Barriers (431)

Koong!

The sphere shattered the barrier and crashed into the earth. The moment it made contact with the ground, the sphere shone and exploded with incandescent light.

Flash!

A blinding, intense cluster of light spread throughout the area in an instant. The light surpassed Seol Jihu in the blink of an eye, exponentially heating the air and setting everything ablaze.

The saving grace was that Seol Jihu managed to narrowly escape from the source of the explosion while Seo Yuhui bought him time.

“Jihu…!”

Amidst the glimmering world, Seo Yuhui tapped Seol Jihu. Running any further wouldn’t make a difference unless it let them entirely escape the scope of the attack and its aftermath. In that case, it was better to stop and focus on defending preemptively.

Once Seol Jihu stopped running, Seo Yuhui immediately chanted a spell, creating several layers of barriers around them.

Soon, a terrifying heatwave raged. The air boiled, and their skin seethed. Despite being inside a barrier and the heatwave being only the aftermath of the explosion, it felt like they were in a scalding sauna.

But perhaps this wasn’t so bad, considering that the rocks around them were burned to ashes in mere seconds.

[Whew….]

Flone breathed out a sigh of relief from the pendant.

[Had we gotten caught up in it… eck, I don’t even want to imagine it.]

The world beyond the barrier was still flickering like a broken lamp, even though they had gotten out of the epicenter of the explosion. Otherwise, they would only be seeing the world burn in white light.

[So there’s an enemy capable of something like this….]

Flone murmured in regret while staring endlessly. In truth, she had been hopeful when Seol Jihu decimated the Parasite army. Though she wasn’t sure what happened, with how powerful Seol Jihu became, she felt like they could really escape. However, the might that the enemy displayed snapped her hope in half.

Seol Jihu took his eyes off of his surroundings and turned to Seo Yuhui.

After concentrating for a while, Seo Yuhui wiped the sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand. Then, she looked back at Seol Jihu.

“Thank goodness. I made it in time.”

Seo Yuhui smiled sweetly, but Seol Jihu stared intently without saying a word.