Kwaaaang! With the sound of a raging storm, Rouket tore through the air as he sped forward.
How is that a mount? It's flying from an explosion. Maybe its top speed is faster than Aji's. Faster than the King of Beasts. Have humans reached that point?
Of course, Aji is a four-legged beast. If he agilely performed evasive maneuvers, he could easily shake it off...
"Muuung! Luggage!"
If he did that, I, riding in the back, wouldn't be able to endure it. If he changed direction abruptly, I'd roll on the ground with the cart and become a bloody mess. Aji, who cannot harm humans, has no proper countermeasure and is just running.
But it's okay. Because I don't only have Aji. I screamed toward the sky.
"Hurry up and come!"
"I'm on my way!"
The voice grew closer. Before long, the Regressor fell with a thud in front of me. After sending a signal to stop Aji, I shouted at the Regressor.
"Why are you so late?"
"I ran here as soon as I saw it! You're the one who should have told me first if you found the Cult Lord!"
"How was I supposed to know I'd find him before I actually found him?!"
"At least say you're going to look for him!"
Grumbling, the Regressor took out Jizan and struck the ground. The earth touched by Jizan's trajectory heaved and rose, creating a low wall. It wasn't difficult to climb over, but it was a slightly burdensome height for a wheeled vehicle.
"What the hell is that?!"
Rouket's four-wheeled vehicle changed the direction of its thrusters in front of the earthen wall. The eight thrusters faced this way and created a wall of flames. Having killed his speed with reverse thrust, Rouket shouted loudly.
Facing the screaming Rouket, the Regressor calmly answered.
"You said you're the Yeolpok Cult Lord, right? I have something to say."
"Don't call me the Yeolpok Cult Lord! How many times do I have to say I am Lord Rouket!!"
"Ah, sorry. Got it. Lord Rouket."
There was no particular meaning in the Regressor's answer. He just called him what he assumed was the other's name. When called by the title he desired, Rouket softened considerably and sat back in his seat.
"Right. Speak."
What's with that guy? Does his temperature drop as easily as it rises? His emotional specific heat is close to zero.
Is there a connection between abnormal people? The Regressor had the most friendly conversation I'd seen him have.
"If you're also a Cult Lord, you must know the location of the Golden Palace. You also said you received orders from the Golden Palace."
"Hmph! Of course!"
"Great. Tell me the location of the Golden Palace."
"What? Empty-handed?"
Rouket waved his hand and asked back.
"If you put your proposal on one side of the scale, it's only proper to put something on the other side. When I hand over the information, what do I get?"
'Ah, right. Yeolguk clung to demanding a price for everything, didn't they? I got confused for a moment.'
The Regressor rummaged through his clothes and pulled something out. A polyhedral gold, the Gold of Understanding.
"Here. This."
"...Do you not know what a scale is? You're offering the right to be executed directly by the Golden Mirror as a price? Not knowing how to distinguish between what is rare and what is valuable. Put away that cursed thing!"
Rouket detested it. As the Regressor sheepishly put the Gold of Understanding back into his clothes, Rouket sighed and said.
"What you want is information. Then, on the other side of the scale, there must be information worthy of it! Speak. If not, there's no deal!"
"Ugh. Wait a moment..."
The Regressor frowned, recalling what he had experienced in the previous round.
'Information, information. I don't have any memory of meeting a Cult Lord named Yeolpok Cult Lord in the previous round... Ah! Right! I saw in the propaganda that he was shot down and killed by Chongsa!'
Is information to you only what you gained from the previous round? It hasn't even happened in this round, so how are you going to persuade him with that?
The Regressor just blurted it out.
"You. If a war breaks out, you die."
"...What?"
"I mean the war with the Military Nation. If a war breaks out like this, you'll be the first to die, won't you?"
No. That hasn't even happened yet. Is it okay to just blurt that out?
"We're actually going to sign a ceasefire agreement. If the war stops, you won't have to die either. How about it? Killing two birds with one stone, right?"
The Regressor answered with a shrug.
True. If the war stops, the Yeolpok Cult Lord wouldn't have to die either. In the Regressor's mind, who had returned after experiencing the tragedy firsthand, a ceasefire was good for everyone and had no downsides.
However, the truth cannot move a person's heart. Like Rouket over there, who was glaring at the Regressor without a word.
"A ceasefire? Is the Military Nation proposing it?"
"Yeah, you could say that."
"So you attacked my Yongmae Unit?"
"We didn't particularly kill them? In the first place, they were massacring the people of Yeolguk arbitrarily?"
Rouket looked around.
Indeed, the majority of the Yongmae Unit had just fallen to the ground. The Regressor only turned off the thrusters to stop the slaughter, and Tir was also just venting his anger while dragging the Yongmae Unit around, not particularly killing them.
The ones attacking the Yongmae Unit now were the enraged jackals. However, since they crashed into them while fleeing, the Yongmae Unit's casualties weren't that high yet.
Having grasped the entire situation, Rouket stood up from his vehicle.
"Up until now, there have been hundreds of bastards who said they'd kill me. They all mocked my power, calling me an idiot throwing money on the ground. Do you know what I did to them?"
He didn't wait for an answer. Rouket stomped his foot hard. The back seat of the four-wheeled vehicle opened, and from there, hundreds of rockets soared into the sky in formation.
"I rammed rockets into their snouts and blew them up. Every single one of them."
