Chapter 123
Chapter 123
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 123
Chapter Title: I Am Lee Si-woo
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Ben cried.
It wasn't the usual tears from being beaten by his friends, nor was it sorrow for his impoverished life.
He was scared.
Scared of the people trying to kill him and his father.
“Ben. Listen carefully. You have to go on your own from now on.”
His father's eyes had turned pure white, and even his hair and eyebrows were slowly losing their color.
It hadn't been like this from the start.
Originally, they had been heading to the temporary shelter in Granada announced by the Magic Tower—the factory district.
But the problem began when other citizens spotted them and gave chase, screaming that they couldn't forgive the humans responsible for this catastrophe.
His father started running with Ben in his arms, and the number of people chasing them gradually increased.
And as the situation worsened and they were cornered, white snow began to fall upon his father's head.
“Ben. You're small, so you can fit through this hole. I told you the way, right? Go to the factory district. It's safe there. Go. Quickly. I'll be right behind you.”
“Father…”
His father's face, which had been beaming with a constant smile, overjoyed at becoming Mr. Lee Si-woo's driver, was now twisted like a demon's.
Whether it was from the sorrow of sending him away alone or for some other reason, Ben found his father strangely unfamiliar.
“Go! Now-!”
At his father's shout, Ben scrambled through the hole under the iron fence.
Then, he clutched the stone statue in his pocket.
Ben prayed to the faceless statue, from which a warm energy emanated.
‘Please keep my father safe. Please let me get to the factory district safely.’
But the boy's prayers went unanswered.
Because white corpses began to crawl down the railings and outer walls of the alleyway buildings like spiders, right where the boy was running.
‘Ah…’
Seeing the mouths of the white corpses, stained red as if they had already feasted on someone's blood and flesh, Ben's legs froze.
And then, gunshots rang out.
Rat-a-tat-tat!
“There's a human child here!”
“Save him, quickly!”
A goblin, naturally talented in marksmanship and other martial arts, fired from the rear, while a beastkin stood at the front, a shield in one hand and a rifle in the other.
But there were only four or five of them at most.
Not nearly enough to face over fifty Stragglers.
“There are too many!”
“Lady Isabelle! Help us!”
Did she hear the goblin's call for help?
From the shadows between the Stragglers, a blonde, bob-haired elf woman shot out and threw a handful of grenades she was holding.
Isabelle had used the 3rd Circle magic, Shadow Step, to plant explosive seeds right in the middle of the Stragglers.
KABOOOM!
After blowing away a chunk of the Stragglers, Isabelle emerged from the shadow of Ben, who was sitting on the ground, trembling.
She grabbed Ben by the scruff of his neck, like one would a pet dog, and said,
“Hey, stop sniveling and get up. Before I leave you behind.”
“Ah, my father…”
“What about your father? What am I supposed to do about it?”
“Please save my father. He's… over there…”
Isabelle scowled.
It had been several hours since she was deployed to rescue humans at the request of the Dongbanhoe.
She'd been running around working her ass off all that time, and her stress levels were through the roof.
And now, a human brat was whining annoyingly right in front of her?
It was the last straw.
Isabelle was on the verge of giving in to the impulse to just dump the smelly human kid she was holding, but then Lee Si-woo's face came to mind, making it hard to be so cold-hearted.
‘Dammit, elves have some loyalty, at least. I thought Si-woo had bailed on his own, but since he's out here raising hell in the slums, I guess I should provide this level of care service.’
Isabelle forcibly handed Ben over to a goblin and ran in the direction he had pointed.
And there, not even a ten-minute run away, she found the body of an adult man, abandoned.
The long claw marks on his chest suggested he'd been killed by a beastkin, not a Straggler.
Seeing the dead man, who bore a striking resemblance to the human kid she'd just saved, Isabelle grimaced with a sour taste in her mouth.
“Tsk, what a fucking mess. Seriously. How did the world get so screwed up?”
Normally, she wasn't the type to care about the death of another race, especially not some human.
No, having lived as a perpetrator herself, deaths like these usually left her unfazed.
But perhaps because she'd lost her own mother at a very young age,
seeing a child lose a parent always left a bitter taste in her mouth.
‘Still, a child should have their parents… Huh?’
Isabelle sensed a suspicious presence and looked around.
Soon, her face turned pale.
It was because she saw the hundreds, thousands of Stragglers that had surrounded her without her noticing.
‘No way! When did so many… Don't tell me the new virus has completely spread throughout the city? Did the quarantine fail after all?’
The white glow emanating from the Stragglers pressed in on her, as if it would swallow her whole at any moment.
