Baek Seol-hwa felt sick to her stomach.
She knew exactly how those elixirs had been made.
There was a sect called the Blood Cult.
Unlike the misconceptions surrounding the Heavenly Demon Cult, which was falsely believed to worship demons, the Blood Cult actually did.
And by "demons," it wasn’t metaphorical.
They worshiped blood itself.
Not the blood of the people in a figurative sense—literal blood.
They burned viges for no reason other than to kill people.
If you asked why, they’d simply answer, "Because we can."
The Blood Cult was so reviled that even the Heavenly Demon Cult had, at times, joined forces with the righteous sects to wipe them out.
One of the Blood Cult’s most notorious practices was consuming flesh and blood for power.
Human blood, hearts, livers—
They mashed it all together into elixirs to rapidly increase their martial arts abilities.
It was a vile, inhuman method—and yet, unquestionably effective.
Every strong warrior of the Blood Cult had gained power through cannibalism.
Seol-hwa could tell instantly that the elixirs the ck Cloud Hall warriors had just swallowed were almost identical to those of the Blood Cult.
Except… there was something else mixed in.
The core ingredients were spirit beast flesh and blood, but she could also sense human remains blended within.
And something even more disturbing—
A thirdponent, somethingpletely alien.
It felt sacred yet unnatural, as if it had been twisted from its original purpose.
She didn’t know what it was, but there was only one possibility—
It had to be connected to "Him."
And "Him" was none other than the True Dragon.
The Dragon Elixirs were a concoction of human souls, spirit beast flesh and blood, and something taken from the True Dragon.
If the method resembled the Blood Cult, then it was highly likely that the True Dragon had ties to them.
BOOM!
Two frost dragons continued their rampage, weaving through the battlefield.
The air twisted under the fusion of frost, yin energy, and killing intent, creating an unnatural phenomenon beyond ordinary ice arts.
CRACK!
A single motion of her palm froze an enemy several steps away.
WHOOSH!
A wed attack came hurtling toward her—
Seol-hwa swept her hand upward.
SHATTER!
A massive ice pir erupted from the ground, impaling the warrior who had lunged at her.
As long as she controlled the cold, her enemies would never even touch her.
However—
She was sweating.
Even while manipting frost, beads of sweat dripped like rain from her forehead.
Because the monstrous energy radiating from the warriors was suffocating her.
"Where did that initial confidence go?"
The ck Cloud Lord sneered.
"Come on, keep attacking!"
WHOOSH!
Even warriors missing limbs continued to hurl themselves at her.
Their relentless ferocity was disturbing, but their attacks were ineffective.
Even so, the ck Cloud Lord didn’t consider defeat.
He could see it—
Seol-hwa was tiring.
CRACK. CRACKLE.
Finally, her ice barrier shattered.
Not just any ice—
The firstyer of ice she had conjured to seal the battlefield.
The defensive measure she had used to keep reinforcements from reaching the lizard—broken.
"Hah… our captains are doing well."
The ck Cloud Lord chuckled.
She was losing stamina—
All they had to do now was drag the fight out and wear her downpletely.
"Yellow Gale Division! Take the Dragon Elixirs and join the fight!"
Just as he gave the order—
WHOOSH.
THUMP.
Something heavynded right in front of him.
A grotesque corpse—a fusion of bear and ram—crashed onto the ground.
"UAAAAH!"
The ck Cloud Lord screamed—a humiliatingly undignified sound.
But who could me him?
The corpse was not only horrifyingly deformed—
It was crushed beyond recognition, as if it had been stomped by something impossibly massive.
Yet, its identity was unmistakable.
A blood-soaked yellow robe.
It was the Yellow Gale Captain.
THUD.
Another corpse followed.
This time, a ck robe.
THUD.
And a third one.
The robe was originally white—nowpletely dyed red.
"Wh-What… how…?!"
The captains hadn’t broken the ice toe help.
The one who shattered the barrier and entered the battlefield was—
"Krurrrrrr…."
