Long Live the Queen (2)
The execution began, and the Awakened of the Busan Clan gathered one by one in the square. After taking in every face, Clan Leader Shin Do-hee walked toward the center of the hall with an excited expression. The man hanging upside down by chains seemed to sense his fate and thrashed. The leader of the Gimhae Awakened group was a middle-aged man whose half-peeled scalp made quite an impression.
“Mmph! Mmmph!”
Of course, his silent screams never reached the crowd thanks to the gag. Still, Shin Do-hee, who had approached close enough, appeared to understand what he was trying to say.
“Kids, this uncle just told me to go to hell.”
She said it with a bright smile, looking every bit like a demon. In truth, the essence was probably the same.
“But you know what, uncle? Hell is right here. No need to go far.”
Shin Do-hee grinned and continued.
“Mmph!”
“Yeah, yeah. You don’t seem to have much will to live anyway, so I’ll make it quick.”
With that, she gestured toward the empty air. She was probably manipulating the Disaster Order interface, even if we couldn’t see it.
Sure enough, a massive disaster appeared behind Shin Do-hee. The 4★ water-type named disaster, Woman of the Deep Sea, Eluma. I had used her often when playing Disaster Order myself.
“Ugh.”
One of the Awakened groaned at the sight. Eluma’s appearance was genuinely grotesque. Far from anything feminine, she had the form of a half-fish, half-human creature straight out of a Cthulhu mythos.
— Kraaaak.
Deep One Eluma opened her torn mouth wide toward the offered sacrifice. Even from a distance, a thick fishy stench wafted over. Shin Do-hee, however, showed no sign of minding the odor.
“Wait, Eluma. Don’t kill him right away. This is a performance, so we should give proper fan service.”
Shin Do-hee clapped her hands.
Eluma coils her long tail and encases the target in a thin cylindrical membrane, then floods it with seawater.
The fish-woman lifted her long tail and curled her body, wrapping around the Gimhae Awakened. At the same time, a thin cylindrical membrane covered his entire body. Soon, greenish streams of water began to flow from between Eluma’s scales. It looked like filthy seawater. Since the man’s body was already covered in wounds, the salt water seeping in would cause immense pain.
“———.”
Trapped inside the thin film and drowning, the Gimhae Awakened thrashed and screamed. After several more minutes, the man stopped moving.
“Good. That wasn’t bad.”
At Shin Do-hee’s words, the membrane burst and filthy water spilled out. From within, the man’s corpse—already bloated and decaying—was dragged out. Through it all, Shin Do-hee remained perfectly calm. She had clearly done this more than once or twice. In contrast, the expressions of the clan Awakened watching were far from pleasant. I naturally came to understand how the Busan Clan operated.
“Phew, how about it? Nam Juyeon, wasn’t that fun?”
“Fun, my ass. I don’t have the bad taste to laugh at a corpse you just turned into a drowned body in a single day.”
“Really? You seem pretty calm for someone who claims that.”
Of course I was calm. The thug who had threatened me had been reduced to ash by the Hellfire Watchdog, and Awakener Han Tae-geon had half his body eaten by the Storm Dragon. There were plenty of others. I had even committed several murders myself. After witnessing so many horrific scenes, there was no reason for Shin Do-hee’s killing to shock me.
“Haha. So that’s what it takes to be S-class, huh?”
Shin Do-hee nodded as if genuinely impressed, then turned her gaze to the corpse she had just made.
“Hmm. Maybe I should’ve left the body a little more intact. It’s a shame for display.”
“Display?”
“I’m going to hang it in front of the building for a while. It’s a kind of message. Anyone who rebels against us will end up like this. It’s pretty effective. I’ve done a few demonstrations, and they all surrendered pretty quickly.”
Displaying corpses was an idea no ordinary criminal would dare to have. But South Korea had regressed to a society close to feudalism. The Busan area was a kingdom ruled by the lunatic Shin Do-hee, and its citizens were little more than her property.
“…Why? Do you think it’s strange? Because Seoul is still safe?”
Reading my thoughts, Shin Do-hee tilted her head and smirked.
“But the world is kind to us Awakened, isn’t it?”
That smile was just as unpleasant as before.
*
Busan’s queen, Shin Do-hee, lent me a high-rise building near Haeundae. In fact, she lent me the entire building, so there was no need to worry about wiretapping or anything of the sort. I supposed it was a form of consideration.
“Hah.”
Yet Shin Do-hee’s consideration only made me uncomfortable. My impression that Busan felt like a city of the dead was no illusion. I now understood why the residents feared my presence and why the city had been so eerily quiet.
“This really is a kingdom.”
A Busan kingdom ruled by the tyrant Shin Do-hee. When an overwhelmingly powerful being ruled through fear, everyone beneath her—Awakened or not—had no choice but to tremble. The expressions of the clan Awakened who had attended the execution had been dark as well. I had heard these executions happened at least once a week. Busan, once the second-largest city on the peninsula with a proud reputation, had become a city of terror reeking of blood almost daily, less than a year after the apocalypse began.
“…What do you think?”
