The Final Boss Has Returned – Episode 72
Users and NPCs—whether they were guild members or soldiers I couldn’t tell—who had received Rio’s command began tearing through the undead blocking their path and charging toward me.
I looked at Rio and spoke.
“You think you can stop me with a rabble like this?”
“Y-your arrogance pierces the heavens! I d-don’t know how you possess such power, but don’t you know the truth that there’s no standing against a mob!”
Rio replied in a trembling voice to my words.
I lightly raised Laevatein toward the sky and spoke.
“‘No standing against a mob,’ you say. There were those who dared say such things to me six years ago as well. Do you perhaps remember what I answered them?”
Rio’s entire body trembled faintly as his eyes met mine.
I looked at that sight and uttered the skill’s activation phrase.
“Rain of Steel.”
Fwoosh!
The moment I uttered the skill’s activation phrase, the pillar of blazing aura light from Laevatein shot up toward the dark clouds gathered in the sky.
Rumble!
From the dark clouds dyed black-crimson, a rain of aura swords began to fall.
Sword Rain!
Greatswords made of blades began to embed themselves into the ground like knife edges.
“Argh!”
“Aaaargh!”
The death throes of enemies charging toward me rang faintly in my ears.
Boom! Crash!
The sight of greatswords made of aura embedding themselves into the ground and exploding filled my vision.
Truly, a rain of steel!
The torrential downpour of swords cleanly erased the enemies approaching me, as if carpet bombing, like an eraser wiping away penciled lines on a canvas.
Despair filled Rio’s eyes as he witnessed the scene.
I checked the remaining buff time on one side of my vision.
Remaining buff time: 17 minutes.
To think it took three minutes just to get here!
Perhaps because it had been so long since I used this character from my heyday, it seemed my senses had dulled considerably. I clicked my tongue and looked at Rio.
“Everyone who said that to me died.”
“Wh-what! Drakan! What the hell are you!”
I swung Laevatein toward Rio, who was screaming.
Kwaaaang!
The instant Rio instinctively raised his spear shaft to block my sword strike.
[Mistilteinn’s durability has dropped drastically.]
[Mistilteinn’s durability has reached 0.]
[Mistilteinn has been destroyed.]
The message I had been aiming for finally appeared before my eyes.
[You are the first to destroy a Legendary-grade weapon during combat.]
[Achievement ‘Weapon Destroyer’ has been completed.]
[All stats have increased by 100.]
[Level Up.]
[Level Up.]
The achievement completion messages were a bonus!
“Ah, ahhh, aaaaaah!”
Rio’s scream echoed around the surroundings.
Mistilteinn!
The Legendary-grade branch was now engulfed in blue flames, turning into a handful of ash.
“Surrender if you don’t want to die. I’m merciful, so if you surrender now, I’ll let you go.”
Fwoooosh.
The blade edge made of Mistilteinn’s flames touched Rio’s neck.
“Surely you’re not deluding yourself into thinking you still have a chance of winning?”
I pointed behind me with the fingers of my other hand, the one not holding the sword.
“Look over there.”
At my words, Rio’s gaze turned toward the rear, and soon his face hardened stiffly.
* * *
The main force of the Northern Expedition!
The main force consisting of roughly one hundred thousand users and NPCs was now caught in a state of utter pandemonium.
“Urgh! Someone stop those corpse bastards!”
“Save me! I’m burning to death!”
East and West!
Because undead raiding parties had stormed in from both left and right flanks.
“Make all the living into our brethren.”
The Arch Lich!
As he, floating high in the sky and emanating black magical energy, shook his skull staff, the heavens overturned and the earth shook, and undead crawled up from beneath the ground.
Under the Arch Lich’s command, the undead moved with perfect discipline.
Zombies staggering about as they swiped at enemies with necrotic claws, tearing and devouring them, and skeletons swinging weapons to strike their foes!
Ghouls hopping about as they gobbled up enemies’ flesh and corpse golems attacking enemies with their massive bodies, and Death Knights slaughtering foes with swords imbued with dark aura, and even Liches firing off spells from the rear!
Truly, in the midst of great chaos, the Northern Expeditionary Army fought desperately.
In the very moment when druids struck at the undead with nature magic and users were fighting against the undead.
“Blizzard.”
Blizzard, the strongest ice-attribute magic and the Arch Lich’s ultimate skill, swept across the battlefield.
A blizzard storm mixed with ice shards imbued with magical energy!
Countless soldiers perished without even being able to scream in the deathly blizzard sweeping across the battlefield.
But the attack didn’t end there.
[Krrraaaaaaaaaaa!!]
A massive roar resounded from the sky!
Soon, roughly scattering the storm clouds, a dragon nothing but bones revealed its form.
A Bone Dragon!
The second strongest undead leading the undead army had appeared in the sky.
Behind the Bone Dragon’s massive frame, Bone Wyverns were following.
An assault by the undead aerial squadron!
In an instant, tremendous magical energy began to gather in the mouth of the Bone Dragon as it nosedived toward the ground.
“Breath! It’s a Breath!”
“Dodge!”
From wyverns to drakes to dragons!
Because the Breath, the secret weapon possessed by monsters of the dragon family, had been charged in a single shot.
The Northern Expeditionary Army quickly scattered upon seeing that sight, but it was already too late.
A streak of black Breath shot up from the Bone Dragon’s wide-open maw and struck straight toward the ground.
