Anagin Chronicles

Chapter 015. Beast Bastard(1)

“Hoo-oh... Does he know how to use Yul (εὐ)?”

Amid a downpour of monster blood, the Monster Merchant muttered, watching Anagin with a look of interest.

Because of their habit of swallowing humans whole, serpent monsters are harder to cut from the inside than the outside, but to think he could slice them like that…

“That’s not Yul (εὐ).”

Deodia interjected, denying the Monster Merchant’s remark.

“What did you say?”

“That one can’t use Yul. If he could, he would have used it when fighting me. And I don’t see any Energy (Γι) on his weapon either.”

It was hard to believe, but the Monster Merchant didn’t argue.

After all, Deodia was a Gigant, a practitioner who was fairly famous in these parts. If he said no, it was highly likely to be true.

“Then… how?”

The Monster Merchant was puzzled.

If it wasn’t Yul, then it meant he used a magic weapon, but Bender’s sword wasn’t imbued with magic.

So, how had he sliced open the inside of a serpent monster’s belly? That was the question.

Anagin answered the doubt.

“I just cut it with the sword.”

“…….”

“…….”

“I was trained rigorously in swordsmanship by my master.”

The Monster Merchant and Deodia were dumbfounded, unable to say anything.

Slashing a monster with a normal weapon was no easy feat. If it were that simple, anyone could have done it already.

But Anagin hadn’t learned it easily either. He had learned directly under his master’s blade.

‘Techniques aren’t learned, they’re stolen. Now, steal it.’

That crazy master really said that and immediately swung a sword at Anagin.

And not just swords—spears, axes, hammers, maces, sickles, staffs, throwing spears, arrows, slings, chains—he attacked Anagin with all sorts of weapons.

Each time, Anagin was cut, pierced, bludgeoned, and sometimes even dismembered, sustaining serious injuries. Half by choice, half by necessity, he analyzed, memorized, and stole all of his master’s techniques.

It was truly a miserable time.

Well, now it was just a memory…

‘No. That’s too glorified. It was just miserable, that’s all.’

Anyway, that’s how Anagin learned his master’s techniques.

Swordsmanship was just one of them.

A sharp cry echoed.

Five human-sized serpents lunged at Anagin at once, fangs bared. They were fast, but Anagin swung his sword faster, cutting their necks in a single motion. Their heads fell cleanly, as if a rope had been severed.

Beyond the fallen serpents, Deodia hurled something.

A sphere-shaped object.

Anagin reflexively covered his eyes, and a fierce heat and shock hit his body.

Unlike the glowing, noisy object before, this one caused a physical explosion.

‘A bomb?’

It seemed to be one of the toys his master had mentioned. Fresh chapters posted on novel~fire~net

The intense explosion burned flesh and shook the body, sending Anagin flying backward and rolling across the ground.

The serpent monsters seized the opportunity and charged.

Even while tumbling on the ground, Anagin used the instability to his advantage, cutting down each charging serpent.

Then another bomb flew and exploded over him.

Through the roar of the blast, Deodia’s laughter rang out.

“That wake you up, huh?!”

“I don’t know about ‘wake up,’ but I can tell you’re genuinely scared of me.”

“Scared?”

"A guy who would normally rush in and smash me with his axe is now just poking from a distance, so yes, you're scared... Did getting hit by me scare you that much?"

Deodia, struck exactly where it hurt, frowned deeply but couldn’t argue. He just stomped his feet in place out of frustration.

The Monster Merchant tried to calm Deodia.

“Don’t waste your time reacting to things like that.”

Anagin interjected.

“If you clearly look ugly, just shut your mouth.”

“…….”

“Even with the weather warming up, if you’re still wearing a robe like that, it’s obvious. You think the world won’t see your ugly face, right?”

The Monster Merchant concurred with Deodia's statement that one would know how annoying Anagin was only by dealing with him. They expressed their displeasure with a heavy silence.

But they didn’t stop at mere silence.

Sha-hahaha-ha-haat!

Another monster serpent, roughly the size of the large serpent that had once tried to swallow Anagin whole, roared in anger and lunged at him.

It opened its blood-red jaws wide, and Anagin spread his legs, lowering his body, and—

Chaaak!

He slashed the giant serpent’s jaws diagonally. The jaw was severed cleanly. The serpent writhed on the ground in pain.

As when he had cut open the belly of a serpent monster before, no Energy (Γι) was imbued in his sword. He had sliced a colossal monster with pure swordsmanship alone.

Skill worthy of being called a divine technique. Yet—

Kwahk!

Even with divine technique, it didn’t mean he was invulnerable.

The moment Anagin cut the giant serpent, a smaller serpent bit his ankle.

