Chapter 91: Romance of the Three Kingdoms
With a vast vortex of mana spiraling between them, finally, they had all gathered in one place.
"…"
"…"
"…"
The Utgard warriors were dressed in white fur.
The traitors, the Nar, were in black.
There were even the humans, who were all dressed in their own colors.
They stared at each other through the black vortex.
“As expected.”
“As expected.”
The two giants, Thjazi and Thrymr, spoke simultaneously.
"It was you."
"It was you."
They both uttered the same words at the same time, like a pair of doppelgangers.
The two leaders of the giants had thought that the sudden phenomenon that had appeared on the ground, a sinister black and red vortex, had been created by the other.
“What is this?”
“What the hell is this?”
They questioned each other. Right then, they realized that the situation was different from what they had imagined.
"…”
"…”
“Is the king within this thing?”
Thrymr was the first to speak again, pointing toward the black vortex and asking if the Utgardian King was inside.
“The king?” Thjazi replied with a puzzled expression. They were both bewildered.
‘Something is wrong here.’
Both sides, whether it was the Nar or the Utgardians, had realized that neither of the two sides had created this black vortex.
“Then…?”
“Then…?”
Now they both had the same question going through their minds.
‘What the hell is this black vortex?’
Thrymr made the first move, slowly approaching the black vortex.
“Grr.”
However, the giant white wolf, Fenrir, moved forward in response, guarding the front of the black vortex and blocking Thrymr from moving forward.
“...!”
Jeong In-Chang saw the wolf’s protective action and was convinced of a certain fact.
'Fenrir is protecting it…which means Mr. Lee is inside that thing!'
Lee Jun-Kyeong had left Utgard with Hua Tuo, and Fenrir was definitely protecting the black vortex in front of him. Therefore, Jeong In-Chang knew that Lee Jun-Kyeong was related to this whole thing.
Jeong In-Chang looked around.
He was in the middle of a situation in which everyone around was bewildered and unable to make their next move easily.
‘Could it be dangerous in there?’
Moreover, he was worried about Lee Jun-Kyeong.
He really wanted to know why something like that had been created and why Lee Jun-Kyeong was in it.
“It seems I can’t trust you about this.”
Eventually, Thrymr drew his ax.
“I won’t trust anything you say any more. I won’t even try to convince you any further.”
Thrymr raised his twin axes and pointed them toward Thjazi.
“Whatever happens today, I will see it to the end today. Finally…”
Thrymr scanned the Utgardian camp. Almost all of the warriors of Utgard seemed to be there, just as he had desired.
‘Although the king isn’t here…’
If they were able to wipe out all the warriors in front of him, then it would be worth it to continue advancing to Utgard and wage war against the king.
Clink!
However, Thjazi wasn’t just standing still as two axes suddenly appeared in his hands.
The two sides stood there, one black and the other white, with a black vortex in between them.
Booooooh!
The battle was about to begin, and the horn of the giants trumpeted throughout the icy wasteland while the vortex continued to get stronger.
As the mana that emitted from the vortex began to spiral into a hurricane, Thrymr and Thjazi shouted at the same time.
“Nar!”
“Frost Giants!”
“Oorah!”
“Oorah!”
The battle had begun.
***
“...”
Lee Jun-Kyeong opened his eyes.
He wondered at what point he had lost consciousness. The excruciating pain he had felt before then was something he never wanted to undergo again. Having come to his senses, he looked around him.
It was dark.
“...!”
In the darkness, he could see the form of Hua Tuo, Won-Hwa.
The physician was standing upright with his hands outstretched toward Lee Jun-Kyeong.
“...Mr. Won-Hwa.”
The physician had been frozen in that state.
His complexion was stark white. Upon closer inspection, Lee Jun-Kyeong could see that the physician’s body was aging in a shriveled manner. His firm hands had suddenly become wrinkled, and those wrinkles crawled from his hands to over his entire body.
In an instant, he could see Won-Hwa getting old in front of him.
