Debuff Master - Chapter 1220
Chapter 1220
The sky over the Espadrille Province was clear.
Not a single cloud was in sight, and the full moon brightly hung overhead, illuminating everything.
However, a grim shadow was suddenly cast upon the ground, and the whole area was swallowed by pitch-black darkness even under such a radiant moon.
Billions—no, tens of billions of locusts swarmed in the skies, forming a massive blanket that blotted everything out. In fact, there were so many of them that they had completely covered the night sky, not allowing even a sliver of moonlight to touch the ground.
“W-What the hell is this insanity…?” Siegfried muttered, staring agape at the swarm.
He was so shaken by the sheer immensity of the swarm that he staggered backward.
The sight of tens of billions of locusts swarming in the sky was not a sight most would ever get to witness in their entire lives. While some were unfortunate enough to witness a swarm of locusts, none of them would have seen a swarm at this scale.
The swarm of locusts rolling in like a tidal wave was truly something straight out of a horror movie.
Whiiiing! Whiiiiing!
With so many wings beating at high speeds all at once, the noise thundered so loudly that it made Siegfried’s ears ring.
“C-Can you even beat that, owner punk?! Kyuuu!” Hamchi shrieked frantically.
“…How the hell do you want me to beat that?” Siegfried replied, his voice void of any hope.
A locust was nothing more than a mere insect to someone like Siegfried.
He was someone who had reached the realm of Grandmaster, so he could squash dozens of them with just his aura, without needing to move even a single muscle.
However, it was a different story when facing this many locusts.
It was not that the swarm of locusts could actually hurt him. Even if hundreds of trillions of locusts threw themselves at him, he could withstand it without batting an eye, as no single locust could deal even a fraction of damage to him.
But winning? That was an entirely different matter.
He could kill, kill, and kill all day, but he wouldn’t even put a dent in their numbers.
‘What do I do?’
Siegfried weighed his options.
He considered unleashing Green Hell Magno and flooding the area with radioactive energy, but he decided against it.
Why?
It was all because that would be tantamount to suicide.
The Espadrille Province was the breadbasket of the Proatine Empire.
If he used Green Hell Magno here, the crops painstakingly cultivated by his people would be poisoned by the radioactive energy and be rendered inedible. A famine would sweep through the Proatine Empire, and people would starve to death in droves.
It was the same for his other area of effect skills, like Infernal Hellscape and Frozen Hell, as they would burn or freeze the farmland along with the locusts.
No matter how strong Siegfried was, it was impossible to protect both the crops and annihilate the swarm. He considered using Wave of Annihilation, but wiping out a swarm this large was not something it could do.
Locusts were infamous for their great numbers—even in the real world—that their corpses would pile up on the ground until the ground itself was covered by layers of them.
In other words…
‘I have to find the source.’
Siegfried spread his wings wide and shot into the sky, tearing through the endless swarm of locusts.
He had to find the root of this disaster.
The fact that locusts were rampaging now, on the verge of summer, rather than autumn, was insane.
‘The boss monster that escaped from the Ancient Dungeon must be behind this. There’s no other logical explanation. I need to find it, fast,’ Siegfried thought.
If he could hunt down the boss monster, then the swarm of locusts could vanish along with it. He flew at near the speed of light and scanned his surroundings for any sign of the boss monster.
There was no time, and he needed to find the boss monster fast.
The locusts were already devouring the fields, gnawing everything in sight with insatiable hunger.
It was only a matter of time before the plains were stripped bare.
Unless he found and killed the boss monster, the farmlands of the Espadrille Province would be destroyed.
‘Where are you? Show yourself…’
Siegfried activated Inzaghi’s Clairvoyance and scanned the entire area.
He was ready to shoot like a bolt of lightning straight at the boss monster the moment it appeared on his mini-map.
Twenty minutes later…
‘Over there!’
A red dot appeared on the mini-map, roughly ten kilometers away from Siegfried’s current location.
[Agnes of Hunger]
Siegfried angled his wings and zipped through the air without wasting a single second.
***
Agnes of Hunger had the shape of a human being, but its head and body were those of an insect.
A grotesque hybrid monster.
“My stomach… is empty… I hunger… I hunger…”
From its body oozed a putrid green slime, and endless locusts poured out from the cracks in its skin.
Agnes of Hunger was a walking hive, spawning endless locusts.
‘That’s disgusting as hell…’ Siegfried grumbled inwardly, his face contorted in revulsion. Then, he landed in front of the boss monster and said, “Hey, stop this shit already.”
Agnes turned its dragonfly-like eyes at him and asked, “Who… are you?”
“You should’ve just stayed in your dungeon. Who’s gonna take responsibility if you ruin an entire year’s harvest?”
“I only seek to feed… to fill this hunger… to end the gnawing emptiness inside me…”
“Then just go die, you bastard.”
“…?”
“You won’t need to eat if you’re dead, no? Why live and make everyone else suffer?”
“What logic is this… to say one must die… because they’re hungry…?”
“Shut up and die already.”
Siegfried struck like a bolt of lightning with his +10 Sky Piercer.
He didn’t use Seven Steps to Invincibility this time.
Why?
It was all because multiple Ancient Dungeons were rampaging all at once, and he couldn’t blow that trump card on just one boss.
Even if Agnes went down, two more still remained, meaning he had to keep his ultimate weapon for when it was really needed.
