The Hero Returns

Chapter 392: Chapter 392

Act 8

Kwa-aaaaaaah—!

Whoosh, fwhoooosh…

A massive wind storm blew inside the "cave" filled to the brim with the parasites found within the World Tree's trunk.

This wind contained intense heat, as well as sword-like sharpness. And following right behind that storm wind, an echoing voice utterly filled up the cave, "Get bigger…!"

KA-BOOOOM—!

"Ruyi!"

The Ruyi Jingu Bang that had been widened and lengthened swept away thousands of parasites in one go. Sun Wukong quickly retrieved his polearm, changed his direction, and took aim once more, "Get bigger…"

At the same time, on the other side…

Creak, gi-gigigigik…

The movements of the parasites become quite unnatural.

"Die."

Pow, splat…

Splat, bang, pow—

The bodies of the parasites exploded one by one, and their fluids flooded the ground. In the blink of an eye, a whole horde of parasites that filled up one side of the cave was obliterated into bits.

"What did you do just now? Was that some kind of a sorcery technique?" Sun Wukong asked curiously after glancing at what just happened.

Luslec thought about his answer for a bit before shrugging his shoulders. "Yes, it's rather similar. Although I'll find it a bit difficult to answer you if you ask me how I did it."

"You sure know some weird stuff, don't you?"

"But it's nothing compared to your staff that grows bigger or smaller like that. How do you pull that off anyway, big bro?"

"What, this? It just gets bigger if I ask it to, and by the way, why am I your big bro, dumbass?"

"Eh, don't be like that, and—"

"Where did my little bro disappear to, anyway?"

"Sorry?" Luslec quickly looked around at what Sun Wukong said.

All the parasites in their surroundings were dead, and that's why he relaxed for a bit just now, but during that brief time, Su-hyeun and Miru vanished from view.

"He's already gone so far ahead."

Whistle—

Sun Wukong summoned a cloud and climbed aboard to get a move on.

Luslec, who was almost left behind all by himself, hurriedly reached out and grabbed Sun Wukong's arm. The latter glanced at him for a bit and then controlled the cloud to quickly fly forward. And with that, the scenery around them changed in an instant.

The eyes of both Sun Wukong and Luslec grew wider and wider as the two of them flew into the center of the trunk.

"Wow."

"He sure has been busy, hasn't he?"

Sun Wukong and Luslec stared at the same sight and gasped in admiration that came from differing thoughts that were also rather similar in nature.

This whole area was filled with burnt-black objects that seemed to be parasite corpses. It was the path that Su-hyeun carved out when he had gone ahead.

"Heeey, little bro! Don't you get tired or something?"

"But, third brother, you don't get tired either, right?"

Grrr—

At Su-hyeun's reply, Miru also theatrically nodded away as if to agree with him.

Sun Wukong, reaching the two while riding on his cloud, scratched his head. When put that way, he couldn't come up with a suitable retort, but in reality, he and Su-hyeun were significantly different.

"Well, I'm me, after all," was all Sun Wukong could say.

He searched long and hard for the right type of retort, but that was all he could come up with. Su-hyeun chuckled softly at that.

It wasn't a wrong assertion, after all.

"Third brother possesses infinite energy, after all," he thought.

However, Su-hyeun wasn't like that.

Su-hyeun's energy reserve was finite, and as he only possessed finite strength, it was only natural for him to get tired quicker. If he wanted to use his powers most efficiently, he simply had to modulate his own speed.

If he had been his old self, that was.

In all honesty, he too was amazed right now.

"I'm not getting tired at all," he mused.

Shu-wuwuwu…

The prana that he could sense somewhere below his abdomen was sweeping through every corner of his body.

Whenever Su-hyeun roused up his magical energy to use his strength, prana answered his will on its own and automatically activated as well, and the prana that began activating this way provided a deep well of vigor in his body and helped with recovering the spent magical energy reserve.

It was as if some kind of an elixir that restored one's stamina was coursing through his veins right now.

He didn't get tired all that much no matter how much he moved, and the large amount of magical energy he spent while wielding the Palm Leaf was being recovered at a far faster rate than before, too.

He initially planned to gradually recover his magical energy and try to preserve his stamina as much as possible, but there was no need to do that anymore.

"What's wrong? Why are you standing still like that?" Sun Wukong asked while staring in some puzzlement at Su-hyeun who just stood there dazedly looking down at his own hands.

The latter silently shook his head to indicate that it was nothing.

He got the feeling that the longer the battle became, the more he would get to understand what being a "demigod" was all about.

Of course, he was still a long way from getting a full understanding of it. The reason for that assessment was fairly simple.

"I have not yet activated prana through my will," he inwardly concluded.

He had not used this newly acquired power called prana consciously yet. A small amount of this power could already energize him to this degree, so it was quite hard to even imagine what might happen if he consciously tried to use this power.

"How much farther do we need to go?" asked Luslec, who was feeling genuinely fed up with fighting against the parasites at this point.

Su-hyeun was acting as the guide for the group; Sun Wukong and Luslec were basically tagging along, and Su-hyeun was leading them to their destination.

It had already been one hour since they stepped foot inside the World Tree's trunk.

Su-hyeun was heading toward somewhere within the World Tree where he could sense its prana, but there was still quite a distance left to cover. There was the tree's height to consider, but some of the blame lay with how wide the trunk was.

It felt like they were currently digging into the core of the planet or something.

"It's not that far, but…" Su-hyeun replied and then scanned all the parasite corpses strewn about everywhere. The reason he didn't advance any further and stopped for a little bit wasn't to catch his breath. "Third brother, the goal of your trial this time is to eliminate the predators, yes?"

"Uh? Ah, yeah. That's right."

"By any chance, is the system saying that the trial has been completed?"

