“There they are...” I muttered as the scenery unfolded exactly as had been described to me.
Something bubbled up from the black sphere’s surface.
“Guardian giants!”
They were inorganic giants with a black luster to them. Their bodies were around three meters taller than the trees around them. They didn’t have anything resembling human heads. A rough simulacrum of an eye was carved into each of them. They looked somewhat similar to the spirits that elves employed. Not that they had any of a spirit’s charms. They looked like crude and dangerous weapons.
That stood to reason; this was the defense mechanism left behind by the first savior, meant to eliminate those who would try to illegally enter the world leading to the Dimensional Cornerstones. It was a little different from what Harrison had told me, but this was definitely what he’d been referring to. They were extremely dangerous. Records stated that back when an elite force of a hundred elves had tried to break into that world, over half of them had died in the battle with the guardian giants. Maybe the giants somewhat resembling spirits was an effect of the elves having rewritten the World View.
Guardian giants surfaced from every point of the black sphere. If we didn’t defeat them, we wouldn’t be able to step into the other world.
“Thank you. You can back away now,” I said to the dragon.
We landed on the ground, crushing trees and shrubbery on the way, then dismounted. Following us, the exploration team members got off their rides too.
“To me!” Nakajima roared.
Everyone rushed to Nakajima’s side within moments.
“Oh, they’re really here. Thanks for the hard work,” Nakajima said to me with a smile.
“Yeah. The rest is up to you,” I replied.
We couldn’t see beyond the trees, but the guardian giants had noticed us too, and were coming our way. These guardians had once defeated elves, but every exploration team member had the power of a savior. When they were all being coordinated by a solid leader, this wasn’t much of a foe for them. Everything up to this point had gone to plan. However, just as that thought came to mind...
“What...?”
We suddenly heard many dragons crying into the sky. It was the dragons of Draconia who’d brought us here. We’d told them to back off, so their voices resounded from far away. It was as if they’d discovered something and were screaming in shock and sorrow. We all looked up on instinct, and through the canopy of trees, we saw the source of their anguished cries.
“No way...” Lobivia muttered.
An enormous dragon, over fifty meters tall, was flying through the sky—a corpse, spurred on by some unseen force. Its sturdy carapace was a shattered mess, the meat beneath rotting. There were places where we could even see its bones. The reason it was capable of flight in such a state was because its body was being stirred into motion not by the warmth of life, but by pure hatred.
There was no way we could mistake its magnificence for anything else. This was the elder of Draconia, the carapace wyrm Malvina—or what was left of her. To Lobivia and all the dragons of Draconia, she was a great mother. The shock this dealt them was unfathomable. The zombie dragon was plunging toward the sphere from the opposite side. Taking a closer look, it appeared that what could only be called an army of monsters was riding on its back.
“It can’t be... My king...?!”
I heard Berta yelling in astonishment. The zombie dragon was too far away for us to spot that slender boy, but there was no doubt that this army was under Kudou’s control.
“Why is Kudou all the way out here...?” I said, before feeling a shiver run down my spine. That was because I remembered Kudou’s wish.
“The world that made me go through this hell is better off destroyed. That’s what I prayed for.”
Wasn’t this situation the perfect opportunity to fulfill that wish? Kudou had learned of the truth behind this world yesterday through Berta. At that point, it hadn’t been much of a problem. The situation was different now because of Jinguuji’s actions. The storage vault for the Dimensional Cornerstones—the very pillars of this world—had been revealed as a result of the Dimension Door being stolen. There was now a clear path to the world’s end. Was that why Kudou was making a move? Now that the door was open, he began his invasion, all to fulfill his life’s desire.
In the next instant, a resentful roar struck my ears and chilled my spine. With the Demon King’s army on her back, the dead dragon roared. The cry of the dragon who’d been driven mad by anger and hatred shook me to the core. There were things that could be conveyed without putting them into words.
“Unforgivable. Unforgivable. I’ll never forgive them. Make up for my children’s deaths. Know of my fury.”
Vengeance cried out, fueled by a maddening bloodlust for the one responsible. Her violent emotions spurred her body to move faster, and the zombie dragon plunged toward the Dimension Door. Countless heat rays shot out to intercept her.
The guardian giants had directed their “eyes” upward, firing intense heat at the zombie dragon. This was the reason we’d chosen not to charge in while riding the dragons. Every ray had the power of grade 3 magic. If we’d moved in recklessly, we would’ve suffered major casualties.
However, the situation had changed since the Dimension Door’s manifestation. Many guardian giants had already moved to intercept us. This meant there were fewer giants to deal with the zombie dragon on the opposite side. What’s more, Malvina’s tremendous body and the broken carapace covering her provided overwhelming defense. Having lost her sense of pain in death, she charged without any hesitation.
“It broke through...!”
Someone shouted just as the giant dragon slammed into the Dimension Door. A fair number of the guardian giants were crushed under the weight of the impact. The zombie dragon kept up its momentum and vanished into the black sphere.