Chapter 169
Chapter 169
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 169
Chapter Title: The Wanderer
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Thanks to their quick movements, Lee Si-woo’s party managed to evade the Arang Club's pursuit and board a bus heading to the Walled City.
In the midst of it all, Plenitas was swept along with them, her eyes darting back and forth as she muttered to herself, “What do I do?”
It seemed she was worried sick about being suddenly thrust into Chapter 4.
Looktator, on the other hand, was completely unconcerned, as if thinking, ‘What does it matter if we go to the mountains or the sea?’ Meanwhile, Lee Si-woo was so lost in thought that he didn't say a single word for the entire ride to Chapter 4.
Looktator casually spoke to him.
“Is something troubling you? Why are you so quiet?”
To Looktator's question, Lee Si-woo replied in a thick voice.
“That red-eyebrowed man I tricked in the last chapter. Do you remember him?”
“How could I forget something from so recently? Of course, I remember.”
“He was alive.”
Looktator raised an eyebrow and said.
“We didn't see him at the police station, and we had that kid, Lee Si-woo… It would have been difficult for him to survive the night, wouldn't it?”
“A person I thought couldn't survive did, and since then, various incidents have occurred, including errors in this world’s system. Do you think this is a coincidence?”
“Are you saying the two are related? Hmm, I think that’s a bit of a stretch. It’s more likely the kid was lucky enough to discover that silver or salt was effective and survived. It’s more rational to think the various incidents were things that were bound to happen when the time came, don’t you think?”
“At first, I tried to think that way too. But…”
The problem was Adrian’s impression.
His appearance was the same, but the atmosphere emanating from his behavior was completely different.
Before, he immediately brought to mind an arrogant and haughty nobleman, but now, there was a pervasive feeling that something was off.
Yes, a sense of dissonance, like a carnivore forced into the skin of an herbivore.
‘I don't know what it is, but it's extremely unsettling…’
Lee Si-woo’s thought was cut short.
With a deafening roar, the bus tilted sharply to the left.
CRASH!
With an impact like an elephant ramming the bus, it rolled onto its side, and the passengers inside began to tumble around like popcorn in a microwave.
The passengers, who had slammed their bodies and faces all over the place and were a mess, began to pull themselves together—all except for Plenitas, who had managed to wear a seatbelt.
Among them were Looktator and Lee Si-woo, who had suffered almost no impact thanks to their incredible reflexes and agility.
“What in the world is going on?”
Lee Si-woo shattered the bus window with his fist and said.
“It’s an attack.”
“An attack? By whom?”
Lee Si-woo said, his gaze fixed on a white giant sitting quietly outside the bus window, like a cat waiting for a mouse outside its hole.
“We’ve entered the Chapter 4 region. Which means…”
Meeting the gaze of the giant's face, which had no nose or mouth, only murky gray eyes, Lee Si-woo continued.
“It’s no different from saying we’ve entered the territory of the ones who ruined Chapter 4.”
Following Lee Si-woo's gaze, Plenitas’s face turned deathly pale.
“Sh-shouldn’t we run away right now?”
Lee Si-woo said in a calm tone.
“Calm down. Acting rashly in a hurry is not a good idea.”
The white giant was waiting patiently, like a hunter who had found its prey.
Therefore, being the first to move was no different from advertising yourself to be eaten.
Just like a certain man who was now majestically smashing a bus window and leaping outside.
“What is everyone doing! Didn’t you see the monster? We have to run!”
High-level. The man, who appeared to possess a suit of a higher rank than even Lee Si-woo's, charged toward the white giant.
However, it was less an act of attack and more a deceptive maneuver for escape.
As a veteran who had long roamed Chapter 4, he wasn't foolish enough to challenge a monster he had never seen before.
But he didn't know.
That moving first against an unknown being was the most foolish decision he had ever made in his life.
Whoosh.
The white giant's hand sliced through the air like a flyswatter aiming for a fly on the floor.
As a rule, the difficulty of the Secret Chapters increases exponentially with the number.
Chapter 1 was trickier than 0, and 2 was harder than 1.
So now, having skipped 3 and arrived in Chapter 4.
What level of difficulty would it be?
Crunch.
The white giant’s strike was so fast and powerful that the man died instantly in a single blow, without even a chance to scream.
As the man, who had been wearing a suit that was at least Rank 3, or possibly even verging on Rank 4, was turned into a bloody pulp and died in one hit, a thick silence fell over the bus.
‘I’ve seen it before.’
Lee Si-woo had seen the white giant before.
Not here, but through the White Disaster he had experienced in the Main Dimension.
‘The white giant in the Main Dimension was a degraded version. Then… what is this one? A prototype even worse than the degraded version? Or… the completed version?’
But one thing was certain: whether that was a degraded version or the completed one, the current Lee Si-woo lacked the ability to face it.
“Sir. You said you stole the Arang Club Master’s suit, right?”
Looktator, immediately grasping the intent behind Lee Si-woo’s question, took out Kei's suit watch from his inventory.
He thought that the club master's suit might hold a way to overcome this situation.
Taking out his scanner and confirming the information on the suit watch, Lee Si-woo's eyes widened.
Eagle Suit
Description: When equipped, grants the user the ‘Flight’ Talent.
Only then did Lee Si-woo think he understood why the Arang Club Master had been so frantic in his pursuit of Looktator.
This suit was a key item, especially in times like these.
