Chapter 62 3. The World's Strongest Pregnant Woman
The World's Strongest Pregnant Woman
Chapter 63
A pure white line seemed to have been drawn across Seoul. Though thin as a thread, it was a beam of light so vivid it hurt the eyes.
KRRRRUMBLE!
Before the sanctity of that lightning strike, everything else faded into insignificance.
Whether it was the Lord of Corpses who stood near divinity, or the darkness that had submerged Seoul—all lost their presence before that single streak of light. Into that void, the flashing beam descended straight down.
CRACKLE-CRACKLE-CRACKLE!
Compared to Seoul, it might have been the tiniest spark of lightning.
But to those who had nearly lost hope, it shone as brightly as salvation. Even if such a description was an exaggeration, it didn't matter.
Whatever it was, within that lightning, silver hair had fluttered.
ZZZZZT!
A blade stained with blood ignited with lightning. The streaks of electricity collided wildly, pouring out a cacophony of deafening noise. Scattered remnants of the lightning spread in all directions, unfurling like snowflakes.
And in the midst of it all, pure white silver hair swayed at her thighs. The scabbard at her slender waist shook violently. Her outfit was exactly the same as before—an open blouse exposing her upper chest, leather hot pants, torn stockings covering her thighs.
Only, there was more blood staining her clothes now.
'Just what the hell has she been doing?'
Yet, her immaculate beauty still shone through. The fact that her bloodstained face somehow suited her was, in a way, terrifying.
Then.
-...How... can a mere... human... conceal their presence... from me...?
A fragmented inner voice reached me.
The ghost with streaks of grey in her hair.
Until now, I hadn't been able to read her thoughts at all, but Park Ha-rin's appearance had shattered her composure.
In contrast.
「.........」
Park Ha-rin was unnervingly silent. Disconcertingly so, as if she made no sound at all.
Even as the storm raged around her, she stood unaffected, like a tranquil lake—an eerie sense of isolation, as if she alone had been cut off from the world.
A sudden unease toward my sister rose within me.
'This... is absolutely ridiculous...'
People have something called presence. It's the scent of mana, a fingerprint, a measure of strength. With training, one could conceal it to some extent. But even then, it was impossible to completely evade my 「Read」 ability.
From the Lord of Corpses, I could sense power capable of swallowing Earth whole without effort.
But.
"What did you just say to my sister?"
From my sister, I couldn't read a single thing.
It was as if the air should have been filled without gaps, yet where she stood, it was unnaturally empty—like a vacuum had formed.
The more I unconsciously observed her, the more I felt an unknown terror emanating from everything about her—from her appearance to the unreadable glint in her eyes.
"...."
Even the Lord of Corpses seemed wary of my sister's presence, finding it bizarre. She couldn't shake the suspicion of how someone had slipped past her senses.
Without a word, my sister rested her hand on her sword. Her rotten eyes, no less unsettling than the Lord's, rolled slowly.
"Something like that...?"
Her perfectly straight head tilted slightly as her gaze shifted. Her silver hair clung to her cheek, streaming down long. Amidst it, her golden irises gleamed messily, like something dredged from a sewer.
"You dare... speak to me?"
The Lord of Corpses twisted the corner of her mouth.
<It's been a while... since I've met a woman who rouses my fury...>
Her raised finger pointed at me.
My sister's smile changed.
"He's my little brother."
<Doesn't that make it even better...?>
My sister kept smiling.
But from her narrowed pupils, a sinister light seeped out.
"Decision made."
My sister raised her sword to her front.
In that instant.
CRACK.
As if the air itself had fractured, the temperature plummeted. In the midst of it, I could've sworn she was the only one moving.
One hand gripped the hilt. The other clutched the scabbard.
"I'll kill you... myself."
The blade revealed itself before my eyes.
Her gaze, split between two directions, was chilling.
"Personally."
The smile reflected in the blade lasted only an instant.
Not even a trace of amusement remained on her face. Only her eyes, honed to razor sharpness, scattered a red haze.
From the blade emerging from its sheath, a white light surged.
For a moment, the surroundings brightened with a transparent flash.
"Die."
The overwhelming pressure radiating outward silently crushed the ground beneath. Whether it was due to Park Ha-rin's oppressive aura, the suppressed light burst forth as if screaming.
BANG!
Only by the trailing afterimage of the light could I belatedly perceive the slash.
"......!"
And then came a result that far surpassed all expectations.
CRACK-SPLIT!
<...?>
The Lord of Corpses had been cleanly bisected.
From her crotch to the crown of her head—so precisely that even the one being cut couldn't hide her shock. The trajectory of light continued onward, carving through the rest.
<Huh...?>
The ghostly body split in two and fell apart. The separated forms melted into the void, vanishing without a trace.
