Chapter 173 - Waled (1)
“A scream?”
The first to react to the scream was none other than Nadasman.
Henry tried to hide his smile and calmly replied, “Let’s go see what’s going on.”
Soon, a search party was created, including Henry and Nadasman.
As soon as the search party looked over the highland, everyone except Henry screamed in shock.
“W-what the hell is that?”
“A-a dragon?”
“N-no way! A dragon?”
Everyone reacted differently, but it was natural for those seeing Elagon for the first time to think it was a dragon.
Looking bewildered, Nadasamn questioned Henry, “S-Sir Henry! What is that? You said you were going to use a monster, but is this what you meant, a dragon?!”
“No, that’s a spirit.”
“What?”
“I said it’s a spirit. That, too, is a high-level spirit.”
After Henry finished his patrol of the terrain with the thousand-man commanders during the day, he decided to use the Thern highland as the first stage of his performance. As soon as it got dark, Henry placed Elagon’s still-evolving egg near the summit of the highland.
‘I have to agree, it sure does look scary looking at it like this.’
Henry answered Nadasman nonchalantly and continued to look at the angry Elagon.
He initially had no intentions of including Elagon in his plan. However, Henry had decided to use him after noticing a special change in Elagon after he had forced him to swallow the Egg of Evolution.
‘It was horrific now that I think about it again.’
After taking the Egg of Evolution, Elagon turned into an egg and entered the evolving phase. Of course, Henry didn’t know what was going on and naturally touched Elagon’s egg. The surface of the large egg then collapsed with a bright light, and the egg became smaller.
That was all that had changed, and since there was no change except for a slight decrease in size, Henry touched the egg once again. Then, the surface of the egg collapsed again, making the egg much smaller than before.
This continued multiple times.
Elagon’s egg, which had been as big as a boulder, was now merely the size of an adult boar. When Henry touched the egg one more time out of curiosity, it caused a large explosion with a loud boom.
Of course, Henry also cast the Magic Shield like Edward, so he didn’t sustain any significant damage. However, the explosion was much more powerful than expected, as it nearly broke his Magic Shield.
However, the problem was that the massive explosion from the egg was not the end of it. There was more to come.
‘This is a unique case. It’s certainly rare to see creatures stop evolving in order to fight against external threats.’
Normally, creatures couldn’t stop the process of evolution on their own during metamorphosis. During this state, they were at their most vulnerable to external threats, which was why many creatures died during this phase.
However, Elagon was different.
Elagon constantly released light as warning signals to threats, and even protected himself by reducing the size of his egg. Nevertheless, having received constant threats, Elagon had made a decision.
He stopped the evolution process on his own, and hatched from the egg to suppress the enemy that threatened him. However, since he was still in the midst of evolving, his mental state was very unstable. As a result, when he first exploded, Elagon didn’t even recognize Henry.
In addition, Elagon was an evolving high-level spirit, so he had a strong resistance to magic and could even withstand the spell Sleep.
Therefore, Henry had no choice but to give up trying to calm Elagon down peacefully and use force.
Of course, Henry had to deliberately repeat the process twice in order to understand the logic behind Elagon’s explosion.
‘Anyway, thanks to this, I was able to use Elagon as a weapon in my plan.’
Having his warnings constantly ignored, Elagon stopped himself from evolving, and following the explosion of his egg, he went out of his way to eliminate the external threat. This was Elagon’s new habit during his evolutionary stage.
Now that Henry had fully understood how Elagon functioned during this stage, he had planted Elagon’s egg as a cunning trap to wipe out the spiritualists in the highland.
‘But I didn’t expect Waled to get caught in the trap.’
Based on the information acquired from Syred, Henry had thought that a thousand-man commander who was also a high-level spiritualist would be placed in the highland. However, it was a bit surprising that one of the thousand-man commanders was Waled.
- Khaaa!
Having been disturbed from his evolutionary process, Elagon gathered energy into his mouth to prepare for a breath. The breath he was preparing to spit out was none other than an acidic, Acid Breath.
Currently, Elagon’s main property was poison. Henry had figured out after several tries that Elagon could only deal with one property after he stopped evolving.
Seeing that Ealgon was currently black, Henry believed that he had the property of poison out of the four properties he could possess.
- Kheaaaa!
Henry was right.
Elagon released his Acid Breath, which could melt everything it touched, all over the place.
“Run!”
Elagon’s now-explosive temper was backed by even more explosive power, and because of him, the highland had become a scene of chaos reminiscent of a hell full of acid.
- Roarrr!
Bite!
Cillion, the wind spirit lion, had suddenly appeared and bit Elagon’s neck, which forced him to stop the Acid Breath.
“Don’t waver! Everyone stay in formation!”
‘Oh?’
Waled shouted in the midst of chaos.
While everyone was busy trying to escape, Waled had summoned Cillion, the highest-level wind spirit, and started fighting the dragon before everyone else.
