I Gain Infinite Gold Just By Waiting-Chapter 195: Episode 2-3_Holy War (7)

Episode 195

Chapter 2-3. Holy War (7)

9.

A massive meteor was falling.

’Dodge?’

The moment they saw it, the thought naturally occurred to them. Even if its sheer scale was so overwhelming as to defy rational thought, their instincts screamed.

’Run. If you stand still, you die.’

It was the most natural reaction in the world. Even without a giant meteor overhead, when people are in danger, their first thought is to survive. In those moments, they sometimes display feats of strength they could never have imagined under normal circumstances.

But what good was that here?

That kind of miracle was only possible when the problem could be solved within the bounds of common sense.

Superhuman feats like lifting a car or running a hundred meters in ten seconds are the kinds of “miracles” that still operate within the bounds of human understanding.

Such things, however, are rendered meaningless in the face of a truly supernatural force.

The proof was the tiny speck of a meteor in the distance, a speck that still managed to cast the entire, vast expanse of the mountain range into shadow.

No amount of desperate running was going to fix this.

At the very least, you would need something like Teleport.

Of course, if they had spent the time they wasted worrying on actually running, some of the knights might have survived.

Some of them.

A massive meteor still needed time to fall, and its size, while enormous, was not infinite.

However, this meteor was not falling alone.

ROOOOOOOOOAR!

The dragon howled.

As everyone remained on their knees, pinned down by the weight of its roar, the meteor continued its descent.

From the meteor’s point of view, there could not have been an easier target.

Every single one of them was just sitting there, quietly waiting for impact.

For those awaiting their end, only one hope remained.

’Please don’t let it fall on me.’

’And if it does fall nearby, please let the damage pass me by.’

They prayed that the mercy of this overwhelming being would be stirred, that this would end as nothing more than a threat.

They prayed and prayed again.

They swore they would never be arrogant again.

They vowed they would never again dare to set foot in a dragon’s domain.

They made that promise over and over.

’So please, just this once, show mercy!’

Whether they were brave knights or high priests of the Temple, there were no exceptions.

Every last one of them had fallen to their knees before the dragon’s overwhelming presence. The term “dragon slayer,” which they had tossed around so casually just moments before, was now an unthinkable blasphemy.

“Oh, God.”

Unfortunately, there was no mercy.

Even the Pope, who had denied the existence of God and used religion as nothing more than a tool of power, desperately sought God in this one moment.

BOOOOOOOM!

The massive meteor slammed into the mountain range.

* * *

Not everyone died.

The meteor was enormous, but it was not so destructive as to wipe out the entire world.

Of course, the initial assumption that everyone would die was born of pure terror.

Reality did not quite match that expectation.

There were heavy casualties.

On the right flank of the three-hundred-thousand-strong army, the formation had been practically erased.

In terms of headcount, at least fifty thousand people had been vaporized by a single meteor.

That number carried enormous weight.

This was not damage sustained after a fierce, drawn-out battle.

If it had been, the Pope and the command of the Allied Forces might have been able to shrug it off.

Their main camp had not been destroyed, and they had structured their forces with casualties in mind from the beginning. To conquer the unknown land of the Forbidden Mountain Range, a sacrifice of fifty thousand would have been perfect material to spin into a heroic tale.

But that was not the situation now.

This was the result of a single spell, thrown out as a mere threat the moment the dragon appeared.

There had been no warning.

The dragon had simply appeared, roared, and the meteor had fallen in the same moment.

And it wasn’t even a direct hit.

The formation had only been grazed by the very edge of the meteor’s blast radius, and still, fifty thousand had died.

What if the meteor had struck dead center, right in the middle of their army?

They probably wouldn’t even be capable of having these thoughts right now.

At best, the number of survivors would have been reversed.

A cold dread washed over them.

The Pope swallowed hard.

The Allied Forces racked their brains, but no solution presented itself.

There was only one thing they could say for certain.

Humans had invaded the Forbidden Mountain Range, they had slaughtered countless monsters, and as a result, the dragon was furious.

And in the midst of this worst-case scenario, a single, faint glimmer of hope could be found.

’Why didn’t it kill us all?’

’Does it intend to let us live?’

Dragons were brutal. They had no consideration for humans and despised them.

That was what the history books said, but not every record described them that way.

Some historians portrayed dragons like this:

[They consider themselves the apex species of the continent and regard all other races as inferior.]

That faint thread of hope was a lifeline they could not afford to let go of.

The Allied Forces’ minds raced.

They started with that small question—’Why?’—and tried to analyze the situation.

’If I were the dragon...?’

They thought it through, trying to judge the creature’s motives.

Did dragons despise humans specifically?

If that were the case, would the meteor really have fallen so far away?

They couldn’t help but shake their heads.

Reversing the perspective, it began to make a twisted sort of sense.

It was similar to why humans hated most monsters, yet felt little aversion toward pets or livestock.

From a human’s perspective, all of them were weaker beings.

But monsters attacked.

There was an instinctive rejection of those who didn’t know their place and dared to challenge them.

Yet even then, humans didn’t exterminate entire species.

There was simply no need.

Was this not the same kind of logic?

When their thoughts reached that point, they saw hope.

“Great One.”

With that judgment made, one of the strategists from the allied forces mustered his courage, forced his trembling legs to move, and stepped forward.

His concise, respectful voice broke the heavy silence.