The rockets, embroidering the dark sky, exploded in midair. Tens of thousands of steel fragments contained within the rockets rained down like a shower, scattering sparks. The steel imbued with the Yeolpok Cult Lord's authority burned without any reason, swept up by the wind they themselves created.
It didn't matter even if the thrusters' fuel ran out. Now that the Yeolpok Cult Lord's authority filled the space, this land was Rouket's domain.
"My power, united with the alchemy of the Golden Mirror! With the power to blow away all these annoying things!!"
Fire ignited simultaneously on the extinguished thrusters. The Yongmae Unit that had fallen to the ground rose again with Rouket's ability. Using the burning, scattering steel as fuel.
With all of that in the background, the appearance of the Yeolpok Cult Lord, Rouket, was the very incarnation of war's inferno.
"War?! I'll die? Don't make me laugh! Nothing has been able to kill me until now!!"
However, the Regressor answered without any particular emotion.
"Then you'll die next time."
'Chongsa's Art, the Zero-Point Marksmanship is a guaranteed hit. Even if they fly in the sky, they're slower than bullets, so they'll unconditionally get hit. Furthermore, if he has awakened the Bayonet Godhood... that unit will just be like falling autumn leaves.'
The Regressor had it all thought out, but unfortunately, Rouket didn't have mind-reading skills. No, he was a hothead who could burn even a slip of the tongue as firewood. The Regressor's words were enough to provoke his anger.
"Come on!!! Try and kill me!!!"
Rouket scattered his hand. The iron dust scattered in the air combusted and burned. The Regressor hastily created a barrier of wind with Cheon-aeng and shouted.
"Wh-what?! Why all of a sudden?!"
Actually, if you're making a request, you went to the wrong address.
"War will break out! Starting with your deaths, even more fiercely!!"
The Yeolpok Cult Lord Rouket was a pro-war faction. Because he wanted a war to break out more than anyone else.
Among the old tales, there is a story where a mother-in-law gave her three daughters-in-law the task of filling a room with a single coin. As befits an old tale, multiple correct answers have been passed down, but generally, it is said they filled it with invisible substances like sound, light, scent, or heat.
If we go by that old tale, the Mujeogang Plains was now packed without a place to step.
Bombs, explosive sounds, explosive smoke, explosions. The surroundings were filled with bombs and their byproducts. The bombs scattered by the Yeolpok Cult Lord exploded everywhere, regardless of time and place. Dust was caught in the explosive smoke and scattered, and the ground was ruthlessly dug up. A historic contour was carved into the once-flat plains.
Aji barked as he watched the tragedy.
"Woof! Bad humans! It's a racket!"
"Not everyone is bad. It's just that person who's bad."
While Aji dragged me and forcibly escaped the explosion range, the Regressor faced Rouket with Cheon-aeng. The Regressor, who blocked the heatwave with a storm, glared at Rouket and shouted.
"What are you doing!"
"This is what I'm doing!"
Rouket touched the ground with his bare hand. Then, metal spread out like tree roots in the ground. The magical power of alchemy substituted the dirt and sand for metal.
Because it was hastily made, it was soft and weak, but even such low-grade metal creates value when it touches the Cult Lord's hand.
"Blow up and die!!"
The metal that had dug deep into the ground exploded simultaneously.
The soil split into strands and flipped over. Explosive smoke and dust swirled, making it impossible to see anything in front of me. Only the vibrations transmitted through the ground gave a sense of the explosion's scale.
Terrified by the indiscriminate destruction, Aji pulled the cart harder and howled.
"Awooooo! You humans!"
"Humans are sorry."
"Woof!"
The combination of alchemy and his inherent demonic way deceived value. Transmuting a pile of dirt would only result in cheap scraps of iron made from dirt, but the Yeolpok Cult Lord could use it as a bomb.
The Yeolpok Cult Lord Rouket, who utilized his inherent demonic path and alchemy appropriately, was certainly strong.
But...
"Do you want to die that badly?"
The Regressor is stronger.
The Regressor pushed through the storm with Cheon-aeng and severed the ground with Jizan. The tremendous explosion couldn't even singe a hair, and he split the roots of metal crawling along the ground. Holding his twin swords horizontally, the Regressor muttered chillingly with killing intent.
"Understood. Then I'll kill you right now."
And his temper was if anything more, not less. As soon as he was convinced the opponent was an enemy, he swung Cheon-aeng.
"Heavenly Sword Qi, Dao Dragon Slash!"
The explosive smoke and dust split diagonally. The elongated Cheon-aeng slashed through everything that existed between the Regressor and Rouket. Slashed by an invisible blade from his shoulder to his side, Rouket staggered greatly.
"Cough...!"
Staggering, Rouket soon collapsed onto his four-wheeled vehicle. The Regressor muttered with cold, sunken eyes.
"Hmph. Pathetic."
Although their directionality is different from the Military Nation, the Cult Lords of Yeolguk are powerhouses comparable to the Six Great Saints. Of course, compared to the Six Great Saints who honed only pure combat power, they have flaws in terms of combat. But still, to be this overwhelmingly dominant...
It must be a compatibility issue. The Regressor, who commands a greater mystery than them, can chew up half-baked mysteries, but is rather weak against pure qi manipulation and martial arts.
I'm glad I left it to him... Wait.
"Mr. Shay! Don't let your guard down!"