Chapter 220
Thwack!
Getting hit on the head feels awful.
The sensation of something slamming into your skull is nothing but unpleasant.
Especially when it drags up the moment you died.
“…!”
A sudden Triple Detonation came flying in.
Inside the skull that reeled from the impact, the Black Wizard Targa grit his teeth.
He’d been intoxicated by the power he gained from briefly becoming a Bone Dragon.
He’d been thoroughly enjoying the feeling of becoming a god.
Then, all at once, his mood turned foul.
The moment of his death flashed back.
‘…It was like this back then too.’
His neck had been severed.
His head had hit the floor with a heavy thud against the back of his skull.
He had felt that impact.
And then—rolling, rolling.
The sensation of his head rolling across the floor had been bizarre and chilling.
Now that he had a new body, he desperately wanted to forget it.
But it came back again.
Because of that bastard who had just delivered a stinging blow.
The Bone Dragon raised its head.
Lloyd—who had just struck him with Triple Detonation—came into view.
Seeing him flying around on a sparrow, another memory surfaced.
Namaran.
The ruined operation in the trading city of Namaran.
They had tried to offer the citizens as sacrifices to summon a Hell Knight.
They believed that if the Hell Knight ran amok for only a month, it would annihilate the kingdom’s major cities and main forces.
But it failed.
Because of who?
That bastard.
After the grand scheme in Namaran collapsed, an after-action report from the contact planted there came to mind.
Noctanium—the black jewel refined using Magical Power extracted from the Bone Dragon’s bones.
Someone had looted all of it, they said.
And on the day of the operation, a person riding a sparrow had slaughtered all their Black Wizards.
Then, after the Hell Knight awakened, that same person fought alongside a silver-haired knight and eliminated the Hell Knight.
‘Lloyd Frontera.’
The name of the mastermind surfaced.
That bastard had interfered with him not only in Namaran.
He had even prevented the Queen’s assassination.
That extreme poison had been hard to obtain.
Recruiting Swordmaster Sir Cherny had been even harder.
They had thought it was a perfect plan.
They had believed they could throw the Magentano royal family into chaos.
They had pushed forward with absolute conviction.
But it failed.
Again—because of that bastard, Lloyd Frontera.
‘If it weren’t for you…’
Every plan would have succeeded.
At the very least, they wouldn’t have collapsed into complete failure like this.
Her Majesty the Queen would have been killed—or turned into a vegetable.
Royal authority would have been shaken, and control over the provinces would have weakened.
In that political turmoil, the Hell Knight would have awakened in Namaran.
Near the Frontera Estate, 500 Undead Mastodons would have awakened in response.
A Hell Knight and 500 Undead Mastodons.
More than enough to sweep away a kingdom.
On top of that, they had prepared one final hidden plan as the finishing blow.
A plague that turned humans into zombies—and its dedicated cure.
‘If only that had succeeded…’
A tremendous number of commoners would have turned into zombies.
The curse would have spread like a plague.
Since it was a curse created through a special process, even the blessings of high priests wouldn’t have cured it.
The only treatment would have been medicine made from the Magical Power extracted from the Bone Dragon’s bones.
In other words, he had planned it so that only they could save those who turned into zombies.
When the royal family’s leadership crumbled.
When the provinces were engulfed in flames.
When the entire nation fell into the abyss of zombification.
They would emerge like a messiah.
‘If only it had turned out that way…’
He could have become king.
No—he might even have become emperor.
But now it was impossible.
He had died.
And even if he was rampaging like this now—
He was no longer human.
And there was no way to return to being human.
So.
‘Now I’m just a monster.’
He had wanted to rise high and command the world.
He had wanted everyone’s fear, respect, and admiration.
He had wanted to tear off the label of discrimination as a Black Wizard.
He had wanted to become a ruler remembered in history.
‘Now I can’t.’
No matter how much god-like power he possessed, that wish could no longer be fulfilled.
Every plan had failed.
He was just a monster.
‘Because of you.’
A blue flame ignited in the Bone Dragon’s gaze as it locked onto Lloyd.
Thick killing intent bloomed.
That emotion brought change to the Bone Dragon.
No—it brought a tremendous change to the Black Wizard Targa residing within it.
‘I’ll kill you. I’ll definitely kill you, no matter what.’
WHOOSH—CRACK!
The Bone Dragon spread its wings.
There was none of the earlier toddling.
No more clumsy movements, no more practice flapping.
Its unfamiliar body?
A magician’s cautious, gradual adaptation?
None of that mattered anymore.
Fly up, tear, smash, chew, and swallow.
Burn, trample, and reduce everything to ash until his rage was satisfied.
Thwack—WHOOSH!
The Bone Dragon kicked off the ground.
