Chapter 174

A deity of calamity emerging from the sea.

As soon as Leandros heard the words of the Toro villager, his entire body began to scream that he must go there.

They couldn't know what was happening in the south, and His Grace hadn't even sent any message.

They drove their horses and finally raced all the way to the south.

The reason was unknown. But if there was one thing he could guess.

"...It seems that becoming an apostle of an eccentric deity has given me the ability to detect other deities."

Far away, in the middle of the black sea, the silhouette of a ferocious white serpent was briefly visible.

Its scales were larger than a human face, and its body was as white as a skeleton.

The serpent, cleaving through the great sea, was undaunted by the harsh climate and continuously created large waves with its fierce belching.

So this was the cause of the tidal waves.

Leandros, keeping some distance, observed the severely undulating waves gradually gaining strength and growing, and made a swift judgment.

No matter how strong Leandros was, he couldn't contend with the giant serpent through force alone.

Moreover, fighting on the sea? Leandros couldn't float on water without ice.

And he also had to consider the possibility of the ice breaking.

The longer the battle continued, the greater the possibility that he would be pushed back.

In that case.

Leandros looked up at the sky.

His gaze lingered on the clouds for a long time.

The dark clouds that had been covering the sun began to move slightly, following an unknown flow.

A bit more.

The sky began to churn. The clouds that had been gathering in one place started to turn not just black, but as dark as the night sky.

And through it, something was gradually protruding.

Just a bit more.

The white serpent, sensing the ominous air current, raised its head that had been submerged in the water.

As the head covered with dense tentacles and hollow black eyes was revealed, Leandros's heart grew urgent.

Just a bit more from here.

The impure flow of air. The movement of magical power circling the void.

The white serpent bent its long body and explored its surroundings to find the root of all this.

Soon, the finely extended tentacles began to detect the anomaly.

Leandros raised his hand. What had been staying in the clouds slowly revealed itself.

The white serpent, which had caught the intruder in an untimely cold ocean current, roared.

The serpent, which had been bellowing with a roar that seemed capable of swallowing the entire sea, crossed the black sea and approached Leandros.

The white serpent, which had been avoiding the pieces of broken ice waves with its sleek white body, hid itself in the sea.

A moment of tranquility followed.

The next moment, the serpent surged from beneath Leandros's feet, destroying the ice and hurling Leandros and his horse into the air.

Falling toward the serpent that had opened its maw, deeper than the abyss, from below, Leandros pointed his ice sword at the serpent.

The thick clouds retreated for an instant, creating a gap in the sky.

Beyond the clear sky,

Ice of an overwhelming size, enough to cover the nearby sea, was casting darkness over the area, emitting a cracking noise.

It was the punishment imposed by the apostle of the Lord of the Extreme Realm on behalf of the deity he served.

"I'll send you without pain."

After the apostle's words as he fell into the sea, cold white meteorites began to cascade over the vast sea.

The ice meteorites, pouring down without a moment's gap, were precisely aimed at the large serpent.

The serpent tried to avoid the meteorites, but due to its large size, it was hit directly by meteorites more often than it could dodge them.

The white serpent, which was sinking after being hit by an iceberg-sized ice on its head and spewing bloody foam, let out a death cry that shook the entire south.

Leandros, floating on the sea, watched the serpent sinking beneath the sea with his ears covered for a moment.

Like ink spreading in water, red bloodstains slowly spread in the black sea.

After waiting for some time, Leandros finally removed his hands once he was certain the serpent was dead.

He was exhausted and tired.

It was fortunate that this was the sea; if he had been standing on land, his legs would surely have given way, presenting an unsightly appearance.

The price for the power he had just exerted was that great.

He even felt as if all the energy in his body had been drained.

So this was the phenomenon of magical power consumption that the snowman had mentioned.

Leandros looked at the pieces of ice meteorites floating in the sea like himself, and finally slowly swam to regain his posture.

The horse he had ridden... had received a direct impact along with the ice when the white serpent surged from below.

By now, it would have sunk to the bottom of the sea along with the white serpent's corpse.

Then he would have to create an ice path to return to land. When should he go back?

Leandros didn't have the strength to even move a finger.

In the end, entrusting his body to the splashing sea and floating while looking at the sky with a hole in the middle, Leandros let out a sigh.

Having killed the serpent causing the tidal waves, the southern matter would be concluded once they cleaned up the demonic beasts that had come up on the waves.

Given the large number of demonic beasts, he couldn't leave it to Russel alone.

He needed to clean up thoroughly, taking his time. Otherwise, he would have to throw all those damned demonic beasts back into the sea.

Returning those who came from the sea back to the sea was quite a generous treatment.

Of course, the gigantic monster that would have received them was no longer there...

Leandros, thinking up to this point, hesitated momentarily.

Something felt wrong. It seemed out of place.

What had the Toro villager said?

