Chapter 49

Black Flame

“He’s a bad person,” Ped said, turning to Juan after hearing the man’s words.

It felt oddly complicated. In fact, he imagined that people may have once judged him similarly while he carried out his own missions.

But now, he was on the side of justice.

Yes, just one look at his teacher’s expression, and he knew it was righteous.

With that thought in mind, Ped heard Juan sigh and say with a tone of regret:

“Necromancy is perhaps one of the magics best suited to this world. It was meant to shine brightly, to bring light and hope to humanity. You have a rare gift, and yet you defile it.”

Juan’s dark eyes held steady on the red-haired man for a long moment before he shook his head and said, “No, to forcefully conscript the living as undead—that can’t even be called necromancy.”

“In every era, every place, there are those who make the same choices once they gain power, but at most, they’re just puppets of that power.”

He thought of the necromancers he had known.

Although necromancers were rare and widely disliked, he had met a few. Among them were some, like the red-haired man before him, who killed others to raise an army of the dead.

Different people, yet they chose the same path once they possessed the same power. Was it their choice, or the power’s? If the same person had held an opposing power and acted differently, did that mean, in a way, they too were held hostage by their own strength?

Juan looked thoughtfully at the red-haired man before him.

Beside him, Ped was utterly confused.

As for the red-haired man in the distance, he seemed visibly enraged by Juan’s words.

“Blah, blah, blah! If you want to fight me, just do it! Enough of this nonsense! Puppets of power? I’m the one wielding my power, all right? It’s me! I’m in control!” the red-haired man yelled at Juan from within the zombie horde.

Although alive, his open-mouthed yelling made him look disturbingly similar to the nearby zombies who were also baring their teeth, creating an eerie resemblance between him and his undead minions.

“I was just thinking aloud; what I said was simply my conclusion. Don’t you ever think?” Juan asked, watching the fuming man.

Those who knew him well would understand that Juan’s words carried no other intention—he was simply speaking honestly.

However, the red-haired man knew nothing about him.

He immediately took the question as a challenge, sneering and refusing to respond. Instead, he raised a finger toward Juan, and instantly, countless zombies abandoned their prey in Sunshine Base and started shuffling toward Juan and Ped.

“So even with control and power, people can’t exceed their own limits by too much?” Juan murmured to himself, observing the slow, awkward zombies stumbling in his direction, their movements still uncoordinated.

Then he looked over at Ped, who was now thoughtfully examining the zombies’ lack of coordination after hearing Juan’s words. Juan suddenly said to him,

“Strength itself is not a crime.”

“Huh?” Not understanding why Juan had suddenly said that, Ped looked at him in confusion.

But leaving only that one sentence, Juan’s dark eyes remained open, his mouth still bearing a rare hint of a smile. Then, his body wobbled and, in the next instant, collapsed to the ground!

Startled, Ped barely managed to catch him. Seeing Juan’s wide-open eyes and his face suddenly drained of life, Ped froze. Quickly grasping what had happened, he stopped looking at the body in his arms and turned toward the approaching zombies—

The female zombie closest to him, mouth wide open and almost ready to bite him, suddenly halted. She slowly straightened, standing still in place.

The male zombie behind her also stopped, as did the elderly woman zombie beside him…

All the zombies charging at the two of them suddenly stopped, standing completely still.

Their bloodied mouths closed, and their expressions slowly reverted to how they looked before death.

They each stood motionless, like newly dead, bewildered souls.

This was the scene in Ped and the red-haired man’s eyes.

Meanwhile, out of their sight, Juan’s spirit was sweeping through everything!

He had first discovered this ability when climbing back up from beneath the bridge with Ped.

Back then, his soul had unconsciously passed through the body he had previously used, “An’an,” and partially attached to the little zombie. At one point, he had even used the little zombie’s hand to grab the next vine.

Realizing this, he knew he might be able to do something.

A dragon’s body was huge and solid.

Likewise, a dragon’s soul was vast and even more resilient.

Stretching his soul as wide as he could, Juan extended himself into each undead body before him! There were so many of them that even his dragon soul struggled to cover them all. He had to keep stretching his soul, further and further, until it was stretched to its limit, refined into thin soul threads. Finally, Juan took control of the last zombie.

Not only the zombies; he even gained control over all the moths!

At that moment, he felt a rare sense of dizziness.

The dizziness made him feel weak.

However, he also felt incredibly immense!

Even larger than he had been in his original dragon body!

To the west, he could see Ped looking at “himself” with his mouth open in shock; a bit further east, he could see the red-haired man’s stunned face, and behind the wall covered in Komira flowers, he saw the survivors of Sunshine Base led by the base commander.

“You’re safe now.” Through the mouths of the undead, he spoke these words for all to hear.

Then, he began to withdraw.

