Chapter 281 - Mammon (5)
Chapter 281: Mammon (5)
The promised land was not far away, so the Skull unit and the Black Orc squadron descended from Tiamet, the giant red dragon, and moved together with the southern forces.
With Skull on his back, Bucephalas raised his head and looked at the sky. Salami, who was his everlasting opponent and bad friend, was not in the sky. Actually, Salami was on standby inside Tiamet to help Yong-ho out during the most crucial moment of the battle.
Bucephalas did not know the outline of the operation of the upcoming battle properly. His dear boss, Skull, explained something to him, saying “Skull Skull,” as always, but Bucephalas couldn’t understand it at all.
But he didn’t care because his duty was always the same. He was supposed to carry his boss on his back and run around the battlefield with vehemence.
Bucephalas made a loud noise to express greetings to Salami. Of course, he didn’t get any reply from Salami, but he didn’t care. He was convinced that his message was clearly conveyed to his boss, Salami.
Salami moved his crouched body slightly, making a little groaning. He could not be seen from inside the hangar of the giant red dragon Tiamet, but he knew from his experience that Tiamet was now heading for the battlefield. The start of the real fighting was imminent.
Salami curled up a little more. He saved his stamina, thinking of Bucephalas who must be marching on the ground. He couldn’t show his shabby status at the moment to Bucephalas.
[You will arrive at the first gathering place in 30 minutes.]
[The northern forces are gathering. It looks like both the northern and southern forces are entering the promised land at about the same time.]
The southern forces were the enemy of the northern forces, but strangely enough, they never communicated with each other about when and where they would fight. But they were drawn to each other. Adjusting the speed of their movement, they marched to the promised land.
The northern troops at the first gathering place were close to 200,000, which was almost twice the total of the southern forces.
There were three reasons why the southern forces responded to their northern counterparts’ demands for fighting.
First, they would ravage the territory of the Queen of Fury if they were not stopped.
Second, the southern forces could not afford to drag their feet long because of the celestial world.
Third, the southern forces believed they could beat their northern counterparts this time.
[You are lying if you can say you are not scared about this fighting, right?]
Lucia said to Yong-ho’s subordinate spirits gathered at the bridge.
But Gusion said sarcastically, “I am not scared at all.”
“I’m not either.”
“Of course, I’m not!”
Kaiwan and Eligos shouted in the negative respectively.
Scathach and Ophelia smiled gently at the same time. With Gusion making a hearty laugh, Catalina, who was looking around nervously, tapped her chest, after erecting her ears and tail.
“I’m not scared at all, either.”
While everyone laughed and showed confidence, Yong-ho, who was sitting in the captain’s seat, turned his gaze slightly to the side. He naturally made eye contact with Sitri.
Instead of saying something, Sitri simply smiled with her eyes then put her hand on Yong-ho’s shoulder. It was her small move, but he felt heightened a lot.
They were nearing the promised land now.
It was time for the real fighting.
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The Queen of Fury once again held the horn in her hand.
Unlike the other subordinate spirits, she stayed on the ground, not joining Yong-ho’s expedition army. Since she was the head of the eight clans despite Yong-ho’s subordinate spirit, she thought of standing at the forefront of her forces, as always.
But this time, she couldn’t just take the lead to fight. In this battle, she had to carry out a mission that only she could do in her capacity as the head of the eight clans.
The tribesmen of the eight clans stopped marching and lined up. It was the first time that the Queen of Fury saw so many of her eight clans gathered in one place.
Everyone looked at the queen. Over 70,000 eyes of the tribesmen in the sky and on the ground were fixed on her.
The queen took a deep breath. She was thrilled with lots of mixed feelings. When they looked at her, their eyes were full of mixed feelings of fear, courage, respect, and affection.
The southern army was silent. With their mouths shut, they just waited for the queen to give an order. In no time, they were letting in and out a breath like one. It was the breathing of a huge army as one.
Kirtimuka squared her shoulders and raised the flag in her arm. Gardimundi also raised a royal banner next to it, symbolizing the Queen of Fury.
Finally, the queen opened her lips. She shouted in a thunderous voice, which nobody imagined could come from her small and slender figure with everybody tight-lipped.
“Fighters of the eight clans!”
“Warriors in arms!”
Feeling thrilled at her thunderous shouting, they strongly responded to her by raising their weapons simultaneously.
The queen kept shouting, “Descendants of the Dragon Lord! All demon warriors in the south!”
