Chapter 125 125: Surviving A Nuke

"BEHOLD, YOU INFERIOR CREATURES! MY ULTIMATE POWER!" The dragon loudly and proudly declared under its sinister shell. "WORLD MAGIC LEVEL 6... ATOMIC AGE...!"

The moment the dragon pulled the trigger, one of the biggest explosions on the continent came to pass.

First, an extremely hot and highly luminous dome of pure energy engulfs an area of eight kilometers in radius. It is measured to be at least millions of degrees centigrade but only occurs in less than a millisecond.

The thick and durable trees, large boulders, monsters, and animals—basically anything inside the dome of hell—are effectively reduced to atoms. It penetrates everything, swallowing the matters within it.

If anybody managed to survive that hellish heat, they would eventually die due to the aftereffects of the explosion.

But the spell of the black dragon doesn't end there.

DOOM!

Before the blink of an eye, the dome explodes.

With a very loud, loud sound, a cataclysmic explosion has been detonated in the forest. So deafening and loud that all sounds seem to be losing.

After the scorching fire vaporized the matter inside the dome, a devastating and extremely hot shockwave blasted out and traveled several times faster than sound.

The heavy shockwave burned and sent the trees and monsters flying within a radius of up to sixty kilometers, which excludes the vaporized ones inside the dome. The closer to the center, the more damage occurs.

At the overpressure of the shockwave within a radius of around ten kilometers from the dragon, the fatality rate is 100%. Unnaturally large and durable trees are burned and blown away if they survive.

The destructive shockwave reaches up to a distance of around twenty kilometers. The area that suffered moderate damages, like snapped trees and blown monsters.

The shockwave even reaches up to sixty kilometers from the center of the explosion. The overpressure wasn't as strong and heavy as those areas near ground zero.

But the wind pressure is enough to billow the hair and fur of the ones who are mesmerizingly watching the signature mushroom-shaped flammagenitus cloud that resulted from detonating a hundred megaton nuclear bomb.

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"Are you kidding me?! That dragon became the nuke itself!"

I shouted at the horizon as I was watching an extremely bizarre event. There's a freaking nuclear explosion in this magical world! This is a thing that I didn't expect to exist in this world.

(A gigantic reptilian monster in black that uses nuclear power? What does the dragon really think of itself? A certain kaiju?)

The matter that the dragon has been preparing was actually making a nuclear weapon out of its body. The deployment of the undead was just in time, just like the dragon said.

By the time the preparations were complete, the dragon casually and proudly dropped (not actually dropped) the bomb, which resulted in this dozens of kilometers high mushroom cloud.

It was a good thing that the nuke was detonated in the middle of the forest, far from any civilization and the dungeon. Though it destroyed a portion of the forest, it is still small as a whole.

((What a terrifying power...))

The fox queen on my left, who is currently in her true form, weakly uttered, was frightened, and seemed amazed by the power that is worth beholding. I, too, felt scared by it but fascinated at the same time.

"Absolutely frightening it is."

((The heat of that hell even reached here...))

"This is the thermal radiation of a large thermonuclear explosion, gamma rays to be exact. It can cause ionizations that damage tissues."

((You seem knowledgeable about this.))

Even though we are as far as sixty kilometers from the ground zero of the nuclear explosion, radiation emitted from the nuclear explosion collided with the air molecules and was brought by the blast.

The temperature of the radiation is quite high, causing a third-degree burn on the skin. But we are resistant enough to negate the burns.

"If we hadn't gotten out of the location, our bodies truly couldn't withstand the heat and would have perished and completely disintegrated with no way of survival."

The explosion isn't some kind of ordinary explosion. It was made by magic. Specifically, a World Magic spell—a magic that surpasses all understanding and could cause devastating effects.

Not only would the nuke completely atomize our entire existence, it would also vaporize our souls without leaving a trace to come back, never mind recover and heal.

((If it weren't for you, I would not have been existing in this world anymore.))

"It was really a surprise that we miraculously managed to escape from the explosion."

We are both safe and sound, and it was because of our sheer luck. I consider this a real miracle; I meant it.

But how did we manage to escape our inevitable fate?

...…

...

…

A few minutes ago.