Instead, Siegfried leaned on what had always been his foundation, his specialty, and his bread and butter—debuffs.
He used Discharge to amplify the effects of Karma Flare, stripping away the boss monster’s defenses.
Then, he unleashed the full wrath of Invincible Spear Art upon it.
And it was the right call…
“Kieeeeek!”
Agnes shrieked as Siegfried’s storm of strikes tore through its body, reducing it to a torn rag in mere seconds.
Even though Agnes possessed immense HP, as befitting of a boss monster, the +10 Sky Piercer had the special effect that gave it a small chance to erase thirty percent of the enemy’s HP on hit.
The chance was low, but Siegfried’s incredibly high Attack Speed made up for it.
As a result—
[Agnes of Hunger]
[HP: ■■■■■□□□□□]
The boss monster had half of its HP bar wiped out in the blink of an eye.
Even for a boss monster of an Ancient Dungeon, Agnes’ HP was nothing against Siegfried.
“Y-You are… strong! Stronger than I thought! Kieeek! I’ll be back! I’ll satisfy my hunger and then I’ll have my revenge!” Agnes shrieked.
Quickly realizing it was no match against Siegfried, the boss monster turned to flee. Agnes of Hunger’s mechanic was quite simple. It would grow stronger the more its locusts devoured crops.
However, it had only just crawled out of the dungeon and had yet to eat enough food, which meant that it was simply too weak to face someone like Siegfried.
“Just you wait!” Agnes bellowed. Then, it commanded the swarm of locusts to block Siegfried’s path before unfurling its wings and darting into the distance. It planned to ravage another region’s farmland, grow stronger, and then return to crush Siegfried.
Well, that was the plan, at least.
“Going somewhere?”
Siegfried bypassed the swarm of locusts using teleportation, and he appeared right in front of the fleeing boss monster.
Then, he cast World of Despair, dragging the boss monster into the domain solely ruled by the Invincible Emperor—a place where there was no escape.
***
Whoosh!
Agnes of Hunger fled desperately from Siegfried, but it suddenly realized that something was wrong.
No matter how far it flew, the scenery did not seem to change.
Instead, the endless void continued to stretch out, just like the abyss of the depths of nothingness.
“W-What… is… happening?” Agnes muttered.
It was then.
Whoosh!
Siegfried suddenly appeared in front of the boss monster, blocking its path.
“Where are you rushing off to? Got another date?” he sneered with a grin. Then, he gripped his +10 Sky Piercer and said, “Let’s not drag this out. The faster we end this, the better it’ll be for both of us.”
Even now, the locusts were devouring the crops, leaving devastation in their wake.
Siegfried couldn’t afford to waste time, as the crops were not just mere food. The Proatine Empire’s farmers devoted their blood, sweat, and tears to nurturing these crops since early spring, so he was not going to stand by while locusts feasted on that hard work.
With that thought in mind, he unleashed a barrage of attacks at the boss monster while layering debuff after debuff on it.
“K-Kieeeek!” Agnes shrieked in agony.
The boss monster couldn’t even mount a single proper counterattack.
As much as the boss monster might seem like a pushover, Siegfried would have struggled against it later if it had managed to flee far away from the dungeon and slowly grew stronger while biding its time.
Unfortunately, the boss monster had been drunk on its newfound freedom and revealed itself too soon.
And now, it would pay the price for its recklessness with its life.
Woooong!
The Touch of Death gathered at the spear tip of the +10 Sky Piercer.
Shwiiiik! Puuuk!
And Siegfried drove it straight into Agnes’ chest.
“…!”
Its dragonfly-like eyes widened with shock.
Then, its body began to break down bit by bit until it scattered into the air.
At the same time, the World of Despair receded.
Just as Siegfried had expected, the locust swarm was nowhere to be seen after the boss monster had been defeated.
[Alert: You have killed Agnes of Hunger!]
[Alert: You have obtained experience points!]
It was not quite enough for him to level up, but the reward was still nearly a full level’s worth of experience points.
All he needed was a sliver of experience points to level up, which was not bad at all.
Just then…
Thud!
Something that resembled a jar dropped where Agnes of Hunger had vanished.
‘What’s this?’
Siegfried flashed his Rune of Insight at the jar.
[Jar of Calamity: Locust Swarm]
[A jar containing ten trillion locusts.]
[Once opened, the locusts will pour forth, consuming and destroying everything along their path.]
[Type: Jar]
[Rating: Mythic]
[Durability: 1/1]
[Note: This is a single-use item. Once opened, the jar will break and cannot be used again.]
“Huh? I can do the same thing?” Siegfried blinked and muttered.
It did not matter whether it was a one-time use item or not, as the utility it provided was nothing short of insane.
What would happen if he opened this Jar of Calamity: Locust Swarm over the Marchioni Empire’s farmlands?
Ten trillion locusts would burst forth, reducing the empire’s breadbasket into a wasteland in the blink of an eye.
‘Jackpot,’ Siegfried grinned, already imagining the chaos brought about by food shortages in the Marchioni Empire.
[Alert: You have obtained Jar of Calamity: Locust Swarm!]
He didn’t linger on that thought longer than he ought to. He stashed the jar away in his inventory and immediately went to the nearest warp gate.
After all, this was only one of the three boss monsters that had escaped from the Ancient Dungeons, which meant two more remained. Rest was a luxury he could not afford, as even a single one of the boss monsters was capable of unleashing catastrophic disasters upon his empire.
