Brightest Darkness – 4

A giant clawed foreleg brushed past the space right next to me. The passing foreleg, with its mere aftermath, completely tore apart the ground beneath my feet. The shattered earth plummeted into an endless pit.

Black lightning gathered in my left hand and scattered forward along the trajectory of my arm. A moment later, thunder roared.

The lightning, imbued with darkness, directly struck The World Eater’s head, but it continued to charge without even blinking. I quickly leaped backward, escaping the attack range.

The maw widely bit into the spot where I had been just moments before. Its right arm swung horizontally, its left arm struck down vertically, and then a breath attack erupted from its head, twisted to the right.

While it was spewing its breath attack, I plummeted onto its head and slammed the Wingless Nightmare directly into it.

ㅡKAAANG!

However, even an attack slammed down with the added force of a fall was insufficient to pierce its scales. A sound like a metal rod striking a steel wall echoed. A stinging current ran through both my hands.

It irritably twisted its body. I widened the distance to avoid being swept away by the erupting shockwave.

‘What kind of crazy… does this attack even work?’

I thought that as I flexed my tingling hands. It wasn’t that its durability was tough; it seemed like the attacks themselves weren’t working at all. Its scales still looked completely unblemished.

Moreover, the size difference was too immense. Even in the game, The World Eater was considerably larger than the player, but not to this extent.

Back then, even though it was large, it felt at least like fighting a living creature, but now it felt like fighting an entire mountain. The sensation itself was different.

I knew the method of where and how to attack. Its movements were identical to those in the game. And that was the game significantly enhanced through Dark Lord Mode.

According to the Goddess, the behavioral patterns that thing showed when she fought The World Eater were recorded as The World Eater boss battle in Brightest Darkness 4.

She had also said that Dark Lord Mode itself was created by the Goddess. She questioned if it would even be possible in the human world to combine so many enemy enhancement mods into one without any issues.

Time was pressing, so I couldn’t hear the details, but seeing that, I realized the Goddess had also desperately tried to kill it.

‘Aside from being able to see the patterns…’

I knew it, but attacking after dodging was the problem. Due to the enormous size difference, if I dodged patterns in the same way as in the game, I couldn’t close the distance before the next attack came.

Even if I somehow exploited an opening to strike, it wouldn’t work at all.

I had clearly landed more successful attacks, and aside from the initial surprise attack, I hadn’t been hit once, yet nothing had changed at all.

‘At least the Goddess is helping, so it’s a somewhat even fight. If I couldn’t fly in the sky, there would have been no answer.’

I glanced at the Goddess, who had now completely given up on attacking and was focusing solely on assisting my movements. She had unleashed all sorts of attacks on The World Eater, but they were all thoroughly ignored.

Since whatever she did caused no damage and couldn’t even attract its attention, she changed her strategy and poured all her energy into strengthening me and assisting my movements.

But I didn’t have any particular brilliant ideas either. I was merely narrowly dodging attacks and occasionally seizing opportunities to land blows that wouldn’t work at all.

‘……Should I attack inside its mouth?’

I recalled the inside of its mouth, which briefly appeared close to scarlet whenever it opened its maw to spew its breath attack. No matter how tough its scales were, the inside wouldn’t be as tough.

‘Let’s try it.’

It seemed like a pretty good idea. I coated the Wingless Nightmare with black flame again. Jet-black flames blazed on the blade, creating a shimmering heat haze.

‘Wait a minute. What if the Goddess already tried it and it didn’t work?’

I paused as I was about to move. What if the Goddess had already tried attacking inside its mouth and it hadn’t worked? My intended action would become completely useless.

My hesitation was brief. It was because a meteor shower began pouring down above my head. It was called a meteor shower, but each ‘star’ was the size of a meteor. I quickly moved my body and left the spot.

There was no time to sit idly and think. I just had to try it, and if it didn’t work, then I could figure out another method. If I didn’t get hit at all during the process, it wouldn’t be a loss at least.

It was a shame that I hadn’t learned telepathy or thought transmission methods for times like this. I considered shouting loudly to ask the Goddess, but I gave up on the idea, thinking both the Goddess and that thing would hear it.

