Dragonslayer’s Class Regression Chapter 107

Chapter 107

“HAAH!”

Even sturdy shields and armor meant nothing before the Aura Blade.

Zeke threw his shield at the charging Antonio.

Slash!

Antonio split Zeke’s shield in half.

But in the next moment, Zeke who had been right in front of him was nowhere to be seen.

‘Where is he…?’

Before he could finish the thought, Zeke struck Antonio’s helmet with his sword.

BANG!

Since he struck with a normal sword rather than the Aura Blade, it didn’t kill him, but Antonio fainted from the impact.

Morgan’s jaw dropped as he watched Zeke take down three great warriors in succession.

He never thought the knights he sent would lose.

“I-impossible…”

Zeke removed his helmet and spoke to Morgan in the viewing stands.

“It seems the match has been decided.”

Morgan’s face turned bright red.

He clenched his teeth and stood up.

Then he glared at Zeke and said:

“Sir Zeke… You’re interfering too much in matters that don’t concern you.”

“Indeed. Just like how the Bird Tribe would live well on their own if left alone.”

It meant to stop causing conflicts by meddling with the Bird Tribe ghetto.

Morgan left the border region headquarters with a frown, without even properly greeting Princess Melissa.

Melissa came down from the viewing stands and ran to Zeke.

“Sir Zeke! Goodness! I can’t believe you won against all the Imperial knights!”

“I was just lucky.”

Melissa knew well that rather than luck, he had overwhelmed the Imperial knights with absolute skill.

With the Imperial forces who had been making provocative insults with their power returning empty-handed after losing, it felt like a decade-old indigestion had been relieved on Allensia’s side.

Zeke said to Melissa:

“The Imperial garrison won’t return quietly. They’ll make excuses to interfere with the Bird Tribe ghetto somehow.”

“I don’t understand why the Empire is so obsessed with that place. And interfering with the treatment of the Hong-hwa Disease too.”

“Princess. There’s something I need to show you.”

Thinking he should inform her of the situation right away, Zeke headed to where the monster’s corpse was stored with Princess Melissa.

Liam and Felix were guarding the monster’s corpse in the morgue located in the basement of the headquarters.

Zeke showed it to Melissa and explained what had happened near the Bird Tribe ghetto.

“You’re saying you found traces of monsters and missing carriages near the ghetto?”

“Yes. Except for this monster, all the other monsters’ bodies were melting and decomposing.”

“Goodness. What in the world is happening in the ghetto?”

Melissa frowned as she examined the monster’s corpse.

That’s when Melissa discovered something.

“Sir Zeke. This monster… shows signs of having suffered from Hong-hwa Disease.”

At Melissa’s words, Zeke looked at where she was pointing.

“You mean the heat flower traces on the face?”

“Yes. When Hong-hwa Disease enters its final stages, the heat flowers worsen, and even after taking medicine and recovering, traces remain on the face. But this person has very severe traces remaining.”

Looking at it after hearing Melissa’s words, there were traces of heat flowers not just on the face but all over the body.

“A Hong-hwa Disease patient becoming a monster.”

Something crossed Zeke’s mind then.

‘The plague that occurred in Mycenae…’

He recalled being told about people infected with a plague similar to Hong-hwa Disease rising as zombies.

The dead who seemed like zombies but were different from zombies.

Zeke felt those he had heard about in stories were somehow similar to these monsters.

‘Hong-hwa Disease and magi, monsters, mysterious zombies. Are they all connected? And Abel came here too…’

It felt like putting together a puzzle with missing pieces.

Zeke felt he needed to investigate these monsters further.

“Felix, Liam. Guard the Princess here.”

“Where are you going, Master?”

“I’m going to the Bird Tribe ghetto to investigate more.”

He wanted to find out if the Imperial side was really trying to excavate a dungeon in the Bird Tribe ghetto.

Melissa looked at Zeke and said:

“Sir Zeke. Will you be alright alone?”

