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Boom!
Crackle, Crash!
Se-un’s battle was a scene of utter carnage.
Like a wolf running rampant among sheep, he was tearing through the enemy with overwhelming force.
Most of the ants had already given up on the thought of facing Se-un.
They either spread their wings and fled into the sky or stepped over the corpses of their comrades to return to the anthill.
Some were so paralyzed with fear that they simply collapsed on the spot.
Watching this, Yoo Seo-ah gripped her twin swords tightly.
‘I can’t just stand by and watch.’
-Player Yoo Seo-ah uses ‘Tarantula’s Fourth Leg.’
Screech!
Yoo Seo-ah’s sword swept through the ants.
A new skill bestowed upon her by Baal, the Crowned Spider, her constellation, at the end of the crystal cave.
If her previous attacks were fast enough to leave afterimages, now there wasn’t even a trace of movement.
Just a gust of wind.
Each time that wind passed, the ants spewed fluids like a fountain and grew cold.
‘Still not enough.’
However, Yoo Seo-ah was not satisfied.
She focused on her legs and moved even more elaborately.
Instead of focusing on swinging the sword itself, she made the sword follow her movements naturally.
-The constellation, ‘Crowned Spider,’ is greatly satisfied and gleams its fangs.
-The constellation, ‘Crowned Spider,’ whispers that you could easily crush that dirty old man’s contractor now.
The dirty old man’s contractor. It was referring to Kang Han-cheol, the contractor of Agares, the old man riding the crocodile.
It seemed intended to ignite a sense of competition in Yoo Seo-ah.
However, she had no intention of competing with Kang Han-cheol.
She only wanted one thing.
To follow behind Se-un.
To not be a hindrance on the path forward, to not fall behind his rapid pace. It was enough to stick right behind Se-un.
It seemed like an easy goal, but Se-un’s speed was too fast for ordinary people to handle.
To follow him, she had to put in bloody and bone-grinding effort.
The more she resolved, the more the whirlwind around Yoo Seo-ah grew in size.
The ants caught in the whirlwind were mangled beyond recognition and left on the sand.
In an instant, dozens of ants lost their lives.
At that moment.
Whoosh!
Several winged ants ambushed her from above.
Without panicking, she calmly swung her sword, and a familiar cutting sound rang out.
However, the winged ants did not stop.
Surprised, Yoo Seo-ah turned her head and saw that they were holding dead ants in their mouths.
What she had cut was the corpse of the ant they were holding.
‘This……!’
It was an ambush that exploited the fact that her attacks were incredibly fast but shallow.
The winged ants, now close enough to touch, discarded their comrades’ corpses and bared their sharp teeth.
At that moment, Yoo Seo-ah’s eyes turned red.
Crack!
A cruel sound, as if something hard was breaking, was heard.
However, the target was not Yoo Seo-ah.
Five ants that had sprung from somewhere threw themselves to block the winged ants’ attack and launched a counterattack.
What was going on?
It wasn’t hard to figure out the reason.
The eyes of the ants biting the winged ants were also red, like Yoo Seo-ah’s.
-The constellation, ‘Crowned Spider,’ is impressed by your potential.
-The constellation, ‘Crowned Spider,’ anticipates that if you grow stronger, you will have tremendous potential for utilization.
The potential she gained by earning the epithet of Whirlwind: domination.
The usage Yoo Seo-ah realized was ‘to control the opponent she cut down.’
She hadn’t used it much yet, and she wasn’t familiar with it, so she didn’t know much about her ability, but now was not the time to conserve her strength because she wasn’t used to it.
Thud.
Thud, thud.
The ants, their bodies mangled and their lives fading, rose from their spots.
Their pupils were red as they surrounded Yoo Seo-ah.
Like a queen and her knights.
The winged ants hesitated, as if looking at traitors.
* * *
Whoa!
Swords and magic raged around Se-un.
The ants had long lost their will to fight and were busy running away.
However, the more they did, the more relentlessly Se-un chased them down and cut off their breath.
Already, hundreds of ants had lost their lives at Se-un’s hands.
The stench of decay, almost like rot, was emanating from the corpses of the ants scattered around.
‘As expected, maintaining it for long is impossible.’
Se-un’s purpose this time was not to annihilate the ants with the power of frenzy, but to learn about the power of frenzy itself.
As expected, the power of frenzy was rapidly disappearing over time.
It wasn’t like mana or stamina consumption increasing rapidly. It felt like something was constantly draining from the stigma.
It seemed that the divinity Se-un possessed was running out.
‘If I could only increase my divinity, I could extend the duration more…….’
The problem was that he didn’t know how to increase divinity.
In the first place, this wasn’t something that could be solved by gathering surrounding energy like a mana training method.
The only method that came to mind was to steal the divinity of other gods, like now.
Whoosh!
In the meantime, the number of ants increased once again.
The ants who had experienced Se-un’s power had lost their will to fight and were running away, but the newly appeared ants were not.
Moreover, at the far end of the anthill, a particularly large ant could be seen standing.
The queen ant.
It had realized the threat to the anthill and appeared in person to command the ants.
‘Should I pull back soon?’
He didn’t think he could destroy the anthill with the first raid.
Since there was plenty of time—10 hours—he planned to repeat the attack and retreat like this.
