Chapter 123: Within the Black Mist (3) Resurgence

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Everyone looked upon the enormous bear trembling on the ground nearby with nothing but awe and astonishment in their hearts.

“You should head this way. I’ve cleared the road ahead,” Dais said, pointing in the direction from which he had come. “Take care, everyone.”

The next moment, Dais vanished.

“So he really is the Benevolent King. Things must be truly dire,” said the burly man in heavy armor. He glanced at the enormous bear, Mars. “What should we do with him?”

“He seems to have been scared half to death. Carry him,” the male mage sighed.

Not far away, Dais had already appeared on the outskirts of the ruins of the funeral home.

There were naturally hordes of demonic insects in the vicinity as well, and the ground around where he stood was covered with the marks of explosions.

Dais had not actually “taken action.” Just as when he had rescued the others earlier, all he had done was run around a little.

At his level of power, most monsters no longer required him to fight. A few casual steps, accompanied by shock waves, were far more efficient for clearing them out.

“Looks like quite a nuisance…” Dais muttered expressionlessly as he gazed at the enormous pillar of black mist rising into the sky before him. “I hate filthy places like this.”

With that, he leaped into the air, stepping on nothing but empty space as he charged inside.

Meanwhile, on the lowest level of the dungeon, the two masked men who had set everything in motion stared at the scene before them in utter despair.

“What do we do? If we don’t make a move soon, we’re going to die, aren’t we?” asked the burly masked man.

“Hmm… Since we’re going to die anyway, we may as well take it easy,” said the masked shadow, shrugging.

The entire deepest chamber was now filled by the enormous insectoid humanoid, which continued to grow larger.

The two men could now see only the creature’s side. The vast chamber, once spacious enough, could no longer even accommodate it standing upright…

All six pairs of the giant insectoid’s compound eyes glowed crimson. The next instant, it moved!

Boom!

A terrifying shock wave mixed with sand and soil swept toward them, nearly blowing the two masked men out of the barrier.

The giant insectoid slammed its palm into the rock wall roughly two hundred meters in front of them. The solid stone collapsed under the tremendous force, cracks spreading outward in layers like waves. Vast quantities of rubble broke free, the scene resembling an avalanche and a landslide combined…

And judging from its posture, it was obvious that this was nowhere near the full extent of its strength.

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“So narrow… So suffocating…” the giant insectoid spoke, and to the two men’s surprise, they could actually understand its words.

“Yes… In this situation, running would be useless,” the burly masked man said, gazing at the destruction before him as a profound sense of helplessness welled up inside him.

“Open… for me!” the giant insectoid roared as it thrust both hands into the mountain wall before it and suddenly exerted its strength.

The entire rock wall began to tremble. Not only that—the vibrations continued spreading outward…

“Hm?”

Dais, who had been advancing toward the depths, suddenly stopped. He could feel the entire space of the dungeon shaking.

“Has the dungeon’s subspace crystal barrier system been destroyed?”

Dais turned toward a certain direction, where a gigantic rift had now appeared.

The rift was extraordinarily striking in color, because this was not an ordinary object splitting apart. The subspace crystal barrier system that constituted the dungeon itself had been torn open!

This was an S-rank dungeon!

“I couldn’t do that either… Such power… How interesting…”

Dais watched the scene with keen interest. Though his words were full of praise, he showed neither surprise nor fear.

Rumble, rumble, rumble…

In a shelter several dozen kilometers outside Saint Rose Port, everyone in the emergency conference room suddenly felt the ground begin to shake violently. The dilapidated ceiling creaked, sending clouds of dust cascading down.

“What’s happening?! What now?!” Li Qi shouted at the workers outside as he rushed out of the conference room.

His reflexes were fairly good. Unlike the other high-ranking officials, he did not have to crawl onto the conference table to steady himself.

“It’s split open!” one of the workers cried, raising the crystal tablet in his hands. “Saint Rose Port has split open!”

On the high-altitude surveillance feed displayed on the tablet, a fissure stretching from Saint Rose Port toward the Endless Sea was slowly widening…

“You’ve got to be kidding me!”

In Saint Rose Port, the heroes were startled into the air by the disturbance beneath them.

“Did the Benevolent King do this?” the elven archer asked in astonishment.

“I… I don’t know…” The male mage had intended to say that it was impossible, but after recalling the tornado from moments earlier, he suddenly found himself uncertain.

Still, this truly had not been caused by the Benevolent King. Even he could not have done it.

Tearing a dungeon apart lay beyond the limits of his abilities.

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Beneath the funeral home, a strange membrane of light trembled ceaselessly. Two enormous hands covered in black carapace reached out from within it. The tremendous force they unleashed was the culprit behind tearing apart most of Saint Rose Port and creating this enormous gorge, hundreds of meters deep.

To project such immense power out from within a dungeon was simply inconceivable.

But the next moment, something even more unbelievable happened.

The strange membrane of light shuddered violently, then split apart like a soap bubble.

Yet what filled that bubble was no harmless plaything. It contained black smoke and dust weighing hundreds of millions of tons…

Although the black smoke was not particularly flammable, once released from the dungeon’s space, it remained in a state of extreme compression. The surrounding space naturally forced it to expand at astonishing speed, and the result was…

An explosion!

A gigantic black mushroom cloud rose with a thunderous roar, visible even from the shelter…

No one knew what it was, but everyone knew it could not possibly be anything good. Without hesitation, they rushed into the underground bunkers.

Fortunately, to prevent the situation from worsening, people had used magic to create numerous underground chambers the previous night. No one had expected them to come in handy so soon.

The heroes flying through the air were hurled away by the violent shock wave, and many were killed outright in the blast.

Centered on the funeral home, the entirety of Saint Rose Port had been blasted into a gigantic crater several kilometers in radius, its deepest point reaching more than five hundred meters.

The enormous fissure leading to the Endless Sea widened further. Judging by the terrain, it had now become an excellent harbor.

Countless clouds of black smoke, accompanied by a ring-shaped shock wave, spread outward for hundreds of kilometers in a single instant!

“Ahhh…”

The giant insectoid gazed at the distant waves, driven back by the shock wave before surging violently back again, and its voice became one of utter satisfaction.

“This… is my world…”

“No. This is not your world.”

A somewhat languid voice rang out.

“You should continue sleeping. Or I can help you ‘fall asleep.’”

Dais stared expressionlessly at the giant insectoid and the devastation before him, his fists clenched so tightly that his knuckles creaked.