The spirit charged at them.
The snake’s mouth opened wide, letting out a low roar.
The air quivered as a faint toxic aura spread around.
It felt like death.
In that moment of sharp, hair-raising tension, Lee Jiyeon moved without hesitation.
She drew upon the earth to extend the handle of her axe.
She gripped the handle tightly, pushing her entire body to its limits.
Then, she infused it with her energy.
A thick, green aura enveloped the axe.
Especially around the blade, the aura surged and flared up explosively.
“Taesan.”
Taesan was a unique ability to control the earth.
Through controlling the earth, one could also handle the life force within it, and, through that, command spirits.
But at its core, it was about mastering the earth itself.
For ages, the earth has been a symbol of the origin of life and of strength.
Lee Jiyeon summoned the power of the earth.
Rooted firmly to the ground, she drew the magic and life force of the earth into her body.
Crrrack! The handle of the axe trembled, as if it might shatter.
A sharp cracking sound echoed between the handle and her grip.
Gritting her teeth, Lee Jiyeon swung her arm.
The axe’s blade sliced cleanly through the air, falling down on the head of the charging spirit.
– Boom!
“Ugh...!”
The axe struck the snake’s head, driving it into the ground.
With the impact, a shockwave blasted in all directions.
It was as if an explosion had gone off, sending clumps of dirt flying, and even breaking and scattering the already fragile trees.
Lee Jiyeon had no time to worry about that. Before the momentum faded, she leaped to the side.
Crash! A dangerous blade-tail struck where she had just been standing.
“It’s tough...!”
Her arms tingled. They trembled violently, as if they might break apart at any moment.
Lee Jiyeon looked at her trembling hands.
She saw her axe handle left there, with the upper part of the axe completely shattered from the collision.
– Ssscreeech!
She had inflicted some damage, at least.
The wounds on the snake’s head, now thrashing around, were proof of that.
But it wasn’t a fatal wound.
Her face twisted with frustration.
The first strike.
Despite imbuing her blow with all her Taesan power, she hadn’t managed to land a critical hit.
“About fourth rank? Not quite an alpha.”
She analyzed it coolly, taking into account the speed at which it attacked her and its durability in withstanding the axe blow.
Its estimated rank was on the lower end of the fourth rank.
A fourth-rank monster was typically a creature strong enough to appear as an alpha entity in a second-tier dungeon and even command a small territory in the demon realm.
It wasn’t a gap that warranted despair. Her blows would eventually wear it down, and it would die.
Although she had never taken down a fourth-rank entity alone, she knew it was possible.
But...
A shiver ran through her entire body.
The earlier feeling of danger now seemed like child’s play compared to this mortal peril.
The snake closed its mouth and inflated its throat, as if holding something.
The gaps in its damaged flesh began to leak drops of a thick, black-green liquid.
– Sssizz...
The viscous, dark liquid, tinted a deep green, dripped down, accompanied by smoke.
This poison was incomparably more dangerous than what it had used before.
“Evade─!”
Lee Jiyeon shouted and kicked off from the ground.
While she reacted, her team, holding formation, also sprang into action.
The snake’s torn eyes squinted as it opened its mouth.
A green wave poured out.
The area, already shrouded in darkness, was dyed green.
The stumps of trees, left barren and stripped of branches, were submerged in the poisonous liquid and immediately melted away without a trace.
And it wasn’t just that.
The poison emitted toxic gas as it spread, as if evaporating.
The liquid poison first spilled out, then spread as gas in all directions.
The ground, submerged in poison, began to melt, lowering gradually. Unsubmerged areas absorbed the poison, corroding and rotting away.
The sky soon turned a murky green as it filled with the poisonous fumes.
– Hissss...
Even after all that, the snake’s mouth showed no signs of closing. The poison continued pouring out without stopping.
It was like a dam breaking, releasing a massive volume of water all at once.
The entire area around them was dead.
