Investigation Request
There was no time to tell the others. I was the leader, and this was an emergency. I followed Ha Yoo-jin at once, heading for the place where the humans were being taken.
"What happened?"
"Well... I had to stay pretty far back."
"...What?"
"A Golden Gnoll showed up that looked like a chieftain—all decked out. But it seemed like it sensed something was off."
My face went rigid.
"...Did it spot you?"
Even as I asked, I didn't believe it had. Nothing unusual had happened when we'd watched from outside the village.
"No, it didn't. I got a weird feeling and hid right away. It seemed to think something was strange and looked around, but it never found me. I think it just wrote it off as its imagination."
I knew these monsters had intelligence, so I didn't find the gnoll chieftain's behavior strange. This was their territory—the deepest part of it, no less. It would have been hard to imagine something lurking inside the village itself.
Ha Yoo-jin pressed on without a pause.
"Anyway, when it couldn't find me, it went straight into the prison where the people were locked up. Then it dragged out about five of them."
I listened carefully as we moved.
"The people were screaming as they were dragged out."
"What were they saying?"
"Well... they really didn't want to go. Things like, 'I don't want to go there!' and 'Let me go!' and 'Please, please spare me!' and 'Where are you taking us?!'"
The last one was probably one of the three who'd been brought in recently. Judging by the others—especially the first man—they sounded like they knew exactly where they were being taken. The last one, though, clearly had no idea what was going on. He might have heard something from the other humans inside, but this was almost certainly his first time experiencing it firsthand. Then again, they hadn't moved anyone in nearly ten days. It didn't seem like a frequent occurrence.
Quite some time had passed since the captives had been taken. Adding up the days we'd spent fighting off the raid, getting our gear together, training, traveling here, and waiting those ten days—it came to over two months. And in all that time, nothing had happened to them...
"Oh, and the people they took were the ones who looked relatively healthy."
Come to think of it, I'd heard a good number of them were skin and bones. Even though the gnolls had force-fed them and even made them exercise, most of the humans had been emaciated when we first laid eyes on them. The gnolls had been forcibly trying to keep their captives healthy. After ten days of nothing happening, I'd started to wonder if they really were just pets. Clearly, that wasn't the case.
Because of the chieftain, Ha Yoo-jin couldn't follow too closely either. That meant I needed to observe from as far a distance as possible. As we moved in the direction he indicated, the gnolls gradually came into my view as well. I used mana to sharpen my sight and hearing, keeping enough distance that the chieftain wouldn't notice me. I didn't forget to tell Ha Yoo-jin to stay close.
From here on, this was my job.
The journey went on for a long time. No matter how much the humans struggled, the gnolls simply bound them up and carried them along. Eventually they gagged them so they couldn't even speak. At one point, a struggling human even managed to punch a gnoll in the face. The gnoll just snarled—it never once retaliated with a beating. It simply picked the human back up and kept moving. Eventually the struggling humans wore themselves out and quieted down, but the moment they recovered even a little stamina, they started twisting and writhing with everything they had again.
What is this? What's going on?
At the very least, they knew what was going to be done to them. Ha Yoo-jin's report had already suggested as much. Which meant they'd been through this before—and come back alive. A place they desperately didn't want to return to, but one they could return from alive...
I looked in the direction they were heading and thought.
If they keep going this way...
In my first cycle, this was where the Worshipping Golden Gnoll Tribe had been. I'd been a low-ranking participant in the subjugation, so I knew the place. That was how I knew about the rocky terrain, too. Of course, the subjugation had failed. We'd advanced that far, but...
We got wrecked by the Gnoll Hero.
And that Hero would later unify the gnolls, becoming their king in all but name. Until the Empire felt threatened enough to launch a subjugation, they would ravage this entire region and amass an enormous army. And the direction we were heading now was that very place from the past. The former seat of the central tribe in Area 30.
At a certain point, a message appeared.
🏛 Type: Sacred Site
📍 Location: Area 30
⚔ Status: Sealed
...Sealed?
Sealed. I remembered this place simply being called the Gnoll Sanctuary in the past. The word "Sealed" had been added.
I remembered this clearly. Certain special areas within the zones had names. The most well-known was the Goblin Forest spanning Areas 21 through 24. The entrance to Area 31 was the Vast Swamp—though the swamp actually stretched all the way to Area 35, so the name seemed more for informational purposes than anything. Then there was the Land of Azirek in Area 35, along with Lisarr's Nest and Riberg's Hideout, also in Area 35. And Area 30's Gnoll Sanctuary. There were named locations in the mines as well.
The name of this place was different from my first cycle. Meaning the seal would be broken later. Obvious enough. I immediately realized the seal was connected to the Gnoll Hero. The Main Quest: stop the resurrection of the Gnoll Hero.
So that's how it was.
I never imagined the Gnoll Sanctuary itself would be sealed. In my first cycle, the Worshipping Golden Gnoll Tribe had already established themselves there, so I'd never even considered it. A regional seal, of all things. What kind of feat would it take to seal an entire region? Maybe later on it would make sense, but this was the Lower Floors. It was hard to even imagine.
The gnolls traveled deep into the heart of the Gnoll Sanctuary. The deeper they went, the more desperately the humans resisted. They were fighting with every last ounce of strength they had.
And at last, I saw it too.