Thinking that, Se-un turned his head and looked in the direction of Yoo Seo-ah.
‘She’s fighting better than I thought.’
Was it because of the training in the desert? No, it was too much to say it was simply because of that.
She had become stronger to an unbelievable extent.
She seemed to be adapting well to the tricky potential of domination as well.
Feeling his gaze, she instantly cleared the monsters around her and approached Se-un.
“What are you planning to do?”
“Let’s retreat for now.”
“Really?”
“To regroup and attack again. If we repeat that three or four times, we can finish it.”
Normally, she would have nodded immediately and followed Se-un’s words, but for some reason, she didn’t answer.
Then, she cautiously opened her mouth with a careful expression.
“……Could you perhaps trust me once?”
“Do you have a plan?”
“Yes.”
Yoo Seo-ah pointed to the highest point of the anthill.
The queen ant.
However, Se-un, who noticed her plan, shook his head.
“It’s useless to kill the queen. It might cause temporary confusion, but a new leader will emerge soon.”
“That’s not it. I think I can use my potential.”
Yoo Seo-ah’s potential: domination.
He didn’t know what kind of plan it was, but her eyes were filled with conviction.
Since she had hardly ever asked for anything until now, Se-un soon nodded.
“Are you confident?”
“Yes!”
“Okay.”
“Thank you!”
She told Se-un her plan.
What Se-un had to do was simple: to clear the path so that she could reach the queen ant.
He wondered how she was going to approach that high place, but several winged ants with red pupils approached her from behind.
“Leave the path to me. I’ll clear it for you.”
“Yes!”
Even if the plan failed, he could just create distance and prepare for another attack.
Since it was her request, it wasn’t bad to take a gamble.
“Then, I’ll leave right away!”
Whoosh!
She flew into the sky on the winged ants.
Naturally, the gazes of countless winged ants were focused on her to stop her.
Attacks were difficult on the ground, but the sky was the domain of the winged ants.
They confidently clicked their teeth, moving their wings quickly.
And then, Se-un manifested the magic he had been preparing.
-According to the mysteries of the Black Tower, the power of ‘Inferno’ is enhanced.
Crumble!
The flames, filled with mana and grown in size, swallowed the winged ants.
They were used to the hot sunlight, but that didn’t mean they could survive in the flames.
Due to the extreme heat, they couldn’t move rashly.
In the meantime, Yoo Seo-ah quickly flew towards the top of the anthill.
The winged ants she was riding were moving their wings without regard to the hot heat.
However, that was only for a moment. There was a limit to the attack range of Inferno, and the higher she flew, the weaker the heat became.
Also, the number of escort ants increased rapidly as she got closer to the queen ant.
Just as they were relieved by the reduced heat and baring their teeth, the second magic was manifested from Se-un’s hand.
It was a magic that squeezed out all the remaining mana in the circle and created a ‘path’ for her.
-According to the mysteries of the Black Tower, the power of ‘Tornado’ is enhanced.
-According to the mysteries of the Green Tower, the speed of ‘Tornado’ is increased.
-According to the mysteries of the Blue Tower, the stability of ‘Tornado’ is enhanced.
The excessively long distance was overcome by the stability according to the mysteries of the Blue Tower.
He increased the power with the mysteries of the Black Tower and pushed her from behind through the mysteries of the Green Tower.
The tornado raged around her, creating a single path.
She quickly approached the top of the anthill, but the ants were not standing still either. The queen’s existence was more important to them than anything else.
They threw themselves into the wind and blocked Yoo Seo-ah even if their wings were torn.
Because of that, the balance was shaken, and the winged ants Yoo Seo-ah was riding lost their ability to fly as they were swept away by the wind.
It was like losing their wings in the distant sky.
However, Yoo Seo-ah did not give up.
Stepping on the backs of the falling winged ants, she jumped towards the queen ant.
The winged ants tried to escape, but it was already too late.
Yoo Seo-ah, who had reached the anthill, stepped on the wall that was close to 90 degrees and ran vertically.
The soldier ants stood in her way, but they couldn’t withstand even a single second and fell to the bottom of the anthill with their bodies mangled.
“Ggggh!”
The queen ant, facing Yoo Seo-ah, made a bizarre sound and bared its teeth.
However, the queen ant’s attack, which was not developed for combat in the first place, could not reach her.
Her sword fluttered as fast as the wind and pierced the queen ant’s crown.
Whoosh!
Thump, thump!
The panicked ants struggled.
She had shown the achievement of single-handedly breaking into and defeating the queen ant, but her plan was not over.
-Player Yoo Seo-ah dominates the ‘Queen Ant.’
The moment her pupils flickered red, that energy flowed through the sword and was transmitted to the queen ant.
The queen ant, whose breath was fading, maintained its majestic posture and raised one arm.
“Destroy the anthill.”
The queen ant’s command was absolute.
Even though the absurd order to destroy the anthill was given, even though the intruder’s sword was stuck in the queen ant’s crown.
The ants faithfully carried out the queen ant’s command.
All the ants in the field gathered and gnawed at the lower part of the anthill.
The sound of scraping echoed madly.
No ant doubted it.
As the lower part of the anthill was eaten away by about half.
Rumble!
The anthill, which had been firmly rooted in the desert, collapsed roughly.