Not only the areas covered in poison but also zones many times over that were poisoned to death.
And the radius was exponentially expanding.
They barely escaped the range of the poison, standing high on raised ground, staring blankly at the poison wave below.
“...This is insane.”
Lee Jiyeon muttered in a daze, her face pale as death.
Her teammates’ expressions were similarly bleak.
Even at this distance...
The poison in the air reached them, turning their faces white.
“...That thing.”
That snake was a spirit.
A corpse puppet, forcefully animated by stuffing a spirit into a dead body.
No matter what, it would be weaker than it was in life. While various enhancements could be added to increase its power, it rarely surpassed the original.
Judging by the snake’s appearance, there were no such enhancements.
If anything, it was unstable.
No need to look closely.
Even a quick glance showed the gaps where flesh, bone, and scales were missing.
Those voids were filled with black magic and miscellaneous spirits, making it clearly unstable.
Moreover, from her experience in necromancy, she could tell the composition of this spirit was patchy and haphazard.
This corpse puppet’s rank was estimated to be fourth rank.
So then...
“What was it like when it was alive...?”
Lee Jiyeon’s face hardened.
“Hold on.”
A thought struck her as she looked at the spirit spewing poison from a distance.
A snake.
A giant type several times the size of an ordinary building.
Dark green scales, eerie yellow eyes.
A massive weapon attached to its tail, two necks...
Most of all, the poison that endlessly poured from its remaining mouth...
It matched a description she had seen frequently in historical records and high-rank monster classifications.
Third rank, dark green snake, two heads, poison pouring from one mouth.
“Twin-Headed Venom Dragon...”
The alpha of the third rank.
The legendary monster that had choked the life out of China.
That creature had returned as a spirit.
– Hissss...
There was no time for shock.
After spitting out a large amount of poison, the spirit... the Venom Dragon, shook its head from side to side, then turned towards Lee Jiyeon.
The distance between them closed.
Watching the Venom Dragon approach, bringing a wave of poison with it, she felt intense fear.
A powerful threat to her life.
She sensed the plants withering and rotting, drained of life by the poison.
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She felt the spirits dissolve upon contact with the poison, unable to resist.
Her survival instincts screamed.
The physical rank of the Venom Dragon was estimated to be on the lower end of the fourth rank. Not even an alpha. It was something Lee Jiyeon could theoretically kill.
Based solely on its physical rank, that was true.
But considering that unique ability... the poison?
She couldn’t kill it. With that poison radiating around it, it was impossible to get close.
Find the caster and deal with it? Would the Venom Dragon stay idle during that time?
Even if she managed to locate the caster, they’d be a necromancer capable of animating the Venom Dragon, however imperfectly.
This wouldn’t be an easy fight.
Logically, engaging with this force here was suicide.
She needed to retreat.
She’d already requested support from her family. Even with the interference of mana wavelengths, the signal likely got through.
With this much chaos, the Association would have noticed too.
Lee Jiyeon turned her head.
She was about to issue orders to her team, who were frozen stiff just like her.
“...Retreat─”
─Now.
Her words stopped halfway.
Turning her head, she saw a girl, held by one of her team members, vomiting onto the ground.
“Ah.”
It was the child Mu-Myeon had rescued.
The girl’s complexion was deathly pale.
Even allowing for her sickly state, her skin looked dark and discolored.
Her eyes were unfocused, her pupils quivering, her fingertips stiffening.
Symptoms of poisoning.
Despite the protective magic and unique abilities used by Lee Jiyeon and her team, the girl had inhaled trace amounts of the poison and was now suffering from it.
The only reason she hadn’t died instantly was because of those protections.
But she was still poisoned.
One of her teammates was administering antidotes and using healing abilities, but there was little improvement.
“......”
Retreating together was the goal.
Dragging along a poisoned child while the Venom Dragon closed in on them?
“Damn it.”
She muttered yet another curse, losing count of how many it had been.
Her head hurt.
