ah, perhaps you wouldn't know him?"

Juter waved his arm clumsily.

"He was better with his hands than other people. I wondered if it might be different, so I cut it off and kept it."

Woojin instinctively glanced at Irurin.

It was a relief. Since she was unconscious, she would not have heard his vile babbling.

Equivalent exchange.

Alchemy's most absolute law.

The result changed according to the value of the ingredients used. That meant they would have to offer something of even greater value to suppress the formula now in effect.

TAP.

Juter stopped in front of Woojin and spoke.

"So give up. Even throwing in a dragon's corpse wouldn't do any good."

Infuriating as it was, he was right. Dragons might be the strongest species on earth, but one dragon was still only one creature. Its value could hardly exceed that of all the many races Juter had crammed into the array.

"Oh, that's right! Come to think of it, I put a dragon in, too. I thought the owner might be curious, you see. I added the Black Dragon's eyeball so we could watch together."

He began laughing like a madman.

They could not have obtained a dragon's corpse in the first place... but he clutched his stomach and cackled, delighted that he had crushed even their last remaining hope.

He was overconfident.

Juter had no doubt that everything was going exactly as he intended.

'Laugh all you want.'

The more he underestimated his opponent, the more openings he would leave.

"Right. Like you said, no corpse I put in could beat your ingredients."

Woojin spoke as he looked at him.

"Exactly! So stop wasting your time and just—"

But Juter could not finish. His face stiffened.

"That's why I'm going to put in something alive."

It was [Kelduan's Egg].

"You... wh-where did you get... that...!!"

"None of your business, you bastard."

Woojin thrust the egg into the array, which looked ready to explode at any second.

RUMMMMMBLE!!!

Pure white light began shimmering within the black shape.

"N-no...!!!"

At that instant, Setsuna chanted, and a gigantic hand surged from the floor and began pushing him away.

"Move...! God fucking damn it...!!!"

Juter screamed.

Woojin swallowed.

But he could no longer hear anything.

'Please...'

Putting a living creature into an alchemical formula.

Perhaps he was the one doing the craziest thing of all. But his madness was not without a basis.

'Alchemy is equivalent exchange.'

Once a result had been determined, adding something else would never produce that same result again. Just as Juter had added ingredients to the formula producing [Debilitation] and changed it a moment earlier.

'You do have to use a higher-order ingredient...'

But as long as that condition was met, even chance could become certainty.

[Debilitation] and [Death].

Two effects had manifested so far.

'At least those two won't appear.'

[The transmutation circle is reactivated.]

▶ One of five effects will manifest.

▶ Manipulation, Growth, Debilitation, Revival, Death.

▶ The ingredients have changed. An effect other than the previous [Debilitation] and [Death] will be selected.

And if this had been the game, a message like this would probably have appeared.

[Black Opus - The Growth effect is activated.]

'... It worked!!'

Woojin sensed the outcome of the alchemy as though it were echoing inside his head.

'... Huh?'

But that was not the end.

As he watched the active formula, he felt something strange.

A tingling in his fingertips.

'What is this...?'

WHOOOOOOSH!!!!

The alchemical array began pouring out a dazzling light beyond anything it had emitted before.

Although he had never seen this phenomenon, Woojin instinctively knew what it was.

A Trait that had never activated even in the game.

It was none other than [Luck].

"Ha, haha... Jackpot."

Woojin gave a cold smile as he looked at Juter's pale face.

[ROOOOOOOAR!!]

At that moment, an enormous turtle's head tore through the array and burst out.