Small compared to the giant serpents, but the inside of its mouth glowed an ominous purple. Seeing it made Anagin stagger.

“A venomous serpent?”

As Anagin muttered, Deodia burst out laughing and swooped down.

"Correct!"

He launched from his position and brought his axe down in a powerful overhead strike. An attack focused more on force than precision.

As proof, when Anagin dodged and the axe slammed into the ground, a roar erupted along with a cloud of dust.

"You've gotten slow!"

Even though the attack missed, Deodia shouted confidently instead of getting angry.

Anagin had already been bitten by the Monster Merchant’s infamous venomous serpent. In other words, he was practically on borrowed time.

For an ordinary person, it would be instant death. Even a Gigant would die without an antidote.

Having been poisoned, his body would gradually stiffen, leaving him vulnerable to Deodia’s axe. Even if he kept dodging, the poison would inevitably kill him.

Deodia knew this, which is why he pressed in close and attacked aggressively.

Wiping away the earlier ridicule about being scared, he intended to personally split the head of that obnoxious kid.

“What’s wrong?! Try to fight back!”

Unlike earlier, Anagin was now barely able to dodge, stumbling as he retreated, and Deodia mocked him. Whereas before he had blocked and countered, now he only wavered unsteadily.

Whoosh!

Dodging Deodia’s relentless assault by a hair, Anagin’s upper body leaned backward, and he swayed violently. His center of gravity was broken.

Opportunity!

Deodia raised his axe high.

At that moment, as Anagin was about to fall backward, his waist bounced back astonishingly fast, and he swung his sword forward.

A counterattack half a beat faster than expected.

Deodia hastily thrust her Energy-imbued axe toward the incoming blade.

'No problem! It's just a piece of iron with no Energy imbued in it!'

No matter how skilled the swordsmanship, a normal sword couldn’t compare to a weapon imbued with Energy.

He could have broken it on impact. Thinking this, he swung his axe. But just as the axe and sword were about to collide, the blade vanished like smoke.

Shhk—!

Simultaneously, Deodia’s right arm holding the axe was cleanly severed.

Too clean.

Just before the clash, Anagin had pulled his sword and, using centrifugal force, sliced his arm from below upward.

He had targeted the weakened part where the Energy was overly concentrated.

Yet Deodia could only stare at his severed arm in disbelief.

How was this even possible?

Why had this happened?

Why hadn’t the venom affected him?

Instead of answering these questions, Anagin swung his sword horizontally.

Sha-ha-haat!

Just before the blade could reach Deodia’s neck, a monster serpent lunged at Anagin. He redirected his sword from Deodia toward the serpent.

Deodia hastily gathered his severed arm and fled, while Anagin tried to pursue, but a massive serpent blocked his path.

Having learned the danger of opening its mouth, the serpent tried to strike Anagin with its head like a hammer. But it was useless. Anagin easily dodged and sliced its neck.

It was a divine technique—a skill of extreme concentration, maximizing the sharpness of the blade to cut through a gap in the serpent’s outer shell.

Then, with one hand, he grabbed the massive serpent’s head and hurled it at another monster serpent watching from afar, smashing it into the wall.

Bang!! Kurrrrr…!

The sheer force of the giant serpent’s head and Anagin’s godlike strength shook the entire underground chamber, and the Monster Merchant watched in awe.

“Oh…!”

Even among Gigants known for their brute strength, he had rarely seen anyone with such power. Strength could vary greatly among individuals, but this one was top-tier, even among the elite.

A creature that had inherited the blood of a giant to the fullest…

Just when the Monster Merchant thought it was time to wrap things up, as Deodia had suggested, catching a guy like this... It was an incredible stroke of luck!

“Wh-Why isn’t it reattaching?!”

A frantic voice shouted.

The Monster Merchant turned his head. Deodia was struggling to reattach his severed arm by gobbling down pills.

“Why isn’t it reattaching?!”

Grabbing his severed arm, Deodia demanded an answer from the Monster Merchant.

When taking the pill, anything should heal, and recently severed body parts were no exception.

But now, it only briefly stuck before falling off again.

Had he been given a defective pill?

The answer was ‘No.’ Just…

“You’ve overused it.”

“Overused?”

Flustered, Deodia asked like a fool.

“The pill’s a powerful medicine, but it’s not a panacea. Take too much, and you’ll build a resistance, reducing its effectiveness. In extreme cases, even your natural healing ability can weaken. And you’ve got both problems.”

The Monster Merchant explained kindly, but Deodia just blinked at him like an idiot. Honestly, it wasn’t even the first time he had heard this.

“Th-Then, what do I do!? My arm!! Give me a solution—Guh!”

His tantrum was cut short as he was forcibly silenced by a venomous serpent biting his throat.

