Chapter 361: 189. The Job of the Bait -2, (Part Two)

Translated by A Passing Wanderer

Edited by RED

I was momentarily tempted to summon either the Skeleton King, the Bone Dragon, or even Metatron, despite the potential strain that would put on my body. However, I wasn’t dealing with only Surtr here. I didn’t feel confident at all about dealing with all three hundred giants of fire by myself.

For now, my role was to buy time. Now wasn’t the right time to spend my energy unnecessarily.

But then…

-Ku-oooooh!-

A large shadow loomed over the flying Bone Wyvern. I quickly looked up.

A Jötunn about eight metres tall was jumping up in the air. In its right hand was a sword of flames, while its left held a shield made out of sizzling bedrock.

I summoned a musket, pointed at the bastard, and pulled the trigger. The divinity had been gathered hastily without any proper casting procedure. Naturally its firepower wouldn’t be so good.

The holy bullet was deflected away by the giant’s rock shield. It swung its sword down hard, so I quickly brought out Avaldi’s Spear instead and swung back.

CLAAANG-!

‘I did it!’

That’s what I thought, but then something else happened.

The Bone Wyvern couldn’t endure the new addition to its load and fell from the air.

The Jötunn used its entire body weight and the strength behind its strike to force us down. The Bone Wyvern carrying me was slammed straight into the ground below.

BOOM!

The Bone Wyvern was shattered into million pieces, but I managed to summon a platform of bones in time to support my feet.

-You… stopped me?- the Jötunn gasped out in a shocked voice.

I roused up my divinity and enhanced all of my physical abilities. The divine power wrapped around Avaldi’s Spear and destroyed the Jötunn’s sword.

-What kind of strength…?!-

I re-summoned the musket into my left hand and took aim at the giant bastard’s face. This time, I wasn’t going to miss.

As soon as I pulled the trigger, the Jötunn’s head exploded.

The headless giant body tumbled back, never to move again. However, I was now treated to the scene of the other three hundred surviving Jötnar still chasing after me.

‘Maaan, gimme a freaking break!’

I turned around urgently to flee, but almost at the same time, flames spread all around the forest near me, cutting off my escape path.

It became harder and harder to move as the land grew hotter and hotter.

Soon, the giants of fire had me surrounded. I stumbled back clumsily while staring at them.

‘Gee whiz, this is like being inside a bloody steam bath, isn’t it? Are these bastards thinking of steaming me to death or something?’

-How dare a measly insect kill one of our own!-

-Do not let your guard down. He managed to murder Lord Hrímr, after all.-

-No, that must be a lie. He doesn’t look all that strong.-

The giants of fire were gradually closing in on me from all sides.

What should I do here? I couldn’t really see any easy way out of this predicament.

In the end, I didn’t have a choice but to strain myself, huh. Well, I did manage to buy some time, so…

I sucked in a deep breath, then summoned holy water beneath my feet.

The waves of water spread out with me in the centre and crashed into the feet of the Jötnar, causing steam to rise up.

-Oh, that’s refreshing!-

-You think this little water can douse our flames, insect?-

The giants of fire snickered away, ridiculing my efforts.

“Nah, that’s not it.”

Sure. Snicker away, you fools. I ain’t gonna be the one to fight you bastards, anyway.

-Wait, what is…?-

The giants of fire finally noticed that something was wrong here.

There were bits of ice floating around on the holy water. Pieces of icy flesh, actually.

The chopped-up corpses belonging to the giants of ice, the ones led by Hrímr when they were still alive, suddenly floated up to the surface next. The severed body parts began gathering and connecting into intact arms and legs. They froze into solid masses, and eventually, the frost Jötnar that had been trapped in the holy water as corpses slowly pushed themselves back to their feet.

-Fuu-woo…!-

These icy undead breathed whitish frost from their mouths as they picked up various weapons, their bodies now encased in armour of ice.

The fire giants were flustered and stumbled back.

-A-aren’t they…?-

-Oh, our brethren! How could this be…?!-

These were my new zombie Jötnar, created from the giants of frost.

The cold lights burning in the eyes of the ice zombie Jötnar gleamed sharply.

-Ku-oooooooh!-

They lowered their postures, split their frozen mouths wide, and screeched out thunderously.

I had the frost Jötnar corpses recovered from the Kingdom of Frants and chopped to pieces, then stored them in my item window. This was the reason we hunted those giants down with a minimal amount of damage to their bodies.

