Dungeon Hunter - Chapter 87
Chapter 87: Episode 24. Hashumal (1)
“Master, you idiot. Master is stupid! Hii-iiing…”
On the 15th floor of the dungeon.
Lyhee was sobbing away by herself on the floor.
After her authority had been revoked, this was one of the two places she was permitted to stay at. Her punishment must have been the duty of looking after the Tree of Origin while everyone else was occupied with their jobs. If that wasn’t it, what else could it be?
Lyhee knew this, and that was why she was being sulky. Normally, she would be busy tormenting the honey bees in the forest and the garden she had created right about now. But she had no way of knowing what their current situation was like, so all she could do was anxiously stomp her feet.
“My dear honey bees… You mustn’t die. I’m going to look after you really, really well after I finish serving this punishment. I’ll give you lots of treats, too. And I won’t torment you that much, either.”
She knelt down and gracefully gathered her hands to start praying.
Please stay alive, my dear honey bees!
If she could, she’d have asked someone else for a favor, but Lyhee thought that doing such a thing would only earn more ire from the dungeon master. She hated that even more than the death of the bees. So, she made up her mind not to move from this spot until her “punishment” was over.
All Lyhee could do was to offer her prayer, being unable to do anything else besides.
“Dear Mister Tree. Mister Tree of Origin. Please look after Lyhee’s honey bees.”
She sneakily opened her eyes a little and glanced at the Tree of Origin.
It sure was big. The tree had sprouted not too long ago, yet it was already five meters tall, at least. Lyhee had seen a World Tree, plus a whole host of even rarer things in the past, but this would be her first time seeing a Tree of Origin. She had no doubt that it possessed vitality easily exceeding her imagination.
“Lyhee’s wish should surely be too simple to answer for a tree of such a caliber.”
She knew that was not true, but right now she’d grasp at straws if she could.
“By the way, Mister Tree, what exactly did you drink to get this tall, anyway?” Lyhee asked while blinking her eyes.
The Tree of Origin grew twice the height of Lyhee every day. It was still at its peak growth period so she was rather scared to imagine how tall it’d be at the end.
Unsurprisingly, there was no reply.
Lyhee’s cheeks puffed up, feeling a bit peeved for no reason. Then, she closed her eyes again to pray.
Splat!
It was right at that moment, the sound of something tumbling over came from her side. Lyhee was currently unable to find out if someone had invaded the dungeon after her authority as the Dungeon Core’s spirit had been revoked.
Feeling puzzled by this, she turned her head in the direction of the source of the noise.
“Eh… What’s this? An angel?”
She discovered an angel with one of its wings cut off, collapsed face-first on the ground.
The state of this Celestial’s body was so bad that the phrase “riddled with wounds” perfectly described its current condition, and even Lyhee frowned.
“Mister angel is not supposed to come inside here, though…”
Lyhee stood up and began massaging her temples, although for a different reason than the angel’s terrible condition. Since all of her authority had been temporarily revoked, she didn’t even know that the Celestials had commenced the attack. All she knew was that “enemies have attacked” and that was about it.
If she had freedom of movement, then maybe. However, Lyhee was permitted to move between only this and the highest floor. She was completely clueless as to the situation currently unfolding outside.
So she couldn’t help but get flustered to see an angel suddenly intrude upon the 15th floor and not only that, in such a wretched state, too.
The definition of good and evil for fairies were rather vague. Treat them well and you’d be “good”, but treat them poorly and you were “evil”. It didn’t matter whether you were an angel, a demon, or even a human, you were all the same in the eyes of the fairies.
Of course, she was at least aware of being a subordinate of a demon. And that made things a bit complicated here.
“Why did mister angel appear here?”
Most intelligent lifeforms would’ve realized by now that the invading “enemies” were the angels. However, Lyhee had come up with a completely different conclusion.
“Ah! Mister Tree has brought you here, didn’t he?”
Lyhee turned her head back and looked at the Tree of Origin. She was very sure that the tree tried to fulfill her wish of looking after the honey bees in this manner.
“By the way, Mister Tree of Origin? The way Lyhee sees it, mister angel’s condition looks really poor, doesn’t it? He won’t be able to look after the bees at this rate, you know?”
Indeed, the angel’s condition was as critical as one could get. It was on the cusp of breathing its last and didn’t look like it’d be able to take care of anything, in all honesty.
Lyhee continued to massage her temples and groaned.
“Lyhee can’t even buy a bottle of potion right now. Master revoked all of Lyhee’s authorities, you see. So Lyhee has no way of treating you, mister angel.”
