Zygote's Return
Ender [A]
One who proclaims the end of the Tower. Slightly raises the possibility of that outcome.
“Uuugh.”
Vague. Honestly, he had no idea what that was supposed to mean.
So roughly speaking… it helps me tear the Tower down?
When? How? In what way?
There was no explanation at all.
The excitement of obtaining an A-grade trait cooled right off. The Akasha System had never been particularly kind, but…
It wasn’t usually this bad.
Seong Yujin furrowed his brow, turning the matter over in his head for a moment before simply throwing the thought away.
“I’ll figure it out later.”
How effective it actually was. Still, it was an A-grade trait—surely they wouldn’t just fob him off with empty words.
Yujin closed the description window and rose to his feet.
“Well, well.”
The sun hung high overhead. When he had first arrived, the sun’s position had been roughly the same. He could have assumed only a short time had passed, but Yujin immediately realized the opposite was true.
“I’ve been here a whole day?”
In the first timeline it had only been three hours. Several times that had slipped by.
Considering the grade of the trait he’d received as a reward, it wasn’t incomprehensible—but he never would have guessed that much time had passed.
Yujin turned his gaze at once, checking on Vivian.
“Huh?”
She was still staring blankly at the cliff face.
“She’s still at it?”
Surprise flickered across Yujin’s face. He himself had come to after receiving an A-grade trait, and yet she was still going?
Don’t tell me an S-grade is about to drop.
With a thrum of anticipation, Yujin approached her side—careful not to shatter her focus completely…
“What are you doing?”
Vivian suddenly turned her head and looked at him.
“…When did you wake up?”
“About ten hours ago.”
“Then why have you been sitting like that the whole time?”
“I was just waiting for you to wake up.”
Not meditation. Not internal contemplation. She had simply been spacing out.
“Ugh.”
Yujin let out a groan, straightening from the crouch he had dropped into in his eagerness.
“What’d you get?”
Even so, if she had woken ten hours ago, that meant she had been submerged in a trance for roughly fourteen hours. At minimum she had far surpassed C-grade.
“Something good. B-grade.”
“B-grade? Not bad. Tell me what it is.”
“Why should I?”
She didn’t seem to be sulking. Her expression genuinely suggested she didn’t understand why she needed to tell him.
“So I can make proper use of it in combat, that’s why.”
“It’s not something you use in a fight.”
“Then what is it?”
“I’m not telling.”
It felt like talking to a wall. Yujin pressed his fingertips hard against his temples as if his head ached, then gave up. Giving up was easier. Vivian managed fine on her own. Even without any real coordination practice, she had slipped naturally into the ranks of his subordinates. This time would be no different.
“Fine. You’ll handle it somehow.”
She wasn’t a little hellion like Lee Sia, so he decided to simply watch and see.
“Feels like we got something huge, yet it’s a little hollow.”
Him, and Vivian too. Probably because nothing was clear-cut.
“Anyway, let’s go. We’ve starved a whole day—time to chew on some meat.”
“Yeah. I like beef.”
“Beef it is, then.”
Vivian’s tone was a touch lighter than usual. Yujin tilted his head at that, then set off with her back toward Unmonghyang.
They didn’t talk much. They simply carved through the occasional monsters that appeared and admired the beautiful scenery around them.
They had diced up roughly a hundred monsters when it happened.
“Hm?”
Something brushed against Yujin’s senses.
“What is that?”
An alien energy that had no business being felt in the Dream Garden.
“Most of the monsters here are illusion-types.”
What he was sensing now was a thoroughly nauseating deathly qi. The aura of corpses. Something you would only expect to encounter on floors six through nine.
“Did a zombie show up or something?”
Impossible. Yujin’s gaze shifted left. Not particularly close—about ten kilometers? Even with his sensory range, that was not an easy distance to pick up. And yet he felt it with absolute clarity. The reason was simple: it was vast, and it was intense. Strong enough to register in an instant even from this far away.
“A corpse.”
“Yeah. A corpse.”
Vivian seemed to have sensed it as well. From the slight crease of her brow, she was recalling unpleasant memories. The sight of a zombie tide rolling in would not have been a pleasant one—even if she herself hadn’t been the one fighting.
“We should check it out.”
If it had only been a foul aura spreading, he wouldn’t have paid it much mind. But he also felt a faint vibration—the aftershock of destruction. Which meant something was fighting. Or slaughtering.
At Yujin’s words, Vivian nodded.
“Go.”
With her agreement, Yujin kicked off the ground.
Paaaat—!
A full-tilt sprint tore through the Dream Forest. He didn’t bother dodging obstacles in his path. He simply rammed through them with his body.
Kwa-gwa-gwa-gwa-gwa-gwang—!
Trees, boulders, and monsters shattered the instant they collided with Yujin and went flying in every direction. Vivian lightly avoided the debris and followed in his wake.
Ten kilometers. A long distance for an ordinary person to run. Not for a player—especially not for Yujin and Vivian, both past level sixty. A few minutes. That was all the time it took to arrive.
“What the hell is this?”