She wanted to flee.
With survival instincts screaming at her, who wouldn’t want to run?
But she held the title of heir to the Taesan family.
She was also the leader of Team 1 for this search operation.
“...Here’s my command. All team members, retreat with the rescue target.”
“What about you, Miss?”
One team member asked anxiously.
She looked briefly at the approaching Venom Dragon.
It was terrifying.
Lee Jiyeon wanted to run.
“I’ll buy some time and withdraw separately.”
As the Taesan family’s heir, as the team leader, she couldn’t do otherwise.
"Miss!"
"Absolutely not!"
"Let us—"
"Shut up. I’ll kill you first if you disobey orders."
The protests burst forth immediately.
Lee Jiyeon didn’t have the luxury of handling them gently. She cut them off coldly, turning her head with a stern expression.
"Team leaders of Teams 2 and 3, arrange your formations, break through the encirclement, and retreat. Once clear, administer an antidote to the rescue target, send an emergency signal to the Association, and proceed with civilian evacuation."
"But...!"
The team members’ protests continued.
“...Don’t look at me as if I’m already dead."
Seeing the worry and sadness in their eyes, Lee Jiyeon softened her tone slightly.
"I’m only doing this because I know I have a way to escape too."
Saying this, Lee Jiyeon shared her vision with a spirit.
It showed her the cliff where she had spotted that mysterious fog earlier, which might be the entrance to a dungeon.
Her hair had turned completely white.
No matter how many times she checked, the color didn’t change back.
“What the...?”
Rubbing the strands of hair in her fingers, she made a slightly bewildered expression.
Not too long ago, her hair had been black, but now it had turned white.
Reviewing the data she had observed earlier, she realized that the color had started changing about ten minutes ago.
The transformation was still ongoing.
It was happening too fast to be called graying...
It wasn’t a dye job either, and it wasn’t common for hair to spontaneously change color on its own.
“Wait.”
Suddenly, a thought occurred to her, and she examined the color of her hair more closely.
It looked familiar.
Even within the same color family, slight variations could make each shade unique, sometimes with subtle differences hard to detect, other times glaringly obvious.
But this color was distinct—it was easy to recognize.
“This looks almost like Seoryul’s hair color.”
The pure white, like untouched snow, with an iridescent shimmer that seemed otherworldly... a unique color she’d only seen on Seoryul’s hair.
Though her hair didn’t shimmer in multiple colors yet, a closer inspection through her senses confirmed it was virtually identical.
It was that otherworldly, magical hair color belonging to Seoryul, a fairy.
And now, her hair was changing to nearly the same shade.
“I once wondered if Cadet Lee Hayul was truly human, not a fairy.”
That comment continued to stir up mixed feelings...
“I don’t know.”
She rubbed her hair briefly, then immersed herself back in the lake.
Her body, after all, was already suspicious, capable of healing minor wounds on its own and regenerating even a completely crushed and severed leg.
A mere change in hair color wasn’t all that surprising.
She submerged her body fully into the lake.
– Bubble, bubble...
With her mouth underwater, she idly blew bubbles on the lake’s surface.
She was still focusing on absorbing as much mana as possible.
For now, she didn’t want to divert her mental energy elsewhere.
“The Proof of Protection should appear soon.”
She observed the waterfall spilling gently into a corner of the lake.
Despite its considerable size, the waterfall was surprisingly gentle, and thus, the ripples on the lake remained calm.
Inside that waterfall was a small cave.
That’s where the Proof of Protection would soon appear.
Based on the timeline of the original work, now was the perfect time for it to show up.
“I need to hurry back to Seoryul...”
This had taken quite a bit of time.
If she went to find him now, she’d still have a few days to spend with Seoryul.
Driven by an impatient feeling, she increased the bubbles she was creating on the water’s surface.
Then, the spirits that had spread out to enjoy themselves around the lake began to return one by one.
“They came back... faster than expected...?”
