Chương 99: The Desolate King

Now, not that far from our goal, the last opportunity to take a break presented itself. From a distance, we spotted a small tavern standing in a quiet village, inhabited by the very last survivors who lived on the edge of the fully desolate region. It was a humble place, filled with simple wooden tables beneath a low ceiling, filling the room with a combination of hearty stew and old ale that instantly told you it was safe to relax. The leaders pulled us into a private corner of the tavern.

Zhuofing, Mo, and the others spoke with absolute seriousness, laying out direct rules for the upcoming fight.

"We need to be smart in our grouped approach," Zhuofing said.

"No reckless charges unless we have a clear opening to strike at. We listen to our surroundings, we adapt to the situation that unfolds, and we strike only when we have the advantage." Mo nodded to everyone and concurred with a heavy grunt.

"The beasts in the Desolate Region are no ordinary monsters. We need to better understand their patterns before we engage." With those words hanging in the air, we huddled in the corner and discussed the creatures while we ate. First on the list were the Hyenfes, nightmarish skeletal predators that defied imagination. They stood an incredible twenty-two meters tall with a lean, elongated body length of three meters.

They possessed a terrifying bite force of thirty-five tons, crushing steel armor and solid bone with the exact same ease. Despite their massive stature, they were capable of unnatural speed, generating short bursts of acceleration that reached up to six hundred kilometers per hour, making them deadly ambush hunters. Their Alpha stood larger still, reaching twenty-five meters in height and four meters in length, with a jaw force that topped out at forty tons.

Its physical presence alone was enough to command the loyalty of the entire pack. Two distinct red whiskers marked its dominance over the others. These creatures were fast, relentless, and highly opportunistic, utilizing their immense height and terrifying speed to strike from above or close the distance instantly in coordinated hunting packs. However, because their primary goal was to strike with an easy opportunity in mind, a greater show of defensive force from our side might make a difference.

If we project a powerful enough presence of Animo, they might tuck themselves away and choose not to engage us at all. The true rulers, and the reason the whole region stayed desolate, were the Nanguwange. They stood thirty meters high and four-point-three meters wide, with bloated pumpkin-like bodies twisted into grotesque forms. Massive eyes glowed with malevolent intelligence above wide, jagged maws, where rows of razor-sharp teeth dripped acidic saliva.

Their arms were fused into thick, powerful tentacles lined with suckers and barbs that could rip flesh from bone in seconds. They possessed a super-strong capability for pure destruction, easily shattering stone walls and wiping out whole groups of warriors in a single swing. Their rapid regeneration closed even killing wounds in moments, allowing severe damage to knit shut right in front of your eyes. Worst of all was the crown, a grotesque living crown made from their own freshest offspring.

These small, parasitic young locked directly onto the parent's head, feeding on its power while serving as extra eyes and extra weapons. Furthermore, the parent always took the skeleton of the most powerful enemy it had felled, building those bones directly into its own body for extra strength and armor inside the pumpkin-like flesh.

They were voracious omnivores, devouring flesh or bone with a visible sense of pleasure, and they would even nibble on the metal of a fallen enemy's weapon if enough Animo residue still clung to the surface. Despite their bloated shape, they were incredibly fast, capable of sudden bursts of speed that caught even veteran fighters completely off guard in the dark expanses of the territory. According to what we had been told, their weaknesses were specific.

They only walked the desolate ground, confined entirely within it because they were seemingly unable to fully absorb nutrients outside of that specific soil. But before we could continue discussing them further, someone interjected. Cao Liangze whom had listened quietly the entire time. As a high-ranked Historian Seeker, he already knew all of this, and in the end, he decided to add his own crucial piece of information to our strategy.

"Those things came from the end of the Zhongguodao Border," Cao Liangze said, his voice dropping an octave.

"Some say their origins are in Gongryeo."

"Gongryeo!?" several of us exclaimed at once, the name echoing sharply in the quiet corner of the tavern. He nodded gravely.

"Yes. Ancient records in our region speak of Gongryeo as a forbidden land beyond our borders, filled with many creatures that are completely foreign to ours. In reality, it is a place of immense vitality, and that very vitality is what draws those disasters. They seek fertile land, which is exactly why they migrated to our territory. The Nanguwange are said to have originated there before spreading into our region. That is why this land became so utterly desolate.

