I Got a Gallery in the Wild - Chapter 852

Hit by the lightning-imbued claw strike, my body was sent flying.

It was a damn shame my newly built house had just been smashed to pieces, but the dragon took priority.

Bzzzt! Bzzzt!

The lightning claw he had swung at me.

I had triggered Body-Protecting Gangqi the moment I sensed danger, but the strike was potent enough to pierce right through it.

The distinct sting and throbbing ache of lightning flared through me at once, making my body briefly hitch.

Flap!

But I had no time to dwell on that.

With massive wings unfurled behind him, the thunder dragon, Dolos, was flying straight toward me.

A belligerent grin plastered across his face, he closed the distance at blistering speed.

Instinctively, I held out my hand, using Unity of Self and Object to recall the Sword of the Heavenly Demon.

’I’ll pierce his back as it returns.’

Even if it hit a wing instead of his back, that was fine.

If anything, tearing through the wing membrane would drastically curtail Dolos’s mobility.

"Tricks won’t work on me!"

Clang!

Yet the unexpected happened.

Whether he had eyes in the back of his head or possessed the uncanny senses of a dragon,

he swung his arm without even glancing back and knocked away the incoming Sword of the Heavenly Demon.

’Are his senses just that sharp? Or is it because he’s a dragon?’

Though taken aback, I braced for the next assault.

As I’d noted time and again, Dolos was a dragon—and unlike the residents of Large Field, nearly pure-blooded.

Shifting the weather according to his mood was proof enough of that.

Even Vanir hadn’t shown such feats, which meant he could be even stronger than her.

Snap!

While I was sorting through my thoughts, Dolos flapped his wings and seized me.

His massive build alone made being held feel like being trapped in a cage.

"I have waited for this moment! For the day I could unfurl my wings!"

Dolos roared, gripping my face in a hand like a pot lid.

Across his scaled face flitted a whirlwind of emotions:

ecstasy, craving, exhilaration, and finally, desperation.

"I was going to do this even without that damn woman nagging me, but what does it matter!"

Flap!

Spouting nonsense, Dolos flapped his wings and shot into the sky.

Having no idea what would happen if this kept up, I fought back immediately.

Thwack! Thud! Thud!

Fists coated in Body-Protecting Gangqi slammed into Dolos’s face in rapid succession.

It was power that could easily shatter solid bedrock, yet Dolos didn’t budge an inch.

Each blow split the inside of his mouth and sprayed blood, but his absurd regeneration healed it in an instant.

Crash!

While I pounded relentlessly on his face, something collided with my back and shattered.

Judging by the sound and impact, it had to be solid rock.

Crack! Rumble!

After shattering through countless boulders, we slammed into the ground.

Because I’d kept hammering his face the whole way down, he was now drenched in blood.

Yet he still wore an ecstatic grin, looking every bit like a lunatic.

Whoosh!

Having dragged my face across the ground, he hurled me into the distance.

It freed me from his grip, but I still had a mountain of problems.

I might somehow recall the Sword of the Heavenly Demon, but the bow and arrows were another story.

Especially the bow—I’d rarely ever retrieved it with Void Object Manipulation, so I had no feel for it.

"Ptui. My whole face tingles just from your punches."

While I quickly checked my condition, Dolos spat a mouthful of bloody saliva.

His bloodied face was already clean again—evidently the work of magic.

Zzt!

"..."

Frowning, I assessed my body.

I had definitely maintained Body-Protecting Gangqi, yet the prickling charge of lightning lingered.

I had fought countless monsters in the Forest of the Four Seasons, but almost none wielded lightning like this dragon.

Adapting to his attacks would take some time.

Bzzzzzt!

Just then, Dolos spread his enormous wings, gathering fierce lightning in both hands.

Everything so far had merely been a surprise skirmish; the real battle was about to begin.

"Now! Show me the martial might of the one who slaughtered my kin!"

Boom!

With that roar and a savage grin, Dolos lunged at me.

A single push off the ground gouged a massive crater where he had stood.

He closed in at near-lightning speed, right before my eyes, and I scrambled to react.

Kzzzzt!

Dolos swept his lightning-clad claws at me once more.

The force far exceeded his initial surprise strike.

I wanted to block it barehanded, but that damned lightning was the issue.

’Even with Body-Protecting Gangqi, the lightning’s charge gets in the way.’

The stinging pain aside, losing control over my movements was dangerous.

Better to prioritize dodging over blocking if possible.

Boom!

The lightning-charged claws slashed out like Sword Qi, cleaving the cliff behind me in half.

