Chương 116: Reborn as the Dragon — Chapter 116 - The Slaughter Begins

The humanoids around him weren't blind. A warrior in full armor sprinting out of a prison cell was hard to miss. They spotted him immediately. These weren't the pampered garrison soldiers of the Holy Wall, raised in a greenhouse and handed a spear. These men had fought across four nations without stopping. Every survivor was an elite among elites. Li Chen's idea had been solid enough. The troll chieftain drank every night after finishing his business, drank until he was dead to the world.

It was the perfect window to kill him. He just hadn't counted on the humanoids reacting this fast. In the end, he was just an ordinary man who'd let his blood run hot. They cut him off before he got ten steps.

"Kid. Where'd you get that gear?"

"And what exactly are you doing near the chieftain's tent?" They didn't attack outright. The human in front of them was technically a comrade, even if he was still a rookie. But something in their instincts stirred, a killing intent they couldn't quite ignore. That, and they were eyeing his equipment. Look at that armor. Silver and gleaming. Miles better than the junk they'd scraped off corpses during the war. Li Chen stared at the ring of humanoids closing around him, jaw tight, eyes burning.

He knew he wasn't killing that troll chieftain tonight. These humanoids were all pushing level 20, some past it. Almost every one of them outranked his level 18. But. If he could take even one or two down on the way out, that was fine. He could respawn. They couldn't. Every kill was profit. Every kill was one small thing he could give back to those girls. And to himself. That was the last thought he let himself have. He raised his eyes, fury bright in them, and lifted his longsword. He was no match for them.

He'd known that before he charged. The system could assist with skill activation, sure. But the transitions between skills, the moments in between, those were his alone. Skills went on cooldown. He couldn't just freeze in place. Basic attacks were something every fighter developed their own feel for, and the system didn't package that into a menu. Players had to earn it themselves. So Li Chen went in anyway.

And the humanoids, having dodged his skill entirely, put him down with basic attacks, each from a different angle, each targeting a joint with the kind of precision that came from years of actual fighting.

"The hell? He's actually turning on us!"

"I never liked the look of him. That sulky face every damn day — who was that for?"

"Kill him. We can eat prisoner meat. A traitor like him? Perfect for the soup pot." They jeered over his crumpled body, loud and frenzied. Is this it? Damn it... Li Chen ground his teeth. His eyes were red, shot through with veins, burning with something that had nowhere to go. The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there. But there was nothing left to do. Outnumbered. Out-leveled. Outmatched in every way that mattered.

In the face of that kind of power, all his preparation, all his planning, it meant nothing. Maybe that was just how it worked. A lifetime of effort, and someone else could outpace it in an afternoon. In school, he'd been nobody. Quiet, invisible. He'd liked a few girls over the years, the way ordinary people did, but nothing came of any of it. Time buried those feelings the same way it buried everything else. Out in the world, his salary covered rent and three meals a day. A car. A house. Someday, maybe.

Always someday. His parents had set him up with someone. He hadn't been interested; she hadn't thought much of him either. They parted without ceremony. Then he'd been chosen. Summoned to another world. Become a Chosen One. Powerful battle-qi. Blazing magic. So why, at this moment, was he still this powerless? Was it really this hard, wanting to change, wanting to reach for something worth reaching for? The wind picked up.

A soft breeze rolled in carrying the smell of grass, cutting through the stench of blood and smoke, lifting the loose strands of hair at Li Chen's temple.

"Rooaaahhh, —" A long, resonant roar, rolling in from somewhere far away. What was that? He looked up at the darkening sky. Something black in the distance, growing larger. A dragon....

"Why is there a black dragon here?!"

"Enemy attack! Scatter!"

"All units on alert — someone get Captain Garth! Find cover, now! You don't want to be in the open when that breath hits!" The mercenaries forgot Li Chen existed. They scattered, shouting, each falling into practiced roles, the kind of coordination that came from surviving real battles, not drills.... Su Nian banked slow circles overhead, his pale golden eyes sweeping the camp below with cool, clinical interest. Living, breathing system points. Not a righteous faction, so they'd only yield half.

But quantity had a quality all its own, and these ones weren't low-level garbage. System point costs were climbing fast. Early on, upgrades had been manageable. Now every tier jump cost ten times what the last one had. Take early humanoid transformation. A modification that added nothing to combat power, one that actually reduced it temporarily, and it cost two hundred thousand system points. There was no such thing as too many system points. Right now was harvest time.

The Black Beast Mercenary Group's commander was no fool. The camp was spread wide, sections deliberately separated, with part of the force even quartered inside the Felineer Holy Wall itself. The Wall was a structure of white stone, rising high, not unlike the walls in that old anime from his past life. Attack on Titan. Wall Maria, specifically. He still couldn't quite fathom how badly the Wall's original garrison had to have failed to surrender a natural fortification like this.

Then again, thinking back to how spectacularly brainless certain characters in that show had been, he supposed he could work it out. The mercenaries on the Wall had already spotted him. They were moving toward the siege weapons mounted along the battlements, high-powered, not something to fly into carelessly. Stay clear of the Wall for now. Clear the field outside first. Su Nian dropped his altitude. Humanoids with no flight capability, regardless of their level, were targets. That was all they were.

He fell back on what worked: gathering dragon breath in his mouth, rolling it into dense liquid spheres, and dropping them. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. Three detonations like rolling thunder. Three mushroom clouds climbed slowly from the camp. And Su Nian got almost nothing for it. He frowned. Three direct drops, and the kill count was negligible. When the smoke cleared, he saw why. The humanoids had already dug trenches throughout the camp, built originally, he guessed, to defend against relief forces from Saint Orist.

They'd repurposed them perfectly. On top of that, the mercenaries were fast. The moment they'd seen the breath bombs dropping, they'd moved. Not panicked, moved. Calculated, experienced evacuation. His opening salvo had landed flat.

"Heh heh heh..."

"You think hiding in holes is enough to survive this?"

"How adorable." Su Nian's lips pulled back in a cold smile. His wings snapped inward like a striking hawk, and he dove, hard and fast, straight into the heart of the camp. What rose to meet him was a wall of archers and heavily armed humanoid mercenaries, weapons leveled.

"Futile."

"ZunHaalViik!" [Disarm] The word hit like a physical wave. Every mercenary who'd been ready to loose an arrow or swing a blade dropped their weapon simultaneously. Arrowheads separated cleanly from shafts. The metal fittings and breastplates riveted to their leather armor wrenched free and clattered across the dirt. Longswords and shields rolled from open hands. They couldn't pick them back up. BOOM. The black dragon's full weight came down into the middle of the camp. Crimson sprayed outward in every direction.

A dozen humanoids who hadn't cleared the landing zone in time were simply crushed. Su Nian lifted his hind leg and punted away the half-torso that had been wedged against his flank. His claws swept forward, sending the next cluster of mercenaries airborne. He rose to his full height inside their encirclement. His pale golden eyes burned with cold, savage light.

"Now," he said.

"The slaughter begins." The roar carried across the entire plain.

PS: One more bonus chapter coming, everyone. Had something come up around noon today, sorry for the delay. Zap zap. (^v^) ➤ Next: Greedy Humans