Chapter 335

Beru’s vicious screech tore through the air. Dark waves of energy followed in its wake, accompanied by a cascade of explosions. Beru’s onslaught raged like a thunderstorm. With each passing moment, the dark energy pouring from his body only grew in strength.

Meanwhile, Arsha extended her hands. At her gesture, swarms of Void Insects latched onto the butterflies and plunged venomous stingers into their bodies. The stingers injected Arsha’s royal jelly. The butterflies convulsed and shrieked in agony.

“Arrgh!”

“O-o Itarim!”

“Stop it! Make it stop!”

Arsha was a queen bee at her core. Just as she’d once done to Lee Minsung, her royal jelly acted as a potent medium, transforming others into loyal worker bees. A follower of the Itarim was incomparably more powerful than the likes of Minsung, but she’d evolved, achieving a higher level of being. Now, these copies were easily viable targets, and the royal jelly was proving lethal.

The copies of the Apostle of Domination, who also functioned as his soldiers, slowly lost control of their own minds. Their eyes grew murky, and eventually, the transformation began. Their colorful, paired wings split open along their backs with a loud ripping sound. They were being reborn as Void Insects, loyal to Arsha alone, discarding the hollow shell that had once been the Apostle of Domination.

“Argh! How dare you take my servants!”

The Apostle shuddered with rage. His soldiers were being stolen from right under his nose. It was an unspeakable humiliation, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

“You dare lose focus while fighting me?” Beru demanded, unleashing another piercing screech.

A giant shadow loomed over the Apostle. It was a hand. Beru swatted down the Apostle of Domination as though he were nothing but a bothersome fly, rather than a butterfly. His dark claws blotted out the sky as they descended, his palm crashing down with enough force to rend the very air and shatter the earth.

The single blow was enough to obliterate countless butterflies in an instant. Only the primary body narrowly escaped the blow, releasing a cry of pain. But it was the humiliation that burned even more than the injury. Void Insects swarmed over the crushed butterfly corpses, plunging their stingers into the fallen.

While the Apostle of Domination had known this might be a trap, this was no ordinary one. If they had this damnable ant, someone as unreasonably powerful as this, why had they bothered with a trap at all?

If I’d known about him from the start... I would never have come out of hiding!

I would’ve built an even bigger, stronger army before I dared show myself!

But regrets always came too late. All those years he’d spent secretly gathering strength were reduced to nothing. Arsha and Beru were simply toying with him, mocking him throughout.

“Damn it all! You were hiding this much power? You dare deceive me?!” the Apostle cried out, trembling with rage.

“Dare?” Beru asked, chuckling quietly.

At that moment, he was no longer the tiny ant that followed Suho around. He had recovered a considerable amount of his mana, and he was back to his usual self—not that this power would last very long. Once it was spent, he would need a great deal of mana stones to recharge. If he let the Apostle escape now, it would only end in wasted mana.

Which is why you aren’t getting away!

“You will not leave this place!” Beru shouted. “You don’t even get to die without our permission.”

He paid no mind to the butterflies being trampled around him. His only goal was keeping the main butterfly alive but cripplingly maimed, its wings and limbs torn away to prevent escape. That was the mission Suho had given him, and all Beru was doing was following orders with a smile on his face.

“As much as I’d love to devour your brain and feast on your memories right this instant...”

If he did that, the Apostle would escape. The moment this main body died, another butterfly somewhere else would be selected as the new true body. Beru licked his lips in frustration.

“Actually, no...”

He suddenly had a thought. If they all shared the same mind... couldn’t he just eat any one of them? There were so many. Sacrificing one to extract information wouldn’t even make a dent.

Beru wasted no time acting on the idea. His jaws closed around the head of a crushed butterfly, and he swallowed. Just like that, memories began to flood into him—memories that were quite useful.

“Hah... Would you look at that?”

Beru turned his indignant gaze toward the Apostle of Domination. The Apostle, who had been flailing helplessly against Beru’s far stronger power, did a double take.

“Don’t tell me you...” As expected from a being of collective intelligence, he caught on quickly. “You have the ability to read memor— Urk!”

The Apostle didn’t get to finish, as Beru had already wrapped his hand around his neck. There was no need for an answer. He had already seen enough to glimpse the Apostle of Domination’s true goal.

“I see it now. You have more than one hiding place. Many more.”

Even as Beru’s grip on his neck tightened and he struggled to breathe, the Apostle managed a deranged cackle. He had good reason to be laughing. Suho and Beru had assumed that the Apostles were competitors, given how many Itarim there were out there. But if that assumption were reversed, a new possibility emerged. There could be multiple Apostles working in allegiance under the

same

god. Some may still compete for divine favor, but others might unite for a shared cause.

“I never imagined you served the same Itarim as the Apostle of Paradise!” Beru said.

The Apostle laughed again. “And what does that change? Our great plan shall be fulfilled... no matter what it takes!”

“Harmakan! Bind him with a spell!”

“Understood,” Harmakan said, appearing on cue.

From the moment Beru had first unleashed his true strength, Harmakan had treated him with the utmost respect. He conjured magical chains around the Apostle, now missing all four limbs, and then turned toward Beru.

