Chapter 833: How to Make an Impact (2)

A freezing chill that seemed capable of freezing even the soul swept in from somewhere.

“This is the first time I’ve felt this refreshed.”

And.

In the direction that chill was coming from stood a woman.

Of course, she was no ordinary human.

An enormous figure well over 3 meters tall, with pale skin that looked almost frightening.

But right now, none of that appearance mattered.

SHHHHHHHHH.......

The freezing chill surging from her body.

That intense cold was holding back the fists of the amorphous monster.

‘This is.’

The amorphous monster, Nergalon, thought.

The force contained in the fists it had swung was not something that mere cold should have been able to stop.

No matter how extreme the chill was, even if it froze its body, those fists had already begun moving.

Their kinetic energy would not suddenly disappear...... so no matter how thick the ice created by that tremendous cold might be, the fists should have shattered straight through it and eliminated their target without losing any power.

But that was not what happened.

That fact itself proved that this chill was completely different from ordinary cold.

-Even so!

BOOM!

Of course, even that restraint did not last long.

The monsters that had split into thousands while fighting Shin Youngjun.

They soon shook off the chill and began moving again.

‘I only need to eliminate that man as quickly as possible.’

That enormous woman.

Although she seemed to have been asleep while it was active, Nergalon’s senses had already recognized her presence.

It had understood that there was a being among the humans who possessed considerable power and was sleeping there.

But...... that was all.

She was only at a level it could handle easily enough.

The real problem was still that man, Sergeant Shin Youngjun.

The owner of the enormous light it had witnessed not long ago.

If it could somehow eliminate him before he summoned that light again, the rest would be nothing more than enemies it could dispose of however it pleased.

But.

FWOOSH-!

An attack came flying toward that monster.

Though it had split into nearly a thousand bodies, those thousand bodies still contained the power it had cultivated by devouring this continent.

Because of that, perhaps that enormous woman could do something.

But it should have been impossible for any other being to injure it.

BOOOOOOOM!

-......!

The tremendous cold froze its body, and then a gigantic hammer struck its slowed flesh.

And...... the frozen body of the monster shattered apart.

SHHHHH.......

Of course, the pieces scattered from the impact regenerated again.

That attack did not reduce the total amount of its power.

It had merely caused it to split into even more bodies.

But...... Nergalon could not help being shocked.

‘How.’

Only then did the surrounding scene begin to come into clearer focus.

The cold that had begun somewhere.

It had not originated from that enormous woman.

‘Them.’

The countless awakened gathered here.

More precisely...... those who, until only a short while ago, had been surrounded by those amorphous monsters and waiting for the day they would die.

The chill emanating from their bodies filled this entire area.......

No.

It ruled it.

It could not help being shocked.

It had not let its guard down.

It had once sensed the being that descended upon that distant land, and the light that drove such a being away.

Until only recently, it had been trying to accumulate as much power as possible out of fear that the owner of that light might appear again.

There was no way it could have lowered its guard.

But.......

What was happening now was something completely different.

Because.

‘He isn’t even stepping in.’

The being it had feared so much.

The owner of that light was standing one step back, merely watching the battle.

The only ones attacking it were the awakened.

What was more.

‘......Even those subordinates are standing still.’

Only the Russian awakened.

Even those Legion members were not interfering in this battle.

***

“UOOOOOOOOOOH!!!”

The old man, Vasily, shouted as he swung his hammer.

BOOM!

The monster’s body shattered and scattered.

The monster merely used that to split apart, without suffering any fatal damage.

But...... that did not mean it was meaningless.

‘The divided bodies become weaker.’

There was a reason that monster had chosen to fuse when it tried to subjugate them.

The more it divided, the weaker each individual body became.

And...... there was one more reason why this mattered.

‘Against an enemy that powerful...... our attacks are working!’

Right.

Not ‘my attack’ but ‘our attacks’.

Right now, on this battlefield.

BOOOOOOOOOOM!!!

Countless awakened.

Were literally smashing the amorphous monster’s bodies apart.

‘My God.’

Even though they were the ones actually fighting.

The Russian awakened could not help being dumbfounded.

They had been nothing more than prey.

In the past.

Even before that being had received support from ‘outside’ as it had now, the difference between them had been obvious.

Its only goal had been to rapidly devour the surroundings.

And fusing to deal with powerful enemies was inefficient.

If not for those two reasons, it would not have been strange if they too had been devoured by that monster and become part of its enormous body.

And now, that monster had even received support from outside.

When they saw it perfectly controlling that tremendous power, they had felt outright despair.

And yet...... the monster that had driven them to such despair.

BOOOOOM!

Was being shattered by their own hands.

And...... there was only one reason such a thing was possible.

‘That taste just now!’

The intense flavor that had entered their mouths.

After tasting it, the power they possessed had become incomparably stronger.

More precisely...... a freezing chill had settled into their bodies.

‘......This coolness.’

And every Russian awakened could control that chill.

Because the Witch, a being from another world, had taught them how.

And the Witch, the source of all those techniques, felt the chill dwelling inside her body and thought.

‘It is slightly different from what I knew.’

Cold was only natural in her homeland.

But she had never thought of that cold as suffering.

She had been born in a cold land and had always regarded that place as home.

To her, cold was much like the warmth other beings felt.

‘This is not that.’

The chill she felt now was extremely similar to the power that had filled her homeland, and yet completely different.

It was a lonely and frightening power.

And that chill was.......

‘A cold stronger than anything I have ever experienced in my homeland.’

Considering what kind of position she had held in her homeland, it made no sense.

Perhaps only the master she had served could barely have wielded a chill of comparable strength.

She could not understand how cold of this degree could even exist in this land.