“Have you… woken up…” Won-Hwa managed to croak out to Lee Jun-Kyeong in a dry voice. “It’s not… it’s not over yet…”
Lee Jun-Kyeong could hear Won-Hwa’s voice gradually losing its vitality as the man talked. Although it must have been difficult and immensely painful, Won-Hwa continued, “This… the congestion in the formation… the congregation of energy… absorb…”
He stopped, unable to speak anymore. Won-Hwa struggled to breathe and was seemingly unable to even muster the energy to open his mouth anymore.
However, Lee Jun-Kyeong could still feel the physician’s pulse and the flow of blood through his veins.
‘He’s still alive.’
The physician was just hanging by a thread.
Lee Jun-Kyeong suddenly thought of a passage he had seen in the book of the Demon King.
[Hua Tuo had lost many things in return for healing me.]
[He had sacrificed his youth to save me.]
His youth.
It wasn’t difficult to tell from this situation that it meant his lifespan.
In addition, Hua Tuo had overdrawn on his own potential.
As Won-Hwa had said earlier, it was the energy brought forth by drawing from one’s potential that consumed one’s life force as a source.
Lee Jun-Kyeong could tell that it was dissipating. That was why Won-Hwa was losing his vitality and was growing old.
Lee Jun-Kyeong looked around. As the physician had been trying to say, this place wasn’t just completely filled with mana.
‘He wants me to absorb this…?’
It was vast—no, it was even bigger than that. So much so that it would be dangerous to even attempt to absorb it. Despite that, he didn’t feel trepidation.
‘I think I can do it.’
Lee Jun-Kyeong was confident for some reason. He believed that the current him would be able to gather and consume all the mana in the destabilized formation. Just as Won-Hwa had said, he would try to become a vessel for all of this mana.
“I won’t let you die.”
Lee Jun-Kyeong opened the inventory and pulled out something.
A golden apple.
It was the support he had obtained from Asgard.
‘The apple of Idunn.’
To be honest, he had only brought it out of precaution. Based on the book of the Demon King, Hua Tuo would have had to lose his youth in exchange for treatment. The Demon King had saved Hua Tuo with the elixir in his possession.
If Lee Jun-Kyeong needed to follow the same procedure as the Demon King, the he also needed a way to save the physician.
The golden apple he was holding in his hand was Asgard’s elixir.
It was a little different from a conventional item, but it had a similar effect. In some ways, it was an item that actually had a better effect than the original elixir that the Demon King used.
Especially when it involved the lost potential.
It was a magical item that would restore the loss of vitality.
Lee Jun-Kyeong shoved the apple of Idunn into Won-Hwa’s mouth roughly. Even though the doctor couldn’t chew properly, the golden apple melted like water and ran down the physician’s tongue and throat.
“You’ll have to work hard to absorb the apple of Idunn well, too, Mr. Won-Hwa.”
Having completed Won-Hwa’s treatment, now, it was his turn.
Lee Jun-Kyeong sat down on the spot and closed his eyes.
‘Mana stream.’
It was a priceless secret method created by the Demon King, containing a magical strength that even Won-Hwa had described as incomprehensible.
As he activated his mana stream, he remembered how Won-Hwa had used his mana to guide the flow within him.
‘He said to move it like this.’
It felt like all of his cells were waking up. A huge sense of vitality filled Lee Jun-Kyeong's body.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Then, Lee Jun-Kyeong slowly began to absorb the magic around him.
It was something he hadn’t been able to do before, no matter how hard he would have tried.
If absorbing the mana around oneself and making it one’s own was an easy task, then everyone would have been strong.
It was a difficult and strenuous task.
‘It works.’
However, now, Lee Jun-Kyeong was succeeding in absorbing the mana that congested the formation to the brim.
The mana flowed in a rapid torrent, spewing into Lee Jun-Kyeong like water being sucked down a sewer drain. It still brought him pain, but it wasn’t like before.
‘My body…’
Although his body was being destroyed by the rapid influx of mana, it was recovering faster than the damage was taking place.