Releasing the survivors who were about to be bitten, he gestured for them to run behind the Komira flower wall. Then, he pulled out the half-mangled bodies from the Komira flowers’ jaws and maneuvered each undead body out of Sunshine Base.

Now, Juan was in every one of these zombies, controlling each of their movements.

But the people didn’t know that!

Seeing the signal flare launched by the base commander, the survivors ran toward it from all directions! Along the way, several people were surrounded by zombies, almost getting bitten. But just as they were about to be attacked, the zombies stopped, patted their shoulders, and gestured for them to leave.

Then, the zombies left.

With their backs to the crowd, the zombies moved in the direction opposite the signal flare. If their faces were unseen and their broken bodies ignored, they almost looked like they did in life.

“Is that my dad? Did he recognize us?” A little girl in the crowd who had just been attacked by her now-undead father cried.

Many people shared her thoughts.

Seeing their former loved ones and acquaintances, they all ran in the direction of the base commander.

This time, their escape route was clear.

No zombies attacked them; even if they encountered a zombie along the way, those zombies would only stand still, slowly walking eastward.

In a completely opposite direction…

Watching Juan’s actions, Ped became thoughtful.

He always knew Juan was strong, but this was the first time he truly realized just how strong.

“Power is not a crime. Teacher, were you really this powerful all along?” Ped murmured, watching the zombies gradually leave in the opposite direction, and then looking at the fuming red-haired man in the zombie horde.

Then, he heard a noise from above.

It was an aircraft.

The base commander had once mentioned that he would hire someone from outside with special abilities to help. Knowing this, Ped hadn’t been particularly concerned about the aircraft.

Likewise, the people in Sunshine Base cheered when they saw the aircraft approaching.

Though the help had arrived late, it still came.

The people were overjoyed.

However—

Without approaching the survivors, a streak of black flame, as dark as a black dragon, shot out from the aircraft, igniting a large area of zombies with a single strike!

Ped heard a deep rumble. At first, he didn’t realize what it was, but after about three seconds, he recognized it as a collective roar from the zombies, sounding almost like thunder.

But zombies couldn’t feel pain, much less speak. The fact that he heard this—

His eyes widened as he realized instantly—it was Juan!

It must be excruciatingly painful to make Juan cry out in pain like that, someone who feared no pain.

The flames had hurt Juan’s soul!

In an instant, Ped figured out the key issue.

With a cold gaze, he summoned a cluster of Mandrake vines and precisely entangled the propellers of the aircraft. The sturdy vines quickly jammed the propellers, and as the aircraft plunged from the sky, Ped saw a figure in black leap out.

When the aircraft crashed to the ground, it exploded.

The black-clad figure stood before the explosion, his narrow black eyes glanced at the blast behind him, then looked directly at Ped.

“You did this.” It wasn’t a question; he was certain.

“N-no, it wasn’t me…” The red-haired man, standing between the man in black and Ped, assumed the black-clad man was talking to him. Once so arrogant, he was now trembling, his voice quivering.

Without even glancing at him, the man in black extended his gloved left hand. Another streak of black flame shot out from his fingertips. With a piercing scream, the red-haired man was engulfed in flames right before Ped’s eyes!

It wasn’t red flame; it was a black fire! It burned silently, without a trace of heat, yet no matter how the red-haired man rolled on the ground, he couldn’t extinguish it. Before long, he was completely consumed by the fire.

Nothing remained of him; he was utterly incinerated.

Witnessing this with their own eyes, even those who had trusted that the man in black was here to rescue Sunshine Base were left stunned.

Without caring about anyone else’s thoughts, the black-clad man’s gaze shifted away from Ped’s face as he cast another line of black flame toward the zombies.

But—

The black flame landed on a newly sprouted vine, which burned away in place of the zombies that should have been scorched.

His gaze returned to Ped’s face, and the man in black pointed in the direction where the red-haired man had once stood, now entirely gone. “You—were you with him?”

“No,” Ped answered firmly.

“Then why are you stopping me from clearing out the zombies?” the black-clad man asked. “Are you with these zombies, perhaps?”

He raised an eyebrow, but his cold, jet-black eyes remained fixed. Under the gaze of those icy eyes, Ped found himself unable to move, cold sweat forming on his forehead as he felt frozen from head to toe.

He wasn’t truly frozen, but paralyzed with fear.

Yes, fear.

It was the first time Ped had felt this way, the first time he’d met someone like this.

The person before him was terrifying, and the black fire in his hands was even more so.

His very soul was sending him warnings!

But—

Without waiting for an answer, the man in black sent another wave of black flame toward the zombie horde, which was blocked once again by a vine Ped summoned.

At the same time, Ped stood in front of the man in black.

“I won’t… let you harm him,” Ped said, his face pale yet resolute, as sweat poured down from his forehead.