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Chapter 76 – Part 3

「Gyeh, gyeh, gyeh!!」

Raising up a scream in a shrill voice, Niezheg took off from the floating island that he’d been half embedded into after crashing into it, and turned his gaze towards me, the white dragon who had suddenly appeared. His eyes were full of hostility and killing intent.

Niezheg twisted his long body, changing the posture of his body by opening up his giant wings to take on a show of great vigilance and intimidation. I calmly looked back upon this display.

If I stayed for too long inside of the Great Demon World, then Caravis may end up detecting my presence here. So I should try to finish this battle off as quickly as possible.

「Who goes there? It is the season of welcoming great harvests for the World Tree, and I wished to sink my fangs in its trunk, slurp up its sap, and chew its leaves and branches. Only a reckless fool would dare get in the way of this blissful moment in time.」

This one sure has an awfully impatient way of speaking.

The members of the Niezheg clan that I knew never talked like this one, as far as I remember. But, hmm, I see. Perhaps this was just a unique personality trait of this particular individual?

「You, who would dare intrude at the table of the Snake Dragons Niezheg as we feast on the world tree, have drawn the anger of I, Niezhel. I’ll have you regret that until your death」

Niezheg, or rather this individual named Niezhel, started to grind his fangs together, and a dark purple colored poison spilled out from his mouth. His heart was truly full of rage towards us for having interrupted his supposed time of bliss.

「The one who behaved boorishly first was you.

All these people here were in the midst of celebrating the coming of Ente-Yggdrasil’s great and abundant harvest, and yet you showed your face so suddenly. Moreover, you are here to try to devour Ente-Yggdrasil. You won’t be forgiven, even if you do apologize.」

Actually facing off against a member of the Niezheg clan like this again really brought back memories, of that time long ago, when I had fought together with the Seven Heroes.

Those enemies from that time were extremely high-ranking members of the Niezheg clan, and when they appeared in the human world, they were all powerful individuals who held great influence.

「Gyuarararara!!」

「So noisy!」

「Gehuhaaga」

Niezhel was stretching his neck towards me, and I slammed my clenched right fist into the side of his face with full force.

Broken, shattered fangs and black blood spilled out of his mouth as Niezhel once again went flying from the impact.

「As I thought, compared to the Niezheg I fought before, you’re still just an amateur. If your lot had appeared before the Seven Heroes instead, then they wouldn’t have needed to ask me for help at all」

I didn’t think fighting him could even serve as a good warm up. I flapped my wings once and chased after Niezhel in a single move.

As I did that, Niezhel restructured his position midair, and the flame of killing intent in his eyes stoked ever hotter as he glared my way. He inflated his lungs and throat, and blew out a deep purple poison breath toward me.

「Get poisoned!」

My field of vision filled up with the poison breath, as if it were a flood. Without any regard for it, I plunged into the poison.

And on the other side of the poison, maybe it was because Niezhel had not been expecting me to fight him head on, I saw surprise in his eyes as he looked back at me.

「At this level, there’s no way I’ll get poisoned, youngling」

「Uooh!?」

Niezhel immediately ceased his poison breath, and I could have tried to take evasive action, but it was much faster for me to close the distance between us by simply breaking through his poison.

Niezhel twisted his body to try to guard his face, leaving his body exposed instead. I grabbed onto the trunk of that body with both hands, and using myself as the axis, I started spinning him around and around. Then along with the momentum of the rotations, I flung him toward a floating island that I had spotted below us.

With absolutely no way to fight back, Niezhel’s large body crashed into one of the floating islands, and the dry earth of the island spread outward as it was pulverized from the impact. But he didn’t stop there. He flew straight through and crashed into another island, and another, and even more islands after that.

In just a short amount of time spent in hand to hand combat with me, Niezhel was sent flying, his scales breaking and scattering about as he went. Even his fangs half broke off, spilling out  streams of blood mixed with poison.

「Don’t tell me, you’re not just any ordinary white dragon!」

Niezhel, having endured the impacts, had come to realize that my appearance of a white dragon didn’t quite tell the whole truth of my power. I could see that his earlier hotheaded attitude had cooled down quite a bit.

「Just because you’ve calmed down and started thinking a little more rationally, don’t think that will make up for the vast difference in power between us, Niezheg demon」

Niezhel repositioned himself, regaining control of his body as he finally came to a stop. He started to absorb the magical energy around him that filled up the demon world, blending it with his own magical power, which caused it to increase explosively.

Indeed, the demons of the Niezheg clan had a weakness; they were not good at releasing magical energy outside of their bodies. Instead, they were good at intaking a flow of surrounding magical energy into their own bodies to strengthen themselves, or at injecting it into their enemies’ flesh or souls in order to destroy them directly.

And so, he challenged me once again in hand to hand combat.

Then in that case, I will accept his challenge and meet him head on in a direct battle. I will completely overwhelm him and have him know that I am absolutely superior in power. His very will shall break before me.

Just like Niezhel, I also incorporated the magical energy of the demon world into my own ether, and used that toward the continued construction of my dragon body. But unlike him, my growth in power was much larger than Niezhel’s, and was constantly growing, so much so, that it couldn’t even be compared.

「Let’s see if you’ve gotten any stronger, Niezhel!」

Rather than continuing to increase his own strength, Niezhel seemed to decide that my increasing strength was more of a threat, and flew toward me in an attempt to stop me before the amplification of my power reached its higher limits.

Niezhel shot toward the sky of the demon world, looking like a deep purple colored meteor as he flew in a straight line, his trajectory aimed towards me. He no longer cared about his own appearance, coming towards me with reckless abandon, seemingly with the intention to take me out along with himself.

「Guuraaaaaaaaahhh!!!」

Niezhel unleashed a strange scream as he flew. I also soared to meet him, both arms raised with just enough power held in them, so as not to destroy the whole demon world. I met him head on, in order to receive his attack directly.

Niezhel opened up his big jaw, and he aimed for my neck with his remaining fangs, filled with killing intent.

His attack was much faster than his first one had been, and it certainly held quite a lot of attack power, but compared to the top ranking evil gods and the primordial Niezheg members I had fought in the past, he was no match for me. He was so weak, I even had time to yawn from boredom. I felt no fear at all.

Rather, the wrath of someone I didn’t get along with, after accidentally running them over or something, would have been far more troubling. He wasn’t a threat, but……

「Haaaa!!」

「G-guaaaah!!!!」

Along with my roar, I slammed my right fist into the end of Niezhel’s nose, and then from there, my swing had reached all the way down to the end of his long tail all in one go, splitting him in two straight down the middle.

Niezhel died in an instant, before he could even think about regretting choosing to stand against me as an opponent. The core of his soul had disappeared completely, never to be revived ever again.

For those who meet the end of their existence and then move on to the afterlife, their final moments pass far too quickly. But as for the ones who fight against me, that is indeed the end most of them tend to meet.