radiothebook Chapter 175 : Chapter 175
Chapter 175 : Chapter 175
Chapter 175. 【Wrath】
Boom—!!!
That fragile soundproof barrier, together with the tavern’s thick red pine roof, vanished completely in an instant.
It was as though some mischievous giant had casually ripped the lid off a sardine tin.
The pitch-black night sky above Winter City, along with the howling blizzard, poured straight in without the slightest obstruction.
“Ahhh—!”
“Help! My leg!”
The patrons who had been cheering for the twenty-second bottle just a second earlier were now like leaves swept up by a gale. Some were slammed into the liquor cabinets by the shockwave, their spines cracking with a sickening snap that set teeth on edge. Others were hurled straight through the wall, their fate unknown. Tipsy Wildfruit, which had been full of malt fragrance and laughter only moments before, became a living hell in the blink of an eye.
Only the chair Ifreles had been sitting on, together with the empty glass before him, remained completely untouched.
The wind and snow came roaring in, sweeping every trace of warmth out of the tavern.
Alectos was on one knee, both arms crossed over his head, his ears ringing violently. He looked up in shock just in time to see a sight that made his eyes split with fury.
As the dust settled, Ifreles was standing there.
With one hand, he was gripping Alice by the throat, holding the small girl high in the air as casually as if he were lifting a dead chicken.
“Cough... cough...”
Alice’s feet kicked wildly above the ground. Her face had turned dark red from lack of air, and both hands clawed desperately at Ifreles’s iron-like arm. Even her nails had broken, yet she could not budge him in the slightest.
Ifreles tilted his head back and looked at the daughter struggling in his grasp. There was no anger in those crimson eyes, no pity either—only the indifference one used for a lifeless object.
It was like a man inspecting a chicken at the market and finding it not quite fresh enough.
“The anger of the weak.”
Ifreles’s voice cut through the wind and snow, entering everyone’s ears with terrible clarity. “It has no value beyond amusing the strong.”
As the words fell, his fingers tightened by an almost imperceptible degree.
Creak.
It was the groan of a neck bone reaching its limit.
“Let her go!!!”
A roar like a dragon’s bellow exploded through the night.
Alectos moved.
At that instant, the ancient dragon blood in his body ignited completely. His brilliant vertical pupils flared in the darkness like twin blades of light. He shot forward like a cannonball, smashing the table in front of him to splinters, the enchanted dagger in his hand shrieking through the air as it stabbed straight for Ifreles’s wrist.
The dagger’s tip flashed with a pale golden battle aura, moving so fast that it left an afterimage in the air.
And yet Ifreles did not even turn his head.
He did not so much as glance at Ale.
At the very instant the dagger was about to touch his skin, he simply flicked his free left hand with casual ease.
As though swatting away an annoying fly.
Bang!
A muffled thud rang out.
It sounded like a solid iron hammer smashing into a slab of raw steak.
Alectos felt a chill in his chest, and then a mountain-crushing force came crashing down on him. There was no technique in it, no flashy energy attribute—only pure, unreasonable, overwhelming weight.
The weight was so crushing that it inspired despair.
His proud dragon-scale armor did not even last a single second before it shattered. His whole body was smashed violently into the floor.
Crack.
The tavern’s solid stone floor caved in, forming a crater half a meter deep.
“Puh—”
Alectos vomited a mouthful of blood mixed with fragments of his internal organs. He felt as if every bone in his body had been slapped apart by that single blow.
Lying at the bottom of the crater, he gasped in ragged breaths, his eyes locked on that man.
Terrifying.
Too terrifying.
No battle aura. No magic.
That attack just now had been pure physical strength.
How could a monster like this exist in the world? Could it be that the man’s strength was actually on the same level as Leonard’s?
“Even... a tiger... would not eat its cubs...”
Ale forced himself to rise. Every breath felt as though knives were twisting in his lungs. “You bastard... are you even human... that is your own daughter...”
Only then did Ifreles turn his head and grant him a glance.
There was a trace of amusement in that look, as though he had just heard an ant discussing traffic rights with an elephant.
“Family affection?”
Ifreles loosened his grip just enough for the half-suffocating Alice to suck in a gulp of icy air, then abruptly tightened it again, calmly admiring the way his daughter’s face twisted in pain.
“In this world, the weak have no right to define relationships. That is the privilege of those who rule.”
A cruel curve touched his lips. “I am her creator, the source that granted her life and power. Whether I destroy her or remake her is my freedom. As for you...”
Ifreles raised one foot, the black leather boot hanging directly above Alectos’s head.
“A noisy reptile.”
If that foot came down in full force, then let alone a dragon-blooded demi-human—even a true dragon would have its skull crushed open.
At that moment—
Ifreles suddenly stopped.
The foot suspended in midair slowly withdrew and returned to the ground. He abruptly turned his head and looked toward the place where the tavern roof had long since ceased to exist, toward the storm-torn night sky.
Three auras were rapidly approaching from that direction.
One was sharp as a blade. That was a sword.
One was warm and blazing. That was light.
Both of those presences were strong—top-tier, at least for this barren land. But in Ifreles’s eyes, they were merely that.
The only one that truly interested him was the figure hidden at the rear, the one with almost no energy fluctuations, yet carrying a nauseating distortion of space.
Whoosh—!
A silver sword aura tore through the wind and snow first, slashing viciously toward the hand with which Ifreles was strangling Alice.
“How dare you!”
Sylvia’s voice, cold as the winter wind, arrived right behind the sword aura.
Ifreles gave a contemptuous snort. With a turn of his wrist, he actually reached out with his bare hand and grabbed the sword aura head-on.
Clang!
Sparks flew in all directions.
Sylvia’s full-power strike, one that could have sliced through a city wall, was crushed in his hand as casually as if he were snapping a potato chip.
Immediately after that, a dazzling pillar of Holy Light descended from the sky. Aurora floated in midair with her staff in hand, her expression grave. “Divine Spell · Greater Purification!”
“God?”
Ifreles sounded as though he had just heard a joke. With a casual wave of his hand, the pillar of Holy Light scattered like smoke before a gale, vanishing without a trace before it even touched the ground.
“Boring.”
He did not spare so much as a glance for the two women facing him as though confronting a great enemy.
His gaze passed over Sylvia, passed over Aurora, and locked onto a broken pillar at the edge of the ruins.
At some point, a new figure appeared there.
A black coat snapped in the freezing wind, and the handsome face beneath it was utterly grave.
Logaris.
He simply stood there, looking over the tavern reduced to wreckage, then at the half-dead Ale, and finally letting his eyes rest on the utterly composed Ifreles.
Their gazes collided in midair.
Logaris’s brows drew together slightly. Once again, the line of bloody words from the Book of Prophecy surfaced in his mind—
【Wrath Is Closing In on You.】
So this was “Wrath.”
And this scent...
Logaris twitched his nose.
He had never smelled anything like this before. It was a scent of sulfur, magma, and blood mingled together. Yet despite its unfamiliarity, every cell in his body was growing restless, every cell was cheering, producing a strange sense of... familiarity?