Chapter 87
Fwoosh.
A mad whirl of movement broke out before him. It was not beautiful or graceful, but sharp and eerie, every motion edged with violence.
The one dancing with a single sword in hand was Yoon Sang-hyuk. Around him, four wraiths circled through the air at blistering speed, each one pressing in to threaten him from a different angle.
The wraiths spat out Soul Cry without pause, trying to shake his mind apart. A thin line of blood ran from beneath Yoon Sang-hyuk’s mask. Whenever the wraiths passed through his body, agony surged through him. Even so, after taking it a few times, he no longer blacked out like he had when fighting Tartaros.
A sacred flash so dazzling it was almost intoxicating sliced through one of the wraiths.
Kyaaaah-
One wraith vanished. Three remained, so Yoon Sang-hyuk did not let his guard slip for a second. He kept up the dance, stepping through space itself to evade their attacks.
"Tch."
He thought he had avoided them perfectly, but one of the wraiths slipped through his left arm. His arm dropped uselessly at his side. Right on cue, the wraiths’ Soul Cry rang out again. Yoon Sang-hyuk bit down hard on his lip. The metallic taste of blood sharpened his senses and cleared his head.
Even with every accessory he owned that carried dark-resistance attributes equipped, it was still this bad. There was no way any of the countless players on Earth could have endured this place.
One by one, he cut the wraiths down until the last of them finally disappeared as well.
"Haa-."
Yoon Sang-hyuk sank to the floor where he stood. From his subspace, he took out a healing potion and a mana potion and drank them both. The chocolate-flavored potion the basement family had prepared with such enthusiasm spread across his tongue, mingling with the blood in his mouth in a strange, unpleasant way.
Even after downing a top-grade potion, he could barely bring himself to stand. A potion might erase physical wounds and pain, but it could not heal mental shock.
After drinking, Yoon Sang-hyuk lay back and laughed softly to himself, a sound that was unusually light for him.
"Not bad. Not bad at all."
Since entering the Abyss of the Ancients, he had managed to raise his experience by 1.32 percent. Considering that he had done it in less than two days, it was absurdly fast leveling.
He had never been this exhilarated since returning to reality. All the hunting he had done over the past few months whenever he found a spare moment, all in the name of gaining experience, now felt like the sort of pointless busywork that history would laugh at.
"I’d like to hunt here all year long."
He muttered the impossible thought to himself, then sprang to his feet. Soon, Tartaros would be entering the sea. The moment it was fully submerged would decide whether Yoon Sang-hyuk could continue his absurd leveling spree.
Where the wraiths had vanished, two items lay on the ground. One was something that looked like it would be used in alchemy, called the Ancient Abyss Essence. The other was a black ring.
Including the one that had just dropped, he had now obtained a total of four Ancient Abyss Essences, but he still had no idea what they were truly for.
The ring, called Gratitude of the Dead, was a unique-grade item with 10 percent dark attribute resistance and 10 percent dark attribute defense. Yoon Sang-hyuk had obtained two rings and one earring here, and the earring likewise came with dark resistance and defense.
Resistance and defense were similar, but they were not the same.
Resistance meant the power to endure the dark attribute itself, while defense meant reducing the absolute amount of damage taken.
In that sense, these accessories, both carrying percentage-based bonuses for each stat, were the best possible items for players who would one day have to assault places like Demon King's Castle, where the highest dark-attribute beings gathered.
It also meant Yoon Sang-hyuk had one more reason to hunt here like a man possessed.
* * *
Yoon Sang-hyuk was flying high above the sea with the Transparent Cloak on and Wings of the Sky spread behind him. Below, Tartaros was entering the ocean.
Far away, reporters from around the world were watching Tartaros sink into the sea.
"How long is it going to take to go under like that?"
Tartaros stood three hundred meters tall from the ground to the top of its head. That meant that to submerge the Abyss of the Ancients on its back completely, it would have to move into water at least five hundred meters deep.
Yoon Sang-hyuk flew through the sky and landed in the Abyss of the Ancients just before Tartaros’s shell touched the water.
"Lilith."
"Oppa."
Lilith threw herself into Yoon Sang-hyuk’s arms.
"We’ve entered the sea?"
"Yeah. But this place still isn’t submerged. We’ll have to wait a little longer."
He was killing time talking with Lilith when blue light began to ripple through the thick mist above the Abyss of the Ancients. He hurried up into the air to check, and found that even the castle walls had already sunk beneath the sea. Surprisingly, the seawater was not surging into the interior of the Abyss of the Ancients.
Something invisible, as if a transparent membrane existed, was blocking the water.
For now, one obstacle had been overcome.
"Lilith. Call Baekjeong here."
"Understood."
Lilith’s body blurred for an instant, then sharpened again. Yoon Sang-hyuk smiled brightly.
"Lord?"
It was Baekjeong.
Even at a low level, Lilith could still summon him without issue.
"Good."
Yoon Sang-hyuk muttered under his breath.
