Chapter 218: Residents of a Ruined World (14)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 218: Residents of a Ruined World (14)
The moment they spotted the figure being assaulted by the swirling vortex of death, Cathy and Kang Ha-ni charged forward without a second of hesitation.
“Dad.”
To be more precise, it would be more accurate to say they lunged the instant they heard the small girl mutter that word.
Though the figure was obscured by the murky energy of death, if the one exposed to that aura truly was So-hyun, he was in grave danger.
Cathy carelessly tossed aside the platinum-haired woman she had been carrying and dropped into a stance, while Kang Ha-ni channeled every ounce of her mana into her blade.
However, the moment their eyes met that thing, they froze.
It wasn’t merely a case of being intimidated. It was a visceral, absolute loathing that felt impossible to overcome—the instinctive terror harbored by every living creature.
Death given form. A deity from another world.
It was an existence far too vast for a mere individual to oppose, so their reaction was only natural. Death was an entity too horrific to be conquered by something as simple as affection or a sense of duty.
Therefore, those who managed to overcome it anyway…
“So what?”
“Who cares?”
…meant they had already transcended the boundaries of normalcy.
Their pause lasted only a heartbeat before the two began to sprint again.
Even as they felt the chilling sensation of their own impending demise, they forcibly suppressed their fear. They let out battle cries that sounded more like desperate screams as they closed the distance.
To Cathy, he was already someone more precious than herself.
To Ha-ni, he was someone she never wanted to see hurt again.
Because they were willing to risk their very lives for something more precious than themselves, they were heroes.
A fist struck at death, and a single-edged blade carved through the darkness.
However.
No matter how weakened it was from the battle with Sun Wukong, and no matter how diminished its power was from having no more price left to pay…
Death was not an existence that could be defeated so easily.
* * *
There was a woman who had been watching this entire sequence of events.
Baek Seol.
While the other two were fighting desperately, she slowly removed the ‘Replica of Hades’ Helmet’—the invisibility artifact—and approached the boy.
To be honest, she had been hesitating because she wasn’t entirely sure, but it seemed her hunch was correct.
She reached out slowly and removed his mask, revealing a familiar face.
He looked shocked, as if he had been wounded.
Even his expression was strangely cold and hollow.
The only person in this world, besides herself, whom she considered a ‘human’ was lying right there.
“Well, now. What an interesting junior I have.”
The Masked Villain.
She had accessed information about him, so she knew the basics.
If she were the rational, cool-headed Baek Seol of her usual self, her first thought would have been to arrest him on the spot. But the current Baek Seol was different.
She wondered why he was playing two roles at once, acting as both a cadet and a villain. Why did he act to help those around him while calling himself a villain?
What was the reason for the massive gap in combat power between his cadet persona and the strength he had just displayed? And why had his eyes suddenly gone dead, like a broken machine?
While these questions piqued her interest, they were merely secondary thoughts that surfaced later.
In this moment…
The emotion Baek Seol felt above all else was…
‘Joy.’
It was strange. It wasn’t rational. Why on earth was she happy?
She was looking at the broken face of a junior she cherished, and she had discovered his secret through illegitimate means.
The situation was already absurd enough, yet here she was, smiling instead of joining the two people currently fighting for their lives.
In the first place, why had she used an artifact just to watch him fight?
In a sense, it was a heroic instinct.
Perhaps she had intuitively been waiting for things to turn out like this.
But again, why?
“Ah, I see. It was quite simple.”
She was the first to learn the secret of this cat-like junior who always acted so haughtily toward her.
One could even say she had gained leverage over him.
So.
“If I keep this weakness a secret, maybe my dear junior will look at me in a slightly different light?”
She carefully placed the removed mask beside him and used her artifact to hide him from sight.
She couldn’t let anyone else find out. This was a connection she had finally managed to establish.
She wasn’t sure what to call this emotion, but one thing was certain.
Today, she wasn’t being rational; she felt a little bit crazy.
“Anyway, it’ll be a problem if he stays broken like this. I wonder what I have to do to make him snap out of it?”
Honestly, his current decadent aura wasn’t bad, but she felt he needed that sharp, prickly edge back.
She briefly considered taking a photo with her smartphone since it would be a waste to miss this, but then she remembered that all electronics were dead because of the dungeon.
“Hmm, would he wake up if I gave him a kiss, like a princess in a fairy tale?”
The sudden thought that it might be fun to get ahead of the numerous women surrounding him confirmed that she was definitely not herself today.
To find something fun that she would normally consider a nuisance…
“Now, let’s see…”
“…Ah.”
“Hmm?”
“Then you should have said something sooner…!?”
Oh, he’s fixed already. What a shame, I didn’t get to take a picture.
* * *
What is this?
What the hell is even happening?
How can this be? Did I ever ask anyone to die in my place?
Ah, right. This is ‘mirror therapy,’ isn’t it? I’m sure you guys never asked me to sacrifice myself for you either.
If you intended to give me one last lesson before you left, I wanted to tell you that it really hit home.
If it were just a matter of an artifact breaking, that would be one thing, but now that he was actually gone, I realized something.
Without even knowing it, I had relied on Sun Wukong a great deal.