Despite the sheer force of the slash, no residual energy lingered in the surroundings. The light, having achieved its purpose without a sound, disappeared cleanly, leaving not even a hint of aftermath.
"Phew."
Noona wiped the sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand.
"What a shame. I really wanted to kill her."
No sooner had she spoken than a disturbance rippled through the air elsewhere.
A translucent figure materialized as if drawn into existence from the void.
<Hmm...?>
The Lord of Corpses emerged from the darkness, running her fingers along the back of her neck. A copious amount of blood stained her hand. Without needing to check, a long, deep gash had been carved into her throat.
<Kikik.>
The Lord of Corpses lowered her head. She didn't even attempt to stop the bleeding. Instead, she seemed to relish the sensation of blood trickling down to her chest.
<Hahaha, hahahahahahahaha!>
Her laughter began to escalate, growing faster and more erratic. She clutched her stomach, bent her waist at an unnatural angle, and rolled her feet in place.
<Heehee, heeheeheeheeheehee!>
In all the game's records, no Climber had ever stood out like this. So, the Lord must have seen hope—the hope that she could finally die.
<Goooood, goooood!!>
Her appearance was closer to that of a deranged lunatic, obsessively fixated on her own demise. Her eyes darkened from the edges inward, as if crawling with bacteria. The corners of her mouth split all the way to her earlobes. She looked less like a madwoman and more like a full-fledged monster.
Drenched in darkness, the Lord let out a tearing laugh.
<How would you feeeel, sisterrr... if your dead little brother were toyed with by meee...?>
But, fuck. That was crossing a line.
I quickly glanced at Noona.
Noona grinned silently. Her already deceptive eyes took on an even more chilling glint of murderous intent.
"I'll definitely kill you~"
"Noona, wait."
I grabbed her shoulder in a hurry. Noona turned to look at me, her expression blank. Her gaze was piercingly cold.
"What?"
Her face was a perfect reflection of her rotten nature, and it scared the shit out of me. Quietly, I glanced at Noona's stomach.
『Park Ha-rin's Semen Reserves — 27%』
Thankfully, whether it was due to my sperm's tenacity or something else, her reserves hadn't depleted as much as I'd feared.
No, that wasn't the problem. The problem was that Noona...
『Park Ha-rin is currently pregnant.』
...was currently pregnant.
I didn't even want to think about the pregnancy, but I couldn't help worrying about Noona's condition.
But maybe she noticed my expression.
"Don't worry. Noona has absolutely no intention of dying anytime soon."
Noona shook off my hand.
Her silver hair swayed as she strode forward. I found myself momentarily entranced by her retreating figure.
For the first time, I could somewhat understand the protagonist's feelings—how, every time Noona died in the game, he'd ramble on about her beauty in the post-mortem reflections.
Balancing her sword on the back of her hand and spinning it lightly as if performing a trick, Noona glared up at the sky.
"What're you waiting for, you dumb-looking bitch?"
Her dull golden irises, already bored, flicked upward.
The Lord of Corpses, meeting that rotten gaze, also raised her chin. Then, as if finding the situation absurd, she couldn't hold back her laughter.
Keeheeheeheeheehee—!
A spine-chilling shriek shook Seoul. The darkness pooling on the ground bubbled and seethed in response to her laughter.
—Kreeeeeeee!
From the swamp of shadows, the hands of zombies clawed their way up.
"...Hmph."
Noona's cold golden eyes, still alight with an unyielding glow, were wreathed in pale mana.
And before I could even think of stopping her, Noona vanished—without a single movement, sign, breath, or sound.
CRACKLE-BOOM!
In the next instant, she reappeared beside me, her sword already raised for a slash.
SHWAK!
A zombie, its head severed before it could even process its own death, floated into the air. Not a single drop of blood spilled from the cleanly sliced neck—until, belatedly, gore erupted from the bisected wound. But Noona was already gone from that spot.
She was walking far ahead.
A vicious smile on her face as she cleaved through mutated zombies.
I couldn't even begin to track her movement. It was as if she was skipping through space itself, omitting the distance between points.
Ahahahaha! Ahahahahaha!
The Lord laughed uncontrollably as she watched. Noona, too, seemed to have taken a liking to the slaughter, her face alight with excitement as she carried out the massacre.
For a brief moment, I almost pitied the zombies caught between them.
<Krrrhehehehehehe!>
"KyahaHAHAHAHAHA!"
"...."
They were women who had failed to go mad gracefully. I watched them both with a weary expression before shaking my head.
Even now, I was relying on Noona. The thought made me despise myself.
But I quickly resigned myself to it.
"Ugh, hng..."
If not for myself, then for the people behind me—collapsed in hopeless despair.
I had to use whatever I could. Even if that meant borrowing strength from outside.
