Ch.99Chapter 99 – Belphegor (3)

“Doggy, there’s an intruder. Go bite them.”

KRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-!!!!!!

With those words, the bone dragon Kalsten flapped its wings, creating blue ghost fire. The tremendous air pressure caused the fighter jets to lose balance and stagger.

“Good heavens! What is that thing?! That wasn’t in the intel!!”

“We believe it was summoned by the boss! What should we do?”

“What do you mean what should we do? Concentrate fire! Aim for that heart-like thing! That must be its magical power source!”

Like hornets attacking a bear that disturbed their nest, the fighter jets flew at high speed around the bone dragon, firing their machine guns. Most bullets passed harmlessly through the sparse ribcage, but some hit the corrupted dragon heart.

The bone dragon’s eyes gleamed with hostility when its weak point was attacked. It began a full-scale counterattack. Though it had lost its noble magical prowess and superior intelligence from its lifetime, its massive size alone remained threatening. Flapping its wings, which were covered with decaying membranes hanging in tatters, it soared into the air.

“Target is taking flight!”

“Get out of its wing range!”

The fighter jets scattered at high speed, fleeing far from the bone dragon. However, the bone dragon could also fly at high speed. With movements as fast as a jet but far more flexible, it caught up to one of the aircraft.

CRUNCH-! BOOM!!

Jaws harder than orichalcum tore through steel like paper, crushing the fighter jet. Watching their comrade’s death helplessly, the pilots unleashed missiles more furiously.

But.

The bone dragon would not tolerate resistance.

Its heart pulsed rapidly,

And energy gathered in its mouth.

The dragon’s signature technique was unleashed.

Breath.

GWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-!!!!!!!!!!

Hellfire erupted. What poured from that mouth was death in the form of flames. Infernal fire as hot as the sun radiated from its muzzle, evaporating moisture in the air and melting building frames like ice cream. It was not an attack one could escape from. The bone dragon meticulously turned its head to burn each insignificant creature thoroughly. The pilots didn’t even leave corpses behind, oxidizing into molten liquid.

After incinerating all the flying insects, the dragon roared victoriously toward the sky. The triangular flames shooting upward evaporated all the clouds in the area. It looked like a mountain covered in wildfire hanging upside down…

Shin Jaehyuk trembled at the sight he had never witnessed before and muttered Belphegor’s nickname.

“Dragon Slayer, the dragon massacrer…”

He had single-handedly slaughtered dragons that were probably stronger than this one when they were alive? Jaehyuk felt his fighting spirit crumbling.

‘How can I possibly defeat that…?’

Jaehyuk reconsidered his goal. Kill the Demon King? How strong must the Demon King be if he’s stronger than Belphegor? And what about Kim Jaemin who killed the Demon King? Jaehyuk felt a helplessness he had never experienced before.

‘Even if my past life’s party of 12 heroes were intact, could we have defeated the Demon King?’

Belphegor manipulated a lever to approach Jaehyuk. The electric wheelchair moved with a whirring sound at a not-so-fast pace.

His movement is slow. I could reach him just by extending my hand.

Yes, I just need to land an attack.

His movement speed is slow, and his physical body is infinitely fragile.

A body that could be killed with a single bullet or one grenade.

But, but.

Jaehyuk couldn’t attempt an attack.

He couldn’t imagine any method that would reach his opponent.

Belphegor grinned.

“That’s the feeling of despair, Holy Knight.”

Belphegor, now right in front of him, easily snatched the spear away, like taking candy from a child. He pricked the tip of his index finger with the spear point, drawing beads of blood. He licked the droplets.

“A spear made of hellish iron. How dangerous to point such a thing at me. Goodness! One hit from this and I’d be dead instantly. Put it away!”

While joking around, Belphegor took away Jaehyuk’s mace as well. Seeing Jaehyuk so easily disarmed, Belphegor kept grinning, believing he had finally broken Jaehyuk’s will. Looking at that smirking face, Jaehyuk fingered the grenade in his pocket.

‘Just a little closer…’

Jaehyuk was waiting for the decisive opportunity. Though he called it a decisive opportunity, it was really a last-ditch effort.

Seeing the bone dragon, he realized a direct confrontation was impossible. Carelessness. He needed to exploit his opponent’s carelessness. While the defense was relaxed due to confidence in victory, he would deliver the decisive blow. This ambush strategy was possible because Belphegor was a glass cannon with attack power disproportionate to his health. It was a prayer-meta that left everything to luck.

‘Light.’

Jaehyuk secretly blessed the grenade. At this moment, he felt like an independence activist from old Joseon.

“Yes, that’s right… Meekly accept your fate…”

Belphegor, now close, extended both hands toward Jaehyuk’s head. His solemn appearance resembled a priest giving baptism. At that moment, Jaehyuk closed his eyes tightly and pulled the safety pin with force.

