Chapter 210
People wandering the desert like drifting duckweed.
They have no patch of land where they can take root and settle, so they endlessly drift across the sands. Any land suitable for settling has already been claimed by others, and those people rarely accept outsiders.
Those who are rejected become nomads of the desert. Their groups can range from a few dozen to several hundred.
They are constantly plagued by countless threats.
Beasts, scavengers, and even the desert itself—hostile to human life. That is why they had no choice but to grow strong.
Fighting everything that threatened their survival naturally made them tougher and stronger. As a result, desert nomads possessed combat power comparable to most scavenger groups.
But before the orcs—a race born for battle—it was all meaningless. The entire nomad group was torn apart as if made of paper.
Not a single survivor remained.
From the awakened ones who led and protected the group, to elderly adults, to children who should have been playing freely—every last one lost their life.
“Damn it!”
“Ugh…!”
The horrific scene left Eloi and the others speechless.
“…Haa.”
Zeon let out a heavy sigh and approached the victims.
Up close, the condition of the bodies was even more gruesome.
Large horned hyenas had already devoured much of them, leaving their insides and bones exposed.
The terror they must have felt before dying was etched clearly on their faces.
“…!”
Brielle couldn’t bear to look and turned her head away.
Tears welled up in her eyes.
Zeon gently closed the staring eyes of a corpse and said,
“How tragic. If we had met them just a little earlier, we could’ve sent them to the Steel Fortress.”
If it were the Steel Fortress, it could have easily accepted this number of people. If that had happened, they might not have lost their lives so meaninglessly to the orcs.
Levin approached Zeon.
“Are there a lot of people like this wandering the desert?”
“More than you can imagine.”
“Then why have I never heard of them before?”
“They don’t want to encounter Neo Seoul’s expedition forces or awakened ones.”
“Why?”
“Because they carry deep-rooted hatred and fear.”
“I understand the fear, but why hatred?”
“They see those living in Neo Seoul or the colonies as the chosen… and themselves as the abandoned.”
“Ah…”
With that, everything made sense.
Those who feel abandoned instinctively avoid the eyes of the world.
In the vast desert, the chance of encountering awakened ones from Neo Seoul or other colonies is extremely low. But even if they do cross paths, the nomads spot them first and avoid them.
The eyesight of desert-hardened nomads far surpasses that of most awakened ones.
It rivals even that of griffins or wyverns soaring in the sky.
That’s why awakened ones from Neo Seoul rarely ever encounter nomads.
Naturally, people in the slums wouldn’t even know such nomads existed.
It wasn’t strange that Levin didn’t know. But he was deeply shaken.
He realized just how much he didn’t know about the world.
For someone who had lived believing Neo Seoul was the entirety of the world, traveling with Zeon was revealing its true nature.
A world defined by struggle for survival.
It wasn’t a matter of orcs being evil and humans being good.
Orcs fought to live, and humans struggled to survive as well.
A clash between the two races was inevitable.
It was only natural.
And yet, Levin still hated the orcs—because he belonged to the human world.
“If we leave the orcs alone, they’ll kill even more humans, won’t they?”
“With a Warchief born, they might even set their sights on Neo Seoul.”
“But Neo Seoul has anti-demonic power, right? The orcs should be too afraid to approach.”
“Recently, that power has weakened significantly. If it’s a Warchief, they might be able to break through it and invade Neo Seoul.”
“The anti-demonic power has weakened? Why?”
“I don’t know. But it’s definitely weaker than before.”
“This is insane… That means even the slums are in danger, right?”
“If the orcs invade, they’ll be the first to suffer.”
Neo Seoul left the slums as they were partly to use them as the first line of defense against external enemies.
“This is insane…”
Levin ran his hand through his hair roughly.
His friends and acquaintances lived in the slums.
If the orcs invaded, they wouldn’t be safe.
Zeon spoke,
“For now, we should take care of these bodies. If we leave them, the horned hyenas will return.”
“Yes!”
As Zeon drew upon his power, the sand around them began to ripple.
Like a swamp, it swallowed the bodies of the people and the double-humped camels.
In moments, countless corpses disappeared beneath the sand.
The desert erased all traces of the tragedy.
Closing his eyes, Zeon murmured,
“May you be born somewhere better in the next life…”
Zeon didn’t believe in an afterlife.
He believed this life was the only one, and that rebirth was impossible.
If such things existed, the otherworldly races from Kurayan wouldn’t have struggled so desperately to cross over to Earth.
And yet, he sincerely wished an afterlife did exist.
Otherwise, the lives of those who died like this felt unbearably meaningless.
Just then—
“Hyung! Over there!”
“Orcs.”
Levin and Eloi suddenly pointed in one direction and shouted.
A massive cloud of dust was rising in the distance.
Charging through it were orc riders mounted on blood wolves.
They were the same riders who had massacred the nomads.
For some reason, they were returning to the site of the slaughter.
Hundreds of orc riders and blood wolves charged forward with terrifying momentum.
Their presence alone was enough to make most beasts tuck their tails and flee.
