Dragon Raja: Lu Mingfei Returns from the Elden Ring

Both were equally thin and pale, looking as if they had been dug out of an ancient tomb.

"Class of 08, Alchemy and Mechanical Engineering, Chu Zihang."

"Class of 07, Caesar Gattuso."

"Lu Mingfei".

Each of their introductions was brief, yet Gao Mi and Wan Boqian recognized them without needing introductions. For nearly a year, these three names had practically dominated the trending topics on the Night Watchers discussion forum.

"Regarding the dealers and Texas Hold'em," Chu Zihang said, "we need to understand it in detail."

Gao Mi couldn't help but feel a sense of relief, which would reduce his bet in the next round. It didn't matter now; the best trio of A-level, Super A-level, and S-level students from Kassel College were right in front of him. Such a combination was definitely not there for rescue, but to take over the battlefield.

He grasped Wan Boqian's hand and described the rules of the Nibelungenli to the group in detail.

Leave

My elderly relative has been hospitalized with cardiovascular issues. They are currently receiving medication and under observation, and surgery may be necessary later.

I'm going to the hospital to check on things, so I'll be taking a break from updating tomorrow.

Including the previous missed updates, I will make up for them all later.

Chapter 125 Attack

"In theory, as long as we have enough people, there will definitely be some who can get out."

After listening to Gao Mi's account, Chu Zihang realized this.

“We’ll coordinate while we play cards, and send someone out to deliver a message,” Caesar said. “Lu Mingfei has already verified this method of bringing in the Nibelungs, and the Executive Department can send in more people and equipment.”

Gao Mi and Wan Boqian remained silent for a moment, but Zhao Menghua, who had been listening to the "Kassel people" talking from the sidelines, spoke up, "Chen Wenwen also got in through that method, she can inform you..."

"No," Chu Zihang rejected. "The people who go out must be good at math, otherwise even if we cooperate, we won't be able to succeed."

Zhao Menghua's face fell. Chen Wenwen and he both studied humanities.

"Which of you two is better at math?" Caesar asked, looking at Gao Mi and Wan Boqian.

Gao Mi looked at Wan Boqian, but Wan Boqian suddenly twisted him hard and then said indifferently, "His math score was second in the whole school that year."

Gao Mi nodded, "Moreover, I've already discovered the pattern of this game in the last few times. The dealer never folds voluntarily, and everyone else will follow suit. As long as none of us fold, the dealer will only keep losing money."

“Very good,” Chu Zihang said.

Inside the carriage were some worn-out, faded seats with peeling paint. The group split into three groups: Lu Mingfei's trio sat in the center, Gao Mi and Wan Boqian opposite them, and Chen Wenwen and Zhao Menghua near the connecting area between the carriages. Having reached an agreement, everyone relaxed somewhat, waiting for the next game to begin.

Only Lu Mingfei remained silent with his eyes closed.

"You're still hesitating at a time like this? What are you thinking?" Wan Boqian scolded Gao Mi in a low voice, "This is a plan devised by the most elite team in the academy, and you're still acting like a chauvinist, wanting me to go out in your place..."

Gao Mi looked aggrieved. He didn't understand why Wan Boqian was so angry. For a moment, he did want to send Wan Boqian out first, but it was just a subconscious thought and didn't disrupt the overall situation. He couldn't help but sigh at how unpredictable women's hearts were, recalling a lecture on female psychology he had watched a few days ago, and then a thought struck him.

"Boqian... let's get engaged after we get out of here," Gao Mi said softly, pressing Wan Boqian's withered hand.

"Huh?" Wan Boqian was taken aback by his sudden change of topic. She withdrew her hand, crossed her arms, and pondered, "I think..."

"I've broken off contact with her and won't bother her anymore." Gao Mi lowered her voice to a whisper, almost like a mosquito buzzing in Wan Boqian's ear.

Only Caesar's expression changed, and then he pretended not to hear and whistled.

Gao Mi blushed, thinking to herself, "You heard it, so you heard it. There's no need to whistle to show your innocence."

"Really?" Wan Boqian asked.

"Of course." Gao Mi was secretly delighted.

At this moment, Zhao Menghua raised his hand. He had only heard Gao Mi proposing a second ago, and Wan Boqian hesitantly agreeing the next second... on the eve of a life-or-death situation at the poker table?

"Brother Gao Mi, you can't propose at this time," he said weakly.

As an ordinary person without dragon blood, he had spent so much time in this hellish place that his physique was now very similar to Smeguru from "The Lord of the Rings," corrupted by the One Ring and wandering the Misty Mountains for 400 years. His mental state was extremely fragile. Any possibility that could prevent him from escaping this misery, even something as absurd as idealism, would deeply unsettle him.

"That's a flag... Couples who say things like that usually end up with a sacrifice scene." Zhao Menghua shrank back when he saw the golden light in Gao Mi's eyes. "I was just saying..."

