Chapter 380- Pure-Hearted Prince vs. Giant Dragon Boss (19) END
Mu Jin’s voice was loud enough for everyone nearby to hear. As his words hung in the air, Gardner suddenly found himself unable to cast any magic of other elements, which sent a wave of panic through him.
Feigning confidence, he turned to Mu Jin and threatened, “Do you even know what you’re doing? Accusing a Holy Knight of the Church of Light like this—are you prepared for the consequences?”
Mu Jin, however, merely curled his lips into a smirk, replying nonchalantly, “Then why don’t you keep using your magic? Is it because your little charade of multi-element magic is falling apart?”
Gardner frowned at Mu Jin’s mocking tone. If he refused to continue his attacks, it would make him look guilty. However, if his supposed multi-element magic truly failed him, and he was exposed for using dark magic, there would be no way to explain it to the others.
For the first time, Gardner regretted bringing Mu Jin along on this operation.
To test his magic discreetly, he tried summoning a small stream of water using water magic. Feeling the flow of water in his palm, he let out a small sigh of relief and proceeded to cast a spell aimed at the sky.
He intended to unleash a light-based spell to illuminate the area and silence Mu Jin’s accusations. However, as he poured his magic into the spell, what emerged was pure dark magic. The surge of dark energy rippled through the air, and everyone present witnessed it with their own eyes.
“Oh heavens, are you really a dark magic practitioner?” Several members of the Church of Light, who had followed Gardner here, exclaimed in shock.
“No! Of course not!” Gardner stammered, sweat beading on his forehead. There was no way he could admit the truth in front of the crowd. Yet with his dark magic exposed before everyone, how could he possibly explain this away convincingly?
Seeing the doubtful gazes of his fellow Church of Light companions, Gardner had no choice but to grit his teeth and cast another spell. As expected, it was once again pure dark magic. The corrosive energy was so potent that nearby trees sizzled and smoked upon contact.
Desperation mounting, Gardner frantically communicated with his system in his mind, pleading for assistance. But the system remained completely silent, offering no response.
When he lost the support of the orc and elf clans earlier, a significant portion of his fortune and luck had drained away. Following that, the exposure of his dark magic caused the humans and the Church of Light—his last remaining allies—to turn suspicious of him.
Now, Gardner’s luck had reached rock bottom. Worse, the system within his body had been suppressed by Mu Jin at the perfect moment.
Realizing his plan had succeeded, Mu Jin finally felt at ease. He stepped forward and taunted Gardner, saying, “What’s the matter? Have your fake, fabricated spells stopped working? Or are you just feeling guilty now that your dark magic has been exposed?”
Then, leaning in closer, Mu Jin whispered in a voice only the two of them could hear, “Or perhaps… your system has broken down?”
Hearing Mu Jin’s words, Gardner’s pupils contracted sharply. How? How could this person standing before him possibly know about the system?
Overwhelmed with unprecedented fear, Gardner acted on instinct. Without a second thought, he launched an attack on Mu Jin.
Just as Gardner’s dark magic attack reached Mu Jin, Mu Jin let out a deep dragon’s roar. Before everyone’s eyes, he transformed into a massive silver dragon. The dark magic attack, which might have threatened others, was utterly insignificant against the powerful and majestic dragon.
Aside from the elves and Norris, no one knew that Mu Jin was the dragon. When he revealed his true form in front of everyone, the crowd was left utterly dumbfounded. They had never imagined that the seemingly frail mage who had been traveling with them was actually the legendary dragon.
One particular orc began to sweat profusely. Orcs were naturally distrustful of humans, and they had even less patience for fragile mages. He now recalled how he had mocked the diminutive mage along the way and felt an overwhelming urge to turn back time and slap himself.
That wasn’t just a mage—that was a dragon! A being who could destroy their entire clan with a single flick of anger. Having offended the dragon, he now feared that he might become the greatest sinner in orc history if the dragon decided to retaliate.
In contrast to the panicking orc, the goblins and elves were overjoyed. The elves, having known the truth all along, felt a deep sense of pride. Meanwhile, the goblins, realizing that their savior was an immensely powerful dragon, were filled with reverence.
Many goblins even began to see their earlier decision to kneel before Mu Jin and pledge to be his servants as a stroke of unparalleled wisdom.
Gardner, on the other hand, stared at the dragon’s imposing figure, his face pale as he stumbled backward and fell to the ground. Pressed by the dragon’s roar and overwhelming aura, he stammered in disbelief, “You… you’re the dragon. You’ve been deceiving me all along. You set me up to reveal my dark magic… You wanted to ruin me!”
Gardner’s expression teetered on the edge of madness. Without hesitation, he reached for the artifact hidden on his person—a trump card that had cost him nearly all his high-level magic crystals. As he activated the artifact, its embedded gemstones began to glow one by one, radiating an otherworldly brilliance.
