“......!”

The girl was swallowed by the golden breath and couldn’t even scream. In order to withstand the immense pressure, she gritted her teeth and circulated the spiritual energy in her body. This was the first time she’d had difficulties fighting an opponent in thousands of years.

To borrow a saying of mortals, she squeezed out all the strength she had. As a result, some of the shields that had been melted by the Breath were repaired. Her torn flesh and bones were finally restored to their original appearances.

As the Breath’s momentum weakened, the girl, who was finally freed from the pressure, looked resentful.

‘Why did he run away back then?’

A few days ago, the girl woke up in a strange world, tracked down the most powerful energy nearby, and encountered the golden dragon. It was quality prey. The golden dragon was weak compared to how valuable he was. He barely survived the girl’s ambush back then.

...Looking back on it now, she realized it wasn’t that the dragon was unable to fight back. He just chose not to.

“You have the ability to control time, right? When I ambushed you, did you see the future and ran away just so you could humiliate me greatly now?

The girl used honorifics when speaking. The greatest goal of a cultivator was survival. The fact that the girl changed her attitude to be more polite meant that she perceived Raiders as a clear threat.

Raiders looked at the girl for a moment before sneering. [You are very self-aware.]

He didn’t care about her. Raiders hadn’t treated the cultivators badly when he first encountered them because he suspected they were also apostles of the foreign god. But his assumption had been wrong.

Raiders now perceived the cultivators as enemies. They were foreign enemies, who weren’t even players, yet they dared invade this land. He considered they should be exterminated.

Raiders’ Breath bombardment started in earnest.

Considering the level of the enemy, he fired beams of light continuously without pausing. The entire area was bathed in gold and rippled noisily. There was no corner where the waves of power didn’t reach. Everything turned to ashes.

The girl tutted. “This damn beast is so ferocious...”

She paused as she was about to take out her defensive treasure. It occurred to her that the treasures had become unusable.

The woman smiled regretfully as she unfolded a cloth and infused spiritual energy into it. Protective gear made of cloth was deployed faster than metal treasures, but it had less defense. She hadn’t used it much after her cultivation increased, but it was a good way to stop the Breaths.

The cloth worked just fine, unlike the metal orbs that stopped working as soon as the golden light of the Breath touched them.

“I see.”

Thanks to this, the girl gained valuable information. The golden beam of light belonged to the metal element of the five elements.

“Metal is weak against fire.”

Still smiling regretfully, the girl set off a spark of flames and surrounded herself with them. Her Bone Demon Flame was capable of crushing and burning the target to ashes. It was so powerful that it melted away all the golden beams coming from all directions.

Of course, every time the beam of light dissipated, the magic power that was condensed inside exploded and caused a tremendous aftershock. However, thanks to the cloth treasure and shields, the girl was able to avoid a serious injury.

As the girl defended against the Breaths, Raiders approached and swung his tail. The girl, who had been pinned to the ground like she was weightless, jumped up.

In the great ascension realm, the cultivators had refined spiritual energy flowing through their skin, flesh, meridians, bones, and the five organs. To put it simply, the refined spiritual energy was similar to an aura.

This made it so the cultivators have an extremely high defense. Of course, this was nothing to brag about compared to an old dragon.

“Cough...!”

The girl spat out dark red blood. A handful of her internal organs were mixed with the blood. When she got struck by the dragon’s tail before, she had been pushed forward. She barely straightened her back.

The girl felt a chill go down her spine as she saw the huge tail coming her way again. She hurriedly dodged and operated the Bone Demon Flame. However, the flames didn’t bloom. This technique was very powerful and it was impossible for her to use it continuously.

The ground shook and the girl’s vision blurred. Raiders, who had polymorphed into a human so he wouldn’t have to bother moving his tail from where it struck into the ground, appeared right in front of her.

He hit the girl on the head and she fell into the deep abyss created by Raiders’ tail.

‘I can’t go on like this.’

The girl made up her mind. She took out five talismans and changed her approach. The talismans turned into five demons and leapt from the pit.

Raiders, who was waiting outside the pit, began fighting the demons.

The girl secretly escaped from the pit with the help of an earth technique and flew toward the Full Moon Fortress in the sky. She was running away.

The other great ascension cultivators were unable to handle the black dragon, who used all types of magic at random. They saw the girl fleeing and became furious.

“Saint Mi! If you want to die then die alone! I won’t let you go if you do any damage to our sect!” The cultivators screamed, but the girl snorted.

Raiders dealt with the demons and pursued the girl.

“Hiik!”

Thousands of cultivators holding their breaths on the walls of the Full Moon Fortresses were terrified. The three Full Moon Fortresses standing side by side had been built by the resources of the two sects.

The cultivators didn’t even want to try to protect this place anymore if they had to deal with a dragon.

The golden dragon landed on the wall of a Full Moon Fortress. They didn’t dare confront a dragon that was as huge as a mountain.

“How can we handle a monster that even a saint couldn’t deal with?”

A few cultivators took a few steps back. Raiders didn’t bother chasing them as they scattered in all directions and ran away.

Raiders had already shot down several Full Moon Fortresses. There was a castle in the center of the fortress. He understood that the real method of activating the Full Moon Fortress was installed inside this castle.