“What will you do, Commander Beru?”

“I will go to the Young Monarch. Open a gate to his location immediately.”

“Yes, Commander.”

“Hurry up. He may be in danger.”

A flash of light erupted. Without another word, Harmakan promptly opened a gate leading to Suho’s shadow. Beru leapt through without hesitation, feeling anxious. If the memories he’d devoured were accurate, the hiding place Suho was headed toward needed close surveillance.

“Arsha! Don’t let a single butterfly escape!”

“Got it! Leave it to me!”

Arsha stood at the center of her newly spawned Void Insects, looking more powerful than ever before.

***

Meanwhile, Suho had just arrived at one of the Apostle of Domination’s secret strongholds located in Russia.

“Russia, huh...?” he murmured, taking in the view before him.

Russia was the largest country in the world in terms of surface area, with a land area of 17 million square kilometers. It was known for its surplus of natural resources, which was only to be expected given all the land it possessed. This meant it was the ideal environment for growing Elvenwoods.

As the Apostle of Paradise’s anti-detection barriers had vanished, the greatest number of Elvenwoods had appeared in this very country. But unlike other nations, which had deployed their militaries to destroy the monstrous trees that had sprouted overnight, Russia had done nothing. It was as if they had known about the trees all along. Rather than responding, they simply left them alone.

Other countries had quickly grown suspicious. They began applying political pressure, demanding answers, but Russia had consistently maintained ignorance. Their position, simply put, was that they should be left alone to handle their own business. Since the Great Cataclysm, Russia had become a very closed country when it came to politics. A diplomatic approach like this was utterly out of the ordinary, but no one was truly surprised.

The current Russia had emerged under the rule of S-rank barrier user Yuri Orloff, who had taken control as prime minister. Immediately following the Great Cataclysm, Russia had descended into an apocalyptic state, far worse than anything ever seen in North Korea. In that hellscape, they lived in guaranteed safety thanks to Yuri’s barriers as a nation of allied city-states. While they may have seemed peaceful on the outside, the truth was quite different.

“We have been cast out.”

Suho, following the trail of Void Insects, had arrived at a village of people who lived

outside

the barriers. The residents were outcasts, banished for a clear reason—for opposing Yuri Orloff’s authoritarian rule.

“But we don’t think of it that way. The way we see it, we escaped that fishbowl of a city.”

As an S-rank hunter, Yuri’s barriers were powerful, and his “fishbowls” were guaranteed to be safe. But outside those walls, it was hell. Still, the villagers didn’t seem to regret their choice.

“We aren’t as safe out here, yes... but I’d rather not be a fish trapped in a pond.”

“We are... human.”

They shared a great deal with Suho after he found them, speaking freely about Yuri and the truth of what had become of Russia under his rule.

“Inside that fishbowl... is an empire meant only for the prime minister.”

“He calls himself a prime minister, but he’s no different from an emperor.”

“Nobody dares disobey him there.”

Yuri held absolute power, something that was difficult to achieve in modern-day society.

“We don’t care how risky it is out here. We aren’t ever going back there.”

“We’ll survive one way or another.”

There were many hunters among the Russians who had been cast out, and thanks to their presence, the villagers could just about fend off the magic beasts and survive. But survival was never certain—every night could be their last. Death loomed over them like a blade at their throats. Their ultimate goal was to seek rescue from another country, but the journey to the border itself was a constant string of life-threatening challenges. Russia was simply too vast.

However, today, their luck was unusually good. Here, in the middle of this endless hell, they had crossed paths with Suho.

“My god! It’s the magic beasts!”

“Hide!”

A monstrous roar echoed in the distance, and the Russians who had been speaking with Suho scrambled away. However, they didn’t abandon Suho, a stranger they had only just met on the road.

“You too! Come quickly!”

“There’s an underground cave nearby. We’ve been using it as a hiding place lately!”

Regions like Siberia were full of naturally occurring caves. These were among the few places where people could hide from the magic beasts, if only temporarily. They had risked their lives to find this refuge, yet they willingly offered it up to Suho, even though they’d known him less than a day.

“How lucky...” Suho said.

They were indeed lucky, and in more ways than one.

[Skill: “Dark Flame Storm” has activated.]

A surge of dense black fire roared forward, instantly reducing the oncoming horde of magic beasts to smoldering ash. The people rushing into the cave stopped in their tracks, their eyes wide with shock at the unbelievable sight.

In truth, though, Suho was just as fortunate. Deep within the cave they had shown him, the eerie energy of an Outer God was quietly seeping out.

“Suho here. I’ve located the hiding place of the primary body.”

Having confirmed that this was where the Apostle of Domination had hidden away in the past, Suho began to look around. He searched the area carefully, until something struck him as odd.

“Why is this place so far away from the Elvenwoods?”

According to Beru, the Apostle of Domination had raised his army by hanging chrysalises from the branches of the Elvenwoods. This place, however, was nowhere near any such tree.

“A sanctuary! There’s a sanctuary hidden here!”

“Beru?”

Beru had just emerged from Suho’s shadow, panting heavily. He had crossed dimensions in a rush to arrive. Suho’s eyes flashed at the news.

“A sanctuary of the Outer Gods is in this cave?”