Chapter 1017
Episode 1017
Chapter 247. The Laprarosa Liberation War (5)
Jin had only taken a brief walk inside his inner world and returned after meeting Lingling.
Yet outside, five hours had already passed. During those five hours, Murakan and the Twin Kings had been guarding Jin, who moved sluggishly like a sleepwalker, as the battle raged on.
“Phew…!”
As Jin took a deep breath, time seemed to freeze for a moment, and everyone on the battlefield halted simultaneously.
Even amid the roaring clash of spiritual energy, lightning, and enemy psychic attacks, they all caught the sound of Jin’s breath.
“Brother Jin!”
“Brother, are you conscious!?”
Garmund and Belliz were the first faces Jin saw.
They had been clinging tightly to Jin, fending off the enemy’s celestial swords and psychic cannons that pierced through Murakan’s barrier.
Both were covered in wounds, large and small. Considering Jin had been absent for five hours and they had endured the fierce battle alone, it was a relief they were still alive.
Far off, Teto, assisting Murakan, looked on the verge of collapse, and Linpa coughed up blood with every breath.
Murakan himself had suffered the most injuries. He had taken nearly all the attacks aimed at Jin from the enemy’s Red-Eyed Tribe, so even he couldn’t remain unscathed.
Protecting one person while fighting is naturally several times harder. It was only because Murakan and the Twin Kings of the Red-Eyed Tribe had fought so fiercely that no one had died or suffered fatal wounds so far.
[Damn it, kid. You just now woke up? You said you’d be back in a moment, but you disappeared for five whole hours.]
“Brother was unconscious for five hours!”
“…Five hours!? That long?”
Jin’s eyes widened. This was the most shocking moment of the battle. He had experienced time moving faster in the inner world before, but never during a fight.
“But there’s no need to feel sorry. Brother went to save Lingling!”
“What about the liberation device?”
“Of course, it hasn’t been thrown yet. What happened to Lingling?”
Garmund asked, though he had a good feeling. He had just confirmed that the corrupting energy that had invaded Jin’s radiant heart had vanished without a trace.
The dark energy wasn’t completely gone. At the center of Jin’s radiant heart, a faintly glowing spot shimmered like a black pearl. It was Lingling’s spiritual energy.
When Jin called out to Lingling silently, Garmund heard her voice clearly.
[I’m safe! Garmund. This guy showed up just in time to save me.]
“Oh, Lingling! So you escaped Laprarosa too? Wait, if that’s the case, won’t time in Laprarosa stop again?”
[It’s complicated to explain in detail, so I’ll keep it simple. My body is still inside Laprarosa. Only my consciousness has transferred to Jin. That’s why time in Laprarosa remains unchanged, and half of me… will appear soon.]
Hearing Lingling’s words, the most shocked wasn’t Jin, Murakan, or the Twin Kings.
It was Simat. He fixed his gaze on the now-conscious Jin, trying to grasp the situation. Had Jin really pulled off this gamble?
“Fire!”
Simat’s furious voice thundered across the battlefield. Enemy psychic cannons from the airborne fortress and fleet all focused their fire on Jin.
At that moment, Jin understood what Lingling had just said.
“Brother Jin, you did well to save Lingling.”
A familiar voice echoed in Jin’s mind.
“Thanks to you, things have eased up. Now, through your body, I can glimpse the outside world once more.”
It was Ban’s voice. Lingling had begun the spirit fusion.
Normally, spirit fusion required Jin, Ban, and Lingling to be within a certain distance or to have the wavelength synchronization device developed by Kwaul.
But not now. Lingling’s consciousness had shifted from Ban to Jin’s inner world, erasing all those conditions.
Clearly, this was thanks to the initial chaos unleashed by Simat. The witch’s chaos spreading across the great desert was now erasing the boundaries between the three of them.
“Brother Ban!”
Jin’s radiant heart, glowing with golden lightning, turned a deep blue. His eyes filled with electric blue thunder, and Sigmund blazed fiercely like sharpened lightning.
The lightning energy pouring from Jin distorted the nearby space like dough. Through the warped space, Simat’s celestial swords and psychic cannons fell.
Jin didn’t dodge. He swung his sword.
A horizontal slash with no preparatory movement, yet it contained the essence of the spirit fusion that Ban and Jin had cultivated so far.
As the blade sliced through the air, the psychic cannon blasts shattered like glass upon contact with the sword’s energy.
Though the psychic cannon was a massive concentrated lightning bombardment capable of obscuring mountains, it wasn’t completely neutralized.
Still, the psychic cannon couldn’t strike Jin as planned. Like a cart tripping over a rock, it tilted sideways and crashed to the ground.