But something was strange.
The behavior of the Stragglers, which should have been pouncing on her immediately, was somehow bizarre.
Wooooo…
Over a thousand Stragglers looked up at the sky, wailing mournfully.
It was a cry that was at once sorrowful, yet also steeped in the joy of finding a long-lost relative.
Before long, the barrier covering the city split in two with a crack, and the blue sky filled her vision.
‘What…?’
Rumble—
The ground she was standing on shook.
No, to be precise, the very axis of the earth was trembling.
As if not the land, but the planet itself were shuddering in ecstasy.
‘Something… is happening.’
Isabelle unknowingly turned her gaze toward the slums.
Yes, toward the place where someone capable of causing this inexplicable event might be.
* * *
Having lost Lee Si-woo right when he was in her grasp, the Spider Matriarch went berserk.
She lost her mind to self-loathing, having let slip the disciple of the one who nearly killed her, a potential successor to the Faceless.
From that moment, the slaughter began.
With a shriek, her kick split the ground, wiping out over ten members of Dawn, while countless others lost their lives to her spider legs, which moved like bloodthirsty tentacles.
This was no longer a war, but a one-sided butchery, yet she did not stop.
No matter how many she killed, her rage would not subside.
“Come out—!”
How many of Dawn's forces had she killed?
Unable to appease her anger with such simple slaughter, she finally arrived before Autoreu's corpse.
“I know you're nearby, yet you still won't show yourself? You'd stand by and watch as they die like insects? Fine, let's see if you'll stay hidden after this-!”
The Spider Matriarch used one of the spider legs on her back to pierce and lift Autoreu's frail corpse.
With an irritated gesture, she tore off the Faceless mask from Autoreu, who was dangling right in front of her.
Fine wrinkles.
She gazed at the old man's appearance, rusted by the passage of time, as if in disgust, and muttered,
“Vermin who can't even maintain their youth for a mere hundred years. Look at this shabby appearance, shriveled by time. It's unbelievable. How did such pathetic things ever rule this continent?”
She caressed Autoreu's neck with her slender, jade-like hands.
“Lee Si-woo. Let's see if you'll still hide after I rip off your master's head and hang it in the middle of these ruins.”
Just as she was about to tear off Autoreu's head, a monotone voice warned her.
“Take your filthy hands off him.”
Lee Si-woo, who had appeared without a sound, was staring intently at the Spider Matriarch.
The Spider Matriarch cackled, delighted that Lee Si-woo had finally appeared.
“Yes, this is what it means to be human. So foolishly sentimental. A stupid race that imbues meaning into a corpse that's no better than fertilizer! A foolish… who throws away their life, swayed by petty affection.”
As she rambled on excitedly, her eyes fell upon the Faceless mask in Lee Si-woo's hand.
And then she froze.
The hair on her entire body stood on end, and a chilling sensation that tingled the back of her head coursed through her veins.
The feeling of cold blood rushing fiercely through her vessels.
The powerful warning sent by her Talent, Crisis Detection, made the Spider Matriarch lose her composure.
She realized.
That if she kept leisurely running her mouth like a villain in a third-rate movie, she would cross a river of no return.
But she was too late.
Lee Si-woo had already placed the Faceless mask on his face.
Sshhh.
As he donned the mask, a voice echoed in Lee Si-woo's mind.
-I failed.
Si-woo recognized the voice as that of his butler, the one who had been the Faceless.
-I did not know. That painting white on a white canvas does not result in a clean picture. So I despaired, and I fell.
Woooong.
The mask rattled and vibrated.
-One day, a demon came and whispered to me. That the world you desire cannot be painted in white. Only in gray. A blackish-gray, at that. I asked him. What is blackish-gray?
The mask rattled, letting out a noise that sounded like laughter.
-He said. A speck of black in white is dirty, but a speck of white in black is beautiful. Like the stars embedded in the night sky. And he said. The white speck mixes with the black and gradually turns to gray, and this gray, infinitely close to black, is the blackish-gray.
The mask's rattling came to a sudden halt.
-He made me an offer. I will become the blackish-gray for you, so you must grant my wish. I asked him. What is your wish? He said.
A halo of light burst forth from the Faceless mask, illuminating the entire land.
Swept up in that brilliant light, the Spider Matriarch was thrown back with a piercing scream, like a vampire meeting the sun.
-I want to become human.
As the Faceless mask revealed its presence, every Straggler stopped moving.
The sight of the White Calamity standing still, turning their gazes in unison toward the Faceless mask, was utterly bizarre, yet it reminded some of a child reuniting with their lost mother.