A colossal gnoll. Golden-furred, easily twice the size of the already massive chieftain of the Worshipping Golden Gnoll Tribe, lying collapsed on the ground.
The Gnoll Hero.
It was the Gnoll Hero. I'd seen it before, so I was certain. Granted, I'd only caught a glimpse from an enormous distance. The strange thing was, it looked even bigger than the Gnoll Hero I'd seen in the past. Though I'd only glimpsed it, so I couldn't be completely sure.
A sword was driven into the center of the Gnoll Hero's corpse, right through the chest. Around it, several weapons were planted in the ground in a wide circle, and various pieces of equipment were scattered nearby.
I knew what those were.
Legendary-grade equipment!
Those were what I'd been after. The weapons themselves performed decently enough. Not at a level befitting Legendary grade, of course. Upper Rare at best? And yet their grade was Legendary. The reason was simple. Through those weapons, you could acquire Legendary-grade skills.
Why are they all here?
The weapons that should have been in the possession of the other tribes were all gathered in this one place. A sword, a shield, a staff, a wand, a robe, a priestess's vestments, gauntlets... Five of those pieces of equipment would let you inherit Legendary skills.
But something was strange. Those pieces of equipment were giving off a faint glow. And it was the ones I knew granted Legendary skills. They hadn't been like that in the past. I couldn't make sense of it.
Krrngh-krrngh-krrngh!
Unfortunately, I couldn't understand it. They had intelligence, but they lacked the rank to speak in a way I could comprehend. When the chieftain barked, the gnolls started bringing the humans forward. Then they immediately began untying part of the ropes binding them.
"No! I said no! This is my fifth time!"
The moment they untied him and pulled the gag from his mouth, one of the men started shouting. But the gnolls showed no mercy. They immediately subdued the screaming man and started dragging him, their movements rougher than before. The others started thrashing as well.
"Let go! I said let go! No, no!"
"What is this? What the hell is going on?!"
One of them—the man Ha Yoo-jin had mentioned, the one who'd shouted asking where they were being taken—seemed to still not fully grasp the situation. Terrified by the others' struggling, he thrashed along with them. The other four were all resisting like mad.
Soon, the man who'd resisted the least—the one I figured was the newcomer—was being led by the gnolls toward the equipment.
...Don't tell me! No!
The man put his hand on the equipment.
Are you kidding me?! Do you have any idea what that equipment is? Don't touch it! My Legendary skills...!
A surge of anxiety hit me. But at the same time, a question arose. Come to think of it, those were the same pieces of equipment that would still grant Legendary skills later on. If someone inherited the skills now, they wouldn't have been able to grant them in the second cycle...?
The answer to my question came immediately.
"Guh—GYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"
For a moment I wondered if that was even a sound a human could make. It was a scream that seemed to tear his own throat apart. People talk about training under waterfalls to find their true voice. If he'd screamed like that under one, it would have drowned out the waterfall itself. It was a scream so wretched that just hearing it made you feel a fraction of the agony.
"Guh—gah! GYAAAAH!"
Hearing that scream, the remaining four people started thrashing even harder.
"Save me, save me! Please!"
But it was meaningless. They couldn't break free of the gnolls' strength. One by one, they were forced to put their hands on the equipment, and one by one, they let out those wretched screams.
"GRAAAAAAAAAAAH!"
"Aagh! AAAAAAGH! AAAAAAAAAAGH!"
The last one's resistance was especially desperate.
"No, no... I—I'm the fifth one, the fifth! If I touch it this time, I'll really die! You can't!!"
The gnolls showed no mercy. A chieftain of that level probably understood what he was saying. In the past, gnoll chieftains had been said to pick up on human speech. And yet the chieftain's gesture was unyielding.
"GYAAAAAAAH!"
Sure enough, the man's hand touched another piece of equipment, and a wretched scream rang out.
"H-hyung, what... what is that?"
I didn't have the presence of mind to answer. I don't know either. What the hell is going on?
I was just about to say something when—
"Guh—GYAAAAAAAAAAAH!"
BOOM.
Splat. Thud-thud-thud.
The man who'd said he was the fifth. The moment he let out that final death cry, his body exploded. Chunks of his flesh splattered in every direction.
Ziiing—
But the flesh flying in all directions hit some kind of boundary and couldn't go any further, dropping to the ground with wet thuds. The area where the equipment was arranged. Looking closer, the pieces were laid out in a regular pattern, encircling the Gnoll Hero's corpse.
After a long while, everyone except the man who'd called himself the fifth stopped struggling.
Ghk. Ghk.
They didn't even have the strength left to scream, just making those choking sounds. Aside from the one who'd exploded, the other four seemed to have survived, at least.
Krrngh! Krrngh-krrngh!
When the chieftain barked, the other gnolls picked them up one by one. The humans no longer had the strength to resist, and were dragged away limply. Looking closely, the surviving humans all looked like they'd lost at least twenty pounds. Their bodies looked utterly exhausted, too.
The chieftain spent a long time checking the remaining equipment, then started leading the humans back the way they'd come.
That. That behavior. Using humans to make them touch the equipment. That was the gnolls' purpose. It was obvious. Those pieces of equipment were sealing the Gnoll Hero's corpse. In that state, the Gnoll Hero probably couldn't be resurrected.
One by one the gnolls left, and after a long time had passed and every trace of them had vanished, I started walking toward the equipment.