The Sweet Melody of Agony
Jo Giman suggested, "Let's settle this with a majority vote. I don't mind where we go. Who wants to do the harpy dungeon first?"
Arin quickly proposed a vote, as if she wanted to get it over with. Since she had already experienced those dungeons, she abstained to keep the numbers odd.
"Obviously the harpy first."
"...The abandoned school..."
"I-I vote for the abandoned school too!"
The vote decided their next destination would be the abandoned school. Ham Eun-yeong's choice was expected, but it was surprising that Yeonhee had chosen it as well. When I stared at her, Yeonhee scrunched her nose.
'How about that? Aren't I brave?'
That seemed to be the feeling she was going for.
"Alright. The next dungeon has been decided as the abandoned school."
"Ugh... I hate ghosts..."
"Not ghosts, ghost ladies."
"Whatever!"
Our return trip had carried a certain tension because we were traveling together at night, but we reached the exit without incident. The people who had been following us offered their thanks once we entered the safe zone, then kept their distance and took different paths, so they were no longer in sight.
"Good work, everyone."
"Yeonhee, are you sure you're okay? After watching how much you used your summons today, I think you should rest instead..."
"Thank you for worrying... but I think I'll be fine. Really."
From Jua and Arin's perspective, Yeonhee seemed to have pushed herself, but today's workload wasn't particularly heavy for her. From what I had observed, Yeonhee struggled when her summons died and she had to resummon them frequently, but maintaining summons for long periods didn't affect her much. The fact that our summons had survived so long without dying was largely thanks to Ham Eun-yeong's abilities. Though she was extremely quiet and supporters tended to go unnoticed, she had certainly done her part.
We promised to tackle another dungeon together tomorrow, settled the loot cleanly, and parted ways. Then, during our return, a message arrived that pushed our meeting back by a day.
The Black Wyvern's Nest, considered a mid-tier dungeon even among A-rank gates. At the starting point of its fifth underground floor—the deepest level of this ominous dungeon—stood a short-haired man.
His gentle, crescent-shaped eyes, straight nose, and three teardrop moles neatly placed beneath his left eye gave him a striking appearance. At 187 centimeters tall with model-like proportions, he was the kind of man anyone would call handsome.
Mimicry. This was one of Jo Giman's favorite skills, allowing him to temporarily transform into the appearance and voice of someone he remembered. It was so perfect that even parents or lovers couldn't tell the difference. However, using the skill lowered his overall rank by several stages. That drawback was precisely why Jo Giman loved it.
He had discovered in his fifth life that he could repeatedly use Mimicry to keep lowering his rank. It was information known only to a few guilds, which he had learned rather late. It served as a loophole, letting him enter dungeons that would normally be inaccessible due to his higher rank. While useful depending on how it was applied, the cooldown increased dramatically with each use, so he couldn't rely on it often.
"Kuh-heuk—! Ghh... Why?! Ji Seok-jun, you bastard, did you betray me?!"
A man lay collapsed before him. With one eye gouged out, he glared at Jo Giman with murderous intent from his remaining eye. Jo Giman paid no attention to the glare. Instead, he skewered the extracted eyeball on his knife like a chicken skewer and spun it around playfully.
Jo Giman had killed the man in front of him many times before. While he had eliminated various people who held grudges against him before his awakening across different regressions, this man was the only one he killed without fail every single time. The fallen man was the bastard who had inflicted a horrific nightmare upon Jo Giman and his sister when they were struggling to survive without parents.
The man had simply been an older neighborhood figure. They had known each other for years. Their paths had crossed hundreds of times. Jo Giman's home was in a slum so rundown that it occasionally appeared on TV as an example of Seoul's worst residential areas. The dilapidated house offered little protection against intruders.
One day, this man had stormed into their home while drunk and violated them both without mercy. Jo Giman could still vividly recall the man's ecstatic, lecherous expression as he straddled his sister. At the time, Jo Giman was only in his third year of middle school, physically underdeveloped and far too weak. He had been beaten unconscious while forced to watch his sister's eyes lose their light beneath the man.
After that day, his sister had wasted away, and upon hearing the man's sentence, she took her own life the very next day. Five years—that was the sentence the man received after being deemed mentally impaired. The world, in its indifference, allowed him to awaken just one month after his release from prison. And with considerable talent, at that.
In his first life, Jo Giman had encountered this man at the association building on the day he received his hunter license. The man had undergone plastic surgery and looked quite different, but Jo Giman recognized him instantly by his unforgettable eyes and distinctive way of speaking. In that moment, Jo Giman lost all reason and charged at him, only to be beaten within an inch of his life once again.