Normally, he wouldn’t have been subdued so easily, but the consecutive battles and his severed arm had shattered his composure.

His face turned purple as he looked up at the Monster Merchant with a look of injustice. The Monster Merchant just shrugged under the robe.

“Too noisy… well, I was planning to clean things up anyway."

“Grrk…!”

Deodia screamed through her venom-stiffened mouth and collapsed.

The Monster Merchant extended both arms, concealed under the robe, toward the fallen Deodia. Around twenty long serpents emerged from beneath the robe, covering his hands completely. The serpents coiled around Deodia, lifting him toward the robe's interior, and gradually Deodia completely vanished inside the robe.

As if being swallowed by the serpents.

From head to upper body, lower body, and finally feet, Deodia was fully inside, and the Monster Merchant adjusted its robe.

“Thanks for waiting.”

"I was curious."

Anagin, who had piled the corpses of monster snakes around him like a mountain, replied.

The large and medium-sized monsters all had their necks severed or were lying against the walls, smashed. The damage was immense for something that happened in a brief moment.

"You don't seem surprised."

"If a vile person and a vile creature join hands, they'll naturally meet a vile end. Especially when one of them isn't even human."

The area beneath the Monster Merchant's robe squirmed.

Looking at the Monster Merchant, Anagin asked.

"Oh, is it a secret?"

“…How did you know?”

“What’s so hard about telling beasts from people? Especially the ones that bite humans… No wonder this place’s felt rotten since I got here."

"You’d better learn to hold your tongue. We could have settled this peacefully, but now you’re making me not want to."

"Oh, it's fine, it's fine. I have absolutely no intention of settling things peacefully with a beast. It would be too embarrassing to tell anyone."

“You’re acting cocky because you think you’ll win?”

Beneath the Ruin, in the giant underground chamber, a cold echo bounced from every corner.

Sha-haaaa-!

Ssssssssss….

Sha-hat-!

The hissing sound of serpents sends shivers through every fiber of the body. Those cries echoed hundreds of times across the floor, walls, and ceiling.

Against this chorus of serpents, the Monster Merchant spoke.

“Killing the giant serpent was impressive. I understand why you’re so cocky. But that kind of show-off is a problem. Generally, small serpents are deadlier than the big ones.”

The darkness-soaked cavern trembled.

Serpents clinging to the floor, walls, and ceiling all moved in unison, forming a flowing current like a tide.

Seeing that, the Monster Merchant's meaning became clear.

At a glance, a giant serpent looks more threatening, but if you have enough strength, you can beat it down, whereas tiny serpents are harder to deal with. No matter how strong you are, you can’t cut a hundred of them with a single strike. Even if you could, you’d just get bitten by the others while you do it.

And if those serpents are venomous…….

Sha-haha-hat!!

The serpents covering every surface opened their mouths. Their insides glowed the same ominous purple as the one that bit Anagin.

“You’ve got poison resistance, right?”

“Thanks to that damn master of mine… Just thinking about it pisses me off again.”

“There must be limits. One or two bites you can handle, but could you survive ten or a hundred?”

“I don’t know, haven’t been bitten that many times.”

“Then we’ll find out now.”

"Do you think you're really smart?"

At Anagin’s sudden question, the serpents that had been surging from all sides paused.

“What?”

"Because you talk like a human and scheme like a human. You think you're so smart, don't you? That you've become something special? But you're not. There was a guy like that in the village where I lived, too. A wolf bastard that talked like a person and used its head to prey on animals, and even adults and children."

Anagin, telling a memory from his past, untied the Interspatial Bag at his belt and opened its mouth as wide as it would go.

“It pissed me off. Do you know what I did?"

“Set a trap?”

“No. I chased it. I chased its scent without sleeping or eating, just kept chasing it. For four days straight without rest."

“How stupid.”

“Yeah, stupid. But effective. The thing got tired and tried every trick to shake me off. It smeared its scent on its subordinates, ambushed me, whatever. Didn’t matter.I just chased it. Want to know what happened?”

The Monster Merchant couldn’t answer.

“After about a week, it was abandoned by its subordinates and collapsed. While I chased it, it couldn’t properly eat or sleep. I snapped its neck, skinned it, and made a blanket out of the hide. It was warm."

“What’s your point?”

“The point is: schemers lose to the simple-minded. The craftier they are, the weaker they are against straightforwardness.”

Whoosh— Clang!

Anagin swung the bag at his waist. Something flew out, struck the wall, and shattered.

An amphora.

The sensitive oil-filled amphora he bought at the Magic Shop.

Those amphorae flew and smashed against walls everywhere.

Anagin then pulled out a flint and set the oil alight.

“And you'll be no different. You beast bastard.”