“I plan to just do some quick reconnaissance. Don’t worry too much.”

Actually, while he was curious about the Empire’s ulterior motives, his main purpose was finding out what Abel was trying to do here.

If he rushed here right after canceling the Guardian Knight position agenda, there must be something.

When it got dark, Zeke put on his cloud iron armor, covered his face, and headed back to the Bird Tribe ghetto area.

Though it was the Bird Tribe ghetto area, their residential district was further inside so they weren’t visible.

‘A Bird Tribe territory with no Bird Folk in sight.’

The Bird Tribe were the only ones suffering damage while getting caught up in the territorial disputes between the great nations.

Though the Bird Tribe were gentle in nature and loved nature, after living oppressed by humans for so long, militant tribes had emerged.

They fought against human knights with their solid beaks, innate physical strength, and tamer abilities that could control beasts and monsters.

The reason the Bird Tribe ghetto area was created was because humans could no longer face the powerful Bird Tribe warriors, so they drew boundaries first and made treaties to prevent invasion of each other’s territories.

But after hundreds of years, humans were trying to invade their territory again.

Zeke went deeper into the canyon past the cave where the monsters had appeared, thinking various thoughts.

Red sandstone walls taller than towers stretched out in a line.

Zeke scanned the canyon surroundings with Dragon Eye looking for traces of a dungeon.

‘Hmm, nothing here.’

If the Empire had discovered an ancient dungeon, there should definitely be traces of their hounds.

Zeke carefully scanned the surroundings again.

Then he found a narrow path leading into the canyon.

With Dragon Eye, Zeke found traces of someone who had entered that path.

‘This way.’

Without Dragon Eye, he would have passed right by the path.

Zeke pulled up his map and entered the path deeper into the canyon.

Fortunately, the path itself wasn’t complicated.

Past the narrow path appeared a massive sandstone wall.

Thanks to Dragon Eye which let him distinguish objects in the dark, Zeke discovered statues carved into the sandstone wall.

‘Good heavens. What is this?.’

Dozens of giant Bird Tribe warrior faces that seemed to have been carved by ancient Bird Tribe were engraved on the canyon wall.

Zeke was startled by the scale.

Even in the Empire or Midlands, statues of this scale didn’t exist.

‘They said ancient Bird Tribe had formed a civilization on the scale of a nation. It wasn’t a lie.’

Zeke was absorbing knowledge from the Chronos Kingdom era by watching Kaisir’s recorded videos in his spare time.

And in Kaisir’s records, there were quite a few stories about ancient races that are no longer passed down.

Kaisir especially described the Bird Tribe as a race with very powerful forces, and there was content about receiving a lot of help from Bird Tribe when establishing the Chronos Kingdom.

So if someone told Kaisir that Bird Tribe now live in protected areas without their own territory, he would never have believed it.

With somewhat mixed feelings, Zeke found an entrance leading inside past the giant statues carved on the wall.

As expected, they had carved the stone wall to make a giant entrance.

It looked like a temple made by ancient Bird Tribe.

Zeke stayed alert, used his stealth skill to hide his presence, and went inside.

‘What’s that smell?.’

A foul odor stung his nose as soon as he entered.

It was a stench as severe as the rotting monsters.

Zeke held his breath and went deeper into the dungeon.

That’s when it happened.

GRRRR!

Two monsters walked out from inside.

Zeke hid and observed the monsters.

Their appearance and attire were very similar to the monster he saw before.

‘The hypothesis that the Empire created these monsters seems more and more correct.’

The Empire conducted human experiments in secret laboratories in the south.

They were likely experimenting on turning humans infected with Hong-hwa Disease into monsters, intending to test the monsters’ powers in the Bird Tribe ghetto.

‘If those monsters became weapons of war, they would be terrifying.’

One puzzling point was that Zeke had never seen such monsters on battlefields when the Continental War broke out in the future he was in.

But it was too early to conclude since the experiments could have failed, or they could have only deployed them to battlefields that weren’t noticeable.