I asked my disasters gathered in the room.
“Honestly, it’s not a bad method. Ruling through fear means fewer people will try to rise up, right?”
Mirien, the Storm of the North Sea, offered a rational assessment. After all, the world Mirien had lived in before entering the rift was a fantasy realm where such fear-based rule was considered normal. It wasn’t strange that she accepted the scene so naturally.
“My Lord, I… find it slightly unpleasant.”
“Unpleasant?”
What surprised me was Selene’s reaction. Unlike the previous Selene who had said an Absolute Ruler must control through fear, her face now showed a hint of displeasure.
“I agree with Magic Wrap that this method is the most efficient and fitting for an Absolute Ruler’s virtues, but…”
Selene hesitated. Her expression darkened. She seemed to be debating whether she should speak.
Selene’s condition was definitely strange. I gestured with my chin.
“Selene, it’s fine. You can speak freely.”
“Yes. It is also because… I was once executed myself.”
“…What?”
I widened my eyes.
“You were… executed?”
“Yes. Though it was a little different from the execution we saw today.”
“Different how?”
“I was bound to a stake and burned.”
At those words, I immediately recalled the background setting of the Scorched Saint Selene.
[5★ Scorched Saint Selene is the witch who set the world ablaze. Selene’s flames reduced every continent to ash in seven days and seven nights, and in the end she turned her back on the world itself and headed for the rift. She is a living flame demon and a great sinner who falsely claimed the name of God.]
The description only mentioned that Selene had burned everyone and brought about destruction. But hearing her words, I realized there was a far more tragic reason behind her burning the world than I had imagined—whether the execution by fire came before or after she set the world ablaze. Information the game had never revealed. Not just Selene, but Mirien, Karne, and even Asteria each carried their own burdens. And as the Ruler of the Rift, Actor—that is, me—I had the duty to take them all in.
“…I’m sorry, Selene. For not understanding.”
When I apologized honestly, Selene’s eyes widened.
“M-My Lord has nothing to apologize for! I was simply…”
Selene trailed off and lowered her head deeply. I couldn’t see her expression, but her clasped hands fidgeted, and she didn’t seem upset.
“My child, you’re quite the player.”
“Excuse me?”
Karne chimed in with a sly smile.
Anyway, we were currently uninvited guests visiting the kingdom of Busan. Karne had already explained the details about that.
“Mother, I believe the leader of the Busan Awakened group, Shin Do-hee, wasn’t originally such a tyrant.”
The 3★ named disaster we had seen in the Daejeon nest last time, Scion of the Meteor Belgarnot, had obtained a fragment of the crown and gained tremendous power. Asteria’s crown granted explosive stat increases, but conversely, when worn by someone unauthorized, the debuff was impossible to ignore. If a human used it…
“Indeed. It could make one’s temperament violently aggressive.”
“Yes. Shin Do-hee must have obtained a crown fragment during the last rift eruption.”
Just like Mirien’s skill, the Blessing of Lightning, the crown fragments could corrupt the mind of their owner. It was the same in movies. Horcruxes and such. Voldemort had split his soul into seven pieces. Coincidentally, the fragments of the crown Asteria had destroyed numbered exactly seven as well. And two of them were currently in my possession.
‘…Then why am I still sane?’
I also possessed crown fragments. I even had one more than Shin Do-hee. So why hadn’t I become as unhinged as her? No, maybe I already had. Hadn’t I casually abandoned the residents of Beijing not long ago?
“Hah.”
Thinking such nonsense actually cleared my mind. I organized my thoughts. Now, what to do? Honestly, what happened to Busan wasn’t my concern. However, Shin Do-hee’s plan to attack the Daejeon Clan was far from welcome.
‘Daejeon is my workshop, after all.’
Located at the center of the peninsula, it needed to continue functioning as a social hub going forward. More than anything, the simple thug Jeon Tae-min was easier to handle than the tyrant Shin Do-hee.
“I’ve decided.”
I raised my head. Three pairs of eyes focused on me.
“Our top priority is to take the crown fragment from Shin Do-hee.”
“So we’re killing her?”
Mirien asked brightly, but I shook my head. Killing Shin Do-hee wouldn’t weigh on my conscience. But what came after was the problem. As we had seen at the execution, the Busan Clan was a loose coalition. What held them together was the existence of the tyrant Shin Do-hee. If that central figure disappeared, the Busan Clan would likely collapse. Then they wouldn’t be able to defend against the upcoming sixth rift eruption. It would end up just like Sejong City. I had abandoned Beijing because it had no hope left, but the situation with the Busan Clan was different.
“Let’s gather information as discreetly as possible. It would be best if we could win Shin Do-hee over, but if that’s impossible, we’ll have to set up a puppet instead.”
Under normal circumstances, this would have been impossible. There was no way we could pull off something so bold in a city with so many eyes watching. But fortunately, I now had a disaster specialized in espionage and covert operations.
“Mother, may I ask a favor?”
“Don’t worry.”
Karne, the Mother of Ill Omens, nodded as if she had been waiting for my words. Her black wings fluttered.