All remaining eyes turned toward him.

At the same time, they were filled with admiration.

’Who would dare speak to a dragon at a moment like this?’

To be the first to step forward... he could die.

He was staking his life.

For the sake of those who remained.

Or perhaps for his own honor.

Whatever his motives, his courage deserved praise.

Everyone watched him carefully.

Fortunately, the dragon did not react.

It simply looked at him.

The man took that gaze as permission and continued.

“We humbly apologize for daring to set foot in the land of the great being and for trampling it underfoot...”

An apology had to be sincere.

On a normal day, that might have been difficult.

No matter how good an actor you were, there was always a clear difference between genuine sincerity and feigned sincerity.

This time, however, was different.

His words were overflowing with sincerity.

They had set foot in the Forbidden Mountain Range, torn it apart, and killed countless monsters.

He was truly sorry.

Not to the monsters who had died, but to the dragon.

Not because they had killed monsters, but because they had offended it.

It was the kind of thing that should have wounded his pride, yet it did not.

That was simply how the food chain worked.

The strong did not need to apologize to the weak.

Conversely, the weak had to apologize if they so much as slightly displeased the strong.

That was why he believed this would work.

The result was disastrous.

ROOOOOOOOOAR!

The dragon roared again.

This time, its roar was accompanied by the very symbol of a dragon.

Breath!

A golden torrent poured down directly on the man who had stepped forward as their representative.

He vaporized before he could even react.

The mood plummeted beyond any hope of recovery.

This was a different kind of fear from the meteor.

The golden light pouring down before their eyes was so brilliant and powerful that it almost inspired awe.

Realizing that the lifeline they had clung to was actually a half-rotten rope, the humans froze once more.

From a purely rational standpoint, a few of the knights realized that this was the best possible time to hunt the dragon, but none of them moved.

No one shouted to rally their morale, either.

If the dragon had been alone, things might have gone differently.

There were three hundred thousand of them.

Even if fifty thousand had died, they still had two hundred fifty thousand left.

With that many, surely they could take down a single dragon, right?

On any other day, they might have thought that way.

But this was not any other day.

The dragon was not alone.

Once they regained their senses, they saw the true reason the Forbidden Mountain Range was called forbidden: the sheer number of monsters lined up behind the dragon.

If the dragon had not been there, those monsters—numerous as they were—would have been nothing more than fodder for the knights’ boiling courage and morale.

However, standing with the dragon, they had transformed into an unbearably oppressive fighting force.

If the dragon cast even a few support spells on that army...

They kept their silence.

They waited for judgment.

It was a complete defeat.

Only after they had surrendered did the dragon finally grant the humans their freedom.

"You foolish creatures, who invoke the name of God while pretending to be gods yourselves."

The dragon’s voice pierced straight into their minds.

Hearing it lay bare their current situation sent another chill through them.

They had heard stories of dragons being guardians of the continent, but this dragon, which had not shown itself in the Forbidden Mountain Range for thousands of years, somehow knew in detail what was happening outside the mountains.

"Do not shatter the peace of the continent. The moment you are tainted by evil and make an irreversible choice, we will intervene."

Two sentences.

The dragon spoke its piece, then turned its back and vanished without a moment’s hesitation.

At the same time, the crushing presence that had been squeezing their bodies disappeared as if it had never been there.

“Whew.”

“Haah...”

Even so, their still-trembling bodies were proof of the immense pressure they had been under.

The gathered monsters also dispersed, each heading their own way.

Even though more than two hundred thousand humans still stood before them, they no longer showed any hostility or fear.

Whose victory was this?

Once the dragon vanished from sight, anger and humiliation belatedly surged up.

However, their morale did not rise again.

The meteor and the Breath had been etched not just into their minds, but into their very bones.

They were human, and as humans, they were capable of selling their souls for power and authority. It wasn’t as if they would all obediently take the dragon’s words to heart.

But for now, their immediate greed had been crushed.

By overwhelming power.

The army turned back.

Before long, all traces of humans vanished from the mountain range once more.

“I heard the Holy War was disbanded?”

“They say they ran into a dragon.”

“Is the Temple finished?”

And so, they wrote the new history they had been so desperate to create.

* * *

Watching the humans retreat, the Gold Dragon let out a roar.

His voice was full of frustration, but it was not grief for the countless monsters who had died.

“Fuck. My gold.”

From the massive dragon’s body, Kim Buja returned to human form, his sorrow utterly raw.

“Goddammit. I really shouldn’t have used Breath. I probably didn’t need to go that far.”

Kim Buja wasn’t the type to swear much, whether in games or in real life, but this time the words slipped out without a filter.

He had used it of his own free will, but now that he was doing the math, the loss was far too great.

Of course, the outcome was undeniable.

[You have completed Gold Mission Chapter 2-3.]

There hadn’t even been a light skirmish.

The war had ended without Kim Buja, as the “Black Magic Cult,” ever once clashing with the Temple’s army.

It meant that even if the Temple tried to pick another fight with the cult by some other means, they had, at the very least, lost all will to continue the Holy War for now.

He had every right to be pleased.

’No matter how much I spent, surely I’ll get more than that back.’

“I blew through the entire two million I got. What a life.”

He had spent far too much gold for that.

It was a quest that left nothing but scars.

The price for so vividly demonstrating Cassius’s final gift was a bitter one.