Gao Mi's golden eyes flashed, not from anger, but from fear. At the same time, golden light also shone in Caesar and Wan Boqian's eyes. They tensed up and quietly gripped their weapons.

Outside the window and inside the front and rear carriages, many dark figures appeared without anyone noticing.

"Chen Wenwen, were you staying at that station without moving? This is the first subway train you saw, right?" Lu Mingfei suddenly opened his eyes and asked softly.

“That’s right.” Chen Wenwen nodded, her hand trembling slightly as she held Zhao Menghua’s. Zhao Menghua’s trembling was even more pronounced than hers. If this were a battlefield of dragons, the two of them would be the only innocent rabbits.

“I came with Chen Wenwen, and this was the first train I took,” Lu Mingfei said casually.

"We're going in circles!" Flames erupted from Chu Zihang's blade.

The train sped past a station, the same one where the group had previously tested their cell phone signal. The platform lights instantly illuminated all the carriages, and a dense mass of dark figures flashed across the scene, each with nine heads and draped in dark brown linen. A white light swept over the skulls wearing silver masks, then quickly vanished.

After mentally estimating the quantity of those items, Caesar drew his hunting knife.

Suddenly, the partition doors of the carriages were covered with dense, sharp spikes. These spikes moved slowly across the partition doors, shredding them like paper. Once the doors were broken open, the true forms of the monsters were revealed.

The animal skeletons, gleaming with a beautiful bronze luster, were huddled together, resembling both birds and membranous reptiles. Their wingtips were tipped with sharp claws, each claw having five fingers like a human hand, and nails as sharp as the thin blade of a razor. Everywhere one looked were withered facial bones, and every pair of eyes gleamed with a hungry gold.

“It’s a sickle weasel,” Caesar said in a low voice. “‘The ghost birds in the capital cried day and night for more than a month. Their cries were very mournful. They gathered and cried at the Observatory, which was even more strange.’ This is the strange phenomenon recorded in ancient Chinese books before the Wanggongchang explosion. The so-called ghost birds refer to this creature.”

Chu Zihang stepped forward and swung his sword. Murasame drew a blazing arc of fire in the air, and many black shadows that were barely visible to the naked eye crashed into the blade and then turned into ashes and fell to the ground.

He had also read the research on the Wanggongchang explosion in the college journal and knew that only the Dragon King's catastrophic words could cause such destruction in the pre-industrial era.

"So the Dragon King is unleashing some kind of catastrophic incantation?"

“They should be assassins, not frightened birds driven away by the power of words.” After failing to expel these strange birds with his mental domain, Lu Mingfei realized that someone was opposing him. “Good news, the enemy is trying to stop us.”

The emaciated Gao Mi and Wan Boqian were incapable of fighting, so they pulled Zhao Menghua and Chen Wenwen to huddle under the seats. These birds attacked in the dark, their claws as sharp as blades. Huddling down would reduce the area they were attacked from and minimize the burden on Lu Mingfei and the other two.

Caesar brandished Dictator, unleashing the Word of Power: Kamaitachi with all his might. Every whisper of wind in the darkness was crystal clear to him, and he could hit his target even with his eyes covered.

Chu Zihang and he each guarded a door in one direction.

Chapter 126 Ambush

In Caesar's perception, the chaotic sounds of the wind gathered together, and the dense swarm of weasels resembled a massive bee colony, while the female weasels standing silently in the distance were eerily quiet.

Kamaitachi are almost exclusively male. Female Kamaitachi differ in appearance from males, possessing nine cervical vertebrae and nine skulls, and are quite large. Similar to the relationship between a queen ant and worker ants, only one in tens of thousands of Kamaitachi is female.

The dense black shadows that everyone initially saw were all female sickle weasels. They stood at a distance and did not attack together with the male sickle weasels, which was unsettling.

Caesar and Chu Zihang were unable to stop all the Kamaitachi; Lu Mingfei dealt with the Kamaitachi that had wandered into the carriage.

In the darkness, Caesar heard it clearly.

Lu Mingfei swung his longsword, and the weasels couldn't react at all to the almost invisible slash in the air. It looked as if they had deliberately run into the blade, then broke into pieces with a slight cracking sound, turning into dry bones and ashes that fell to the ground.

Centered on Lu Mingfei, a domain measured by the tusks of a hunting dog vaguely appeared amidst the overwhelming swarm of weasels.

Caesar was puzzled. Chu Zihang had already confirmed that flames were effective against the Kamaitachi. He didn't understand why Lu Mingfei didn't use that kind of flame power. Was there a price to pay for using that power?

He had spent some time in the Gattuso family's ancient scroll display room and knew that there was something called "conceptual weaponry," which was almost equivalent to a second incantation, summoning something destructive at the cost of one's life force. However, that thing belonged to the category of "powers," and he had never heard of any hybrid being able to master it.