But just as Gardner raised the artifact, prepared to deliver a final, lethal strike against the dragon, the artifact’s radiance suddenly dimmed at the very moment it was about to unleash its full power. Not even a spark of its potential energy emerged.
Instead, the artifact’s long handle began to crack inch by inch, and moments later, it shattered explosively in Gardner’s grasp. The resulting blast left his hand mangled, with flesh and blood torn apart. Suffering the brunt of the artifact’s backlash at such close range, Gardner fell to the ground, writhing in agony and howling in pain.
At that moment, the goblins—who had been brought along to maintain and repair the team’s equipment—stepped forward.
The goblin leader pointed an accusatory finger at Gardner and declared angrily, “The mark that enslaved the goblins has long since been destroyed by the Abyss Lord! You vile scoundrel! You exploited us and used the goblin mark to control and oppress us like some despicable parasite. A wretch like you has no right to wield an artifact. Someone as evil as you deserves to be burned alive!”
By now, the members of the Holy Light Church were utterly stunned. As they processed the scene unfolding before them, they could no longer deny the truth—Gardner had been deceiving them all along. Worse still, he had committed countless heinous acts in secret.
However, what alarmed them most wasn’t Gardner’s wickedness or betrayal. Instead, they feared the collective fury of the other races. This growing wrath could spell disaster for humanity as a whole.
Anxiously, the church members longed to sever all ties with Gardner on the spot. Some even began worrying that after Gardner’s death, the other races might redirect their anger toward the church itself.
Gardner, now broken and humiliated, scanned the hostile gazes surrounding him. Some were filled with scorn, others with hatred. He never imagined he would fall so far. With trembling hands, he pointed at Mu Jin and spat out bitterly, “If it weren’t for your overwhelming strength, the one lying in ruins today should have been you!”
“You all say I’m wrong, but isn’t it only because the magic I awakened is dark magic? If I had awakened all-elemental magic and was just as powerful as you, wouldn’t they be the ones kneeling before me, begging for my protection?”
But the dragon across from him snorted coldly at Gardner’s words. “Magic is neither good nor evil. Even dark magic is merely a tool. Good and evil lie within the heart. Even if you were truly an all-elemental mage, your heart would remain as black as night.”
“Your wrong doing has never been about the type of magic you possess, but about how you’ve used your power to harm so many. You’ve committed unforgivable crimes, and justice demands that you pay the price.”
As Mu Jin spoke, he raised one massive dragon claw before the crowd and reached toward Gardner. In a moment, he pulled a pitch-black orb of light from Gardena’s body—a dark entity that turned out to be the hidden system within him.
However, as soon as the system was grasped, an unfamiliar surge of energy erupted from it, power that clearly didn’t belong to this small world.
In that instant, a bold hypothesis formed in Mu Jin’s mind. Perhaps this Qian Sha wasn’t merely parasitizing the protagonist but had instead created a facade to mask its presence—a system, hidden within itself, which had allowed it to avoid detection all this time.
With Gardner’s luck nearly drained and the system forcefully extracted, he was left almost lifeless, crumpled on the ground like a pile of broken debris, barely hanging on to life.
Sensing imminent danger, Qian Sha within the system instinctively unleashed its primordial power in an attempt to flee.
But having finally caught the fox by its tail, Mu Jin had no intention of letting it escape so easily. He immediately called out to Teng Gen in his mental sea, urging him to help contain the Qian Sha.
Teng Gen’s essence had a natural restraining effect on such malevolence. At this moment, the Qian Sha was tightly encircled by the combined forces of Mu Jin and Teng Gen, leaving it with almost no room to maneuver. Qian Sha realized that if it didn’t escape now, once it was handed over to Qian Chen, it would never have another chance.
In desperation, it consumed the divine soul it had painstakingly condensed to distort space-time within this plane on a small scale.
Yet even a small-scale distortion of space-time inflicted immense damage on the plane. The sheer force caused Mu Jin and Qiong Qi’s primordial souls to be forcibly ejected from their bodies. Even Qian Chen, who hadn’t fully descended into this plane, felt the threat and was compelled to intervene, forcefully stepping in to halt Qian Sha’s reckless actions.
However, in the instant Qian Chen’s power appeared, Qian Sha seemed to gamble everything in a final act of defiance. It offered its own soul as a sacrifice, amplifying the dark energy surrounding it. The energy expanded wildly, enveloping the souls of Mu Jin, Qiong Qi, and Qian Chen, creating a completely distorted world and trapping them all inside.
Qian Sha seemed to be consumed with hatred for Mu Jin, who had orchestrated its downfall. Using its remaining strength, it launched a ferocious attack on him. The last thing Mu Jin saw before losing consciousness was Qiong Qi, exerting every ounce of its power, desperately trying to shield him from the blow.
Unbeknownst to anyone, just before the distorted space completely sealed itself, a crimson orb of light surged into the vortex with all its might, colliding head-on with Qian Sha’s power…