Chapter 152: Sacrifice shrouded in Mysteries

It was painful.

Pain was the only thing that kept Ishiki awake… considering how exhausted he was. He would have fainted by now, if not for his every breath feeling like knives scraping against his ribs.

But there was a downside to the pain as well… it turned his thoughts sluggish and made the world feel distant and unreal.

’The last thing I want is to die under a rock!’ Ishiki thought with a strange detachment. After all that could very well happen considering the rocks falling outside.

His left forearm throbbed with his heartbeat. The chunk of stone was still embedded deep in the muscle and he could feel it shifting slightly with each small movement, grinding against bone that made his skin prick.

Blood had pooled beneath him, soaking into the wooden floorboards. He had lost a lot… too much, probably. His body felt cold and his fingers had started tingling.

For several seconds he took in heavy breaths. Every time a rock hit the door or the roof of the house he was in, it sent goosebumps through his body.

It was cold and he was naked so he summoned the inner cloth piece from [Berserkers Effigy] to keep himself warm.

After about ten minutes… the outside had finally calmed down, the bombardment had finally stopped.

The constant BOOM-BOOM-BOOM of falling rocks had faded into silence, leaving only the distant sounds of people screaming, crying and calling for help.

’How many died?’ Ishiki thought, closing his eyes. ’How many more players just got erased by random falling stones? And who the hell was that ’

He’d seen at least one person get crushed during his aerial trajectory. It was a lone figure in an alley.

There would be innumerable others. The scenario participants were dropping like flies, and they hadn’t even reached the actual objective yet.

’We’re fucked,’ he thought bitterly. ’Even if we reach the Inner Ring, the emperor is still an immortal and powerful being… _we’re irrevocably doomed. Too many are dead and now there’s… whatever that thing was in the cathedral.’

Just moments after he was hurled into the air and thrown around by the aftereffects of the blast… he glimpsed the shadow of something colossal stirring within the particulate haze and detritus.

Ishiki compelled his eyes to open and scrutinized his ravaged forearm… Around the wound, the flesh had turned an ugly purple-black, swelling grotesquely.

’I need to get this out before I get infection…’

He grabbed the stone with the fingers of his other and bit on the blood red cloth before pulling out the rock. It came out with a wet sound and numbness followed as a lot of blood flowed out.

Following that motes of light condensed around his forearm and soon a pitch black vambrace and gauntlet covered his left arm, tightening the muscles and stopping more blood flow.

Then he laid there breathing heavily and covered in cold sweat, letting his mind wander to certain things and trying to make sense of a lot of things.

A sound severed through his spiraling cognition.

A profound and utterly inhumane roar. It was the kind of sound that articulated ancient dominion and fathomless fury.

Ishiki’s eyes widened as he turned his head toward the door… and the direction the sound had come from.

’What the hell was that?’

The tremor followed immediately. The entire structure convulsed violently, dust cascaded from the ceiling. Somewhere in an adjacent room, something ponderous crashed to the floor with the sound of shattering ceramics.

’Earthquake?’ Ishiki thought desperately. ’No… no, that’s not an earthquake.’

Another amplified and proximate roar followed… this one was so deafening that it made his ears ring.

And then came the wind.

It hit the house suddenly, blasting through windows with hurricane strength, and carrying the broken glass pieces far.

The door he had thrown himself through earlier slammed open, banging against the wall so hard the wood cracked.

Through that open doorway, Ishiki could see the dark sky.

Except now he couldn’t see the moon at all.

Something was blocking it out.

Ishiki forgot about his pain in front of the strange need to see what was out there.

He rolled onto his side, biting back a scream as the wound in his arm pressed more tightly… Then using his good arm, he dragged himself across the floor toward the doorway, leaving a trail of blood behind him.

’Move,’ he commanded his body. ’Move, damn you. I need to see what we’re dealing with.’

It took an eternity to cross those few meters.

But he made it.

Ishiki dragged himself to the threshold and looked out into the crimson night.

And his breath caught in his throat.

Ascending above the cathedral’s devastation was a creature that Ishiki had only heard about in fantasy books or games. He had never thought that he would see something like this… but it wasn’t that big of a surprise after all, Nexus had everything one could call fantasy.

In the sky… there was a Dragon.

An actual, fucking dragon.

It had four massive wings spread in terrible majesty and they seemed to glow in the moonlight.

There were two tails behind him and they were covered in scales that caught the crimson light, making them look like they’d been forged from blood and shadow.

’How?’ Ishiki’s thoughts raced frantically ’How is this possible? Where did it come from? Was it… was it under the cathedral? Is that why the explosion happened?’

He thought back to the girl in the cathedral… she had killed herself right in front of him in a strange ritual. She even chanted something in the ancient language.

’This doesn’t make any sense…’ Ishiki couldn’t help but frown. The girl was a player from earth just like him… he was sure of it. Then how did she know the ancient language? Why did she kill herself there?

Why was she there in the first place?

’Has it something to do with me? No… I was just there at the wrong time. Damn it!’ Ishiki gritted his teeth and continued to deduce what was happening.

Just then a wild thought appeared in his mind that seemed to make a lot of sense.

’A sacrifice,’ he realized with growing horror. ’She was a sacrifice. The explosion wasn’t random or a chance… It was part of unsealing this thing. But who… who would do that? Who would someone deliberately release a monster like this?’

But… why did the girl sacrifice herself in order to release such a thing? And were the pillars actually helping seal this abomination?

The dragon opened its mouth and roared again. This time, Ishiki could see the way its throat glowed from within.

And he understood, with terrible certainty, that if that creature decided to breathe fire down onto the Secondary Ring, there wouldn’t be any survivors.

’We’re dead,’ he thought numbly. ’We’re all dead. There’s no way to fight something like that. Even if everyone who survived the bombardment worked together, even if we used every skill and vestige and ability we had… we’d be nothing to it.’

The thought sent shudders through his body.

The dragon’s wings beat powerfully, holding it aloft as it surveyed its domain. Its golden eyes swept across the Secondary Ring, taking in the destruction and the terrified players who had frozen in place beneath its shadow.

And then, as Ishiki watched in growing horror, another figure appeared in the sky.

This one was smaller… It was human-sized, in fact and looked like a dog in front of an elephant.

But it was also flying using its wings.

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