“Snrk! Humans!”
“There are still humans left!”
The orcs spotted Zeon’s group and shouted excitedly.
The blood wolves howled loudly in response.
“Kuoooo!”
“Kwaaang!”
The roar of the blood wolves echoed thunderously across the desert.
“Those bastards…!”
“I won’t forgive them!”
“I’ll kill them.”
Levin, Eloi, and Brielle prepared for battle, their eyes bloodshot with rage. But Zeon stepped in front of them, blocking their path.
“I’ll handle this.”
“Hyung?”
“Just this once… leave it to me.”
The moment Levin heard Zeon’s low, sunken voice, chills ran down his entire body.
He had been with Zeon for a long time, but this was the first time he had ever felt something like this.
“Zeon!”
“…Mm.”
Even Brielle and Eloi fell silent and stepped back.
The Zeon before them was not the one they knew.
His appearance was the same, but his eyes, his presence—everything was different.
So much so that even those who saw him every day felt a sense of dread and fear.
They didn’t dare speak to him anymore and retreated.
Leaving them behind, Zeon walked toward the orcs.
“Snrk! Kill the humans!”
“Let’s eat them!”
The orc riders bared their brutality.
Having grown alongside the Great Warchief Orca, they were warriors capable of taking on a hundred enemies alone.
Their momentum was naturally overwhelming.
But Zeon’s expression didn’t change in the slightest as he looked at them.
With every step he took, grains of sand rose from the ground like clouds.
Before he had even taken ten steps, an enormous amount of sand was floating around him.
Levin, Brielle, and Eloi widened their eyes.
The sand moving with Zeon looked like a pair of massive wings.
At that moment, he no longer looked human—but like a demon king… or a god of destruction.
Whoooong!
At that moment, the wind began to blow.
The sand particles suspended in the air rippled like waves.
“That human is strange.”
“The sand follows him.”
Even the charging orcs sensed something was off. But it was too late to stop.
“Just charge! Humans cannot defeat us!”
The leader of the orc riders shouted and took the lead.
Papapap!
The blood wolves surged forward even more fiercely.
In an instant, the distance between Zeon and the orc riders shrank to just a few dozen meters.
“Kwaaang!”
The blood wolf right in front of Zeon barked ferociously.
Its foul breath and stench were vividly overwhelming.
Just like they had done to the nomads, they lunged to tear Zeon apart.
At that moment, Zeon muttered,
“A painless death… is something you don’t deserve.”
Suddenly, the sand beneath the blood wolves’ feet heaved violently.
Like the stomach of a beast.
As the sand shifted, the blood wolves lost their footing and tumbled awkwardly.
Naturally, the orc riders riding them were thrown off as well.
The fallen orcs scrambled up angrily.
“Snrk! What happened?”
“That human used some strange trick to move the sand!”
The blood wolves shook their heads, still dazed from the impact. The orcs abandoned them and charged forward on foot.
Losing their mounts didn’t dampen the orcs’ fighting spirit.
They were a race born for battle.
But this time, their opponent was different.
Whoooosh!
A sand-laden wind wrapped around them.
Sand poured into their eyes and ears, yet the orcs ignored the pain and pressed forward.
Avoiding pain was something only the weak did.
They were born strong—and their endurance was not so fragile as to yield to this level of suffering.
Trusting in their iron-like bodies, they chose to advance.
But they soon realized how foolish that choice was.
Kukwakwa!
With each step they took, the sandstorm grew twice as fierce.
It was as if a massive wall of wind stood in their way.
The sandstorm turned into blades, gouging into their flesh. Sand burrowed deeper into the hollowed wounds.
Relentlessly, it tore through their skin and muscles, digging further inside.
“Kgh!”
“Snrk! It… it hurts!”
The orcs screamed as their flesh and skin were torn apart.
A race that feels no pain?
Zeon scoffed.
There is no being that cannot feel pain.
Some are simply dull—taking longer to realize it.
For the orcs, true pain was only just beginning.
Shrrrrk!
The sand peeled apart their skin and flesh, grinding away the exposed red muscles.
“Keaaaagh!”
“Spare me!”
The orcs screamed within the raging sandstorm.
But even their voices were swallowed by it.
The storm engulfed them completely, spinning violently.
Kukwakwakwa!
Faced with the overwhelming might of the sandstorm, Brielle and Levin couldn’t say a word.
This is insane… Is this really a human’s power?
Eloi stared wide-eyed at the storm.
It stretched dozens of meters in diameter and rose over a hundred meters high.
It was hard to believe that a human had created such a massive sandstorm.
And yet, they had no choice but to believe it.
Because the one who summoned it—Zeon—was right beside them.
After a while, the sandstorm slowly began to subside.
The sky and the sun, hidden behind the storm, revealed themselves again.
But nowhere could the orcs be seen.
They weren’t buried.
They weren’t hiding.
They had been completely ground down into sand.
Not a shred of flesh, not a single drop of blood remained where they once stood.
Just like that, hundreds of orc riders and blood wolves were completely erased from this world.