By the way, the last hit was mine.
#
Grrrrrrrraaah!
Blood splattered across Ha-rin's face. A pale flash of lightning erupted from her skin, vaporizing it instantly. Yet not a single burn remained as she twisted her snow-white face.
A zombie, missing parts of its body, lunged forward, staining the floor with blood. But did these mindless creatures realize? That they had chosen the wrong opponent—far, far worse than they could have imagined?
Fwoosh!
—Keeeeeeek!?
Blinding white streaks of light erupted across my vision.
Multiple zombie heads went flying into the air.
Their eyes trembled, still unable to comprehend their own deaths. Not that they ever could. Even I struggled to follow the sequence of that attack.
Fear began to seep into the faces of the corpses as they met Ha-rin's vicious gaze. Park Ha-rin raised her sword in their midst.
Fwoom!
A sickly crimson Sacred Power flashed along the blade's edge. A color that could look either divine or sinister depending on the light—though this time, it leaned far more toward the divine.
"Ahahahahaha!"
Watching my sister, her eyes rolled back, slicing through zombies like a madwoman, I let out a pained groan.
...She's growing way too fast, isn't she?
Crunch!
Ha-rin's elbow shattered a zombie's jaw. She pivoted her hips and launched a kick, cleanly crushing its skull. The tip of her sword flickered wildly with white light, tracing dizzyingly intricate patterns in the air.
—Keeeeek!
Zombies in her path were reduced to mere splatters of blood. As she grinned, pale lightning crackled across her skin, charring even the blood into ash.
A monstrous talent—that was all it took for her to awaken Sacred Power.
Damn it, what the hell.
I had gained Sacred Power as a skill by becoming the Holy Sword's wielder. That was why I knew just how insane it was for Park Ha-rin to awaken it on her own.
For an ordinary person with no connection to Sacred Power, it was something they could never grasp in their entire lifetime.
But Park Ha-rin had done it in just a few days. And she might already be using it more skillfully than I could.
But that wasn't all.
Crackle-crackle-crack!
Her movements as she sliced through zombies were as precise as a programmed sequence. Breathing, footwork, gaze control, power adjustment—not a single wasted motion. And yet, the speed at which she lowered her stance and weaved through the zombies was something even I struggled to track. It far surpassed the limits of human mobility.
—Keeeeek!
It didn't matter how many came at her.
Even when dozens densely surrounded her, Ha-rin broke through without a change in expression.
Sometimes with acrobatic movements, other times with sharp lunges—she crushed zombie skulls with her knees.
She predicted the flow of battle based on what she saw, stepping forward in a calculated routine, severing limbs to carve a path.
She was fundamentally different from me, who just bulldozed through with brute force. Her Sword Aura, distributing power precisely as needed, had already surpassed Hayase's level. Unlike mine, clean cross-sections were carved into the zombies one after another.
The result? Mutated zombies lay scattered across the ground as nothing more than wreckage.
"What? That's it?"
For a moment, Ha-rin looked dazed—then she let out a hollow laugh. A sneer dripping with mockery.
Every zombie that emerged from the darkness was instantly bisected by razor-sharp lines, left motionless. Eventually, as if bored, she even stretched her eyelids.
"Boring."
<...>
At some point, the Lord of Corpses, sitting cross-legged in displeasure, shifted her gaze. Her eyeballs rolled like those of a mannequin.
<Not bad...?>
At the edge of her vision, scattered flesh began reconstructing itself.
The darkness lashed out like a whip, seizing and swallowing the remaining mutated zombies.
From within, more advanced zombies burst forth.
Only then did Ha-rin half-open her eyes, as if finally finding some interest.
"Ugh, I almost fell asleep from how dull that was. Should've sent these out sooner. No sense of timing at all."
Says the one with zero self-awareness, you psycho bitch.
Ha-rin, who had been yawning with her sword planted in the ground, kicked the blade with her foot. Without even looking, she effortlessly caught the spinning sword—then vanished like a swift tiger.
She reappeared behind the zombies.
Fzzzzzzzt!
Dozens of translucent trajectories connected around her. Every zombie she passed was mercilessly split apart, regardless of type.
"Haha, now these are a bit tougher, huh?"
Her golden irises, scanning the enemies with predatory glee, even carried a sadistic delight. Judging by that display of power, it seemed nothing in the Tutorial could stop her now. Maybe not even me...
Just what the hell had she been doing all this time?
<......>
The Lord of Corpses glared at Park Ha-rin, clicking her fingers. Faster ashes fell from her fingertips.
And then—something changed.
Grrrroooowl.
From the two Zombie Swarms. The bodies of the two giants bubbled and swelled like boiling foam.
Sucking in all kinds of mutated zombies and darkness, growing even larger. Zombie hands stretched from their skin, merging into one.