Kwaaa-kwang!
The earth shook with an explosion, and smoke covered the sky.
Watching those around them die without a single scream from one blast of Breath, the expeditionary army fell into terror.
But little did they know that this was only the beginning.
“Kill all the living!”
The Black Knight Commander!
Because the leader of all Death Knights and the strongest Death Knight in Arth World leaped from the Bone Dragon’s back, blue light radiating from his eyes.
Starting with the Black Knight Commander, elite Death Knights riding on the backs of Bone Wyverns dropped to the ground like special forces and began slaughtering the expeditionary troops.
Such chaos was unfolding on the other side as well.
“Grand Inferno.”
A hell of fire unfit for the North where snowflakes fluttered!
At its center was Ignis.
When Flame King Ignis swept his hand, waves of flame rose and engulfed the enemies, and the other party members beside him—Queenhani, Shin Ha-yeon, and Mabujang—likewise unleashed their respective skills in a barrage to attack the enemies.
And behind the waves of flame Ignis had raised, undead were surging endlessly.
The morale of the Northern Expeditionary Army, being pincered from both sides, was steadily falling.
The sight of the Northern Expeditionary Army collapsing miserably!
Rio, watching that scene, thrashed about in desperation.
“Surrender? I can’t accept this! This, this isn’t right! It isn’t!”
Rio could not accept this reality.
How painstakingly prepared had this expedition been.
Rio had believed that with the success of this expedition, he could gain Vice Chairman Shin’s trust and rise to a position above Over Ranker.
But all of that had collapsed in an instant.
Therefore, he couldn’t accept the reality all at once.
Drakan thrust Laevatein directly into the abdomen of the thrashing Rio.
“Kuk, keurk!”
Rio’s eyes widened as he looked at Laevatein, the flame sword, embedded in his lower abdomen.
Thanks to Arth Saga’s system that blocked pain senses above a certain level, he didn’t feel pain, but the sight of a sword embedded in his stomach was truly shocking.
“If you cannot accept it, then you can just die like this. It was I who showed mercy, but it was you who refused my mercy.”
The moment Drakan’s icy voice entered Rio’s ears, Rio realized the cold reality.
‘I’ve lost.’
The fact that he had been defeated, and the Northern Expedition had failed!
And in Arth Saga Second, where a single death led to a character’s permanent death, if his character—his greatest asset as an Over Ranker and as Rio himself—were to die and disappear like this, the probability that the real-world him would also fall into ruin was high!
Only after feeling his vitality decrease in real-time did Rio come to this realization.
With a cooled head, Rio properly assessed the current situation.
Mistilteinn!
The blessed branch Mistilteinn, known as the only weapon capable of completely killing the Undead King, the fallen undead monarch who could not die, had snapped and vanished upon clashing with Laevatein, he himself was now in a life-threatening crisis, and the Northern Expeditionary Army couldn’t come to its senses under the enemy’s fierce onslaught.
Rio’s gaze turned toward Drakan.
Steel Monarch Drakan!
Former Top Ranker!
Rio, who had first entered Arth Saga through Second, hadn’t believed in Drakan’s fame.
He knew, of course, that Drakan had unified the continent and seized world hegemony in the era before Yujin.
But so what!
In the end, he was nothing but a loser who had lost to Yujin, one of many common washouts clinging to past glory.
That’s what Rio had thought.
Of course, Drakan had been a rising blue chip in Arth World, and had now escaped the prospect label to firmly enter the ranks of star users, but the gap between him and Rio, who had reached Over Ranker, had still been enormous, which made Rio think that even more.
But Drakan, whom he had clashed with directly, was different.
It wasn’t merely his skills and stats that had temporarily grown stronger due to some unknown buff.
This was a more fundamental issue—one of physicality.
The so-called physical.
Rio realized the moment he exchanged blows with Drakan that Drakan’s physicality had already reached a state far surpassing his own domain as an Over Ranker.
‘So the Top Ranker seat is a domain that only a monster of this caliber can even aspire to?’
Rio thought, trembling.
Top Ranker!
His own ambition to one day seize that seat was now embarrassing to even recall.
Rio let out a sigh.
Anyway, no matter what excuse he made, he had lost.
He could struggle more like this, but that would only increase the number of casualties and further narrow his position. And decisively, if he died here, only a miserable ending awaited him.
It was better to at least save his character and return.
Having been defeated, quick surrender was the only path to survival.
Having thought so, Rio spoke quietly in a bitter voice.
“I surrender! I’ll surrender. I said I surrender!”
Hearing those words, Drakan pulled Laevatein from Rio’s abdomen and replied coldly.
“I accept your surrender.”
Drakan!
He had had no intention of killing Rio from the beginning, as long as Rio surrendered.
He needed the image of sparing even enemies if they surrendered. Because he needed to dilute the reputation of the cruel Steel Monarch of the past and continue expanding his support base through that.
A man who, even when delivering satisfying justice, knew where to draw the line, unlike the past!
That was precisely the image Drakan aspired to, and to complete that image, he needed to let Rio live.
Of course, if Rio had refused to surrender and resisted to the end, he had intended to kill him on the spot.
Having accepted Rio’s surrender, Drakan commanded the surrounding undead to bind Rio.
It was the moment the War with Death, ambitiously pushed by the Simseong Milkyway Guild, ended with a miserable defeat.