He seemed to swing it casually, yet the power far outstripped Bbareumbo’s strikes.

As strong as Bbareumbo was, his weight class fell far short against a dragon that sat above the heavens.

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Still, that left just as many openings.

His flank was wide open as he swung his claws.

Snapping my waist to put full rotational force into it, I landed a clean hit.

Whip!

Yet Dolos’s tail whipped into my arm first.

He must have predicted my immediate counter.

Thud!

Not stopping there, he stomped heavily, sending lightning scattering in every direction.

Whether he deemed it too risky to take hits or had some other reason, I couldn’t tell.

If it was the latter, I needed to figure out what was going on.

"Hraaaaagh!!"

KABOOM!

With a thunderous battle cry, Dolos brought both arms slamming into the ground.

Lightning and rock shards exploded everywhere in the wake of the blow, and the shockwave threw me back into the cliff face.

Refusing to miss the opening, he sparked with lightning and flashed right in front of me.

Thwack!

Dolos hammered a fist into my gut.

The cliff behind me caved in from the impact, sending a severe jolt through me.

Even so, I kept my wits and drove punch after punch into his stomach and face.

Crunch!

His lid-sized hand clamped over my face again and slammed me into the ground.

The sheer difference in mass made moves like that possible.

"Why don’t we cut the probing attacks! I want to see this Sovereign that damn woman wouldn’t stop singing praises of!"

Bzzzt!

Dolos charged again, cloaked in lightning.

My ears rang every time he shouted, but I tuned it out as best I could.

Rumble!

Dark clouds rolled across the sky as faint thunder began to rumble.

At the same time, blue lightning wrapped around Dolos’s body, warping the surrounding terrain.

The sharp scent of ozone saturated the air, and towering cliffs dozens of meters high collapsed like soft tofu under the overwhelming pressure.

"I haven’t even done anything. You’re the one who attacked out of nowhere, and now you say that?"

"She wouldn’t have sent me here if that were true!"

Bzzzt!

It happened in an instant.

As if his very body had become lightning, he appeared before me in a flash.

I barely caught his movement with my kinetic visual acuity, and my shock didn’t last long.

Crack!

As if to ensure I couldn’t slip away, he seized my head and slammed his own straight into it.

Unlike before, an impact powerful enough to render Body-Protecting Gangqi meaningless rattled my brain.

My vision flashed white, and for the first time in a while, dizziness washed over me.

A fierce instinct warned me that if I let this continue, I’d get torn apart before I knew what hit me.

Crackle!

So I unleashed my cold qi in earnest.

Grabbing Dolos, I flared the chill to freeze him solid, forcing him to back away in a hurry.

Shaking my spinning head, I cleared my senses.

"Ice? Don’t tell me that’s all you’ve got!"

Boom!

Dolos rushed me, lightning coiled around his right fist.

I wanted to seep cold energy into the ground to make it slick, but...

Flap!

He came flying on beating wings, making even that futile.

It was fine right now while we traded blows on the ground, but if he took to the skies in earnest, I’d be in trouble.

I needed to freeze those wings with cold qi or disable them somehow.

BOOM!

A fist charged with lightning clashed against a fist dense with pure mana, unleashing a resonant shockwave.

The impact was so fierce that the gale it produced sent me flying.

That was what I had been aiming for. He had been pressing relentlessly with savage aggression, leaving me no breathing room.

Whoosh—snap!

The Sword of the Heavenly Demon, which Dolos had swatted away, snapped into my grip.

I could have managed barehanded one way or another, but humans were meant to use tools.

I spun midair, barely regaining my balance, and landed on my feet.

Dolos must have been blown back too, as he was nowhere in sight.

Rumble!

Instead, all I saw was a massive bolt of lightning striking in the distance.

A strange unease crept over me the moment I saw it.

If only I had Mistilteinn, but without it, flying anywhere was off the table.

With no other choice, I leaped high into the air to survey the situation.

KRA-KZZZZT!

Before long, just as I’d feared, a serpent formed of pure lightning tore straight through the heart of the forest.

The dense primeval forest evaporated without a trace, and the earth’s sand and soil melted under thousands of degrees of lightning heat, gleaming like black sheets of glass.

A single strike had leveled the terrain into a massive disaster zone.

Kzzzzt!

And that wasn’t the end of it.

Another massive serpent of lightning bared its fangs and lunged at me in midair.

It wasn’t entirely unexpected, but the problem was that it was made of lightning.