I thought of him as just a chance acquaintance, but at times he was like a master, and at others, a friend. He was someone I could vent my unspoken worries to, someone who understood the things I couldn’t say.
I didn’t have time for this. I needed to get up right now and finish this, one way or another.
But I was paralyzed by a wave of damn regret and self-reflection.
— Uh, well.
Ah, now I’m even hearing hallucinations.
To only realize how precious something is after it’s gone… I really am a moron who never grows—
— The monkey listening is getting embarrassed, so stop the self-deprecation right there.
…Huh?
‘What the fuck?’
— No, look. It’s not like I didn’t talk to you on purpose. I wanted to speak up sooner, but that actually hurt more than I expected.
‘…Sun Wukong?’
— Who else would it be?
Wait, this is weird. Didn’t you disappear in a totally tragic way? And didn’t the Ruyi snap in half…?
— Honestly, I won’t say I took zero damage since I was fighting Death itself, but the Ruyi has been splitting and dividing this whole time. What kind of nonsense are you talking about now? Why would a myth-grade artifact with a fluid form die just because it got snapped?
…Ah, right. It had been splitting into multiple pieces this whole time, hadn’t it?
Then what does that make everything I just did…?
— It makes it you moping around by yourself. What else?
…What is this? This intense emotion rising from deep within my chest?
— Still, I was a bit touched. Honestly, I thought you might just brush it off or think, ‘Well, there goes one useful card,’ like some web novel protagonist.
Ah, here it comes.
An incredibly intense wave of embarrassment was surging from the depths of my soul.
— But I’m also a little hurt. ‘Did I ever ask anyone to die in my place?’ Doesn’t that mean you didn’t believe me when I said I wouldn’t die? Though I suppose I can’t say much since I failed to keep my word about winning.
No, then why did you have to make your exit look so grand and epic?
— Because it’s cooler that way. I think I told you once before, I enjoy a good prank just as much as you do.
“…Ah.”
— Hmm…?
This is so goddamn embarrassing.
“Then you should have said something sooner…!?”
“Oh my, you’re fixed?”
The moment I screamed, unable to bear the shame, a beautiful face startled by my outburst came into view at a very close distance.
“…Senior Baek Seol?”
And in the distance, I saw Professor Cathy and Ha-ni struggling against Death.
Wait, why is Ha-ni here too?
“Dad.”
My head was spinning, but most of my questions were answered the moment I saw our little deity.
…Wait a second. Wasn’t I wearing a mask? My face feels a bit bare.
As I hurriedly searched for my mask, Baek Seol, with a faint smile, moved her artifact aside and handed it back to me.
The movement was so natural that I almost said, “Ah, thank you,” as I took it.
Wait. Am I screwed?
“Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone. Junior.”
Contrary to my expectation that she would report me immediately, Baek Seol’s reaction was quite unexpected.
Is this a good thing…?
“It’s a secret between you and me that we finally managed to share. I can’t let go of it that easily.”
Actually, maybe being reported and going to jail would be better?
“Don’t you think we can be a bit closer now?”
…Wait. Did Baek Seol just get blackmail material on me?
I felt like I had to say something, but a poorly timed explosion forced me to turn my head.
“We should probably do something about that first, don’t you think, Junior?”
* * *
The Death of the Otherworld was growing quite impatient.
How long had it been since it had smelled the scent of death after its contractor failed the plan to destroy the world?
And from this boy, it caught a scent of death even more exquisite than its own contractor’s.
Just how many lives had he taken, and how many great beings had he brought down to emit such a powerful fragrance of death?
It would have eventually faded away if it just dragged out the time, so encountering such a thing was a stroke of luck.
It had tried to claim him immediately, but there were more interruptions than expected.
That woman in the red mask, in particular, was truly dangerous.
She was likely an existence that would normally be far superior to itself, but for some reason, she seemed to be in a degraded state.
Well, fine. Whatever the reason, it had been able to clear her away, even if it meant exhausting most of its remaining power.
Now that the interference was gone, it could obtain a new vessel.
If it claimed that boy, it could avoid fading away.
No, perhaps it could even regain its divinity—its ‘qualification’—once more.
Just as it reached out with that thought…
Another interference occurred.
This time, they were beings far weaker than itself.
It did not appreciate the fact that these dregs, who wouldn’t have even dared to meet its gaze in the past, were resisting now that its power was spent.
Pathetic things.
It would dispose of them.
Even if it had weakened, it was a humiliation for one who was once called a god to be hindered by such creatures.
However.
The momentum of one of the two interlopers was quite unusual.
“Haa…!”
She was glowing.
It was a light it had seen before.
The brilliant radiance that those often called heroes or adversaries sometimes possessed.
The light that only those who held the possibility of reaching godhood while in a human body could show was dwelling in her fist.
Not yet. Not quite.
That light was still incomplete, so it could not reach the deity.
The other one wasn’t even a nuisance, let alone a threat. Once it endured this attack and killed that woman, it would finally be able to claim its prize.
But then.
Suddenly, a power diametrically opposed to its own death was felt, and the momentum of the women before it shifted.
An attack that shouldn’t have reached, now reached.
One who should have been below the threshold was now a threat.
It knew instinctively.
This…
Was dangerous.