Minjun had experienced many kinds of combat as a hunter, but he had never fought an aerial battle on this scale. He had faced wyverns before in the Garden of the Dragon Sword, but that was hardly comparable to this. From the moment he saw the wyvern army until the enormous barrier around Elysium began to recede, he worked on a strategy.

‘Objectively, I’d have a hard time taking on even one wyvern alone.’ Minjun was B-rank, while mini wyverns were classified as A-rank and wyverns as S-rank. ‘One-on-one is out of the question.’

But if he used his artifacts well and divided the work with the defenders, he could surely do his part. The enemy had wyverns, but Elysium had the powerful legacies left by its founder, the dragon Bellium. According to Estelle, those ranged from nearly permanent protective magic over the city to artifacts designed to fight monsters.

Perhaps because Elysium’s forces dealt with monster invasions so often, they looked formidable at a glance. Their weakest point, though, seemed to be aerial combat. Judging by the weapons and artifacts along the walls, they were relatively poorly equipped to fight in the air. Simply drawing the wyverns’ attention there would be enough to help. The batteries of cannons and the archers appeared to have more than enough firepower.

‘In theory, it’s not a bad plan.’ The problem was how to distract the wyverns without getting hurt. And if his luck ran out during the aerial battle, he might be caught in friendly bombardment aimed at them. It would be different if he and the defenders had fought together before, but they hadn’t.

As he wrestled with the problem, a wyvern of a size no human could compare to swept close, and an idea struck him. ‘What if I use a wyvern as a meat shield?’

Wyverns were dangerous, but their skin wasn’t dangerous to touch. It was tough, certainly, but it wasn’t covered in spikes or poison. And while he was clinging to one, the other wyverns would be less likely to attack him. They were monsters, but surely they weren’t stupid enough to attack one of their own without hesitation just to kill a human.

Dodging the wyverns’ breath attacks, Minjun pulled a sturdy grappling hook from his pocket dimension while still in flight. Then he changed direction and drove it deep into the nearest wyvern. After securing it so he wouldn’t fall away, he began stabbing the creature mercilessly with his sword.

SKREEEEE!

After a few stabs, the wyvern shrieked in pain and thrashed violently. The hook Minjun had first lodged in it had barely hurt, but the Dragon Bone Sword he was driving into it was sharp enough to pierce its thick hide. Blood poured from the wounds, and the wyvern began to reel. At the same time, the hook connecting Minjun to it came loose. It wasn’t as sharp as the Dragon Bone Sword.

Minjun darted away the instant the hook came free. A mage’s fire spell struck the wyvern, and it lost consciousness and began to plummet. ‘I can do that again.’ He hadn’t had a good feel for it at first, but one success had taught him a great deal.

Of course, hooking a wyvern and getting close to it hadn’t been as easy as he’d imagined. He decided to adjust his strategy. Landing briefly on the wall to regroup, he put away the hook and drew another Dragon Bone Sword from his pocket dimension. It was the one that had shattered during the raid on the Garden of the Dragon Sword and never regained its original performance. He’d had no reason to use it after Sia gave him a new one, but he had kept it in his pocket dimension just in case.

Now he would try using that old Dragon Bone Sword in place of the hook. Even if it was inferior to his current sword, it should pierce a wyvern’s tough hide better than the hook. He attached a wire to it and took flight toward the wyverns again.

The basic strategy was much the same. He was using a sword instead of a hook, and rather than leaving each wyvern at death’s door, he focused on aggravating them. Strike and pull away. Strike and pull away. As he grew more adept at controlling his artificial wings, he flew faster and began pestering the wyverns in earnest—like a mosquito.

Ignoring him was irritating, but paying attention to him meant contending with powerful spells, arrows, and cannon fire from the walls. A misdirected breath attack could hit another wyvern, too. They were in a bind.

Minjun was making a useful contribution, but the battle still couldn’t be said to favor them. Estelle had said this was the strongest monster assault she had seen in nearly fifty years. Elysium’s residents had expected to be outmatched from the start. They had taken up arms despite the odds to defend their home.

“Aaaah!”

“Someone’s badly wounded over here!”

“Why are the potion supplies taking so long?”

“This is the best we can do right now!”