As the cycle of destruction and restoration repeated itself, the pain gradually disappeared. He could feel more and more incredible strength from every corner of his body.
The current of the torrent of mana continued to grow faster and faster, and the mana within the formation was being consumed at an even more rapid rate.
Within the vortex, Lee Jun-Kyeong was creating his own vortex.
Crreeak.
Suddenly, light emitted from within Won-Hwa after the physician successfully absorbed the apple of Idunn. At the same time, from within Lee Jun-Kyeong, darkness erupted with the sound of scraping iron.
***
The all-out battle between the colossal giant had started suddenly, and now the conflict was as massive as their physical size. It was cruel and brutal.
“Oorah! Ooorah!”
It was horrendously savage.
As soon as someone was injured by one of the axes wielded by the colossal giants, it would rain blood.
Drip, drip.
Huge amounts of blood gushed out like fountains and wet the icy wasteland.
The colossal giants didn’t die easily.
Their regenerative powers were as strong as their size was vast, and they wouldn’t leave the battlefield until the last breath left their bodies.
Furthermore, there were the Hunters.
"Defeat the Frost Giants!"
The Chinese Hunters on the side of the Nar were also doing their part. Although one Hunter couldn't defeat a giant, several Hunters were able to take down a giant by joining forces.
Clang! Clash!
Of course, there were also three Hunters that stood out as they were able to take down a giant alone. Moreover, they could even overwhelm them.
One of them approached Jeong In-Chang.
“Looks like we have met again!”
“I don’t know what you’re saying!”
Jeong In-Chang recognized him as well.
It was the same Hunter that he had met during the raid of the Nar the previous time he had gone hunting. He recalled that this Hunter used a slightly strange spear.
Clang!
Jeong In-Chang raised his greatsword and blocked the incoming attack. He was also someone who was able to handle two giants at the same time, but he felt something different from this Chinese Hunter.
‘He’s strong.’
It seemed he would have to deal with this man one on one.
“Princess!” he shouted.
Naturally, the Utgardian warriors were being pushed back on the battlefield as they were inferior in power. He knew that if he was tied up in a fight now, Utgard would suffer great damage.
“Goongje!”
Therefore, in his place, he summoned the princess.
‘Doesn’t she seem somehow larger than before?’
The princess had clearly increased in size, and she seemed to be showing off her even larger frame.
"It's a monster!"
A single ogre appeared in the midst of the giants. It was a monster that was sure to die instantly if an ax moved by it at even the slightest angle in the wrong direction. However, the princess was different.
“Goong–je!!”
As the princess ran forward, she slammed into a giant Nar that held the front line.
“Ahhh!”
The screaming giants fell down.
“Let’s fight properly then!” Jeong In-Chang shouted.
“A Korean?” asked the Hunter facing him.
Jeong In-Chang was now able to mark the Hunter with peace of mind.
The fight gradually intensified.
All of a sudden, a long spear—no, someone wielding a strange weapon too odd to be called a spear, joined the battle.
“I’ll help you as well.”
“Hyungnim!”
The man who interfered had previously expected that the duel between the two would have ended quickly, but it didn’t.
“How cowardly!” Jeong In-Chang shouted.
However, this was war.
In the name of victory, war was a place where no cowardice existed or vile actions mattered.
“Oorah!"
The giants of Utgard fell.
"Oorah!"
And the giants of the Nar were torn apart.
"Ahhhhk!"
In the midst, humans struggled to survive.
Boom!
And a black vortex emitted intense light.
1. The original term here, Seon Cheon Ji Gi, is both an energy and a method. Oftentimes, you’ll see it in Chinese wuxia or xianxia novels where the MC has to burn his blood essence or overdraw his potential to burst with even stronger energy, oftentimes crippling one’s foundation, or even dying. This term refers to both the method of burning through one’s potential, but also the energy that is created by doing so.
2. Marking is a term in fighting/competitive sports where one person picks someone to match and keep from interfering from their teammates.
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