‘A way to attack powerfully while having a fast casting speed…’

After calculating in my head and shattering one of the falling meteors, I made up my mind and moved to a position to bait its breath attack pattern.

The World Eater immediately charged. I waited for it to get closer, then sharply turned perpendicular to its charging direction and moved to the side.

If it had been a pattern where it charged with its mouth open from the start, it would have saved time, but unfortunately, that wasn’t the case.

As I moved to the side, it didn’t follow me but instead soared high upwards. Then, it created spheres of jet-black in both its hands. It was a pattern I had seen in the game.

The World Eater, which had soared towards the sky, simultaneously plummeted like a rollercoaster and spewed its breath attack. The world began to melt away like toilet paper thrown into seawater.

The spheres plunged into the ground. Jet-black energy spread to the horizon. In the game, it was at least within a reasonable range, but now it was far from that.

As I flew into the sky to evade the attack, its head also tilted to follow. Like the letter V, The World Eater, which had plunged down only to soar up again, spewed its breath attack towards me, suspended in mid-air.

“Scatter-!!!!!!”

The now all-too-familiar outcome unfolded before my eyes. It closed its mouth. Not yet. I charged directly at The World Eater. The distance closed in the blink of an eye.

Aside from the fighting location being a different space than a boss room, and fighting while standing on thin air instead of the ground, what I had to do was the same.

I created a fireball made of black flame in my left hand and hurled it. It directly charged into it and shattered it. Seizing that opening, I changed direction and rolled in front of its right foot.

The World Eater’s head looked towards its own right foot. It opened its maw wide as if to devour me. Up to this point, everything had gone as I intended.

Seizing the brief moment when its interior, hidden by scales and teeth, was exposed, I plunged the Wingless Nightmare-

ㅡKWAAJIK!

“Keoheuk?!”

Something large pierced my abdomen. A moment later, immense pain washed over me.

Coughing, a gush of crimson chunks erupted from my mouth. I tasted blood. A horrifying metallic smell spread through my nasal cavity, and liquid refluxed from my throat.

It felt like all the strength drained from my body. I slowly lowered my head.

Long and sharp, like a thorn, something had pierced through my abdomen and was sticking out. Somehow, its appearance was familiar.

“This… is…”

It was the blade of the Wingless Nightmare.

My eyelids kept wanting to close, making my vision quite blurry, but its appearance was unmistakable. I shifted my gaze. The Wingless Nightmare was still held in my right hand.

With difficulty, I turned my neck to look behind me. The Wingless Nightmare, piercing my abdomen, had emerged from thin air. From absolutely nothing.

Desperately keeping my swaying head steady, I placed my hand on the thing that had pierced my stomach. Its surface was smeared with blood and flesh. Crimson liquid, flowing from my lips, dripped onto it and seeped to the side.

The blade was horrifyingly thick. It was so thick that it felt less like a blade and more like an H-beam had been pulled from somewhere and rammed through me.

Vertically, it had pierced from near my hip bone all the way to just below my solar plexus, and horizontally, only a sliver of my side, less than the thickness of a finger joint, precariously connected my upper and lower body.

ㅡHuman… foolish… inferior….

A telepathic message flowed into my mind. It was clearly a mocking tone. Lacking even the strength to retort, I simply slumped and listened.

Even if I had retained some strength, I wouldn’t have been able to speak properly anyway, due to my mouth being filled with blood.

ㅡThe false god… must have told you… my actions… my thoughts… and you followed them….

‘…Did it know its actions were being recorded?’

That meant that my movements, which had followed the game’s patterns until now, were the result of it manipulating my thoughts. The reason it pulled such a stunt was, of course, to mess with me.

It was a fact I could tell just by the telepathic message flowing in now.

Cough, another cough escaped me. Had my tongue gone numb from tasting too much blood, or was the metallic smell gradually fading? Or was I just bleeding too much and dying?

“You! Youuuuuu!”

From afar, I heard the Goddess’s voice, wailing and screaming.