Soon, the female weasels began to act. Their skeletons were much harder than the males', and their claws were sharper. But their first attack was actually a sonic attack. All the weasels screamed along with their queen, creating an explosion of ultrasonic waves.

Everyone felt a wave of dizziness, and the decline in their mental state immediately translated into physical injuries. The wounds inflicted by the weasels' sharp claws were extremely minor, feeling merely like an itch. Caesar was the most severely affected; several wounds appeared on his body in an instant, and the smell of blood further aggravated the weasels around him.

He endured the pain and withdrew the last "Kamaitachi." This situation was clearly unsuitable for maintaining the Word of Power, but the information brought back by the last "Kamaitachi" sent chills down his spine. When the sonic attack came, there were slight footsteps moving on the top of the carriage, directly above Lu Mingfei.

"Up there!" he roared, turning around to pounce on Lu Mingfei.

It was too late. The top of the carriage burst open with a crash, and a bloated figure plummeted down. It was a Deadpool dressed in full armor, and it even knew how to use a weapon—a heavy iron hammer.

The black, rusted iron hammer, accompanied by a fierce gust of wind, smashed towards the back of Lu Mingfei's head.

All of this happened in the blink of an eye; Caesar didn't even have time to fire his gun.

But Lu Mingfei seemed oblivious to the strangeness behind him. He made a bizarre movement, raising his long sword and slashing down into the air.

Chu Zihang's hair stood on end, and all his muscles tensed up. He subconsciously remained still. His keen intuition after activating Blood Explosion told him that something destructive was brushing past him. The sense of threat was even more terrifying than the assassin he had encountered in the East Suburb Park.

From Caesar's perspective, it can be seen clearly.

Where Lu Mingfei struck, red-hot cracks spread along the metal body, and the roaring steel behemoth crumbled at a visible speed.

The carriages carrying the female Kamaitachi collapsed along the central axis in an instant. The broken wreckage, which derailed, collided with each other with enormous inertia, like a series of thunderclaps echoing in the tunnel.

In an instant, all the carriages behind detached from the one in front, tumbling at the end of the tunnel, bursting into blinding flames. Chu Zihang stood on the edge of the only remaining intact ground, one step forward and he was facing the bogies that exposed the spring damping devices and transmission mechanisms. His strike had somehow avoided the lower structure of these carriages.

The hammer-wielding Death Servant was cleaved in two at the waist, and Lu Mingfei had unleashed a second strike without anyone noticing.

While Caesar was still in a daze, Lu Mingfei suddenly raised his knife and slashed at him horizontally. He immediately understood and ducked down.

The blade of wind grazed his head and spine, and he felt the same sensation that Chu Zihang had when his hair stood on end. For a moment, everything went white before his eyes, and he felt as if his body was floating lightly in the void.

Behind him, a huge female Kamaitachi was cleaved in two.

The vehicle came to an abrupt stop, its wheels screeching against the rails, sparks flying, before finally coming to a halt at a dark platform.

Lu Mingfei swung his sword again, this time using the power that Caesar had guessed was "conceptual weaponry".

Blood Curse Slash.

The blazing sword light, like twisted lightning, streaked through the other carriage, piercing through one dark shadow after another before exploding with a deafening roar. The explosion was incredibly dazzling, engulfing all the remaining male and female Kamaitachi.

"You guys wait here, I'm going after them." After leaving those words, Lu Mingfei jumped off the tracks and sprinted towards the back of the tunnel, leaving only a series of afterimages.

Caesar and Chu Zihang looked at each other in dismay. They went to examine the carriages that had exploded and saw that the force of the explosions had completely twisted and heated the various components of the steel carriages.

“Holy shit!” Caesar whispered.

This phrase is equivalent to "Holy crap" in English, a vulgar expression that doesn't fit the image of a refined young man, but only such words can express his feelings.

"It doesn't seem like Junyan; it should be a Word of Power located at serial number 89 or even 101 or later," Chu Zihang, a seasoned "flame enthusiast," offered his assessment.

“The bad news is we’re now stuck with some kind of dragon-slaying weapon from Angers.” Caesar pulled out his last cigar, pressed it against the red-hot ruins, and lit it. “The good news is he’s on our side.”

Now, he had no interest in comparing himself to Lu Mingfei, and even the slight sour feeling he had after learning about the "super hybrid" had vanished. Why compare himself to such an existence? Hybrids should just stay in the hybrid race.

Chu Zihang checked on Gao Mi and the other three. They had been huddled in a corner and had lost consciousness in the final series of explosions. The three trapped individuals were already in low spirits, while Chen Wenwen was simply a delicate and frail woman.

The two men worked together to lift the unconscious person out of the carriage and lay him flat on the concrete platform.

"There are bleeding wounds left by the weasel, but the vital signs are normal." Chu Zihang checked them one by one.