The Dragon Legion watched the Queen of Fury. The spirits belonging to the Mammon family and the Dungeon Market shone their eyes.
When her large army cheered and shouted with joy, the queen didn’t agonize to impress her soldiers with eloquent speech. As always, she just spoke her mind honestly, “The enemy is over there. Let’s defeat them all together to save the demon world. Let’s save our lives.”
Her goal was to defeat the northern army and close the celestial door. In other words, she wanted to save everyone who lived in the demon world.
There was a thunderous applause from the southern forces again. The Queen of Fury turned then stared at the northern army located in a place that was not far away. She had a horn in her mouth and blew out loud without hesitation.
Everyone heard the sound of her blowing the horn.
Now, the battle began finally between the southern and northern forces.
The arrows shot from both sides filled the sky. Magic bullets fired from the wild monsters burned the sky in a beautiful curve.
With all of that attack going on, the southern army rushed to their northern counterparts. The northern forces also charged at them. Biryubakcha, the head of the Garura clan, saw tens of thousands of monsters rushing toward them. Dragon Lord Ancablosa ordered the Dragon Legion to just wait even though the monsters were rushing toward them.
The distance between the southern and northern forces gradually narrowed. In a few seconds they were going to collide, and at that moment, hundreds of them would be killed.
Bucephalas also rushed. Skull, which was on Bucephalas’s back, lifted Baphomet’s sickle. At that moment, Sitri, standing on the deck of the giant red dragon Tiamet and looking down at the battlefield, began to move. She lifted the wand that she had made on the same day when the Dungeon Market was born in the demon world. It was Sitri that made the Dungeon Market, but she could not dominate it alone. The demon world was too vast for her to manage alone, and she needed time to heal the poison of the celestial world. While she had been asleep for dozens of years or several hundred years, she needed somebody who had to run the Dungeon Market on her behalf.
So, Sitri set up the system of five directors. In return for downgrading her status as one of them, Sitri could maintain the welfare policies that Mammon had introduced. Over time, her status became gradually equal to that of the other four directors of the Dungeon Market.
Because of this, Sitri had prepared one secret weapon from the time she created the Dungeon Market. Although she became complacent over the course of one thousand years, she had been thoroughly betrayed by the other directors a thousand years ago.
Her secret weapon was the master key of the Dungeon Market. She had kept it from the other directors until now and put it in total secrecy.
Sitri injected mana into the cane. As the owner of the Dungeon Market, she ordered all those who had gone through the Dungeon Market until now.
“Stop!”
Her short order soon became a reality. The mana unleashed from the master key filled the entire battlefield.
The various subordinate spirits that Abrasax took out of the warehouse in the north obeyed her order. Even though the southern forces were nearing them, they just would not move. They literally stopped on the spot.
About half of the beasts flying in the sky stopped flapping their wings. They also stopped using their superpower that helped maintain their existence in the sky. Left to gravity naturally, they just crashed to the ground.
The subordinate spirits of the King of Pride, the King of Envy, the King of Lust, and the King of Gluttony also faithfully obeyed Sitri’s order. Most of them experienced going through the Dungeon Market before. The crest of the Dungeon Market still remaining under the crests of the four kings blocked their movement.
Sitri knew that the moment she used the master key of the Dungeon Market, the whole demon world would know it, so she could not use it twice. It was a massive power that she could never use twice once she activated it.
The entire northern army got frozen on the spot. There were still some of them moving, but they had no choice but to stop because the rest of them didn’t move.
But the southern army did not stop marching. They stared into the eyes of those northern forces who could not move properly but who were conscious.
Those at the forefront of the northern army were terrified. The reality that they could not move even their fingers when their enemies were right in front of them created a tremendous fear.
They could not even think of their death because they were totally overwhelmed by fear.
Standing at the forefront of the southern army, Skull swung Baphomet’s sickle violently.
Rikum and the Black Orc squadron struck the helpless northern army with their own weapons.
The vanguard unit of the southern forces struck the northern army right in front of them.
Without slowing down their vehement strike, the southern forces destroyed, trampled upon, and smashed the northern army. The bodies of those at the forefront of the northern forces were shattered to pieces and scattered in all directions.
Nonetheless, the northern forces could not move. The increasing bodies of their fellow soldiers drove their tense hearts to extremes. The blood and flesh of their dead fellow soldiers covered their faces, followed by the southern forces’ relentless attack with spears and swords.