“With this…”
As Lee Si-woo reached for the suit watch, Looktator scoffed and put it on himself.
“Huh? Sir?”
“You shameless bastard. Do you plan to eat all the delicious things and take all the good things in this world for yourself? I got this, so it’s mine, you punk.”
Seeing Lee Si-woo smack his lips, speechless at his rebuke, Looktator quickly equipped the suit.
And then, a blow like a thunderclap struck the bus.
BOOM!
The white giant, like a bear bored with bees that wouldn't come out of their hive, split the bus in one strike and roared.
Blood trickled from the ears of the passengers, startled by the roar.
Their eardrums had burst from the monstrous sound, like a bomb exploding right next to their ears.
“Keuk…”
Fortunately, Lee Si-woo had equipped his suit quickly enough to avoid ruptured eardrums, but the impact wasn't nonexistent, and the pain in his ears was considerable.
Plenitas, on the other hand, had been caught defenseless by the roar and was bleeding from her ears, unable to get her bearings.
Lee Si-woo pulled Plenitas into his arms to protect her and shouted.
“Sir!”
At Lee Si-woo’s call, giant brown-feathered wings sprouted from Looktator’s back.
Looktator, wearing gauntlets shaped like the talons of a bird of prey, pulled Lee Si-woo and Plenitas into his arms and soared into the air.
Swoosh!
The white giant glanced at the flying Looktator, but it seemed more interested in the other helpless passengers writhing on the ground like grubs than in a fly that was obviously troublesome to catch, so it paid them no mind.
Flapping its brown wings, Looktator soared high into the sky and watched as the giant picked up the passengers one by one and shoved them into its skin.
“…Horrifying.”
Watching the act, which was closer to absorption than a meal, Looktator shook his head as if he were appalled.
He couldn't dare to imagine what those people, being swallowed alive into the pores of its skin, must be feeling.
Lee Si-woo, however, turned his attention from the crisis they had barely escaped to the towering wall before them.
A thick steel wall, as high as any skyscraper.
And, enshrined within it, a city of advanced civilization.
It was the Walled City, the main stage of Chapter 4.
Lee Si-woo said to Looktator.
“It looks precarious.”
“Mm.”
Outside the city walls, hundreds of the same white giants were gathered, pounding on the walls.
Perhaps because it was made of steel, the wall didn't break easily, but it was visibly dented and damaged.
It was holding for now, but Lee Si-woo could guess that one side of the wall would eventually collapse.
“Shall we go inside?”
Looktator looked at the people lined up like soldier ants on top of the wall, showering the giants with bullets, and said with a worried expression.
“I don’t know if they’ll just let us in.”
“But we can’t just stay here and die, can we? Let’s go and see.”
Deciding there was no other choice, Looktator flapped his wings and approached the Walled City. People on the wall pointed at them and shouted something.
Soon, seeing hundreds of gun barrels turning toward them, Looktator shouted urgently.
“Wait! We are not your enemies!”
But they didn't seem to believe Looktator's words and responded immediately with a hail of bullets.
Rat-a-tat-tat!
Looktator, dodging the bullets with what could only be described as aerobatics, shouted.
“You crazy bastards! I said we’re not your enemies!”
Just then, someone pushed through the crowd and stopped the people’s actions.
A moment later, as Looktator was relieved to see the shooting stop, Lee Si-woo said to him.
“Can you break through there as quickly as possible?”
“Huh? No, why? If we do that, our relationship with them might become irreparable.”
“The fact that the Arang Club's target area is Chapter 4 bothers me. They might be among them.”
Lee Si-woo’s prediction was correct, but it came too late.
One of the people on the wall stretched out a hand, and from it, a white spiderweb shot out, wrapping around the entire party that had flown nearby.
As Lee Si-woo’s group, who had crashed right on top of the wall, struggled like butterflies caught in a web, the man picked up a radio and contacted his superior.
“Confirmed subjects wearing the Master’s Eagle Suit. Captured them immediately. What are your orders?”
-Kill them all and retrieve the suit.
At the Master’s voice, which sounded like he was trying to suppress his anger, the man nodded and replied.
“Yes. Understood.”
After finishing the radio communication, the man fixed his emotionless eyes on Lee Si-woo, who was looking up at him.
Turk, a member of the Arang Club and the owner of the Spider Suit, spoke.
“Sorry, but you have to die. Our boss seems to be very angry.”
As Turk, exuding a faint killing intent, tried to approach Lee Si-woo, one of the surrounding NPCs jumped out and stopped him.
“Wait, killing them would be a problem.”
Turk, about to get angry at an NPC daring to stop him, was taken aback when he realized the person who had blocked him was an unexpected figure.
“…Wanderer? Why are you here?”
The black-haired man called the Wanderer looked directly at Lee Si-woo’s party, specifically at Lee Si-woo wearing the Frogbear Suit, and said.
“Because they’re people I know.”
Having said that, the black-haired man knelt down and met Lee Si-woo’s eyes.
The man spoke with a friendly-looking smile.
“Long time no see, big bro. Still wearing that ridiculous suit? You really have a unique taste, don't you? Ah, maybe it’s a bit weird to call you ‘big bro’ now? It’s been seven years since that day, so you might not be my big bro anymore. Hmm, then… friend?”
The young Si-woo.
No, now a grown man in his mid-twenties, Lee Si-woo was there.