She sighed in lamentation, and trudged closer to the angel to stealthily confirm the latter’s overall condition.
But at the same time, the angel’s eyes shot wide open. “Oh, the spirit of… the origin… urgh!”
“Argh! That surprised me,” the startled Lyhee hurriedly took a step back. “What the heck? If you were still alive, you should’ve said something. Why are you scaring Lyhee, instead?”
It hadn’t even been a few minutes since she last addressed the angel politely, yet Lyhee had become really peeved right now.
The dying angel utterly disregarded that and tried to finish what it wanted to say. “The gigantic… distortion… Heo-urgh! The breakdown of… laws of causality… To punish… D-dispatched to Devildom… Someone, intervened… Alteration to the code… Oh, the spirit of Origin… I beg thee…!”
“What is this guy even talking about?”
Lyhee blinked her eyes. She couldn’t make head nor tail of what this angel was saying.
At the very least, she wasn’t even the spirit of the origin, either. To mistake a fairy-like herself as a simple-minded spirit, of all things. What an impudent fellow this guy was.
Unfortunately, the angel’s head limply faltered back to the ground after uttering those puzzling words.
Lyhee shifted her head back to the Tree of Origin and without a shred of hesitation whatsoever, frankly spoke her mind, “Mister tree? Mister Tree of Origin, the angel you sent to me seems to have lost a few screws in his head.”
**
Evening had come.
It was also the time for the tedious war of attrition to come to an end and the real battle to commence.
The dead monsters piled and the stench of burning corpses wafted thickly in the air. The surrounding topography had been devastated beyond recognition by now. This state of destruction extended to several kilometers in diameter.
Also… Demons, determined to finish this before the end of today, had unleashed the monsters they had been keeping by their sides. These creatures were considerably high-leveled even among the high-grade monsters, and they were lining up one after the other.
I issued a new order. “We are falling back. Pay attention not to get caught in the crossfire.”
As I knew they were going for the deciding battle, we had no choice but to pull out from here. After I finished issuing my new order, Lee Jihye asked me.
“It’s evening, so shouldn’t we help them?”
She had figured out that angels became weaker in the evening through the events of the previous night. Since we were supposed to be assisting them, now should’ve been the time for us to butt in even more aggressively than ever before.
However, I remained adamant in my decision. “With our current condition, we won’t be any help even if we joined them.”
I gave them hope and squeezed out every ounce of their energy but they were slowly reaching their limit. If they forced themselves to go even further, then it’d not be strange to see their built-up fatigue explode and cause some people to suddenly keel over and die.
Lee Jihye too understood that fact. She bit her dried-up lip and took a step back.
Just over 100 awakened remained. I began leading them away from the center of the battlefield. The monsters and demons must’ve lost their interest because they didn’t try to put much pressure on us. All of them were currently focused completely on killing Hashumal.
After leading the group away from the battlefield, I patiently waited.
I waited until the demon army grew weaker, for Hashumal to become weaker!
The fierce battle lasted for several hours. The desperate fight that twisted heaven and earth, and caused them to scream, continued to unfold, and… And, when I figured the time had come, I issued a new order to the Golems M1 and M2 still telepathically connected to me.
“M1, M2. Go Berserk.”
The hidden ace of a skill that instantly increased the physical ability levels at the cost of the one’s lifeforce, Berserk(U)!
Crimson light akin to burning flames swirled within the eyes of M1 and M2, currently in the deactivated mode.
I knew what Hashumal’s weakness was. It was her stubborn personality, the one where she’d not change her mind once something had been defined.
A “good” would always remain as “good”, while “evil” would forever be “evil.”
When looking at the trajectory of her life from the previous timeline, there had been many moments when she publicly revealed such a side to her personality.
Ariel exploited that side of Hashumal and attacked, allowing the demon to brush aside the truly powerful angels in the vicinity and kill her. Without that, the war between the demons and the Celestials would’ve lasted for at least two more years.
That method back then was… The “return of the enemy that she no longer paid attention to.”
I planted the idea that M1 and M2 protected the dungeon’s outer wall and nothing else. That was why Hashumal and the other angels didn’t attack the Golems when they stopped their operation earlier.
Would she be able to respond in time if such existences suddenly re-entered the fray at the most dangerous moment?
“She’s falling! Catch her!”
“Tonight, I shall quench my thirst with the angel’s blood.”
Hashumal slowly descended. Her supply of divinity was not infinite, and the light emanating from her wings were getting dimmer. She had been cornered so much that it no longer was possible to freely fly around. She still put up a spirited resistance, but it was only a matter of time.