A single leap.
That alone sent it straight up to an altitude of 800 meters in an instant.
Its bony wings spread wide.
Blue flames condensed within the empty framework of the wing bones.
Like feathers made of resentment, they infused explosive power into the wingbeats.
KWA-HA-HAK!
Just once.
It swept its wings.
It shoved the air aside.
With a single wingbeat, the space churned violently.
Air was explosively pushed aside, compressed, and a shockwave formed.
And in that instant, the Bone Dragon’s two-hundred-meter body advanced by hundreds of meters.
No—it charged.
SCREEEEE!
For a moment, the Bone Dragon broke the sound barrier.
Airwaves overlapped, converging at the apex before its massive skull.
They stacked, amplified, and finally detonated outward.
KWAANG!
A powerful sonic boom erupted, along with a burst of condensed vapor.
Windows in the nearby Royal Palace—and in surrounding buildings—shattered.
Down in the garden, people covered their ears and collapsed.
“What the… insane!”
Lloyd felt like collapsing too.
He looked back, eyes wide enough to pop.
The Bone Dragon was closing in.
No—it was charging.
It was just shooting forward, as if it meant to smash into them!
‘How is it so fast?!’
Lloyd was stunned.
All he meant to do was run.
Make it follow him while he fled.
Rile it up a little by smacking it once.
He’d only hit it on the back of the head with Triple Detonation.
He never imagined it would fly at such an absurd speed.
He genuinely hadn’t expected it to charge so fearsomely without hesitation.
‘Is it the type that really hates getting hit on the back of the head?’
That didn’t matter right now.
Even while he was thinking, the Bone Dragon beat its wings again—WHOOSH-HAK!
Air was shoved aside, vapor condensed instantly, and another sonic boom followed.
KWAANG!
The distance narrowed to a dizzying degree.
‘We’re going to get caught.’
Five seconds?
No—four?
At this rate, they’d be caught within that.
And then what?
‘What do you think?! It’d be like a Matiz getting rear-ended by a tank at full speed with no brakes!’
They’d be obliterated, bones and all.
Lloyd’s eyelids twitched violently as he realized it.
His response was instant.
“Ggoming! Down!”
“Ggoming!”
Ggoming was already feeling the relentless, lethal charge behind them.
The moment Lloyd shouted, he folded his wings.
Ggoming’s specialty—his proudest flight.
A steep dive.
“Ggoming!”
He tucked his head and dropped like a swallow skimming water.
He descended almost straight down, as if fired from a bow.
“Grrrrrrrip!”
A storm of headwind tore at them.
Lloyd clung to the saddle and endured.
A thought hit him.
‘Will it follow this too?’
He glanced back.
‘…It’s following!’
The blood drained from his face.
Because right behind him—was the Bone Dragon.
It lowered its head just like them.
Folded its wings tight against its body.
And pursued them, diving vertically like a swallow skimming water.
“What kind of… Ggoming! Left!”
“Ggoming!”
Lloyd shouted, sensing the crisis.
Ggoming snapped his head left.
He spun counterclockwise—two full rotations like a screw.
Using that momentum, he bent the dive path ninety degrees to the left and instantly transitioned into level flight.
Right after—
The Bone Dragon copied their maneuver exactly.
With its massive body, it performed an impossible, swallow-like turn.
It even stretched out its long neck—
CRUNCH-CRACK!
The Bone Dragon bit down on the space where Ggoming had been an instant ago.
Its huge teeth nearly grazed Ggoming’s tail feathers.
“Ggoming! Ggoming!”
Ggoming cried out in panic.
That it was impossible like this.
That they’d be caught if it continued.
That they needed a countermeasure—now.
“I know! I know too!”
Cold sweat poured down Lloyd’s forehead.
He had to admit it.
His plan had been naive.
‘This was a mistake. I should’ve just run unconditionally—no matter what happened to other people, no matter what.’
Even if he was called a coward.
Even if people spat on him and called him trash.
Who cared?
Surviving was what mattered.
‘But—damn it! Why did I step forward to save Javier and Her Majesty the Queen?!’
He regretted the decision he’d made ten minutes ago.
‘Is this really the end?’
Hopelessness crept in.
It turned bleak.
Ggoming was flying at his limit.
This was their maximum mobility.
But that Bone Dragon?
There was no trace of its earlier clumsy, waddling figure.
It was like a supersonic jet.
No—like a rocket.
It flew with KWAANG KWAANG booms, tearing through the air.
And on top of that, it had insane maneuverability that made no sense for its size.
A whale with a swallow’s agility—would that even be possible?
No, a sixty-three-story building flying around like a dragonfly was more accurate.
‘There’s no way to escape.’