Even with his ears ringing, Minjun could hear their desperate cries nearby. ‘Is this not enough?’ His strategy was sound, but their position was poor. Horrific screams kept rising from the soldiers on the walls, and the line they had held with their blood looked ready to break. They needed one more decisive blow to turn the tide.

But simply removing his suppressor carried a terrible risk. If the side effects Rokan had warned him about appeared, he might cause even greater harm. He could take more artifacts out of his pocket dimension, but that didn’t seem like enough. He was caught between two bad choices. And just as he was turning the problem over yet again...

‘...What?’ A strange sensation came over him, and Minjun looked back. Something invisible was tethered to his body. ‘A cord?’ Not exactly. Something between aura and light would have been a better description.

He didn’t know when it had appeared or what it was, but he could make a guess about where it led. From its direction and everything else he knew, it was likely connected to Bellium’s statue in the center of the city. What was more, since the long, invisible tether had appeared, Minjun had begun to feel a rush of exhilaration, as though strength were surging through his entire body.

He had felt something like this a few times before. This time, though, the sensation was more comfortable and familiar. At the same moment, the aura around his Dragon Bone Sword began to change color, taking on the hue of a dark night sky faintly touched by an aurora. Minjun knew what that meant.

Minjun kicked off the ground and charged at the wyverns. The invisible tether between him and the statue rippled. ‘Move faster. Drive in a fatal blow.’ His movements lighter than before, he closed in on a nearby wyvern and immediately drove the Dragon Bone Sword deep into it. After only one or two deep thrusts, it lost consciousness and began to fall. ‘That’s it.’ It was the beginning of the counterattack.

The aerial battle had been at a standstill, but Minjun’s sudden surge in power sent the wyverns’ numbers falling fast. That set off a chain reaction: more and more monsters below were crushed to death under the falling wyverns. Minjun picked up speed and harried the flock more quickly and relentlessly than ever. The wyvern army could no longer ignore him. He had become their first priority. Wyverns that had been bearing down mercilessly on the soldiers atop the walls, and wyverns that had crossed the walls to smash the barrier around the village’s safe zone, all turned and flew toward him.

“Oh, no.” He had succeeded in drawing the wyverns’ attention, just as he’d intended. The trouble was that he had succeeded too well. He’d meant to attract only as many as he could handle, but his recent attacks had made such an impression that every wyvern was now focused on him.

He had the support of the ground forces and the unidentified aura that seemed to be coming from Bellium’s statue. But how was he supposed to dodge and fight so many wyverns attacking him in earnest, all by himself? Whether he tried to flee, distract them, or block their attacks—‘How many are there?’—there was a limit to what he could do. For a moment, Minjun feared he might die here.

The fear didn’t last. ‘I’ve been through things like this plenty of times already, haven’t I?’ Since Sia’s return, he had faced a strange number of brushes with death, yet he had overcome every one. At first he’d called it a miracle, but a miracle that happened again and again was skill. There had to be a way to survive this crisis, too. He simply hadn’t thought of it yet.

Just as the flock seemed about to tear him apart, Minjun began drawing out all the mana in his body and releasing it, almost as if in a trance. Mixed into it was the unidentified energy that had just flowed into him through the aura. The wyvern army struck by that energy felt an unfamiliar emotion they had not experienced in a very long time: fear so overwhelming they could scarcely breathe. The energy Minjun released resembled the Dragon Fear wielded by dragons.

‘Wait... Did I just use Dragon Fear?’ He had used dragon speech several times, but this was his first time using Dragon Fear, and he was stunned. When the wyverns charging at him faltered, he released Dragon Fear across a wide area again, this time with confidence. It reached more than half the wyverns. Those exposed to it lost their will to fight and began to retreat.

“The wyverns are falling back!”

“Yeeaah!”

“Press them harder!”

“Let’s start taking down the monsters on the ground, too!”

Whatever the reason, the battle that had favored the monsters moments ago had turned in an instant. As the wyverns retreated, Elysium’s forces seized their chance and attacked with everything they had. Minjun pressed the advantage, driving the wyverns back with the energy he released. He swung his Dragon Bone Sword, its aura growing deeper in color as time passed, and pushed the defensive line farther out.

The cheers of the volunteer fighters, the thunder of massive stones launched by catapults striking the ground, the sharp cracks of magic, the screams of wyverns and other monsters—the tables were turning completely.