I've carefully analyzed the text and identified all character names, places, and special terms from the glossary. Here's the translation:
Have you ever seen a streetlight illuminating a tree-lined road on a summer night with a dark sky overhead?
Or have you ever seen a dead dog, rotting for about three days after being hit by a car?
These two vastly different scenes share one common trait: they both attract swarms of insects. The streetlight draws moths, mosquitoes, and various flying bugs, while the corpse attracts ants, maggots, and other ground-dwelling cleaners.
Whenever I encountered such sights while walking, I'd feel an involuntary tingling sensation all over my body.
But now, I was thinking that was nothing compared to this.
After all, those insects weren't measured in meters.
Bwoooong!!
The holes that Lily had blocked were breached.
Simultaneously, the insects that had been piling up behind them began pouring in chaotically.
It took only minutes for them to fill every corner of the Audience Chamber. Poisonous insects flew through the air, while insect monsters as tall as humans roamed freely on the ground.
Amidst this chaos, bad news arrived.
"Cough...!"
Adel had been poisoned.
Bright red blood flowed from her mouth. Lily, startled, stopped her incantation and asked Yulice for purification.
Hearing this, Yulice, who had been burning insects with holy power, hurriedly examined Adel's condition.
"This doesn't look good... Purification will take at least two minutes!"
"What? Two whole minutes?"
Two minutes. Normally, it would pass in the blink of an eye.
But during battle, two minutes felt longer than eternity.
With this major loss of fighting power, Camilla spoke to me again.
"Hero, we can't hold them back anymore!"
"...Let's move to a corner. We don't need to worry about the monsters coming in anymore, so let's focus on protecting our party members first."
I said, swallowing hard.
There was no choice. With the situation so urgent, something had to be sacrificed.
Moving to a corner would at least prevent us from being surrounded by insects. However, not being able to stop the monsters meant my burden would double. I continued:
"No matter what happens, don't let any monsters get near Lily and Yulice. So they can concentrate."
I still had something to believe in.
Lily's magic. With her powerful single-target attacks, she could definitely land effective hits on the Insect King.
Add Yulice's buffs to that, and delivering a finishing blow wasn't impossible.
So what needed to be done was simple.
Camilla would protect Lily as much as possible, and I would wear down the enemy so she could deliver the final blow.
That's when it happened.
Thwack!
"Ugh...!"
Suddenly, a heavy impact struck my side.
Turning my head, I saw a rhinoceros beetle as tall as me ramming into my flank.
"Son of a..."
Slash!
I swung my Holy Sword to cut it down, then briefly checked my side.
Fortunately, no bones were broken, but the pain made movement difficult.
Of course, it would heal quickly thanks to "Regeneration," but... every second was precious right now.
I looked ahead again.
Insects and monsters had completely surrounded me.
The Insect King was hiding among them, gasping for breath.
He wasn't in good shape either.
Though his insect army had arrived as he wanted, the king himself had already been pushed to the brink of death.
I charged at him again, determined to deliver certain death.
Bwoooong!
A swarm of insects filled my vision.
They were desperately trying to hinder me.
Stingers, pincers, teeth—attacks from countless appendages came rushing toward me.
Thud, crack, crunch!
I dodged what I could and took hits where necessary.
There was no time to worry about each individual attack.
Faster, more precise.
Somehow, I had to find an opening in his defense.
During this process, I seemed to gain a realization.
No matter how many gather together, there are always "seams" in their formation.
Just as sand grains clumped together don't make a solid wall.
If you keep pushing through the gaps, eventually you'll reach the core. My job was simply to find those gaps better.
"Aaaaargh!!"
[Congratulations!]
[The level of 'Multicasting' has increased!]
With the system's alert ringing in my ears, my field of vision expanded. My skill "Heavenly Martial Body" was working hard even in this situation.
The movements of insects attacking me, monsters sacrificing themselves to protect their king—
Their movements became even clearer to me.
Then I noticed a spot where their formation was particularly weak. As expected of bug bastards, even their gathering was stupid.
As if guided, I swung my sword toward that spot.
And then.
Slash!
"Gahk!"
My sword connected.
The Holy Sword, swung diagonally, cut off one of his thin legs.
Whoosh.
Through the gap between the noisily flying insects, I could see his left leg spinning through the air.
I inwardly rejoiced.
'Got it.'
I'd taken away his mobility.
Now he wouldn't be able to dodge nimbly like before.
And taking away mobility meant it would be much easier to land a heavy blow.
"Move aside."
After struggling for quite some time, a voice echoed from behind.
A calm voice that hadn't raised its volume. Yet it was clearly audible even in this chaotic situation.
Glancing back, I saw Lily emanating blue magical energy. Above her head burned a small fireball as red as her hair.
Despite its brightness, the fireball was only the size of a millet grain.
But I wasn't worried.
Though she could freely use the four elements, her foundation ultimately lay in fire magic.
Its precision and completeness were incomparable to other magics.
"I command all things in heaven and earth, burn yourself now and reduce everything to ashes."
Then she threw the fireball at the Insect King.
The slowly flying fireball naturally settled on the severely injured Valkan.
And it set the world ablaze.
"Aaaaargh!!"
Whoosh!
It took less than a second for the millet-sized fireball to engulf him.
One of Lily's high-level skills.
"Mana Burn."
Everything in the world contains mana.
If one could use their own mana to influence the surrounding mana, wouldn't it be possible to cast magic beyond one's capacity?
This was a magic developed from such an idea.
The fire-attribute magical energy soon spread to the world, burning everything around.