Even applying Unity of Self and Object to the Sword of the Heavenly Demon, whether I could actually cut lightning was doubtful.

Yet this was all I could do right now.

Kzzzzt!

Ready to take the hit with my body if I failed, I brought the sword down toward the lightning serpent.

Even if it lacked the power to sever space like my arrows did...This chapter was copied from novelping dot com without permission.

Slash!

Surely it could cut through lightning.

The Sword of the Heavenly Demon cleaved the serpent in two, clearing my field of vision.

Beyond it, I caught sight of Dolos trying to conjure another serpent.

If I had my bow, I would have shot him right then, but unfortunately I didn’t.

Slaaash!

All I could do was unleash a massive wave of Sword Qi to keep him in check.

As the colossal slash surged forward, Dolos stopped controlling the serpent and moved to defend.

While he reacted, I focused an Aura Blade onto the tip of the Sword of the Heavenly Demon.

A sword naturally had its center of gravity in the hilt, making it hard to swing and ride like Mistilteinn.

But if I could artificially shift the center of gravity, it should be possible.

This was my first time trying it, right in the middle of combat, but it didn’t matter.

If it failed, I’d just land on the ground; if it succeeded, it would be a counterattack.

Whoosh!

Fortunately, it worked.

The speed matched what I had envisioned.

Crack!

Meanwhile, Dolos shattered the massive slash, sending azure motes fluttering through the air.

Yet he couldn’t completely negate it, failing to stop the devastation around him.

When the Sword Qi blew apart the terrain and threw Dolos slightly off balance,

I used the shower of azure particles as a smokescreen to close right in on him.

He seemed genuinely surprised, clearly not expecting me to close the gap so fast.

CLANG!

I swung to take his head in a single stroke, but something unexpected happened.

The restraining collar around his neck deflected the Sword of the Heavenly Demon outright.

I had reinforced the Sword of the Heavenly Demon with Unity of Self and Object, yet the collar was so hard I couldn’t even fathom its durability.

"Showing your true colors at last!"

Regardless, the bastard swung his claws without hiding his bloodlust.

The lightning wreathing his body filled the air with acrid ozone, but I had no leeway to care.

Parrying his strikes came first.

Bzzzt! Crackle!

Was it because metal was naturally conductive to lightning?

Every time the Sword of the Heavenly Demon clashed against Dolos’s claws, a numbing jolt hindered me.

Bypassing my Body-Protecting Gangqi to shoot directly into my arms made it a royal pain in the ass.

More importantly...

Boom!

Dolos wasn’t rampaging blindly; he was employing techniques akin to human martial arts.

Apart from swinging claws, his movements resembled a human’s rather than a dragon’s.

With his overwhelming size combined with martial skill, he was ridiculously tricky to fight.

Flap!

On top of that, whenever things turned against him, he unfurled his wings to retreat.

"Now this is a real fight!"

Dolos reached out into empty air.

Bzzzzzt!

Pulling out a battleaxe infused with his own lightning, he swung it at me.

CLAAANG!

Caught completely off guard by the counter, I hastily blocked with the Sword of the Heavenly Demon, but I couldn’t endure the recoil.

I was blown back, plowing through dozens of trees, exhausting considerable energy just to steady myself.

Bzzzt!

And that wasn’t all.

He pursued me even as I flew back, swinging the axe yet again.

Determined not to let my feet touch the ground, he pressed forward relentlessly.

Crash!

Only after slamming into a wall harder than rock did I finally come to a halt.

"Ho. Such a place exists? How fascinating."

Looking around, he uttered something between an exclamation and genuine admiration.

Rubbing my aching back, I scanned my surroundings.

’The Theme Park...’

The Theme Park—a place presumed to have been built by Aragon.

We had flown that entire distance purely through our brawl.

What was more, whether it was his first time at the Theme Park or he was just showing off his composure, Dolos openly exposed his back to me.

Creeeak!

Catching my breath, I ripped out an exposed steel beam.

CRASH!

I swung it with all my might, making him stagger.

"Hey, bumpkin. You shouldn’t turn your back."

"Bumpkin? Ha!"

Dolos gave an incredulous laugh, then snarled viciously.

"You’re the one who turned my kin into bumpkins!"

At that desperate cry—

[What is the subject’s condition?]

[Currently stable. It is emitting an energy never seen before.]

[Energy, you say... What is the designation of this experiment?]

Static seemed to crackle in my mind as dizziness blurred my thoughts, and then—

[Prometheus.]

A murmured voice echoed through my head.

[It is the Prometheus Project.]