All the cannon fire was twisting like that. While the sword’s energy deflected the main fire, thousands of lightning strikes rained down, tearing apart the remaining attacks.
“What the…!”
The Red-Eyed Tribe could only gape in disbelief.
In fact, most of them didn’t even realize what was happening. Only Simat, the Great Twin Kings, and some first-class Twin Kings fully understood the situation—that Jin had neutralized all that firepower with a single sword strike.
“And now, we can finally see what those sub-species tormenting me and my brothers look like. So… that’s the king of the sub-species.”
Jin’s gaze met Simat’s, who wore an unprecedentedly stunned expression.
Simat sensed it. Even if Ban hadn’t fully escaped Laprarosa, he was manifesting through Jin’s body.
The lightning strikes scattered from the psychic cannon blasts rained down on the airborne fortress and fleet’s shields. Ban noticed that Simat wasn’t protecting the regular fleet at all.
“Strong. But too cold-hearted to possess a radiant heart. Well… that’s probably why he dared challenge me without fear.”
As Ban spoke, Jin sensed her hesitation—whether to raise the synchronization level and fight directly or maintain the spirit fusion at this level and leave the battle to Jin.
“Brother Ban, what will you do?”
“I’d like to punish him myself, but it’s better for Brother Jin to wield the sword now. Lingling’s rampage left him quite injured.”
The Red-Eyed Tribe’s bombardment, dimensional distortions, and the initial chaos continued to ravage Laprarosa. Raising the synchronization to full might cause problems there.
“Understood.”
“Besides, Brother has already reached creation. That’s impressive. With a little help from me, you’ll be even more efficient than before. Once this fight ends and we leave, we’ll celebrate properly.”
“I look forward to it. And Brother Ban, soon I’ll throw an ancient eternal iron box into Laprarosa. Catch it well. It’s the device to liberate Laprarosa.”
“Ah, so that’s what it is. Brother Tantal brought a fragment of the ancient eternal iron and was cautious. As long as it doesn’t get lost in the dimensional distortions, it should be retrievable. Then… I’ll entrust the punishment of those bastards to Brother.”
Ban fell silent after that.
She focused on Laprarosa. Though the spirit fusion wasn’t broken, Jin still shared the senses Ban gained as a spirit.
As Ban said, that was enough. Now that Jin had reached creation, he could understand Ban’s senses more richly than before.
“…As expected, the sky above the sky. Brother Ban must think that way.”
It was mysterious.
The moment Jin clenched his hand to swing the sword, every cell in his body seemed to move solely for that purpose.
Though he was merely performing simple vertical and horizontal slashes, a new realm unfolded—one he had never sensed before.
It was as if a hazy veil that had clouded his vision all his life was finally lifted, revealing what he had never truly seen.
He spotted countless gaps in the enemy formations above. Even though the Red-Eyed Tribe had maintained a solid formation after Jin’s absence, they had not inflicted significant damage.
“This sense… is the wall between me and Brother Ban.”
Just as Jin prepared to thrust his sword through one of those gaps, Simat instinctively put more distance between them.
“Fall back!”
His voice was no match for the sword’s speed. The moment Simat opened his mouth, a streak of sword energy thundered against the airborne fortress’s linked shields.
Crack!
It sounded like a wooden pillar snapping. To the ear, it seemed like a minor impact on the shield.
But the next moment, Jin’s sword energy tore through the shield and struck the core of the fortress—Pibil’s central section.
Exactly where the power source was.
Thanks to Simat’s orders, Bakalun moved hastily, just a moment too late to prevent the power source from taking a direct hit.
“What…! The core armor is torn like this!?”
Not only the Red-Eyed Tribe but also the Twin Kings gaped in shock. The core of each airborne fortress had been their prime target throughout the battle.
To hit it in one strike and tear the armor like paper was unbelievable.
In fact, the Twin Kings, with Murakan’s support, had struck the core armor several times before. Each time, the psychic waves surrounding the armor had repelled their attacks, preventing any real damage.
[I told you, little brothers. You can’t just try to break them with brute force. You have to do it like this, like this.]
“What do you mean, ‘like this’?!”
“Tch, mortals like us can’t understand the subtlety of the Changsung.”
Murakan and the two kings exchanged glances and burst out laughing. It was hard to believe these were the same people who had been on the defensive, fighting to protect the fortress just moments ago—they looked so bright and carefree.
But when Jin amplified the psychic energy of the Lighthearted Heart and aimed Sigmund at the enemy Myungmyung tribe, the two kings wiped the smiles off their faces.
[Are you ready to face the wrath of the Myungmyung tribe, Simat?]
Simat said nothing and tightened his grip on Tetalon.