The demons were getting excited, smiles blooming on their faces. 5,000,000 points. This payout alone would enable them to gain superiority over everyone else. And if they managed to hunt every single angel in the vicinity, then becoming the “true bigshot” within their faction would no longer remain a dream.
Even then, it’d not be easy.
Just like the old saying of “Even if the wealthy lose everything, it’d still last three generations,” Hashumal was a “Dominions”-class angel, and her standard of “being exhausted” was quite different from the regular angels. She maintained a low altitude, determined to take all these monsters along with her to the afterlife as she began her final desperate resistance.
“You disgusting b*tch…!”
Her tenacity made these demons feel truly fed up. She looked like she was ready to crash to earth, but at the same time, not quite. Hashumal was well aware that things would get so much more dangerous if she landed on the ground.
Everywhere on the ground below, all sorts of specialized monsters were waiting for her to fall.
But, there was an exception. One small spot, currently not dominated by the demonic creatures. It was precisely where the human awakened were.
Hashumal, realizing that she’d be unable to keep flying for long, fell into a dilemma. And the source of that dilemma was none other than me.
“It’s possible that she has figured it out.”
…That I was the master of the Lightning God and also, a demon, too.
If not, she would not have ignored the human awakened assisting her all along. Either she’d have blessed us, or at the very least, tried to heal us. The mere fact that she didn’t do that meant something was tugging at the back of her mind.
“Will you come here, or meet your doom in the sky?”
Right now, Hashumal was standing at a crossroads.
She had six wings. To fly in the air while supporting them took a massive amount of divinity. From her perspective, preserving her divinity and fighting on land would help send one more enemy to the afterlife.
However, if she had classified me as a demon, then she would not come down to the ground.
I was certain that she was feeling very confused at the moment. After all, I used the Lightning God to attack other demons and at the same time, worked together with the humans to assist the angels, outwardly at least.
I couldn’t wait to find out how Hashumal saw me as.
If she had figured it all out, then I’d deal with her in the air. However, if she hadn’t…
Soon, Hashumal made her move, and an imperceptible smile sneaked up on my lips.
“U-unit leader, that angel is heading towards us!”
Yoo Eunhye threw a huge fuss. Edward, who was sticking behind her like a piece of gum, also seemed to be surprised. Not just these two, but every surviving awakened was the same, as well.
“Ah!”
Hashumal, who had neared the ground, was suddenly struck by a massive ball of exploding flames. Yoo Eunhye could only watch and lament at that.
That was an unforeseen sneak attack. Hashumal wobbled and began falling from the sky.
I kicked the ground and leaped up into the air, then caught her falling figure.
In that brief window of time that didn’t even last a single second, her golden eyes shifted over to me. Those eyes seemed to be asking me whether I was her enemy or an ally, and I replied with a slight smile.
Hashumal’s stiff expression seemed to soften just a little then.
“Unit leader! Watch out!”
It was right then, Yoo Eunhye suddenly cried out.
Swoooosh!
Swiiiish!
M1 and M2 in the Berserk state crazily sliced apart the monsters in the near vicinity and rapidly approached me.
Back when I purchased them during the Devildom auction, these two looked like a pair of square steel plates. Which meant that the other demons wouldn’t be able to suspect their real identity.
The Golems’ physical ability level easily rivaled the highest-grade monsters. And with the “Berserk” state added on top, a skill that sacrificed everything of them for a temporary boost in power, no demonic creatures could stand as their opponents now.
Even Hashumal seemed flustered by this. She had not predicted that the M1 and M2 silently defending the dungeon’s outer wall to re-appear at this time. That moment of fluster went on to create the absolute worst opening for her.
Two silver-hued sets of armor raised their massive swords after getting close to us.
“Stab, now.”
Stab!!
“Ah…!”
Hashumal let out a gasp similar to her death throes. I too was stabbed cleanly through. Blood quickly stained my abdomen, but I didn’t pay any heed to this.
“Slice them off.”
Right afterward… M1 and M2 slashed down at Hashumal’s wings from both sides.
The wings of an angel was the source of their power. So, their defensive capabilities were unsurprisingly great. For a Dominions-rank angel like Hashumal, her wings’ solidity should be extraordinary. Them still being unscathed even after getting hit by all sorts of attacks was the testament of such hardiness.
Unfortunately, the attacks from M1 and M2 in the Berserk state was truly horrifying.
A total of six wings, making up three pairs – they were all cleanly sliced off in one breath.
“Aaaaaahk!!”
The shock caused Hashumal to faint in my embrace.