Jo Giman's regressions began after his second encounter with this man. Because of the recurring memories with each regression, his rage never faded.
"Kekeke— You always look at me like you can't understand. Your life wasn't exactly spotless either. It's not like you were some innocent who didn't deserve to be killed."
"Ghh... What the hell are you talking about, you crazy bastard—!!"
Even after having his eye gouged out with a finger, the man showed no sign of recalling his crimes. Jo Giman's forehead burned as if scorched by fire, and his temples throbbed violently like a pounding heart.
Every regression, Jo Giman felt this unchanging fury—and every time, it brought him great relief.
Crackle—
Jo Giman grabbed one side of his once-beautiful face and tore it off, roughly ripping away the layer of skin that Mimicry had applied. When the man saw Jo Giman's true face beneath, he froze for a moment before his pupils began to tremble violently.
"J-Jo Giman? G-Giman— Giman-ah!! Wait, listen to me. Back at the building, when I hit you, it was— Mmph! Mmmph—"
The man immediately started babbling about the incident at the association building. At the very least, he should have remembered what came before and begged for forgiveness first. Not that it would have changed anything.
After gagging the man to silence him, Jo Giman pulled a massive coffin from his inventory—one large enough to easily fit three people—and spoke.
"Kekeke, fuck. How can this bastard be so consistent every single time? I was worried he'd die like Yun Han-gyeol, but I'm so glad you're still the same. Here—let me explain this coffin. Listen carefully."
In his early regressions, he had tried to take revenge as quickly as possible. But after killing the man a few times, it no longer satisfied him. So from his fifth life onward, he changed his method—waiting until the man had the most to lose before inflicting suffering. Showing the man's two beloved daughters videos of his vile deeds had been the greatest pleasure of all.
After becoming a hunter, the man had lived a seemingly respectable life on the surface while committing countless atrocities behind the scenes. Filming an hour-long nauseating video hadn't been difficult. People never truly changed, after all.
Jo Giman had recorded the daughters watching the video and sent it to the man, along with daily footage of them being held captive. He promised to release them if a hundred million won was left at a specific location. Of course, Jo Giman never went to collect the money. That way, he never left a trail for the hunter special forces to follow. Not that they could have caught him anyway.
Things hadn't gone smoothly for the man after that. Jo Giman had used various methods to seize the dungeons the man managed, cutting off his funds. He had exposed the man's past deeds one by one on the internet. The man, who had lived while hiding his past through full-body plastic surgery, watched everything he had built crumble piece by piece. After socially and economically burying him, it was time to bury him physically as well.
The man had endured the false hope of his daughters being returned for a long time before finally entering a dungeon beyond his reach in an attempt to locate where they were being held. All because of the fake tracking artifact information Jo Giman had planted. Even a moment's thought would have revealed it as false, but the man was no longer in his right mind.
It was laughable. A man who had so easily destroyed others' lives—how could he feel such affection for his own children?
The man had scraped together his remaining money to hire party members for the dungeon, including a fake hunter using the alias Ji Seok-jun. Of course, Jo Giman had used even this ridiculous alias for one final purpose: to deliver the ultimate suffering. Killing him outside would have been too merciful. He deserved to rot and die in the darkness underground.
Fortunately, in his sixth life, he had obtained an artifact that would inflict eternal torment upon this trash.
Archmage Falkai's Eternal Hell Coffin — A coffin that eternally cycles through ninety-nine methods of the greatest pain a human can feel. Equipped with life-support and self-healing functions, it was designed to keep its victim alive and suffering until they died of old age.
It was the artifact he had taken after killing Falkai, Asuran's loyalist, at the end of his sixth life. Placing it among the three artifacts chosen during regression was an enormous waste, but Jo Giman hadn't hesitated for a second when selecting this coffin.
"Aaaaaaaaagh――――!!! Hiiik――!! Kyaaaaaaaagh――!! Ughhh... It hurts!! Please, it hurts!! Kill me, you fucking bastard!! Aaaaaagh――!! Ghhk—"
The moment the man was placed inside the coffin, a cacophony of metallic sounds and agonized screams filled the air, bringing peace to Jo Giman's heart. Overwhelmed by unprecedented satisfaction, Jo Giman smiled and clapped for a long while. Shortly after, the coffin's advanced healing activated, restoring the dying man. Then the screams began again.
Jo Giman leisurely unfolded a chair, sat down, sipped his coffee, and surrendered himself to the sweet melody of those screams. This hidden space in the dungeon, which Jeong Ju-in had found for him, would now become a place he visited often for healing.