Chương 87: Reborn as the Dragon — Chapter 87 - Total Annihilation

The throat-slitting gesture had been explained in loving detail by the Black Dragon Boss himself, so by now the Blaze Rabbits understood it perfectly. It meant: You walked into this. Now stay. Sometimes combat required silence. A well-chosen gesture was worth a hundred words. The boss's meaning had been received, loud and clear. Time to move. A mob of Blaze Rabbits surged forward and looped behind the Sakura Island players, clubs already swinging at the backs of their heads.

THUMP THUMP, the double strike dumped the players straight into a stunned state. Those who hadn't yet shaken off the flashbang's blindness got immediately locked down again before they could even blink. That said, these weren't ordinary soldiers. The Sakura Island players had levels on the Blaze Rabbits, and they were professionals, especially the warriors, the ones built like fortresses with HP and armor to match. One or two saps to the skull wasn't going to drop them.

But numbers were the one thing the Blaze Rabbits never ran short on. They hit. And hit. And kept hitting. When a club snapped in half, they switched to stomps, elbow strikes, knee strikes, kidney shots. No hesitation. No mercy. Every blow landed at full force, the iron rods had bent completely out of shape. Those rods, incidentally, were part of the junk the Kobolds had salvaged. Reportedly they were items from the private chambers of human noblewomen. The monsters had no idea what they were actually meant for.

Didn't matter. They worked as weapons. That was enough. Four or five Blaze Rabbits per player, each group going to town. Big Slaps swung in wide arcs. A chorus of deeply suggestive slapping sounds rang out through the dim canopy of Silvermoon Forest. This wave of players was being wiped out completely. No survivors. Su Nian had two reasons for the order. First: he wanted this massacre to knock the wind out of the Sakura Island players, break their momentum before the eventual assault on Sakura Island's No.

1 Starter Village. Second: his monsters' levels were still too low. Muscle training had hit a hard ceiling. Only leveling up would let their conditioning continue improving. So he'd given the order clearly. Go all out. Beat them to death. The monsters themselves didn't particularly care about the strategic logic. They just wanted to protect their sacred relic. The potatoes.

While the Blaze Rabbits were busy administering their beatings, the Silvermoon Forest Monster Cavalry had already lined up outside the Dragon's Nest in a single file. At the front: Grey Wolf, astride the Rock-Armored Crocodile leader Rekton. Flanking him were Gray Brother, Banana Wolf, and the other elite Gnolls, mounted on ordinary Rock-Armored Crocodiles and Spearboars. Behind the Gnolls came the Kobolds, also mounted on Spearboars.

They'd crammed captured human military helmets onto their heads, Tetanus Dinner Knives raised and ready.

"AWOOO—" A clear, ringing howl split the air. Grey Wolf's command to charge. Rekton lunged forward like a bolt from a crossbow. This was not the lazy crocodile that used to sleep in the swamp all day. Whether in a dead sprint or a long endurance run, Rekton now sat near the top of every metric among the monsters. Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit. The Light spell's blinding effect was fading. The Sakura Island players who were still breathing began to recover their vision.

What they saw when the world came back into focus: a wall of furious, muscle-bound rabbits. And charging cavalry, coming fast. Monsters in every direction, like someone had shoved a stick into a hornets' nest.

Yamaguchi Murakichi clawed at the dirt with both hands. Two Blaze Rabbits had him by the ankles and were dragging him — slowly, steadily, into the bushes. He fought the whole way. His face was a swollen mess of bruises, smeared with mud and something brown and gelatinous that he didn't want to identify. His eyes held nothing but despair and humiliation. He watched his players get launched through the air by crocodiles and Spearboars, and he issued his final order.

"We can't fight them! Everyone — run! Run!" Whoosh. The bushes swallowed him. Then the two Blaze Rabbits stopped moving, because they'd reached an impasse. Both of them wanted to deliver this human leader to the Black Dragon Boss personally. This disagreement rapidly escalated into a full contest, each rabbit latching onto one of Yamaguchi Murakichi's legs and refusing to let go. The critical detail: while they were squeaking at each other in argument, they never stopped walking.

They kept shuffling forward in their respective directions until Yamaguchi Murakichi's crotch made firm contact with a tree trunk. The Blaze Rabbits registered only that they had suddenly stopped moving. So each of them gripped a thigh and pulled harder. Under that combined monstrous strength, the trunk began to bend. Yamaguchi Murakichi's HP ticked steadily downward. He quietly dialed his pain settings from 20% down to 0. The color came back to his face a little.

He let his arms fall open against the ground, turned his gaze to the sky, and smiled, the thin, fragile smile of a man who had accepted his fate. Above him, branches laced together and cut the blue sky into small irregular pieces. A few white clouds jostled against each other, stuffed into the gaps between the leaves. A bird or two glided past. The noise of battle faded. Wind and rustling leaves filled the quiet instead, growing louder and louder until that was all there was.

Somewhere in the haze of it, he thought he saw a girl's face. And in his ear, almost real enough to touch, the voice of his childhood sweetheart, Meme Gougouzi:"Hey. Yamaguchi-kun. The cherry blossoms back home are blooming. Shouldn't we... go see them together?" Yamaguchi Murakichi pressed his lips together. Then came a soft, wet crunch, like an eggshell giving way, and he felt something leave him.

"Gougouzi," he murmured.

"If you're in this 'game' too..."

"... someone as clever as you would probably know exactly how to handle monsters like these." Yamaguchi Murakichi died.

The Sakura Island players scattered through Silvermoon Forest in a blind panic. Then they found the road back. The road that was no longer a road. Pits that looked like solid ground until the moment they weren't, deep holes lined with spikes and shattered blades. Trip-ropes that triggered rolling boulders and poisoned arrows the instant someone's foot caught them. Poison-tipped spear traps that snapped upright without warning. Oversized animal snares buried under the grass every few meters.

And that was just the welcome mat. Push through the dense undergrowth and the black water pythons came out of the shadows, massive, coiling things that simply crushed the life out of whoever they caught. Hug the tree line instead and thick claws reached down from the branches, grabbed heads, and hauled people up into the canopy. Waiting up there were heavily muscled Cockatrices, eyes burning red. A handful of players actually made it to the open plains. They looked up.

A Black Dragon blotted out the sun, circling slowly above the forest. Flanking it was a flock of harpies with faces like something out of a nightmare. The players' legs gave out. They sank to their knees.

"Heheheh..." The Black Dragon looked down at the few dozen survivors who'd clawed their way out of the encirclement, and laughed, low, cold, and deeply satisfied.

Not one player escaped. Not a single one made it out. Sakura Island No. 1 Starter Village's assault on the Dragon's Nest ended in a clean, total wipe. Su Nian did two slow circuits over the battlefield, letting his gaze sweep every corner of the carnage. Only once he was certain there were no survivors did he turn back, Anna riding on his back, and head home to the Dragon's Nest. An exhaustion had settled over him, deep and heavy. He was drowsy, almost desperately so. But it wasn't the exhaustion of a hard fight.

It was something else. His body had shifted into a different kind of state, one he couldn't quite name. He had an inkling. He opened the system panel. There it was. Level 32. Fourth-tier creature. Pushed forward by the System and the accumulation of his special abilities, he had broken past the natural constraints of his age. He had stepped into the Young Dragon stage ahead of schedule. And this exhaustion, this bone-deep pull toward sleep, was his draconic bloodline calling him inward. Urging him to slumber.

To receive the draconic inheritance that was waiting for him. To complete the transformation into what he was becoming. ➤ Next: Slumber