Against that insane flight capability, no escape route came to mind.
Even imagining shaking it off was difficult.
But Lloyd didn’t give up.
‘No. If I give up, I die. Think. Work, brain!’
While leading this suicidal acrobatic chase—
Barely dodging by a hair every second—
Lloyd racked his brains.
He didn’t want to die.
He had to survive here, no matter what.
Especially when he thought of the honey jar that was the Frontera Estate—built up carefully, piece by piece, until now.
So.
He ransacked every scrap of information in his head.
The settings of this novel.
The history he’d already altered.
Everything—down to trivial details from months ago.
And finally—
‘Ah. Wait.’
It came.
Lloyd snapped his head up and looked back sharply.
‘Confirm first!’
There was no time to drag it out.
The Bone Dragon was right behind them, charging with monstrous persistence.
Staring straight at it, Lloyd shouted inwardly.
‘[Measurement]!’
He strained his eyes, activating the skill as he locked onto the Bone Dragon.
Tsu tsu tsu tsu tsu!
[Scanning initiated.]
With the familiar message, the Bone Dragon’s body began to be analyzed in detail.
But Lloyd wasn’t looking at the whole thing.
‘No time!’
His gaze shot downward, toward the creature’s body.
In the mad-tempo chase, he could catch glimpses of its tail.
That massive tail was constantly swinging up and down, left and right, maintaining balance in flight.
‘So… show me. Come on!’
His desperate eyes traced the tail from the tip.
From the thinnest end to the gradually thickening middle—
And finally, around the one-third point, sometimes obscured by the body—
‘Found it!’
A gleam flashed in Lloyd’s eyes.
He saw it.
A single segment of tail bone—his target.
No, more precisely—
‘A fake tail bone!’
One segment was clearly different from the others.
It wasn’t real dragon bone.
It was a chunk of granite fitted in.
The reason was simple.
‘That’s where I had the real bone removed so I could take it as construction payment from Her Majesty the Queen!’
A few months ago, around the time construction began on the Termina Grand Garden, he had already whispered to the installation expert in charge of setting the dragon-bone framework.
That one piece of tail bone was his.
So don’t forget to set it aside.
‘After that, I got busy with the garden, then today’s mess, and forgot for a while.’
But now that he remembered and checked—
Sure enough, one segment was missing.
And that spot had been filled with a fake carved from stone.
‘And that stone piece is just roughly carved granite to save on material costs!’
He remembered that the royal family originally intended to use expensive Emperor Whale vertebrae for that spot.
Not as good as dragon bone, but still a high-grade material—remarkably strong and relatively light.
But the problem was—
‘It was too expensive.’
Not just expensive—pointlessly expensive.
It was an ultra-luxury material that would have made the material costs explode.
So Lloyd had talked them out of it.
He had argued that no one would inspect the framework with a magnifying glass.
Everyone would just admire it from a pleasure boat and go, “Wow.”
So carve it to match the color and texture of dragon bone.
And it only needed enough strength so the framework wouldn’t collapse.
Granite was more than enough.
He had insisted until he got his way.
‘Material cost savings!’
Even if it was the royal treasury paying, he still hated pointless waste.
He had never imagined that stubbornness would save his life.
That it would become the only weakness to target—the only hope.
A wicked smile spread across Lloyd’s lips.
“Hey! I’ve got a good idea!”
He shouted.
“But if it fails, we all die nicely together! Anyone got last words you want to leave behind?!”
“…”
No answer came.
He looked back.
‘Whoa. Why do both of you look like that?’
Her Majesty the Queen.
Javier.
Both wore grim expressions.
Like people who had already prepared themselves for death in front of an overwhelming enemy.
A chuckle escaped Lloyd.
They were too tense.
In that state, they wouldn’t hear a word he said.
He needed to snap them out of it first—so they’d actually listen to the plan.
He steeled his resolve.
Loaded his tongue with bombastic nonsense.
“If you’ve got nothing to say, I’m starting! Javier! It was fun being with you, but you were unlucky! You always brag about getting confession letters, but you’re single just like me! And Your Majesty—no, noona!”
“…What? Me?”
“Yes, Your Majesty, noona! You’re the same! You’re always trying to use me to the fullest!”
“You dare… You called me noona just now?”
“If we’re about to die for real, what does it matter?!”
“You—!”
“Anyway! Thanks to that, you seem a lot less tense now!”
Lloyd cut off Her Majesty the Queen’s rebuttal and shouted.
“From now on, listen carefully and do exactly what I say! This—if it succeeds, we all live! So please be lenient about me calling you noona just now! And please grant that ten-year labor exemption for real! And if—if we catch that Bone Dragon—give me all of that bastard’s bones! Do you agree?!”