Gradually, the spirits gathered above the lake, coloring its surface with a vibrant array of colors.
Whether it was her imagination or not, the spirits seemed brighter than before.
That wasn’t surprising.
“Wait, who are these guys?”
The strange part was that there were more spirits than before.
She had sent out around a hundred, but now there were about three hundred.
She looked at the spirits gathering in front of her with a baffled expression, poking at one that floated close to her.
The water spirit, shimmering in blue, seemed ticklish, jittering as it moved back a bit.
By the way, this wasn’t one of her contracted spirits.
She didn’t know whose spirit this was.
“What are you guys?”
She sent out a vague thought... an intent, but there was no clear response.
She only received simple emotional waves like “happy,” “pet me more,” or “ticklish.”
Lower spirits had blurry consciousness, so it was hard to communicate properly.
“...Should I make a contract?”
She checked the capacity of her vessel.
There was plenty of room.
Her spirit contracts had stopped at a hundred not because of her capacity, but because there weren’t any more spirits available to contract.
Having more contracted spirits wouldn’t be a bad thing.
As she prepared to approach one of the spirits to begin contracting...
– Woooong!
At that moment, the lake’s surface rippled.
A series of small tremors, like continuous mini-quakes, spread ripples across the lake, dyeing the water yellow.
It was the same color as the yellow leaves floating on the lake.
“It’s here.”
This was the sign of the Proof of Protection’s appearance.
In the original game, this mechanic required the player to stay immersed in the lake for several days—a tedious yet easy task.
In less than ten seconds, the lake returned to its normal color.
However, she observed new information emerging from the cave inside the waterfall.
Excited, she headed toward the waterfall. It was on the opposite side.
She moved forward, pushing aside the floating yellow leaves and the colorful spirits to approach the waterfall.
She waded across the lake’s center. The depth increased, reaching up to her mouth when she stood straight.
– Woooong!
“?”
The lake rippled again.
Waves rose, splashing against her face.
“What’s going on?”
The gimmick should’ve been a one-time event.
She stood still, observing the surroundings carefully. Concerned about an unforeseen incident, she heightened her alertness and focused her observation.
Reflecting her own nervousness, the spirits darted around, wary of any potential threat that might appear.
– Crack.
“?”
Her observation detected a change.
Not only through observation—space itself seemed to recognize it.
Above her.
The sky shimmered, and something was spat out.
“Intercept—wait, hold on!”
She almost instinctively unleashed her prepared spells but caught herself, halting the attack just in time.
The spirits, ready to unleash various elemental attacks, shrank back in surprise.
The person ejected from the sky wasn’t unfamiliar.
“Lee Jiyeon?”
The main character, and the heir to the Taesan family.
A character she’d planned to meet during the second semester had, for some reason, entered the Lake of Mana.
She knew that Lee Jiyeon had been active in China recently... but she never expected to meet her here.
Especially in such a battered condition.
Lee Jiyeon fell, unable to control her body, descending powerlessly.
She appeared to be conscious but unable to move properly.
She activated a levitation spell.
Slowing Lee Jiyeon’s fall, preventing her from crashing into the lake’s center.
As she reached out to catch her, a thought crossed her mind, and she paused.
Her arms were too short, and her height...
– Crack.
And... her height made it awkward to try catching someone directly.
With a frustrated expression, she manipulated the Wings of Heaven.
The feathered threads of the Wings of Heaven split into several strands, gently cradling Lee Jiyeon.
“Uh, uh... I don’t want to die...”
As she exited the lake to set Lee Jiyeon down, the latter’s body trembled.
Her eyelids twitched, as if in a nightmare, and slowly, her eyes opened.
A pair of deep green eyes looked around in confusion.
She seemed to struggle to understand the situation.
Her gaze swept over the surroundings before it settled on her.
“...Ah...”
A faint, startled gasp escaped Lee Jiyeon’s lips.
“...Are you... an angel?”
“?”
Did she hit her head?