[Vol. 8] Chapter 195: The Black Tide
“Everyone, be careful!”
Everyone tightly gripped the temporary weapons they weren’t very used to. Mia and Selna quickly moved to stand on either side of Eudora, protecting her in the middle. Even though the magic-restricting environment of the Chaos Magic Valley made it hard to use magic or channel magical energy, it didn’t mean they were powerless here.
Aside from Chloe the mage, who relied heavily on magic, everyone else, including the two vampire maids, still had ways to protect themselves. The only difference was in how and how much they could fight.
“It’s coming.”
Just as the black-haired girl finished speaking, as if to prove her prediction right, the explosion came, suddenly and violently!
BOOM!!!!!!
The ground erupted. Dirt flew everywhere and the noise was like thunder. Rocks and layers of earth exploded into the air, and right from the sunken center of the valley, a jet-black flood burst out like a volcanic eruption, shooting straight into the sky!
Along with the black flood came an intense, wild wave of invisible sword energy. It was as if that sword energy had torn through the earth’s crust, bringing whatever was hidden below straight to the surface at an incredible speed.
The stone pit at the valley’s center was huge, and although Violet and her team were not standing directly in front of the eruption, they were still close enough for danger. Thankfully, they had just enough distance for a short reaction time.
“Fall back!”
Knowing full well how dangerous that black liquid was, having seen it before, and noticing that the priestess didn’t seem about to give orders, Hero Elunie quickly stepped up and took command. She led the team to retreat to a safer distance.
Violet didn’t object. She only exchanged a glance with the Dragon God. The dragon girl, instead of stepping back, moved forward instead, vanishing and reappearing instantly above the erupting black tide.
She hovered midair with her natural platinum-colored dragon wings spread wide. Just as she was about to strike, she suddenly frowned, as if she sensed something. With a graceful wave of her slender white arm, a figure was forcefully pulled from the black tide and flung toward the team watching from a distance.
“!?”
The figure came flying fast. Kunnir, the tall tiger-man, was surprised and got ready to catch them. But the person’s speed suddenly slowed down near the end, and they gently raised a hand to steady themselves. Kunnir barely had to use any effort to catch them.
Looking closer, they realized it was a young human man, dressed in the same scholar’s uniform as Rowan.
He wasn’t exactly handsome, but his appearance was clear and pleasant. The dirty black water that had covered him had already been burned away by golden flames when the Dragon God pulled him out. The process was so fast and precise that neither his clothes nor his skin were even slightly harmed, so no one really thought much about how powerful that cleansing was. Instead, their curiosity turned to who this person was.
“I can’t feel any magic coming from him... He’s super weak. A normal human actually made it to a place as dangerous as the Chaos Magic Valley?”
“Hey now, what’s with that tone? Aren’t you a human too? Why are you looking down on your own kind?”
“Well sure, I’m human, but I’m not ordinary at all~”
Chloe smiled and raised her hand, showing off the divine emblem etched on her skin, already more than two-thirds complete. Zachary fell silent in response.
“Alright, both of you, enough. This isn’t the time for bickering. Actually, I think it’s because he’s a true normal human that he was able to safely enter the valley’s center, and even survive being soaked in that black water unharmed. Don’t you remember? The Chaos Magic Valley’s strange environment harms beings with magic, but it’s harmless to those who have no magic at all.”
As the Hero’s party chatted and tried to figure out who this young man was, their leader, Elunie the Heaven Hero, narrowed her eyes. She had already sensed something about him that didn’t quite add up…
“But when we came in, wasn’t the valley’s outer area completely covered by a powerful sword-energy storm? Even if the strange environment here doesn’t affect regular people much, there’s no way they could walk through that sword formation with just their bodies, right…?”
That question made almost everyone pause in surprise for a moment. But the tiger-man Kunnir was the quickest to react, his mind working fast as he made a guess.
“If we rule out the possibility of some super-powered outside force helping him, then there’s only one explanation. He must have entered the valley before the sword formation appeared, and never left. Remember that empty campsite we found on the way here? It wasn’t too far from this place. It’s very likely that it belonged to this guy and his companions.”
“But then... how did he end up getting blasted out of the ground by the black water? And if they’ve been in the valley all this time, what exactly are they trying to do?”
With no answer to their growing doubts, everyone instinctively turned to look at someone who had seemed to know everything so far, the calm and mysterious priestess, Violet.
But Violet didn’t respond at all. She just stood silently at a higher vantage point, hands folded behind her back, gazing into the distance at the deep pit where the black flood had erupted, and at where her dragon was. She stayed quiet, acting like a master who had seen it all before.
“...Couldn’t hold back after all, huh? Looks like that thing isn’t all that smart,” Violet muttered softly to herself, sounding thoughtful.
As the black-haired girl spoke, the deep pit that had been endlessly spewing out the black, polluted flood suddenly paused. The "fountain" of darkness, which had been shooting ten meters into the air, slowly weakened, like it had finally exhausted all its stored-up contents and was coming to an end.
But that was only the calm before the real storm.
The very next moment...
BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM!!!!!!
A deafening series of explosions, like thunder pounding from all directions, roared out. The pit, which was only a few meters wide just seconds ago, collapsed violently under a storm of wild, raging sword energy. It expanded instantly, becoming more than ten times its original size, turning into a massive crater.
At the same time, countless chaotic shadows burst into the sky like a black tidal wave, rising and twisting like a swarm of insects or a black sea crashing through the valley.
These weren’t just shadows, they were living things.
Terrifying creatures formed from thick, black liquid that had been compressed, hardened, and reshaped into monstrous forms. Some looked like beasts. Some looked vaguely human. Most were so twisted and bizarre that it was impossible to tell what they were. They clung to each other and squirmed together like half-formed slimes, mad, terrifying, and grotesque.
Every one of those things opened a giant black mouth that was way too large for its body. Just seeing them made the hearts of those watching fill with a terrifying and unnatural feeling.
They wanted to devour everything they could see!
And the first target in their line of sight was the golden-haired dragon girl floating above the pit, wings spread, calmly staring down at the approaching swarm.
The flood of black creatures twisted and flailed madly. Some roared like beasts, some screamed like people, others made strange howling noises. All those terrifying sounds merged together into one giant, low, hissing noise, like a massive snake whispering from the dark, shaking the entire valley.
“Ssss… ssss…”
Even from far away, just hearing that horrifying sound was enough to make the spectators go pale. They felt like their magic was being drawn right out of them, pulled toward that black mass to be absorbed and erased. Startled, they quickly refocused their minds and suppressed their unstable magical energy. But their eyes were full of concern as they looked toward the dragon girl who now stood alone against the nightmare.
They knew Violet’s companion wasn’t someone ordinary.
But this...
Was this kind of monster swarm really something a single person could fight against?