The world was dying. Not simply being destroyed, cut apart, or broken. Death itself had settled over everything. Everything in sight had turned black, proclaiming the end of its life.
“Fuck.”
The stench that stabbed at his nose dragged a curse out of him on its own. At the same time, he realized something serious had happened.
This never happened before.
From the moment Yujin had climbed to the 100th floor and fought the Apocalypse, the 20th floor had remained beautiful and fantastical without fail. He himself had dropped by now and then to rest. Never once had anything like this occurred—never had a vast stretch of land been reduced to this absolute wasteland.
Something changed, didn’t it?
There were far too many candidates for the cause. Ever since Yujin had returned to the past, everything had diverged from the first timeline. Somewhere along the way, some action of his had produced this scene as its result.
Yujin rapidly expanded the range of his senses, sweeping the surroundings. He needed to find whatever had done this. Whether it was a monster or a player, he didn’t know yet. But he could not leave a variable alone. He had to confirm it with his own eyes and decide how to deal with it.
There!
A place even his vision could not quite reach. There, an existence condensed with deathly qi was present. Slowly. Very slowly. It was walking toward Unmonghyang.
“Don’t follow right behind me. Keep your distance and stick close carefully.”
He had no idea what kind of thing it was, so for now Yujin put space between himself and Vivian. If a fight broke out, he didn’t want her dragged into it the moment it started.
“Got it.”
Vivian, face stiff as she looked at the dead flowers, nodded.
“Then I’m going first.”
Yujin stepped onto the dead earth.
Pa-ba-ba-ba-ba-bat—!
Flowers that had died and rotted to mush crumbled into fallen petals the moment they brushed his feet.
Even my feet feel like they’re rotting.
The deathly qi was vicious. It didn’t even compare to zombies. It rivaled the Endless Fleshmass, the boss monster he had torn apart on the 9th floor.
It can’t be the Death Dragon showing up this early.
The boss of the 70th floor came to mind. Of course, if that thing had appeared, Unmonghyang would already be finished—but purely in terms of the sheer foulness of the energy, it was similar.
Is that it?
A back came into view. A person.
No… is it really a person?
The form was certainly human. A little tall and large, but still within human bounds. And yet…
No. That’s something else.
It looked like a doll made by stitching together torn hides. Its entire body was composed of sewn leather. Something like that could not be human.
Yujin stamped down hard and stopped.
Kuuuuung—!
A great tremor rolled through the ground. The thing halted. Then, slowly, it turned around.
“Huuuuh—”
The stench of rotting corpses spilled from its mouth and nose. Yujin barked a hollow laugh. He knew that face. It was a complete mess, but he could still make out the shape.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”
Another curse slipped out.
“No wonder the corpse was missing.”
Yujin pulled the Requiem Blade [C] from Chunbae’s mouth.
“Kku-aaaaaaang—!”
Even though the atmosphere was anything but normal, their Chunbae didn’t give a damn and burst into a cry. Well—its true form was the Gluttonous Avarice [A]. An A-grade item had no reason to be scared of something like this.
Yujin gave Chunbae’s head a quick ruffle, then spoke.
“How the hell are you alive? That goddamn Fusion [C] skill of yours again?”
Why was Zygote called Zygote? Because he had devoured people, beasts, and monsters without distinction and made their power his own. Yujin just hadn’t expected the skill to work even when the man was in pieces.
“You ate zombies back then too, didn’t you? That’s why you look like that.”
Zygote—Eliyah Ventrick—did not answer. He simply lifted eyes full of savage killing intent and fixed them on Yujin.
“Guess stuffing yourself with zombies rotted your brain too.”
“Seong Yujin.”
Then the thing’s mouth opened. Unlike its rag-doll body, the voice was surprisingly clear.
“I was looking for you.”
“I bet you were.”
Yujin’s Heavenly Silk Thread [C] had turned the man into scraps of meat, after all. It would have been stranger if he hadn’t felt the need for revenge.
“I get that Fusion [C] is better than I thought. I get that you want revenge. I get that you’re stronger than before. But what I’m really curious about is something else.”
Yujin looked at him through narrowed eyes and asked,
“You. How the hell did you climb up here?”
No matter how he looked at it, that thing had not climbed the stairs the normal way. It had used some other shortcut. Otherwise there was no way something that size could be wandering around without rumors spreading. Kang Mu-hyun hadn’t known a thing about him—neither had Jane or Logan. Even though it was a being that brought death just by moving.
“Who helped you?”
He asked with certainty. But the thing’s mouth stayed shut tight, as if it had turned into a clam. Yujin smiled anyway. That reaction itself was as good as an answer.
“An Administrator.”
A flinch. The rag-doll body reacted.
“Thought so.”
Yujin drew the Requiem Blade [C].
“These bastards are using cheats?”
This time they planned to use that piece of trash to kill him. Since the Administrators couldn’t act directly, they had turned the player Zygote into a living weapon. Utterly disgusting. And Yujin knew exactly which one of them liked methods like this.
“Didascalia. You son of a bitch—where the hell are you right now?”
Yujin’s killing intent erupted like a detonation.