They suck the earth dry with their tentacles, draining the lifeforce from everything they touch." We shuddered as we listened, the horrifying scale of their ecology setting in. Yet, the old man was almost giddy. His chair rocked forward and back as he spoke, his body language proving he simply could not contain his scholarly excitement. His pupil tried to lean in and calm him down, only to receive one sharp slap across the face for the effort.

"And their weakness lies inside their mouth," the historian continued, completely ignoring his groaning student.

"There is an orange core inside their jaws. If you manage to shatter that core, the entire beast will wither and dry up. Therefore, you have a definitive, potential weakness to exploit in the coming battle." We spoke until late around the tavern tables. Talk moved from strategy to old battles, from the Progenitor's art to the losses that still sat heavily in our chests. The fire cracked softly. Some laughed at old jokes, while others went quiet with heavy eyes.

The coming fight hung over us, but for a few hours we let ourselves just be together, comrades bound by blood and purpose. When sleep finally came, some rested well, their bodies emptied by the long day. Others lay awake, their minds running toward the Hyenfes and Nanguwange. I dreamed of fighting. As usual, I faced the shadow of Siegfried. I threw everything I had at him. Flame and soul energy roared around me, but no matter how hard I pushed, I could not overcome him.

The shadow stayed just out of reach, taunting me with that overwhelming presence. I woke with a heavy chest and a bitter taste in my mouth, frustration and determination mixed together. The morning air was crisp when we set out toward the Desolate Region. The clouds were still thick and gloomy, casting a grey veil over everything. We moved with grim purpose, the weight of the coming battle sitting heavily on all of us.

Cao Liangze rode on the carriage, his excitement barely contained, while the rest of us walked steady. The landscape had already turned grim hours ago, but as we reached the literal border into the territory, the desolation hit its absolute peak. The cracked earth split into deep, jagged fissures, and the last signs of sparse, dying vegetation vanished entirely, leaving nothing but barren dust stretching toward distant, black mountains.

The air grew suffocatingly dry, choking us with a heavy, metallic stench that burned the back of the throat. Every step forward felt less like a march and more like a descent into a completely ruined world, where the true danger was finally waiting for us. We passed the old warning shield: You are entering the Desolate Region. Please RETURN back! We ignored it and pushed forward.

One hour deeper into the region, the scenery turned truly bleak, revealing a more grey, dark-looking place where everything was fully dry and lifeless. No birds sang, and no wind rustled leaves. The ground was barren and broken, cracked like old leather. We saw many hideous scenes, including run down villages with no activity whatsoever and skeletons everywhere, picked completely clean and left to bleach in the sun. Then, from those very skeletons, the Hyenfes attacked.

They used the piles of old bones as camouflage, rising suddenly like nightmares from the dead. Our group of six hundred faced three hundred of them in a fierce battle, embarking on a long and brutal combat. Our original plan to use our Animo to hold them back fell flat on our shoulders, crushed because the Alpha controlled the pack with a much greater, absolute fear. Under its dominant will, the Hyenfes swarmed us with terrifying coordination.

Their twenty-two-meter-tall skeletal bodies moved with unnatural speed, reaching bursts of six hundred kilometers per hour as their long necks snapped at limbs and throats. Their bite force of thirty-five tons crushed armor and bone with sickening ease. The Alpha, a massive twenty-five-meter-tall beast with two distinct red whiskers, led the pack. Its forty-ton bite force tore through our front line while its eerie, high-pitched cackling laughs echoed across the wasteland to coordinate the attack.

Zhuofing roared through the chaos, commanding everyone to hold the line and stay in formation, while Mo took on the tanker role to protect the main line where the rest of us stood. We fought with pure skill and steel, using no Vestuto yet. Swords clashed against bone, spears thrust into joints, and axes chopped at long necks. I cut down several Hyenfes, my blade slicing through their skeletal frames while I dodged their lightning-fast strikes.

Xhife fought beside me, his staff spinning in wide arcs to smash skulls and break necks. Xihua's thorn whips lashed from the edges, tearing through multiple beasts at once. The leaders worked together to take down the Alpha. Mo's raw strength and Zhuofing's explosive gauntlets formed the core of the assault, while the mentor Cao Liangze and his pupil joined with their own powerful techniques. After a long, bloody struggle, they finally brought the Alpha down.