‘I didn’t know he had a side like this to him. Huh… But I’m sure he…?’
Trying to calm the soldiers and boost their fighting spirit as a commander was something worth praising, but nevertheless, the reason Henry looked at Waled in confusion was simple.
Waled was supposed to have only one arm, since the other had been cut off, but he was currently controlling the spirit with both arms.
‘What the hell?’
His arm didn’t look like a prosthetic one from a medical school either. That was definitely his own arm.
Henry instantly thought of the possibility of human transformation.
‘Could it really be human transformation?’
Since Alfred was close to Arthus, it was very likely that Waled had undergone human transformation, as Arthus was already making Chimeras based on human transformation.
‘For such an advanced procedure, at least one mage would’ve been involved. This makes it almost certain that the Magical Spire was also involved.’
However, Henry wasn’t mad as he believed that nothing else could shock him after he had found out that Chimeras were being produced. Rather, he was just curious which wizard had performed the procedure as he looked at Waled’s completely normal arm.
‘What a waste of talent.’
It was fine to perform this kind of procedure with permission as long as it was done with good intentions. However, the problem was that there was no one with an upright character among them.
It was obvious that the wizard who had conducted the procedure was involved in the production of Chimeras as well.
If ethical regulations were lifted for those with power, they would be capable of actions beyond one's wildest imagination, especially if they were curious wizards.
“Um… Sir Henry?”
“Yes?”
“What do we do now…?”
Henry confidently stood on the highland without trying to hide himself as he looked at Elagon. However, unlike Henry, the search party, including Ndasaman, were just barely peaking their heads over the highland and watching the hell below.
“What do you mean? That monster is fighting on our behalf, so all we have to do is sit back and enjoy the show.”
“Will the monster win?”
“I don’t know.”
“What?”
“There are around one thousand five hundred spiritualists alone. Although the monster is a high-level spirit… I’m not sure. If the monster struggles, then we should step in and help, right?”
Though Henry responded in a joking manner, he believed that Elagon wouldn't lose. Waled was bound to have a much more difficult time restoring the soldiers’ morale again after it had already crumbled once.
- Kheaaaa!
Thud!
In addition, Elagon fearlessly swung his forelimbs at Cillion, who had bitten his neck. Cillion fell back in no time and tumbled on the ground.
Cillion was physically no match for Elagon in the first place. Moreover, the only two high-level spirits in the unit had been attacked just like that. Edward was still coughing out blood from his internal injuries, and most of the intermediate spiritualists had already run away.
‘They’re done for.’
The outcome was obvious.
With this strategy, Henry had managed to defeat the army of spiritualists, the main force of the Etherwether army, without getting a drop of blood on his hands.
“Argh!”
Cillion couldn’t handle Elagon’s kick, so Waled dismissed it. He then collapsed on the ground, placing his hand on his head due to the aftereffect of dismissing his spirit.
- Khaaaa!
The dragon roared once again.
Waled was brutally defeated.
Left alone in the hell of acid, Waled had no choice but to helplessly admit defeat in the face of the horrifying dragon.
“N-no…!”
Waled belatedly looked around, but there was no one else around.
Ealgon’s eyes naturally gravitated toward Waled.
- Khaa…!
After venting his anger to the fullest, Elagon’s rage subsided a little, and he brought his huge head closer to Waled.
- Khaa…!
Waled was the final target for Elagon’s anger to fully subside.
Elagon filled his mouth with Acid Breath again and looked at Waled, who was trembling in fear.
- Khakkk!
The Acid Breath headed toward Waled.
There was no one to help him.
Waled had no choice but to surrender as he saw the Acid Breath spewing at him.
As soon as his life flashed before his eyes, a huge stream of acid covered him.
‘It’s done now.’
Henry nodded as he watched Waled’s end.
There was nothing more to see. Waled was dead and the army of spiritualists had collapsed.
Henry had won the battle in the highland.
Now that Elagon had eliminated all of his enemies that could pose a threat, he was going to go back to continuing his metamorphosis.
‘We should be able to go back now.’
Henry could retrieve Elagon’s egg at night.
By this time, Hector would have also been done with his task and he would be sending a signal sooner or later.
There was no need to kill the three hundred soldiers that had come with Nadasman since they were going to the ones testifying against this ridiculous situation.
Just as Henry turned his back and was about to return to the main camp…
Boom!
- Khaaa!
There was a giant explosion, followed by Elagon's anguished cry.
Henry quickly looked back to see what had just happened.
- Goop, goop.
The explosion had come from the puddle of acid that Elagon had spat out. However, the puddle was now gone because the huge explosion had evaporated the acid.
In that same area, a hideous creature, which Henry had never seen before, was growing in size, its body twisting in a weird way, making for a grotesque sight.
‘That’s…!’
Henry was at a loss for words.
That creature was none other than Waled, who had just turned into a Chimera.
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