When the frost Jötnar displayed hostility, the Jötnar of fire grew even more flustered.

-These things, they are all corpses!-

-You dare to defile the souls of our brethren, too?! You damn insect!-

The next thing these Jötnar of fire did was glare at me murderously, rage filling them up.

“Kasim, Nasus, Rahamma.”

Three more existences were Summoned around me.

I entrusted my protection to the trio, and got ready to summon the Skeleton King.

I realised that I couldn’t just go easy on these giant bastards and simply buy time. No, if I could inflict some serious damage to them before breaking out of their net and escaping outta here, I should be able to stop their march dead in its tracks.

That was the line of thinking in my head as I slammed Avaldi’s Spear on the ground, and I gathered up more divinity.

I even put on Amon’s Skull. Gentle rays of light began engraving themselves one the surface of the holy water.

For a moment there, though, I felt something inside my chest snap loose.

“…?”

I briefly tilted my head this way and that, wondering what had just happened, but after confirming that there were no other strange signs, I focused on the summoning process.

-What are you all doing?-

Surtr was slowly approaching our location. It raised up its lengthy whip again and smashed it down.

Several frost giants were instantly shattered into bits.

-Take him down, now!-

The fire giants pounced forward. The ice Jötnar howled out loudly as they fought back, while Kasim, Rahamma, and Nasus joined them to push our enemies back.

“I am the legion.”

One of the fire giants huffed and panted heavily as it tried to pounce on me. I fired my musket and shot that damn thing down.

“And I’m Gaia’s…”

Another fire giant, its mouth wide open, rushed at me from behind, as if it wanted to swallow me up whole.

I turned around urgently and pointed my musket at the open mouth of the Jötunn, only to sense a familiar aura nearby.

Someone was sprinting rapidly through the burning forest. She broke through the walls of flame and her figure spun around in the air.

“Fuu-wuu…”

I heard the familiar sound of her taking a deep breath. A woman, fitted with a pair of gauntlets, her blonde hair whipping in the air…

‘Alice?’

Alice’s figure spun around in the air, and her foot stomped down hard on the Jötunn trying to jump on me. The giant’s head slammed into the ground and shattered into bits.

Just as I stared at her in shock…

She turned to look at me and cried out, “Don’t stop!”

Well, I’ll be. She sure can be a wild child, can’t she? Weren’t you trying to dissuade me earlier, though?

I controlled my breathing and finished the rest of the activation phrase, “…Inheritor!”

**

(TL: In 3rd person POV.)

Before anyone had noticed it, the sun had sunk below the horizon.

The darkness visiting the sky once more was illuminated by the lone moonlight, but the ground below was brightly lit up by the burning land and the gentle glow coming from the holy water lake.

Alice quietly opened her lips and the beautiful melodies of a hymn came from her. The Resonance caused the divinity in him to amplify.

“Skeleton King,” muttered Allen, still under Amon’s skull.

The Jötnar of fire that had managed to bring down the giants of ice reacted to the harmonious song and stared at Alice.

“Donn O Donnchadha.”

Surtr witnessed the advent of a truly shocking event and its movement came to a standstill.

The Fire Giant could sense ‘it’. It could sense this eerily familiar presence, an aura so scarily cold that it could even freeze one’s soul.

The Skeleton King slowly raised its torso up from the lake of holy water, its four arms spreading open.

-I am the King of Death.-

The Skeleton King bent forward, extended its hand, and dipped it below the surface of the holy water.

-I can take as my own the powers of the ones that I have defeated.-

What the gigantic skeleton pulled out wasn’t its usual golden bone sword, but the severed head of the Frost Giant, Hrímr.

The Skeleton King’s bony jaw clattered open wide. It swallowed up the severed frozen head, and then… began munching on it.

Suddenly, a layer of frost quickly spread on the entire body of the gigantic skeleton.

A set of ice armour materialised in between its ribcage. The four arms even extracted spears made out of ice from the lake of holy water.

-Who can emerge victorious against me, the true conqueror!-

The glowing eyes of the Skeleton King burned fiercely as it glared at Surtr.

-Oh, hear me, my brethren!-

Surtr the Fire Giant was jolted out of its stupefaction. It began stumbling back as if it wanted to reject the current reality.

-Let us become one being!-

Soul-chilling frost gushed out from the bony jaw of the Skeleton King.

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