Show Me Your Stats!-Chapter 117

"Gasp, gasp..."

The final Ayra, her stomach pierced by Janus, panted heavily. Gripping her collar with trembling hands, she looked up at him with a face drained of all color. Her lips moved, as if to call his name—“Janus”—but before the sound could come out, her breath stopped and her head slumped forward. As Janus withdrew his arm, feeling the warmth slowly fading, the body thudded to the ground.

He stared down with indifferent eyes at the corpse, whose temperature and breath felt uncannily real.

‘The fact that the illusion’s still holding means I haven’t killed them all.’

As he began to walk again, the chains wrapped around his body clinked with a harsh rattle. Somewhere in this burning village, the real Ayra had to be hiding. Janus inhaled deeply, but all he smelled was the acrid smoke and the thick stench of blood. Only then did he recall—Ayra had taken Honghwa earlier.

He halted and let out a quiet giggle. It wasn’t cheerful—it was the kind of laughter that would send chills down the spine of anyone who heard it. His lips curved in a smooth arc, but the blood-red sheen of his eyes held not a shred of mirth.

"Ayra, where are you... hiding?"

His languid, relaxed voice was lined with a razor-sharp edge. Clenching and releasing the hand caked in drying blood, he murmured her name again.

"Are you scared? If you come out now, I won’t kill you."

With the chain dragging noisily behind him, Janus prowled through the village. Though blood still gushed from the harpoons impaling his body, the searing excitement in his head made it feel like his skull was on fire. Even though they were illusions, the fact that they looked and smelled exactly like Ayra made each kill send a shiver down his spine. A feeling he’d never experienced when killing a human.

Was that a good thing? Was this a pleasant feeling?

Exhaling long and slow, Janus let out a grinding noise between his grinning lips as his molars clicked together.

"It’s all thanks to you. I’ve never felt this good before. I want to return the favor somehow."

It felt so good it was driving him mad... A sinister gleam flickered in his eyes. The color of his irises gradually dimmed, the borders warping as blood-red streaks spread into the whites like smudged stains.

‘What should I do when I catch her?’

Janus roamed the village again. He wandered for a long time, but no more harpoons flew, and not even a single fake Ayra appeared.

‘When I catch her...’

He stopped, tilting his head slowly from side to side. His expression was blank, and there was no white left in his eyes. His body creaked, joints popping audibly. The blood-soaked chains hung from him like grotesque ornaments.

‘...Was this village always this big?’

He’d been to Naulam before, and he remembered—it was a tiny village with barely a dozen homes. A faint pattern, like a crack, appeared on his cheek. He set his direction toward a distant mountain and began to walk. Before long, his pace quickened into a near-sprint.

But no matter how far he ran, all he saw was more of the flaming village. There was no end—only endless repetition. Ayra’s mutilated corpses kept multiplying, the more he ran, the more he saw. Even when he destroyed houses, they would reappear the moment he turned around.

Eventually, Janus stood still in silence. His reason frayed, his gaze slowly swept over the countless corpses. His fingers moved, crackling and snapping with each twitch. He looked down at the Ayra lying closest to him. Her gray eyes, staring blankly at the sky through a hole in her chest, held not a flicker of life.

"This fucking village is the worst I’ve ever seen..."

Muttering to himself, Janus looked up. His alien eyes scanned the sky before he chuckled quietly.

Of course—this place was never real from the beginning...

He slowly knelt. From the palm he pressed to the ground, massive scales emerged. Crimson scales spread across his entire body, some of them digging softly into the earth. Deep beneath the ground—thud—a heavy shockwave spread out.

The world trembled. A violent quake ripped through the area. Buildings crumbled into pieces, and the flames surged even higher. The crack on Janus’s cheek grew darker and formed a distinct scale pattern. The earth split wide open with a crack, and somewhere, the sound of water roaring out echoed.

Crash!—everything shattered.

As the ground buckled and tilted, a nearby corpse slid toward him. Thump—a cold, revolting sensation brushed his ankle, then melted away like snow.

When Janus closed and reopened his eyes, the red had returned to his irises. His skin, once split and scaled, was pale and smooth again, as though none of it had happened. The burning village of Naulam was gone—replaced by a vast lake.

He rose and turned around. The village had completely vanished. In its place stood a crumbling ruin, fractured and ancient.

And the one last thing he’d been searching for.

He had finally found her.

He grinned, stretching his mouth wide. The lover he hadn’t seen despite all his wandering now stood there, clutching the metal sphere tightly, her face pale as a sheet, staring directly at him.

This chapter is updat𝙚d by freeweɓnovel.cøm.