"BEHOLD, YOU INFERIOR CREATURES! MY ULTIMATE POWER! WORLD MAGIC LEVEL 6... ATOMIC AGE...!"

Right before the dragon exploded, I immediately and painstakingly maximized the full potential of the Godspeed unique skill and pushed my body and thinking speed beyond their limits.

Not only did I overdrive the Godspeed, I also maximized the potency and limitlessly widened the coverage of the Space-Time Magic Level 10 Time Delay that I cast beforehand.

My efforts are endlessly sucking up my mana but I don't have a choice but to gamble. It is a do-or-die situation, a now-or-never opportunity.

For all the abilities that I simultaneously activated, I became infinitely fast, and everything went unimaginably slow. It is as if the world itself is freezing.

My mana is depleting at a terrible rate, to the point where my Invincible One cannot keep up with the damages and losses I have inflicted on my body. But a saving voice helped me again in a dire situation.

<Proficiency fulfilled. World Magic spell Level 3 Time Stop has been learned.>

The moment I heard the announcement, everything went black. I mean that literally; my eyes cannot perceive anything but sheer darkness.

Approaching the speed of light, the time slows. As time stopped, the photons, which give everything light, could not reach the eyes. In short, I cannot see a thing as long as I am in a literary timeless world.

But it was no problem act, for me being able to perceive anything within a certain range with my Omnidirectional Perception. If I could not see, I would just have to use my other available senses.

Within the stopped world, I sensed multiple presences in stop motion on my radar. But I am focusing on two particular individuals.

From what I could gather, the black dragon is still in its position and has finished casting its spell. The nuke has been detonated, and the impossibly hot fireball has formed. Fortunately, I did the right timing on time stopping.

I looked around (though I couldn't see a thing) and perceived the gigantic figure of the fox from the distance, surrounded by trees slightly shorter than hers.

As soon as I found her, I immediately got transported to her via Warp. Even though everything seems frozen, I cannot waste time since I am currently using a World Magic spell that is draining my mana.

Once I reached her spot, I deployed a spherical, translucent pale blue barrier that covered a radius of a hundred meters, doming the entire body of the fox queen and myself.

The reason for erecting a barrier? Well, a single use of the Time Stop spell took more than half of my mana, and my mana is continuously decreasing as I prolong the spell.

Before I ran out of gas, I had to put up barricades to protect ourselves from the atomizing explosion. But a simple barrier is impossibly incapable of shielding us from the nuke. That was why I added a secret ingredient to my recipe.

Not soon, my Time Stop has finally come to an end and everything has reverted back to normal. A beat later, my vision instantly returned, and the first thing I saw was all white.

The nuke has been exploded, and we are within the radius of the nuclear fireball. But the barrier was able to prevent a radiation from breaching.

((Mr. Raphael…! What happened…?))

"I will explain it to you later." The fox queen was shocked by the sudden change in her surroundings, but I have to ignore her for now.

The thing that I added to the barrier is the Infinite Barrier subskill of my Ultimate Art ultra skill. I did not allow anything to pass through the barrier, not even sound.

Since it only lasts for ten seconds, we have to get out of here as soon as possible, or else we will be nuked.

With the wave of my hand, an ultramarine magic circle, with a width that covered the giant fox and me, appeared on the ground. The earth wasn't vaporized since it was included in my barrier.

The magic spell that I cast is actually an Area Long Teleportation. I was not sure if my Warp could carry a monster of her size, so I resorted to this one.

Five seconds after the spell has been cast, we were engulfed by its light and disappeared from the scene.

…

...

...…

Present.

That's the story of how we managed to survive a nuke, though I was the one who did all the work.

In the process, I somehow learned a new World Magic spell, but it almost sucked my mana dry. But I have been recovering my mana after we teleported sixty kilometers away.

((Seems like the dragon isn't surrendering.))

"It seems like it."

Minutes after the explosion, the dragon had set off on its new flight toward our new location. Its flight speed is significantly slower than before. The nuke must have taken a great toll on its body.

((How are we able to defeat that kind of monster?))

"I am not sure if it's worth gambling, but I have a plan."

Before the black dragon arrives, I break down my ideas for the fox queen.