He fired his Breath in a straight line to damage the castle, darkening the jade glow of the fortress.

“It’s falling...!”

In the end, all the cultivators chose to flee.

“T-This...!”

The cultivators in the great ascension realm witnessed the fall of the three Full Moon Fortresses damaged by the beams and were furious. They cursed the girl for fleeing in that direction. They were unable to suppress their soaring killing intent and followed the girl’s trail with bloodshot eyes.

“Calm down!” The old man in the late great ascension realm told them.

Right now, the giant black dragon was alive and well in front of them.

“There is no point in grieving what has already been lost. Let’s take comfort in the fact that our disciples survived. We should overcome the current crisis while the golden dragon is pursuing the saint.”

The golden dragon had seemed weaker than the black dragon, but he still managed to beat the girl. These dragon-type monsters were much stronger than expected. The cultivators were acutely aware that they were in a dilemma.

“Kill!”

“Charge!”

The cultivators cooperated by generously releasing the cultivation they had accumulated over tens of thousands of years. Hundreds of flags pulled out by the six cultivators interacted. They weighed heavily on Nevartan’s body and disturbed the surrounding heaven and earth origin energy.

The speed at which the beams of light coming from the huge mouth of the dragon slowed down significantly.

“Haap!”

The old man, who was holding black and white swords in both hands, launched an onslaught toward Nevartan.

He used all of his hidden skills, not wanting to end up like the girl. The old man’s black and white swords possessed yin and yang energy respectively. Their mutually opposite energies exerted a faint power.

Nevartan’s Absolute Defense and scales were weakened by the hundreds of flags and he kept taking damage.

[Pretty good...]

Nevartan’s will that was engraved on the space was full of admiration.

The old man’s linkage technique allowed him to endure all types of phenomena using his extreme yin energy while poking through any gaps in the enemy’s attack using his extreme yang energy. It was impressive.

Even the cultivators were amazed by the old man’s skills. They discovered that the old man was a swordsman. This was how secretive the old man was. He had stagnated for a long time in the middle great ascension realm and realized that change was necessary. After tens of thousands of years practicing the swordsmanship he acquired later on, he broke through the limits of his cultivation..

The reason he kept this hidden was to deal with unexpected circumstances.

“My dream has never changed since the day I began walking the path of cultivation. I will survive until the end and make it to the top.”

He couldn’t die in a place like this...

The old man’s determination was contained in his two swords. He had swung them hundreds of millions of times over tens of thousands of years of training. He controlled them with the precision of a machine. There wasn’t the slightest error in his technique.

Nevartan became serious as he was cut hundreds of times, revealing his flesh underneath the scales. It wasn’t because he was in trouble. He just had the feeling that he should respect the other person.

He had watched his daughter from afar and had witnessed countless human beings working in their respective positions. Farmers who sweated to make a small sprout bloom; blacksmiths who hammered metal until their flesh turned red just to make an iron sword; soldiers who patrolled tirelessly to protect a village where only a few hundred mortals lived; knights who trained day and night to protect a kingdom that would disappear without a trace once a dragon fired a Breath...

They were all obsessed with insignificant things, but his daughter still watched them with great affection. Nevartan watched the scene in front of him and was unknowingly affected.

[So that your death isn’t in vain...]

I will show you how to wield a sword.

Nevartan polymorphed into a human, pulled out a dark sword, and took the stance of that damn man who turned his daughter into a human. It was easy to copy.

There were many accomplishments that the human left around the world, so it was easy to track them down and replicate them.

“Hmm.”

A dragon-type monster teaching swordsmanship to a swordsman? The old man thought this situation was absurd, but he saw it as an opportunity. He adjusted his grip on the black and white swords and used his strongest attack. It was quick swordsmanship that made it look like he released black and white thunderbolts.

But before those bolts could pierce Nevartan’s heart or cut off his head, Nevartan’s sword cut through the old man after activating Grid’s Pinnacle sword dance five times in a row.

Nevartan, the most aggressive of the old dragons, even achieved swordsmanship.

“G-Great elder...!”

The cultivators couldn’t believe their eyes. They were all shocked and didn’t seem to be aware of the sudden change in the situation.

For Nevartan, this was an opportunity. He turned into a black beam of light and moved to slaughter the cultivators.

Just then—

Flash!

There was a loud roar. A strong jade light shot out from the three Full Moon Fortresses that had fallen and intertwined together.

“This...”

Nevartan, unperturbed by the commotion, cut off the head of the last cultivator. He frowned. Raiders’ expression in the sky was also serious.

[While the three Full Moon Fortresses were collapsing, the space rifts mixed together and merged into one,] Raiders clarified.

The jade light gradually intensified and bled into the surrounding area. Surprisingly, the being who slowly stepped out of the huge space rift was...

“Let’s fight again.”

It was the same girl who had run away earlier.

The girl, who had long been able to ascend, forcibly merged the space rifts created by the three Full Moon Fortresses and opened the door to the immortal world. Then she went there, and became an immortal.

“I lost too much by forcibly ascending. I have to take your inner core so I can recover a bit.”

Raiders glimpsed the Bone Demon Flames in the girl’s breath and said, [Well… I have to back off for now.]

“......”

Nevartan disappeared, and Raiders, surprised, was quick to follow.

This was the beginning of a long pursuit.