❄

Not long after starting to date Janus, Ayra came to a certain realization.

‘There’s just no way I can take down a dragon by myself.’

You didn’t need to see the stats to know. Janus could be sweet and affectionate with his lover, but there were moments when Ayra felt like she was keeping a tiger at her side. Not just any tiger—a massive one, capable of wiping out an entire city with a flick of its tail.

Trying to subdue that ferocious beast alone was less feasible than shattering a boulder with an egg.

But still, she couldn’t just sit back and do nothing while the tiger slaughtered everyone in the city. That’s why, the moment Ayra realized Janus was a dragon, she began preparing in secret. Maybe she couldn’t kill him, but at the very least, she’d keep him away from the city.

That plan began with casting illusion magic on Janus.

With a stat barely reaching 100, Janus couldn’t detect magic itself. Rather, he instinctively sensed subtle discrepancies the moment an illusion was cast.

Ayra started small, with the help of her spirit stone—just a speck of dust, then a pebble, then a still plant. Slowly, she conditioned Janus to grow accustomed to static illusions. Each time he sensed something off, she tweaked the illusion just slightly.

Then came dynamic illusions. From gnats to birds darting across rooftops—when Janus didn’t find anything strange about a stray village dog, Ayra took him to the lake ruins for the final test.

‘Wow, I didn’t know such big fish lived in this lake.’

She feigned ignorance as she showed him an illusion of a shimmering fish with rainbow fins swimming through the lake. “It would’ve been nice if there’d been a building right over there,” she’d added, displaying a structure that hadn’t existed yesterday. Her hard work paid off—Janus didn’t suspect a thing.

When Ayra finally confirmed that illusion magic worked perfectly on Janus, she had to stop herself from jumping for joy. The man hadn’t reacted to colorless, scentless paralytics, sedatives, or sleeping agents. At °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° last, she had found a thread she could grasp.

The location, too, was ideal. Ayra hadn’t chosen the lake ruins as a date spot without reason. No one lived there, and the abundance of magical energy from ancient devices made it easy to install enchanted artifacts. It had a usable water source and plenty of utility.

More importantly, Janus had entered the ruins of his own will and stayed the night—actions that deepened the hold of the illusion magic on the site.

Ayra’s goal was to turn the entire ruin into a miniature labyrinth to trap Janus. He might not be restrained physically, but mentally was another matter. If the magic succeeded, Janus would remain trapped inside the illusion, wandering its cities and villages, until Ayra released him.

The day before the date, Ayra had visited the ruins, set up artifacts and magic circles, and checked everything multiple times. While pretending to stall under the excuse of “finding your destined partner,” she completed the preparations to imprison Janus’s consciousness.

And at last, the day she had steeled herself for had arrived.

The moment Janus left the city, Ayra cast the illusion spell. Within the illusion, Janus wandered in a zigzag through the trees, heading straight for the lake ruins. Once the bait was taken, Ayra waited—using illusions to distract and delay him until the labyrinth was complete.

The most dangerous moment had been the early, weak stages of the illusion. Thankfully, Janus had tolerated it since she was his “lover.” But his monstrous regeneration had been completely outside her calculations.

‘No wonder you can’t kill a dragon with normal means...!’

He was already insanely strong—and even when impaled through the chest with a massive wooden shard, he kept moving. Watching his torn lungs heal through the gaping hole in his chest was both horrifying...

...and absolutely fascinating.

She’d wanted to run over and bury her face in the wound just to observe the regeneration process—but held herself back. That kind of curiosity could wait until the dragon was trapped.

To trap a dragon—no mage in history had ever achieved such a feat! The thought alone made her frozen face flush with warmth. Saving her territory and capturing a dragon—Ayra layered more and more illusions over Janus, pushing toward that future. System alerts for his favorability kept popping up in the corner of her vision, but she ignored them to maintain focus.

Over time, Janus’s movements slowed—proof that the illusion was taking hold.

Illusion magic was rare, and among Labyrinth Mages, Ayra had been one of the best. After awakening to Blooming Magic, her illusions had evolved to an even more profound level. If it had been an ordinary human, Ayra could’ve turned them into a wreck without lifting a finger.

Clutching a magical amplifier, she watched Janus slowly succumb to her spell. Just a little longer—and the dragon would be fully trapped in the labyrinth, a prison no one but Ayra could perceive.

And then—at the very moment his powerful knees buckled and touched the ground—an unexpected second variable shattered the spell, just seconds before completion.

From Janus’s seemingly unconscious body, massive scales erupted—and then, suddenly, an earthquake.