-A huge whirlpool formed in the middle of the sea, and a gigantic monster surged up. Everyone who saw it, even from a distance, has gone mad!

The white serpent was large.

But when he saw it, far from surging up, wasn't the serpent diligently swimming with its head buried in the water?

Moreover, since the sea was an area prone to sea fog, it would have been impossible for anyone from the village to see the serpent here unless they had exceptionally good eyesight.

Yet, could there have been witnesses who saw it even from a distance?

And they went mad after seeing the monster?

It's not that they saw a vague shadow or form. They went mad because they saw and understood it.

Such an entity was in this sea now.

The serpent he had just killed might not have been the 'monster' that the villagers had seen and gone mad from.

He needed to escape.

Having reached that thought, Leandros tried to squeeze out whatever strength he had left to freeze the undulating waves.

But before he could do so, he was helplessly dragged down into the black water with excruciating pain as if his entire body was being crushed.

Salty and cold water entered his nose and ears.

Even though he tried to hold his breath, the force squeezing his chest only caused bubbles to burst from his mouth.

The completely black water.

His dizzy mind.

Leandros, who had barely opened his eyes, witnessed the true identity of the 'monster' beyond the violent water current.

A being that was gloomy, dirty, ugly, horrible, cruel, and for which even if one attached all sorts of dishonorable expressions, it wouldn't properly explain even one ten-millionth of it.

This was the deity in the southern sea.

Leandros's consciousness was swallowed by the unconsciousness as black as the sea.

* * *

The northern mountain.

The entity trapped beneath the mithril-bearing mine.

The grayish-white flame, just returned from the Dreamland, flickered beyond the veil of overlapping ice crystal and quartz.

Although the avatar abandoned somewhere on this land had melted away without a trace,

The memory conveyed by its avatar and branch was enough to draw the sleeping deity from Dreamland to reality.

A deity cannot be established without worshippers.

The existence of a deity is proven by worshippers serving and revering that existence.

The Lord of the Extreme Realm remembered the weak life forms that had served it long ago.

And it also knew that it was the one who had destroyed them.

Giving up the status of a deity, letting go of the promised eternal worship,

An era when only a few demonic beasts realized the fear of the deity and revered it.

When an eternity of time had passed, all glory had declined and remained only as a faint trace, a human came seeking the forgotten deity.

The human's body was in a state that could not function as a single human.

Only the mind occupying that body made him think and act as a person.

-How should I serve you? Should I offer sacrifices?

A fearful voice was heard beyond the stained wall.

-Would you consider admitting other believers...? They're much healthier and stronger than me. And, um, handsome.

All records of the believer remained here.

Essentially, human emotions were not permitted to deities. Insignificant humans were the playthings of the gods.

Small, weak beings that performed strange acts with amazingly peculiar logic.

Deities had no joy, no sorrow, no love, no affection, but they still retained the anger of having their domain or territory violated.

His one and only believer had been hunted, and the apostle to whom he had first bestowed blessings had been captured by the dreamer in Leng.

The Lord of the Extreme Realm was rightfully angry.

Thousands of layers of walls broke. Ghouls wandering in the tunnel fled with strange gagging sounds.

The brilliant grayish-white flame devoured the underground, the tunnel, the rails, the carts—all that could not be burned.

Everything touched by the flames froze and shattered, but the violent flames did not stop.

The entire rocky mountain embracing the mine burst into flames.

The fire spread and spread, beginning to spread relentlessly at a terrifying speed, freezing all living things in the vast snowfield and in the Dikenter Mountains stretching far to the south.

Deer, birds, wolves, bears, insects—all were frozen and shattered by the deity's anger without even realizing what had befallen them.

Life had no blood, and trees had no spring.

The pale flames spread as if to devour the ends of the sky, and along the path frozen by the lord's anger, demonic beasts and monsters bound to the northern snowfields began to march.

As the northern climate spread at an unbelievably rapid pace, demonic beasts from the north ran wild.

Demonic beasts that detected the anomaly in the Dikenter Mountains began invading cities and villages, either fleeing the blizzard or running wild in response to the anger of the ancient one.

"Save me, please, please, no, no!"

"Mom! Dad! Where are you? Where is everyone, aaaah!"

"Stop the demonic beasts! Drive out those coming through the collapsed fence!"

"Impossible, they're coming from all directions! We can't hold any longer... aaaah!"

"Shoot! I said shoot! You cowards, what are you hesitating for! You call yourselves mercenaries?"

"This is a telegram. There have been anomalies in the western plains and eastern wasteland as well! They are requesting reinforcements."

"We can barely hold on here by gathering people, and they're asking for reinforcements! What about the royal family? Is there no news? Why on earth!"

Someone who saw the cold white flames, which struck down both the wicked and the good, looked up to the sky and lamented.

"It's the wrath of God... God is sending divine punishment!"

The cry of someone, a character who had never even appeared in the novel, tore through the cold air.

The so-called era of destruction, the end of the story, was approaching.