‘Please!’

And there was an explosion.

No,

There should have been.

Everything was quiet.

‘Why didn’t it explode? Damn, was it defective? I’ve heard soldiers steal so much behind the scenes…!’

When the expected pain didn’t come, Jaehyuk cautiously opened his eyes. What he saw was unbelievable.

The grenade wasn’t defective. It had definitely detonated. The flash of the explosion and the heat he felt were proof. But the cause failed to produce its effect.

“Impossible…”

As if time had stopped, like someone had pressed pause on a video, the explosion, heat, and grenade fragments were suspended in mid-air. Jaehyuk’s exceptional sense detected intricate magical threads holding each particle involved in the explosion.

‘In that split second?’

It should have been impossible. But for Belphegor, it was possible. His normal time perception was tens to hundreds of times that of an ordinary person. The moment Jaehyuk pulled the safety pin felt like a day to Belphegor. Thus, he had plenty of time to prepare.

After casually performing the miracle of “holding” an explosion, Belphegor lowered his hands in disappointment.

“Ha, an assassination attempt? How disappointing. After I so kindly offered you… eternal life, promised glory. And this is how you repay me?”

His face, already repulsive due to skin disease, became even more disgusting as it contorted. A magic circle appeared instantly. Six hundred strands of magical chains bound Jaehyuk’s body.

In a voice devoid of his characteristic frivolity, and therefore more terrifying by comparison, Belphegor pronounced:

“I’ll give you a painful death.”

With a gesture from Belphegor, the bone dragon above Jaehyuk pointed its maw downward. Magical energy pumped from its heart gathered at its mouth. As Jaehyuk deployed his celestial barrier in panic, hellfire rained down from above.

The flames, tinged slightly black from magical energy, licked the surface of the barrier greedily. Jaehyuk had been in a similar situation before when fighting Kwak Taewoo, caught in a flame thrower trap installed on the ceiling. But the heat he felt now was on a different level.

The black flames, with a color that couldn’t naturally exist, had an equally unnatural temperature. The heat traveling through the air past the barrier covered Jaehyuk’s hands with burn marks.

‘Black flame dragon is so damn strong…! There’s a reason they seal it in the right arm in anime.’

Though he tried to stay positive with jokes in his mind, Jaehyuk knew he was screwed.

The unceasing inferno gradually consumed his holy power. How long could he hold out? Belphegor, watching Jaehyuk’s struggle, wondered the same.

Comfortably leaning back in his electric wheelchair, Belphegor made a gun shape with his index finger and thumb.

“Bang! Bang! Bang!”

Belphegor fired magic bullets while playfully imitating gunshots. The magic bullets were a basic technique, lower in level and power than the 1st-tier black magic Dark Arrow. It was just a crude lump of magical energy thrown.

However, Belphegor, having reached the pinnacle of black magic, could see which parts of the barrier were weak, where holy power was less concentrated.

“Pop! Pop!”

The magic bullets he playfully fired unfailingly found the weak points of the barrier and poked at them. Each time a bullet hit a vulnerability, cracks appeared on the barrier’s surface.

‘Ugh…’

Jaehyuk hurriedly concentrated holy power to patch the barrier. Though it was quickly repaired, even the sparks that slipped through in that instant were unbearably hot.

“Well done. Shall we increase the difficulty a bit? Ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-tang-!”

The sound of a machine gun.

Magic bullets hammered into the barrier, nearly breaking it. Though he could have easily shattered it, Belphegor didn’t use his full power. He enjoyed this torture. For him, even this was just entertainment. And torture is always more fun when a little hope remains.

Burns, pain, increasing difficulty, pressure, hope fading with holy power.

Finally, Jaehyuk couldn’t hold on. Fire rushed through a one-centimeter gap and engulfed his face. That was the end. Jaehyuk couldn’t maintain his concentration. With the sound of shattering glass, the barrier broke.

Immediately after, a waterfall of flames engulfed Jaehyuk. It looked like pouring oil on the only begotten son, or a demon baptizing a saint to corrupt him.

Even hellish iron, which can withstand the heat of the infernal abyss, couldn’t withstand the hellfire deliberately spewed by the bone dragon Kalsten. The armor melted instantly, sticking to Jaehyuk’s skin. When the glowing magma touched his skin, nerve tissues exceeded their threshold, sending electrical signals of pain to the brain. The maximum tactile signals from peripheral nerves throughout the body tangled and mixed in the brain. The brain secreted neural substances in response to the pain. The pain was so great that consciousness seemed to be erased, the brain bleached white.

Jaehyuk wanted to scream. He wanted to release a scream to alleviate the pain. But the moment he opened his mouth, his airways melted instantly and his throat filled with acrid smoke, preventing any voice from coming out. He was on the verge of suffocation from the wave of fire.