The pack broke soon after, and the remaining Hyenfes fled back into the bones. We lost only nineteen of our own. The victory was hard-fought, leaving us victorious but weary. We eventually made it to a resting place to plan our search for the pearl. Once we had rested, we formed groups of ten and went our separate ways. We fought some smaller groups of juvenile Hyenfes, which were weaker and easier to kill. Their movements were clumsy compared to the adults, and their skeletal frames were not yet fully hardened.

The battles were short but still dangerous. I fought at the front of my group, my Elsa di Fuoco fire aura slashes cutting through their long necks and limbs with precision. The two named mercenaries, Qilianchi and Houshou, held back slightly, observing how I fought. Qilianchi watched with calm, wise eyes, nodding occasionally as if evaluating my technique. Houshou stood with crossed arms, his heavy aura silent but clearly analyzing every move I made.

They did not intervene unless necessary, acting as if they were testing me. Our initial search yielded no results in finding the pearl's location. We searched through ruined villages and broken paths, the overall desolation weighing heavily on us. Then, once we reached the top of the most western hill, we finally found something significant. The old City of Kunglunge, the former capital of the fallen clan, lay run down and nearly entirely destroyed in dark blue colors.

The once-grand structures were trapped in ruins, with towers collapsed, walls crumbled, and streets covered in thick dust and old bones. The only thing alive in the entire vicinity was a small tree standing twenty meters high. It retained its original white-pink colors, looking as if it had been mysteriously maintained through the centuries, its blossoms glowing softly against the grey wasteland. It stood like a lone beacon of what the grand city once was.

However, we were suddenly called back for a debriefing before we could investigate the tree any further. As we returned to the camp, we had to report that we had not found the pearl, though we had also encountered no Nanguwange. Hearing this, the old man Cao Liangze was absolutely furious that he had not joined the active search. He kicked up a massive fuss like an eccentric child, throwing a tantrum that physically broke the surrounding area down with the sheer impact of his motion.

The blocked cliffs, which looked like they had been sealed ten years ago, completely broke down under his tantrum. The collapse revealed that the Nanguwange had been right there all along, entrapped by someone in the past. A singular king Nanguwange had survived inside that sealed cavern through horrific acts of cannibalism over the years. It had grown massively, swelling far bigger by eating its own kind. Now, by accident, we had freed it.

The old man and his pupil immediately engaged this giant Nanguwange, which stood far bigger than the standard size recorded from the dead city's history. A man in his late forties carrying twin tonfas suddenly appeared, completely furious that we had broken his entrapment. We had inadvertently released the very beast that he had spent so long trying to contain because he was unable to kill it, a desperate effort to slowly restore his fallen clan.

This man, Hibazuo, was a seasoned forty-year-old tonfa fighter standing one-point-seventy-six meters tall. His shoulder-length dark blue hair framed a sharp, battle-hardened face accented by a neat, masculine beard. Dressed in traditional dark green and black warrior robes with reinforced armor plating, he exuded a calm authority and lethal intent, his twin tonfas gripped firmly in his hands. Driven by sheer, deranged anger because we had destroyed his city's last hope, he turned his wrath against us.

If the monster remained free, the king Nanguwange would inevitably suck the life from the pink-and-white tree, finally killing off the last remaining legacy of the Kunglunge clan. To attack us, Hibazuo activated his Vestuto, channeling the thunder attribute. His tonfas physically infused with his arms, seamlessly becoming part of his limbs. His armor shifted into a darkish blue hue, granting him immense power.

He used no electricity-based moves; instead, the raw power of thunder roared directly within his arms, granting him greater reach and leaving his hands completely free to punch or execute devastating combinations with his tonfas. He possessed enough destructive power to split massive cliffs with a single strike. Meanwhile, the old historian Cao Liangze activated his own Vestuto, transforming his armor into an earth attribute power suit.

His Animo was the greatest among us, peaking at a staggering 149, 000, but even he struggled heavily against the sheer scale of the situation. We fought with everything we had while the mentor and his pupil were brutally beaten back by the giant Nanguwange. Seeing them falter, our qualified leaders immediately jumped into the fray to assist.

Mo roared through the chaos as his three-meter earth Panda form slammed violently into the beast's side, commanding everyone to hold it back and prevent it from reaching the sacred tree. Beside him, Zhuofing's gauntlets glowed at maximum overload as he landed heavy, explosive blows on the Nanguwange's thrashing tentacles. He shouted in a voice filled with absolute rage, dedicating every strike to every life the monster had taken and to the lands it had destroyed.