A lizard—with a tail that carried the scent of death itself.
The Gomodo.
*
Seol-hwa stared at me, utterly dumbfounded.
Was it because I made such a dramatic entrance?
“Are you insane?! What were you thinking, breaking that? You stupid lizard!”
"Gehhh?"
Is she talking about the thing I just smashed?
Wait, what was even blocking my way?
“…Do you even know why I was keeping that barrier up? Ugh. Well, looking at you now, I guess it didn’t really matter.”
Her lips curled into a smirk.
She didn’t seem shocked by my appearance.
Was it because she had already suspected I was hiding my strength?
Or was it because I hadn’t fully unleashed my Gigantification yet?
“Still… you’ve gotten a lot bigger. Must be because I’ve been feeding you so well?”
So she thinks my size increase is just from the elixirs I ate?
“Anyway, I assume you finished the job?”
"Gehk-gehk."
Perfectly.
I raided the storage they were guarding and managed to snatch three elixirs.
I had already swallowed two, and thest one was tucked between my scales.
Seol-hwa was fighting a Hwagyeong master, after all.
If she got injured, she’d need healing.
I kept one just in case—but for now, she seemed fine.
Aside from the sweat dripping down her skin.
Her clothes were clinging to her body...
Geroooroorong.
“…You making that noise with that massive body is kinda creepy.”
Creepy?
That’s a first.
“You’re the only human who’s ever said that to me.”
“KRAAAH!”
“Do you think we’re a joke?!”
As Seol-hwa and I bantered, the things around us—not quite human, not quite beasts—let out furious roars.
"Yellow Gale Captain! KRAAAH!"
CRACKLE!
They didn’t even get the chance to close the distance before turning into ice sculptures.
So that one was the Red Gale Captain.
Then that one on the right must be the Blue Gale Captain.
SWISH!
I swung my ws, knocking his sword aside.
CLANG!
The de didn’t break, probably because it was reinforced with qi—
But he couldn’t absorb the shock entirely.
“Krrgh…!”
And that moment of staggering meant—
SLAASH!
—My tail finished the job.
“Everyone, CHARGE!”
Even though theirmanders had just been annihted, the berserk warriors showed no hesitation.
They piled forward,pletely mindless.
CRACK!
Only to be frozen solid within seconds.
SPLAT!
Or pulped into mincemeat—and they still didn’t stop.
This wasn’t even a proper strategy.
It was just throwing bodies at a problem.
This kind of attrition warfare was meaningless.
They couldn’t have infinite reinforcements, right?
The strength gap was too wide. Any sanemander would have ordered a retreat by now.
…Wait.@@novelbin@@
“Hey. Where’s the ck Cloud Lord?”
Seol-hwa frowned.
“He’s gone?”
Did that bastard run away?
Where the hell does he think he’s going?
"Gek!"
I extended my tail, wrapping it around Seol-hwa’s waist.
“Kyaaah! H-Hey! What are you doing?!”
Right now, wasting time on these scrubs wasn’t important.
Haaa…
Fwooo…
I exhaled a cloud of paralytic poison.
Even if they weren’t killed outright, they’d copse soon enough.
The real priority was hunting down the ck Cloud Lord.
I hoisted Seol-hwa onto my back.
“Oh my. Are you giving me a ride?”
Her voice was oddly satisfied.
Well, I guess getting to ride a massive lizard like me wasn’t exactly an everyday opportunity.
"Gerooororong."
“…That noise is kind of weird, but I won’t question it.”
How gracious of you.
FWOOSH!
*
“Hic… Hic… How did ite to this…?”
Gang Chang-mu, the leader of the ck Cloud Faction, had ordered his subordinates to charge forward while he himself retreated at full speed.
The moment heid eyes on that monstrous beast, his will to fight shattered.
For a martial artist at the Hwagyeong level, charging in even at the cost of their life wasmon sense—but only when the opponent was within reason.