The greedy flames sought to take everything from the organic matter. Bones and flesh, blood and meat… Everything burned equally.

But Jaehyuk’s regenerative power was remarkable. In his past life, just before death, he had experienced something similar fighting Beelzebub. Even while burning in hellfire, holy power divided cells, connected blood vessels, and filled in flesh and muscle. The immobile heart was forced to beat.

The process was accompanied by indescribable pain. It was an experience of why being burned alive is considered the worst death. The epidermis, the dermis beneath it, the muscles below the dermis, nerves, bones—all melted equally, mixing into a single dough. At the same time, holy power restored the body, creating new fuel to be burned again in a few seconds. Cells created were incinerated and disappeared within seconds. Then, cells regenerated by holy power filled the empty spaces.

A series of chaos repeated.

Jaehyuk’s appearance, with only skeleton and vital organs remaining, repeatedly experiencing birth and death, was utterly miserable. He was truly a living corpse, a monster barely clinging to life.

“Wow… it’s not dying? Are you a cockroach? At this point, you seem more demonic than me, kid.”

Even Belphegor, who had met all kinds of demons, was amazed by this recovery ability. He realized that even this level of attack wouldn’t be fatal to Jaehyuk. With this level of regeneration, ordinary attacks wouldn’t kill him. Having faced countless demons, Belphegor knew how to deal with this type.

“If the body won’t break, then break the mind.”

There was just the right spell for this. Belphegor licked his lips and chanted.

And he used his unique magic.

“Know that life is suffering.”

Unique magic,

Yeokjisaji (易地思之) – Put yourself in another’s place.

***

“Damn, I need to save these…”

Kwak Taewoo cursed while checking his remaining teleport scrolls. After using one to move from Argentina to Pyongyang, only three remained.

“That bastard, forcing a teleport out of nowhere. Some Four Heavenly King he is, running from a fight because of numbers?”

At times like this, it’s customary to blame someone else to alleviate feelings of injustice. Taewoo cursed Belphegor to soothe his disappointment.

But when the scenery changed from Argentina to Pyongyang, he had to stop cursing.

“What the hell…”

A giant skeleton in the sky was breathing fire down to the ground. The profanity he was about to utter got stuck in his throat.

“That’s an undead too?”

In the first timeline, Kwak Taewoo participated in the Pyongyang operation but never directly faced Belphegor. His and Cha Eunkyung’s mission was to clear a path to the gate while the S-ranks dealt with Belphegor.

‘Still, seeing it continuously breathing fire, they must be fighting hard. Probably evenly matched.’

In reality, Jaehyuk was being one-sidedly beaten, but Taewoo’s intellect couldn’t deduce that far.

“But who’s fighting? The Sword Demon? Shin Jaehyuk? Or together?”

He concentrated his energy sense to detect presences. His sense couldn’t reach where the dragon was. However, he felt two presences moving quickly nearby. One was the Sword Demon’s.

‘So the Sword Demon’s opponent is that Black Knight, and by process of elimination, Shin Jaehyuk is facing that bone dragon.’

The hunters who teleported to Argentina were surprised when they checked personnel. Only Jaehyuk and the Sword Demon hadn’t been teleported. They concluded that the two S-ranks had somehow resisted Belphegor’s magic and were still fighting hard, so they urgently requested additional support from headquarters.

Taewoo decided he should help the Sword Demon, assuming additional forces would target the larger, more easily detected target. He had no idea that those reinforcements had already been reduced to molten liquid…

‘That bone dragon doesn’t seem like something a sword can handle anyway. Better not disturb Jaehyuk who’s fighting hard and go help the Sword Demon instead.’

There was more to gain from that fight too. A chance to witness the swordsmanship of two genius swordsmen. Growth through life-or-death battle.

And the Sword Demon’s life.

Running toward the presence, Taewoo recalled the Sword Demon’s fate in the previous timeline. In the first timeline, the Sword Demon died facing Belphegor.

But there were no wounds on his body. His physical form was intact. He became like a vegetative person, as if he had suffered a great mental shock. The Sword Demon was declared brain dead one week after the Pyongyang incident ended.

“But this time will be different. I can save him…!”

Taewoo repeated his determination. Change the future. Save the world by doing so. Having witnessed Kim Jaemin avoid a fatal wound in the battle against Belial, Taewoo was convinced he could twist fate. That gave him hope that he could also change the Sword Demon’s future.

“A healthy hero, a living Sword Demon, and a Dark Knight who has returned to humanity’s side. With this much, even the Demon King should be…”

Calming his hopeful heart, Taewoo thought of Jaehyuk, who must be battling Belphegor by now. Seeing the bone dragon burning half the city, he was a bit worried. But Jaehyuk’s confident attitude dispelled his concerns.

“Jaehyuk will… well, he’ll be fine. He said himself he’s the strongest holy knight in history.”