It was then that I, who had only ever dealt with small fry zombies, stood dumbfounded.
<Go.>
GRROOOOAAARRR!
The arm, fused from tens of thousands of zombies, split into four and stretched out. The thickened limb clawed at the sky before swinging down toward us.
It felt like a building was collapsing.
"Noona!"
I ducked frantically and shouted. My cry was futile—the tips of my hair evaporated in the storm of force. When I hastily looked up, Noona was no longer on the ground.
"Huh..."
Whoosh—
Noona was up there.
On top of the giant's arm that had just swept through the area.
When the hell did she get up there? Damn it...?!
Noona, who had driven her sword into the Swarm, lifted her golden pupils.
The arm thrashed violently, trying to shake her off. In a world now moving at hyper-speed, Noona bent her knees. That alone was enough to maintain perfect balance, refusing to be thrown off.
Her impossible sense of equilibrium left me breathless.
WHOOSH!
The zombie's arm didn't stop, flipping up and down. Noona couldn't counter that, so she sprinted faster than gravity could pull her down.
But the Zombie Swarm was a fusion of countless zombies in their rawest form. Noona was now running across its body.
What did it mean to run atop a Swarm? It meant the very ground beneath her feet was made of zombies.
True to expectations, the zombies unraveled from the arm. Countless masses of flesh and tendrils coiled around Noona.
Her eyes turned cold and lifeless. Then, with her stockings tearing further, she charged forward. Not a single remnant of a zombie managed to graze her.
SHWIIIIING!
The tangled waves of arms from all directions were severed by Sword Aura.
Noona didn't slow down—she plunged even deeper.
Like hacking through jungle vines, she didn't stop for even a second, despite being surrounded by zombies.
Spinning mid-air, she detonated her Mana and split the Swarm's arm apart.
A massive palm came flying from the side. She leaped onto it, grabbing the zombie's head and climbing higher.
Then, Mana surged into her sword. She raced forward, cleaving through the arms with streaks of white light.
That sight left me—and everyone else—utterly speechless.
Even I, who had grown steadily stronger, couldn't freely sprint through a frenzy of zombies like that.
The Swarm's arm was a jungle, densely packed with zombies.
At any moment, zombies would break free and lunge out, blocking her path. A human would have to force open those narrow gaps just to keep running.
Stop even for a second, and your legs would be ensnared—either crushed or sucked in.
But Noona? She carved through every zombie, sprinting through their traps.
Haha. And she's pregnant...?
...I might be looking at the strongest pregnant woman in the world.
While I was still dazed, a sharp light gathered around Noona's sword.
A Sword Aura fiercer than even Hayase's—unrivaled in blade mastery.
KWA-BOOOOOM!
The moment the Sword Aura was unleashed, the fused zombies shattered into light. The Swarm's midsection split wide open.
As the slash's radiance faded, a zombie arm shot out from the gap, blocking Noona's path.
She accelerated through even that tiny opening in an instant. Twisting her body, pivoting on one foot, she broke through the Swarm's snares—like an entire mountain of zombies trying to ensnare her.
It was as if a beam of white light was scaling and collapsing a mountain made of zombies.
CRRUMBLE—BOOM!
By the time all the arms had been carved apart by light—
Noona had reached the summit.
The mountainous giant of zombies she had traversed was now shredded beyond recognition.
Its blood-soaked body teetered precariously, as if it would collapse at any moment.
Standing atop the giant's peak, Noona raised her eyes.
Her noble bearing remained untarnished, even smeared in blood.
Facing her, the Lord of Corpses smiled.
<Seems like you've hit your limit now?>
Noona glanced at her sword.
The blade was chipped. In some places, it had even cracked. The natural end for an ordinary sword.
But Noona showed no expression as she let it go.
The crumbling blade didn't even reach the ground before disintegrating mid-air.
She had truly squeezed 100% out of its material.
<Can you win the rest without a sword?>
Darkness bloomed from all corners of Seoul.
Noona's expression remained unchanged. She simply reached out her hand.
At the same time, my eyes twitched.
WHOOSH—
A new sword appeared in Noona's grip.
Even my Read skill couldn't fully grasp her abilities.
The Lord of Corpses, who hadn't seen Noona draw the sword either, frowned.
Noona examined the blade with mild interest, then—as if bored—dropped it just like before.
"!"
The abandoned sword plummeted to the ground. It shattered into pieces before even retaining its metallic form.
No one could understand her actions.
Then, Noona muttered:
"With something like this... I don't think I can defeat you."
As her colorless eyelids lowered, her golden eyes narrowed.
Noona's right hand slowly rose. At the same time, not just me—even the Lord of Corpses was left speechless.
CRACK—CRACKLE!
An ominous violet light.
The power of a monster surged from Noona's hand.