That thing exuded a murderous aura so thick, it was as if death itself had taken form.
Even from a distance, the ck-scaled lizard ovepped in his mind with the True Dragon he had once seen, an illusion born from sheer terror.
And considering that the three captains who had taken Dragon Pellets had returned as lifeless corpses, it was clear that the creature was not only powerful but utterly merciless.
The ck Cloud Faction was finished.
Quite literally—this was going to be a massacre.
That was why Gang Chang-mu had fled.
At the very least, he had to report this.
A conflict with the Holy Maiden of the Heavenly Demon Cult.
And then, the sudden appearance of a ck-scaled lizard.
This unprecedented event had to be ryed to the higher-ups—and it would be best if the strongest among them was the one to deliver the message.
“…If I had known this would happen, I should’ve held on to that old bastard Docheol.”
He spoke without realizing that if Docheol had been here, things would have ended even faster—but not in his favor.
“Chang-mu… Chang-mu… Snap out of it. Chang-mu. We’re almost at the emergency exit. Once we get past this, we can avenge the others.”
Muttering to himself, he pushed forward toward the exit.
It was his ownmand that had sent his subordinates to their deaths, but he had long since ced all the me on the Holy Maiden and the lizard.
"Those bastards… I’ll rip that lizard''s hide to shreds, and that woman, she’ll—"
His curses, muttered under his breath as he climbed thedder, were cut short.
Because at the top, two pairs of blue eyes were staring down at him.
Blue-eyed lizard.
Blue-eyed Holy Maiden.
They had gotten here before him.
“H-how…?”
It was thanks to the centipede and the mantis revealing the emergency exit’s location—but there was no way Chang-mu could have known that.
“H-hiiik!”
Thud!
In his panic, Gang Chang-mu let go of thedder and crashed to the ground.
The lizard and the Holy Maiden exchanged nces before she let out a sigh.
“I told you, running is pointless. We won’t kill you right away, so you might as well just stay put.”
She never said he’d be spared.
“H-hic… Hic!”
Chang-mu scrambled backward, still sprawled on the ground.
There was no winning against them.
Not even survival was an option.
He was cornered, like a rat in a cage.
But sometimes, a cornered rat bites the cat.
Crunch!
Seolhwa’s eyes widened at Chang-mu’s sudden action.
The leader of the ck Cloud Faction had swallowed an entire, unbroken Dragon Pellet.
Not just one—three.
As the faction leader, he knew well what the side effects of Dragon Pellets were.
He would lose his reason, turning into nothing more than a beast.
He had always divided the pellets into smaller doses to mitigate the side effects—and even then, he had never taken them himself, instead forcing his subordinates to consume them.
But now, there was no one left to take them in his ce.
And a single fragment wouldn''t be enough to escape this situation.
So he made his choice—to devour three whole Dragon Pellets at once.
Crack!
Squelch!
In an instant, the lizard’s ws and Seolhwa’s freezing aura struck his arms with pinpoint uracy.
“Uwooooh!”
But cutting off his arms wasn’t enough to stop him.
Booooom!
An enormous explosion erupted.
The lizard swiftly pulled Seolhwa into his embrace and lowered his stance.
KWA-BOOOOOM!
“What the hell…? Hui, are you okay?”
The lizard grimaced.
That explosion wasn’t an attack.
It was a transformation.
“The power…! Khaha! This—this is real power!”
Gang Chang-mu had lost his original form.
His skin turned blue, and thick blue fur sprouted all over his body. His hair was dyed a deep crimson.
Even Hui couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
This thing… this abomination… it no longer resembled a human.
It was no ordinary transformation into a beast—it was the result of an overdose of Dragon Pellets, twisting him into something entirely new.
If Hui was the manifestation of ancient death with a tail, then what stood before them now was another ancient being.
“Magnificent. I feel like I can do anything.”
In ancient times, humans had a name for such creatures.
Something so suspicious, it was beyond suspicion itself.
The fur-covered relic of the past had finally revealed itself.