Zeke passed by the monsters and went deeper inside.

That’s when a message appeared before Zeke’s eyes.

[Detected a being tainted by Demonic energy.]

‘Tainted by Demonic energy? Does it mean a magical beast?’

Zeke slowly moved his body toward the direction the system indicated.

But what was there wasn’t a magical beast or monster.

A knight wearing black armor all over was guarding the door.

‘A knight tainted by demonic energy?’

Zeke recalled Cain whom he fought in the southern dungeon.

He too was tainted by demonic energy and was neither human nor magical beast, but different from monsters and appeared human on the outside.

‘Should I call him a Dark Knight?.’

Zeke looked at the Knight wearing black armor with Dragon Eye.

Looking from the outside, he couldn’t feel any particular difference from a normal knight.

But looking with Dragon Eye, there was clearly something different.

‘His Heart? Looks like something is attached to it.’

He could see something like tree roots clumped and attached to the heart.

It didn’t look like a normal body organ no matter how he looked at it.

‘Could they have enhanced their body with dark magic?’

He had heard such forbidden techniques were popular long ago, but they had almost disappeared in the present.

Because the abilities gained were too little compared to the risks, there was no reason to use forbidden techniques.

Zeke tried to look inside the door the Mein was guarding with Dragon Eye.

But he couldn’t see through the door even with Dragon Eye.

‘I need to check what’s inside there but…’

Since this door was guarded by a Dark Knight , he needed to find another way.

Zeke turned on his map and moved toward another detour he found.

The inside of the dungeon was complicated like a maze with paths continuing to split in multiple directions.

Without the map, even Zeke would surely have gotten lost.

While examining the map carefully, Zeke found stairs leading underground.

‘Good. There should be something this way.’

If he could find evidence related to Abel or the Empire, it would be another trump card along with the Dorta Republic evidence.

Zeke slowly descended the stairs.

The stairs carved from stone walls still maintained their sturdiness despite the long time passed.

After descending the stone stairs to the dungeon basement, maze-like paths branching in multiple directions spread before Zeke.

‘This is my first time seeing such a complicated dungeon.’

Looking to the side, carved murals that seemed to have been engraved by Bird Tribe long ago lined the walls.

Not just simple pictures, but historical records with connected content.

‘They carved pictures one by one into those hard walls.’

It showed how prosperous the ancient Bird Tribe forces were.

Zeke examined the carved murals on the wall.

Though he couldn’t tell exactly what they were about, it seemed to be about a large-scale war.

‘War. Was there some big war even before Bahamut?’

Scanning through the pictures, Zeke found something strange.

Not just Bird Tribe and humans, but all races were fighting together in the war.

‘Who are they fighting?’

Zeke looked around the walls to see who they were fighting against.

After searching for a while, Zeke finally found who they were fighting against.

But surprisingly, there was only one opponent facing this large army.

A mysterious being floating in the air wearing a robe, looking down at the allied forces.

‘What in the world is this?’

This didn’t match any history Zeke knew.

He hadn’t seen such a story even in the Chronos era from Kaisir’s records.

While looking at the murals, Zeke spoke to the system.

‘System. Can you record these pictures on the wall?’

[Checking available functions according to administrator’s request.]

[Scanning and saving content is possible using the Dragon Eye skill and wide-range buff skill.]

[Can be saved in a new folder in the inherited secure archive.]

‘Then save the content.’

[Please specify folder name.]

‘Folder name? What’s that? Anything is fine.’

[Saving content to new folder ‘Anything’.]

Suddenly light shot from Zeke’s left eye and scanned through the murals.

Amazingly, the mural contents were saved exactly following his gaze.

[Save complete. You can check the saved content in the security archive whenever desired.]

Zeke nodded in satisfaction while looking at the mural records displayed before him.

‘I’ll have to figure out what it means slowly.’

That’s when it happened.

Grrrr!

At the sound, Zeke turned around to see three monsters approaching him.