Since it used not only her own magical energy but also the mana spread throughout heaven and earth, its power was beyond imagination.
Aaaagh...
For a while, the Insect King's screams echoed from within the flames.
I lowered my sword and let out a deep sigh.
*
...It's over.
That thought naturally came to mind.
As far as Luke knew, few creatures could survive such flames. Even if something did survive, further combat would be impossible.
After all, he had already used "Molt," his final survival skill.
Luke could afford to relax a little.
Camilla and Adel sighed in relief as they watched the insects suddenly stop moving. Even though they had been fighting a limited number of monsters from a corner, they were reaching their limits.
They stared blankly at the Insect King burning in the flames.
Lily felt proud of her final strike.
It was a blow created by pouring all her techniques and magical energy into it for about five minutes. With no proper defense against it, few could survive this technique.
She was confident in their victory.
And Yulice inwardly rejoiced.
'We did it.'
Finally, at last.
'We did it!'
They could escape from this wretched place.
They had defeated the Insect King who had been so terrifying and frightening.
"We did it. We really did it...!"
She had always disliked insects. That hadn't changed even with her past memories. Adapting to something and disliking it were separate matters.
No, rather because of her life over the past two months, as well as her past memories.
Because she had personally experienced the Insect King's power.
This victory couldn't have been more joyful.
Everything was much better than her previous life.
Unlike last time when they were breached immediately, this time they had held off the insects for a full 15 minutes, steadily wearing down the Insect King during that time.
They had overcome all the skills he had shown in her previous life, and the Hero had been able to conserve his lifespan.
Of course, there had been crises along the way...
But from her perspective, it was a perfect victory.
It had been difficult, but they had won.
There had been hardships, but they had overcome them.
The Hero and his party members were each savoring their thoughts, intoxicated by their early victory.
However.
There was one fact they overlooked.
Despair quietly blooms when hope shines most brilliantly.
"...I have been defeated."
The Insect King was a genius.
A prodigy who had created and mastered his own unique magic, "Insect Arts," from a young age.
No one ever underestimated his skills.
But at the same time, he could be called ordinary.
Though overflowing with talent, compared to the other Four Heavenly Kings who were extraordinary from birth, his origin was ultimately that of a mere mortal.
Compared to dragons that soared through the sky, monsters born with special abilities, and giants that could tear the earth apart, he was just an ordinary mage.
For such a person to later ascend to the position of one of the Four Heavenly Kings must have required tremendous effort.
He studied dark magic.
He created creatures like the One-Eyed Big-Eye Bug and the Dimensional Thorn Bug.
He compensated for his lack of physical strength by summoning insects all day long, and when his lifespan became insufficient, he even sacrificed his body to become a lich.
After honing his "Insect Arts" to the extreme, it had risen to the realm of Authority.
Insect King.
One who used the most insignificant beings to earn the title of "King." A monster who started from the very bottom and achieved a position among the calamities through his abilities alone.
"...But I cannot die like this."
His stubbornness and tenacity were closer to that of a madman.
"I cannot betray the expectations given to me by that person. Even if I must burn my entire life away, you shall never pass through this place."
At that moment.
Whoosh!
A magic circle appeared on the floor.
A massive magic circle that filled the entire spacious Audience Chamber.
"What?!"
"W-wait. What is this!"
"I sense an evil energy."
The party members began to panic at the ominous purple light filling the room. The Saintess was no exception.
'W-what is this?'
It was a scene she had never witnessed in her previous life. This meant it was the Insect King's first casting of this spell.
An enormous amount of magical energy, incomparable to anything before, rose above the magic circle.
The Saintess looked toward the Hero with confused eyes, hoping he might know something.
The face of the Hero, Luke, that she saw was:
"...Fuck."
Filled with bewilderment.
"You've got to be kidding me..."
Anger, disbelief, futility—various emotions flashed in his eyes. He stared at the magic circle for a long time, as if rooted to the spot.
Then, in a voice too quiet for anyone to hear, he muttered:
"Why is Gu Poison summoning appearing on the first boss..."
At that moment, all the insects and monsters in the Audience Chamber were sucked into the summoning circle. No, not just those in the Audience Chamber, but all insects in Chunghoe Castle.
"Ancient transcendent being, worst of all lifeforms. I release the seal placed upon you and call you forth.
I will give you what you desire. I will let you eat to your heart's content.
If that is not enough, I can offer half of my body.
I will bring all the delicacies of the world before you.
So manifest yourself here and now."
Not only that, but even parts of the Insect King's burned body.
He was now offering everything he had built up to summon the Gu Poison.
After greedily consuming for a while, the summoning circle called "something" to this place.
Crash!
The Audience Chamber collapsed.
The chamber, large enough to contain several sports fields, crumbled in an instant.
Stone blocks fell from the ceiling, and the closed sky was breached.
Outside, it was night. The dreamy moonlight briefly shone upon us, but soon "something" covered the sky again, making it oppressive.
Screech!
It was a gigantic worm.
A worm of unfathomable size, likely several kilometers long. Luke froze momentarily at the overwhelming entity that filled the night sky.
He knew very well what it was.
The third of the three Gu Poisons sealed in the world.
Energy-Devouring Hungry Ghost.
Its endless gluttony would one day devour the world.
Fused with the creature, the Insect King's upper body floated above the ghost's head and muttered:
"Today, I have been defeated here. But there will be no victors either."
[WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!]
[Fate Enforced!]
Bright red windows flashed frantically on Luke's retinas as he stood in a daze.