Sun Wukong tilted his head at Su-hyeun's question before replying, "No, it doesn't seem to be completed yet. Wait, now that I think about it, this is kinda weird."

"I knew it," Su-hyeun nodded. He wasn't completely sure of it, but that answer made it certain now. "These creatures, they were the parasites, yes?"

"Yes. I mean, they do look like huge parasites, don't they?" Luslec replied, not quite seeing what could be the issue here.

He was correct about that. These creatures did look like parasites at a casual glance, after all.

These things burrowed into the World Tree's body and sucked away its energy, making it their own.

"Huh. Hold on for a sec." When his train of thought reached that far, Luslec hurriedly placed his hand on the floor.

Quite obviously, the energy the World Tree possessed flowed within its trunk. Every living being was imbued with magical energy; even if this was the "false" World Tree, considering how enormous it was, the overall energy it possessed simply had to be incredibly easy to notice.

Luslec soon figured out what was strange. "Where is all the energy sucked out by the parasites going?"

"Huh? Wait, now that I've looked around…" Even Sun Wukong began making a puzzled face now.

If the parasites had been sucking out all the energy from various parts of the World Tree, all that energy should've been converted into their own power. Even if it was only a minute amount, some traces of the World Tree's energy should've remained within the parasites.

But they couldn't sense anything else from these critters other than bodily fluids containing toxins.

"They are all being gathered at one point," said Su-hyeun.

"At one point?"

"Yes. The main host that created all these parasites, the 'real' insect living inside this World Tree."

Su-hyeun carefully pondered the system message once more.

It told them to eliminate the "parasite" that had taken over the false World Tree. That was the goal of this mission, but the truth was, literally countless parasites, easily numbering past millions upon millions, could be found hiding away within the trunk of the gigantic tree.

However, was the system telling them to eliminate every single one of them? And could anyone really argue that these parasites had "taken over" the World Tree?

"Only one host is controlling all these things, and that could only mean…" Luslec's expression turned indescribably grave. "The power of the World Tree all these things have been sucked up for a long, long time has been transferred to just one creature."

"…"

"Wow."

Su-hyeun kept his silence, while Sun Wukong smirked in awe.

Tap—

Sun Wukong rested his Ruyi Jingu Bang over his shoulder. With how his whole body shuddered intermittently like that, he seemed to be really excited right now. "That means, it's incredibly strong, right?"

"That might not be good enough to describe this thing, actually. We might end up running into a monster ranked within 'One Hundred Evils' today, you know."

"One Hundred Evils?"

"One Overlord, Three Destroyers, Ten Great Evils, and One Hundred Evils. They are the worst of all the predators found throughout all the dimensions," Luslec said as he held his aching head.

Without a doubt, this would be the first time he looked this serious.

"A predator rated as one of the One Hundred Evils is that powerful?"

"Whatever it is, it means that thing is super strong, isn't it? Let's get going already!"

Su-hyeun and Sun Wukong spoke up at the same time.

Luslec seemed to have determined that there was no point in listening to Sun Wukong, judging from how he replied only to Su-hyeun. "In the vastness of all the dimensions out there, only the predators stand diametrically opposed to the gods, and the One Hundred Evils denote the top 100-ranked predators among them."

"That means they are super stro—"

"We'll go and take a look," Su-hyeun cut Sun Wukong off.

Of course, that reply was something the latter had been waiting for. "Yes, as expected of you!"

"Will it be fine, though?"

Sun Wukong chuckled after finding that decision to his liking, while Luslec asked back with a face full of concern.

Su-hyeun nodded. He had no idea how strong a creature ranked as one of the One Hundred Evils was, but at the very least, Luslec didn't say they should flee from here, meaning, winning was possible in this situation. Besides, even if that possibility was tiny, he wasn't going to give up after coming this far and run away.

"That thing will only get stronger if we leave it alone, after all," Su-hyeun thought.

And the World Tree would also gradually die.

Finally…

"Even if you don't want to fight, we don't have a choice in the matter anymore."

Splash, splatter…

Chiiirup, hissss…

Numerous presences could be sensed from the front and the rear of the group on this long stretch of the cave, and noises were coming from the distance where their eyes couldn't see.

Su-hyeun and companions shifted their gazes over in the direction they had been traveling toward earlier, and they spotted seemingly hundreds of millions of parasites.

However, their overall numbers didn't really matter. No matter how many of them showed up, they didn't present much of a threat in the end.

The real problem lay elsewhere.

"Here it comes."

Screeeech…

Hiss, hiiiissss—

Ruuumble…

Its size didn't seem all that big. However, the aura this creature emitted was more than enough to shake the World Tree itself.

"Damn! That's incredible."

Gulp…

Sun Wukong swallowed his saliva. Even the one and only Sun Wukong was getting tense with how massive the presence of their new opponent felt.

Shuffle, srrrrr…

The movements of the parasites changed. The countless creatures that had been bunched up like a white bundle of wool suddenly split off left and right.

It was as if they were creating a path for their king's march.

"That thing is mine, got that?"

"But, third brother, can you handle that thing all by yourself?"

"What, you think I can't do it?"

"I mean, that thing's definitely on another realm compared to the predators from earlier, you know?"

"Is that so? Actually, yeah, I think so, too."

Sun Wukong acknowledged it as well. He admitted that it might be too tough for him alone.

That response certainly was not something Su-hyeun was expecting, but that only served to reaffirm the truth—that monster was unlike anything they had run into up until now.

"Well, in that case, should we get rid of it together?" Sun Wukong suggested.

He and Su-hyeun had fought side by side several times by now, but this would be their first facing off against one enemy together.

A chuckle escaped Su-hyeun's lips, which didn't suit their current situation at all. He replied while gripping his sword in one hand and a spear in another, "Yes, we should."