The white clouds in the once-blue sky turned gray and formed a spiral.
At the center of the swirling sky, the sunlight fractured.
The voices of countless people drifted into Lee Si-woo's ears.
-Save my father… please save my father.
-Anyone, I don't care who. Please get me out of this hell.
-Get rid of those white things. Please, please…!
-Even if I die today, I have no regrets. Because I believe that tomorrow will be better than today, and the day after better than tomorrow.
-I will become nourishment, a part of the future that will one day blossom beautifully.
Lee Si-woo answered their voices.
The roar that erupted from his mouth became a storm, sweeping through the city and the sky.
The dark clouds split apart, and a clear sky with dazzling sunlight shone down on the city.
At that thunderous voice, the Spider Matriarch clamped her hands over her ears and screamed.
The blood flowing from her eyes and ears was tinged with a fear and terror so great it felt like suffocation.
‘The Faceless… has the Faceless returned? No! No! That thing… is not the Faceless…’
She knew instinctively. The being before her was entirely different from the one once called the Faceless.
Lee Si-woo spoke.
“Kneel.”
The voice, like a striking thunderbolt, rang in her eardrums.
At the sound that shattered her very ego, the Spider Matriarch screamed, covering her ears.
Soon, an irresistible gravity pressed down on her knees and shoulders.
With her head slammed into the rough dirt, she shrieked and struggled with all her might to get up.
But at this moment, neither her powerful body nor her mind responded.
As if the master of her body was not her own ego, but the being before her.
She cried out.
“You are not the Faceless! The Faceless never uses his power this way! He uses his voice to move others! To inspire and enlighten them! But I can tell. You, you are… different. You are trying to make me submit! To make me obey… to dominate me!”
He said.
“I am not the Faceless.”
Lee Si-woo, approaching without a trace, placed his foot on the back of her head.
Sensing her end, the Spider Matriarch shot back in a sharp voice.
“You are a fake! I can't feel any proper conviction or values from you! None of the principles or banners of the Faceless who founded Dawn—!”
Lee Si-woo ruthlessly stomped on her head.
The immense force extending from the tip of his foot not only crushed her head like a roadside fruit but also cracked the very earth.
As the axis of the earth trembled, an earthquake opened a massive, bottomless sinkhole beneath Lee Si-woo's feet.
Looking down at the Spider Matriarch's headless body falling into the darkness of the hole, Lee Si-woo said,
“I am Lee Si-woo.”
Lee Si-woo waved his hand, and the wind that rose at his gesture swept across the area.
A tremendous gale swept up the Stragglers.
Pushed and swept by the wind, the Stragglers rained down into the massive sinkhole where the Spider Matriarch had fallen.
If they had been the original White Calamity, they wouldn't have been so helpless, but fortunately, they were merely degraded, later-generation specimens.
Watching the white specks fall into the abyss of the earth, Lee Si-woo clasped his hands behind his back.
‘I think I understand why the Butler let me hear that voice.’
The clearer and more desperate the voices he hears, the more divinity accumulates within him.
And that divinity returns to him as power like this.
Of course, the power he just displayed wasn't based on those voices.
The time he'd spent gathering the voices was far too short for that.
Therefore, this was something squeezed from the remnants of the Faceless, from the man who was his butler.
Yes, the last flicker of the Faceless's nearly exhausted wick, his remaining strength.
‘Does this mean… I won't be able to see the Butler again?’
Realizing that the Butler had turned himself into fuel to create this power and passed it on to him, Lee Si-woo let out a bitter sigh.
It was out of disappointment at the thought that he might never see the Butler again.
His disappointment was brief. With a light gesture, Lee Si-woo summoned the corpse of Autoreu, which was only a torso.
Perhaps because he had let go of everything before he left, his master's body felt impossibly light. Holding it in his arms, Lee Si-woo sighed, his breath tinged with sorrow.
‘If I were truly a god, omniscient and omnipotent… no, if only I could become one, how wonderful would that be. Then, I wouldn't have had to send him off so bleakly…’
And at that moment, a piece of stationery appeared before Lee Si-woo's eyes.
It was the quest he had received from the white hand.
The question marks written on the quest were erased, and other words filled their place.
[6-Star Quest]
Survive from ???. > Survive from the Five Divine Seeds.
* * *
On the rooftop of the tallest building in Granada.
Lying on the floor and staring blankly at the sky, a handsome young man with white hair, Jin, broke into a wide smile.
As if this was the very moment he had been longing and waiting for.