And...... while experiencing such a completely different kind of chill.

A chill stronger than anything she had ever experienced before.

For the first time, she understood a single concept.

‘Cold.’

Lonely, frightening, painful.

Something completely different from the pleasant coolness she had known.

And because of that.......

BOOOOOOOM!

When it came to smashing an enemy apart.

There was nothing more suitable.

‘The children are fighting well.’

The chill dwelling in her body had settled equally into the bodies of all the awakened.

Compared to her they were terribly clumsy, but the awakened were controlling that energy as they fought.

She could see that overwhelmingly powerful being becoming flustered while fighting awakened who should have been far weaker than itself.

Watching that, the Witch thought.

‘Normally...... no matter how powerful this energy was, we still would not have been able to fight that monster.’

Perhaps it might have been possible against the monster from a short while ago.

That was how powerful this chill was.

But...... not after that sky had opened.

Not after the monster had held some kind of conversation with whatever was outside.

‘That power back then...... seemed to overwhelm even that man.’

Countless bodies had fused into one, and it had perfectly controlled the power produced by that fusion.

Even the man who had begun tearing that monster’s flesh into pieces the moment he appeared had seemed overwhelmed by its power.

That form back then.

If the monster had remained perfectly fused into a single body, even she would not have been able to face it.

Even if she poured out all of this chill at maximum strength, she probably would not have been able to slow its movements in the slightest.

And yet there was only one reason this battle was possible now.......

‘Because that man split the monster apart.’

The man who had now stepped back and was watching the awakened fight.

Because he had divided the monster’s body into thousands of pieces.

If all of its power had been gathered into a single body, they never could have faced it.

No power would have worked against that one overwhelmingly strong individual.

But when it was divided into thousands, the situation became slightly different.

Even if the total amount of power remained the same.

The strength of each individual body had fallen to one several-thousandth of the whole.

They were still difficult to deal with.

But if the awakened and she fought with everything they had, somehow dealing with each individual body was possible.

Only then did she realize one thing.

‘At first...... that man was not being overwhelmed.’

When all that enormous power had been perfectly fused together.

She had thought even that man had no choice but to be overwhelmed by such a monster.

But that was not it.

‘He deliberately...... fought it only until it had divided into thousands of pieces!’

Because it was too powerful as a single body.

Until it had split into an appropriate number.

In other words.......

‘To bring it down to a level we could fight!’

She was not the only one who realized that.

The Russian awakened who were fighting.

All of them understood why they were now able to fight this enemy.

“......This power.”

And so.

While continuing to smash the enemies apart.

The old man...... Vasily spoke toward the man who was watching them.

“Did this power originate from you?”

“Hmm?”

At those words.

The man thought for a moment, then shrugged his shoulders and said.

“I wouldn’t say it originated completely from me...... but, well, close enough.”

“The power I can feel in our bodies right now...... is beyond anything words can describe.”

And.

They had experienced something similar not long ago.

“It was you.”

Vasily spoke with certainty.

“The owner of that light...... was you.”

Yes, that must be why even that thing was afraid...... the old man muttered blankly.

But.

If that was true, there was one thing he could not understand.

“If you can grant us this much power.”

When this man had first appeared.

He had hunted that monster with overwhelming power that they could not comprehend.

Then, after the sky had opened.

The man had seemed to struggle somewhat against the monster.

At first, they had truly thought it was because the monster had become far too powerful...... but that was not it.

“Earlier, you could have hunted that monster yourself.”

“.......”

“No, even before that. When the sky opened and that thing was speaking with the being beyond the sky. You would have had more than enough time to dispose of it then.”

A being capable of granting this much power.

In that case, it made sense why the monster had feared him in the first place.

It also made sense that he had been capable of overwhelming that monster.

There was only one thing that did not make sense.

“Why did you not deal with it yourself?”

Even though this man was capable of disposing of that monster himself. 𝘧𝓇ℯℴ𝓂

He had not done so, and had only weakened it to an appropriate level.

That process of weakening it had merely looked to them as though he were struggling somewhat.

“That thing devoured our land. Of course I hate it. But.......”

“But?”

And at Vasily’s words.

The man lightly shrugged his shoulders and said.

“Because there are people who hate that thing even more than I do.”

“......What?”

“I’m the one who’s curious. Is it really okay for you to be talking to me right now?”

As Vasily stared blankly with his mouth open, unable to understand what he meant.

The man smiled lightly and said.

“The monster that devoured your homeland is right over there. You should deal with it yourselves.”

“.......”

Only after hearing those words.

Did Vasily understand the man’s intention.

The reason a being possessing such tremendous power had not eliminated the enemy himself.

‘To hand the opportunity over to us.......’

And.

Once Vasily understood that fact, a chill ran down his spine.

‘If he had simply subjugated that monster himself, I might have been able to understand it at least a little.’

That monster, Nergalon, possessed power on a scale they could not comprehend.

And the same was true of the man before him.

If that man had personally defeated the monster.

It would merely have been ‘a monster possessing incomprehensible power’ being defeated by ‘a human possessing incomprehensible power’.

This ruined world was overflowing with powerful beings like that.

Even if they could not understand the power itself.

They might still have been able to understand what had happened simply as...... another powerful being had appeared.

‘I know the power I possess.’

But...... this was different.

‘I know that even if I died and came back to life, I would never have been able to fight that monster as I am now.’

That man had accomplished something beyond the limits of what Vasily could barely comprehend.

It was not another overwhelmingly powerful human defeating an overwhelmingly powerful monster.

An overwhelmingly powerful monster that they could never defeat.......

BOOOOOOOOOOM!!!

Was being defeated.

By the power of those who should never have been able to defeat it themselves.