The Nanguwange roared in fury, its massive tentacles whipping around, smashing boulders and nearly crushing several of us. It bellowed in its deep, monstrous voice, demanding to know if we dared free it only to fight it, declaring that the tree belonged to it and that it would suck the last of Kunglunge's hope dry to grow stronger. The Nanguwange roared in fury, its massive tentacles whipping around, smashing rocks and nearly crushing several of us.

"You… dare… free me… only to stand in my path and fight me?!" it bellowed in its deep, monstrous voice.

"This tree is mine! The last of Kunglunge's hope! I will suck it dry!" The old mentor, Cao Liangze, laughed wildly in excitement as he fought alongside his pupil.

"Finally! A worthy opponent after all these years!" he shouted, his earth power suit slamming into the beast's side.

"Come on, you oversized gourd! Show me what you've got!" His pupil was struggling, breathing hard.

"Master, please be careful! This thing is stronger than anything we've faced!" The Nanguwange tried to retreat after getting more and more beaten, desperate to regain its power.

"Enough! I will return later… when I am stronger!" it growled, trying to slither away toward the small white-pink tree. But the old mentor returned one more time standing in its way, eyes blazing with excitement.

"Oh no you don't! I've waited decades for a fight like this!" He charged with everything he had, his earth power-suit blazing. The hill shook under each step. Cao Liangze was seventy and still ran like a man who had been waiting decades for permission to be stupid. The Nanguwange met him with the crown-children screaming. The parasite-young on its head opened extra mouths, and tentacles slammed down like falling towers. One blow cratered the slope, while another tore a slab of dead-city stone into dust.

Cao took the first on the shoulder-plate and laughed through the impact.

"That's it! More!" He drove a fist into the bloated orange hide, causing earth Animo to detonate inside the wound. Flesh blew out, but the regeneration knitted it shut before the spray even hit the ground. He hit the same place again, and then again. The pupil tried to flank the creature and got whipped twenty meters into a collapsed wall.

"Master!"

"Stay down if you can't keep up!" The beast wrapped three tentacles around Cao's torso and squeezed until his armor cracked. The old man's glasses flew off his head. He bit a herb from his own pocket mid-crush, chewed it dry, and spat green foam directly into one glowing eye. The Nanguwange shrieked and loosened its grip a fraction. That fraction was enough. Cao dropped low, placing both palms to the cracked earth, and the hill answered him. Stone spears punched up through the pumpkin-body from underneath.

Acid saliva rained down, but he ignored it despite his burned beard and burned sleeves. He climbed the spears like a ladder and went straight for the living crown. Both of them looked dead in that instant. Tentacles closed a death-grip around his ribs, making his bones pop. The Nanguwange hauled him in toward its jagged maw, acidic drool hissing on the earth-suit.

"You… old fool… I will wear your skeleton!" Cao Liangze's last roar of triumph tore out of him anyway.

"Then wear this!" He poured everything left into one strike straight into the crown. Offspring-skulls burst, and the living coronet shattered into the beast's inner body, reaching the core and breaking it with the exploding force. Rainbow light kicked out of the wound like a second sun. The beast collapsed. The old man stood victorious on the hill where the Nanguwange had tried to flee and suck the ground to regain its glory. His attack stopped it, killing the beast directly on its crown.

The pearl with the number 2 with the sign 二 was there, glowing brightly among the broken remains. It was a perfect sphere radiating shifting rainbow light, with the ancient character etched clearly at the bottom, pulsing with a faint but powerful Animo. The last man of Kunglunge, Hibazuo, fell to his knees, heavily wounded. He looked at us with tired, broken eyes.

"My madness… ended. I was already on the verge of ending my life. The last line in my family clan's honor made me stay here… and the darkness consumed my mind. I always attacked incoming visitors… but with my end… the clan's last hope can finally rest without my madness beside it." With those final words, Qixian delivered the killing blow. Hibazuo fell, his body still. We obtained the second pearl. The silence that followed was heavy.

We had won, but the cost, including the lives lost, the destruction, and the tragic story of the last Kunglunge survivor, left us all quiet and reflective about how dangerous nature is when releasing such a beast into the Orbis Terrarum.