"I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that."
"Nothing. More importantly, congratulations."
"Huh? Congratulations?"
"You’ve become the first player, aside from me, to enter the Abyss of the Ancients on Tartaros’s back."
Baekjeong jumped in shock. He had grown used to being summoned by Lilith as they steadily pushed through Castle of Chaos. But he had never imagined that the place he was suddenly summoned to would be the Abyss of the Ancients on Tartaros’s back.
"I have a favor to ask of the Masked Mercenary Group."
"A favor, sir? You need only command us, and we will obey."
"I appreciate you saying that. The favor isn’t anything else, just this...."
Yoon Sang-hyuk explained. Baekjeong nodded as if he understood everything at once.
"If it’s uncomfortable for one person to stay here for a full day, then two people can take turns as a pair. I’ll prepare things so you can stay here without any trouble."
He could bring in living quarters, beds, chairs, and other conveniences through subspace. If he wanted to, he could even bring building materials and throw together a simple house.
"The only people I can trust are the Masked Mercenary Group, so I keep asking you all to handle difficult requests like this."
"Please don’t say that. It is because you have led us, Lord, that we have come this far. As you know, the Masked Mercenary Group’s reputation has already surpassed the Ten Great Guilds by a vast margin. And in actual combat, even against the Ten Great Guilds, we do not fall behind at all. All of this came from what you gave us, Lord."
Yoon Sang-hyuk was touched by that almost fanatical loyalty.
"Tartaros is currently completely submerged in the Atlantic. Of course, my hunting here is a secret. You understand what that means, right?"
"Yes. I will make sure the members know."
"You’ve been busy lately, haven’t you?"
Baekjeong lowered his head slightly.
If you were to pick the busiest players in the world, the Masked Mercenary Group would be the obvious answer. They had Castle of Chaos and the Steel Mountains to conquer, and on top of that there were overseas expedition requests to handle. The overseas trips were always booked solid.
The members of the Masked Mercenary Group had gained a great deal in exchange for that frantic workload, but they had also lost a lot of personal time.
"Once the level of players catches up to the real-world manifestation, things will get a little easier."
He had no idea when that would be, though.
"Tell the members who come here this clearly. Even out of curiosity, they must never enter the fortress. It’s a hunting ground so dangerous that even I can get injured there."
"Is that true?"
Baekjeong asked in astonishment.
This was the same Yoon Sang-hyuk who had single-handedly hunted the White Knight, which four raids of two hundred people had failed to clear.
"It’s true. Over the past two days, I haven’t cleared even one of the four fortresses. To be precise, I spent the entire two days just circling the first floor. Right now, go back with Lilith, gather the members, and relay what I told you. Whether they come one at a time or in pairs, have them come as soon as they decide. I’ve got other things to deal with, too."
"Understood."
Lilith and Baekjeong disappeared.
* * *
What had begun as a simple plan to rotate the Masked Mercenary Group members through the post had gradually grown into something much larger.
At first, he moved in a prefabricated building to create a space where two people could stay. He furnished it with beds, a table, chairs, and other conveniences. But the requests from the Masked Mercenary Group members kept piling up one by one.
He asked the basement family to help him install a refrigerator and a stove made with magical circuits. Then, when they requested a water tank, he brought in a tank and filled it to the brim.
As the Masked Mercenary Group members kept asking for more, he granted every request, thinking of the trouble they were going through on his behalf.
Then came the decisive event that made the situation spiral far beyond anything Yoon Sang-hyuk had expected.
The basement family, after hearing about Tartaros, asked Yoon Sang-hyuk’s permission to visit in person. When they saw the prefabricated building standing at the center of the fortress courtyard, they murmured among themselves before returning to the Masked Castle.
Sometime later, they came back with what they called a new invention: a bathing system that could be connected to the water tank with a hose. It could be used for showers, or the tank could be filled so a person could soak in it, and amazingly, a button could make hot water come out.
Not only that, they also created magical lighting for the house, and even streetlamps outside it.
After that, the fortress of the Abyss of the Ancients atop Tartaros became both an exhibition hall for the basement family’s inventions and a playground.
As if that weren’t enough, Lilith dug into the ground beside one side of the makeshift building and made a fairly large pond. Then she even brought fish and released them into it. She also made a garden around the pond. Planting flowers and accelerating their growth so they bloomed quickly was easier for Lilith, queen of the incubi, than turning over her hand.
Before long, the Masked Mercenary Group members were even bringing in a few board games and bottles of alcohol.
What had once seemed like an assignment to endure a dull day and then swap out with the next person had instantly turned into a place for rest and recovery.
One day, a Masked Mercenary Group member suggested that they ought to put up a fence around the area. Yoon Sang-hyuk brought the materials, and before long the fence was being built. After that, they asked Lilith to bring in two dogs. Lilith watched the dogs running around inside the fence with fascination, then added a few cats and rabbits as well.
He knew it was slowly turning strange, far from what he had intended at the start, but he pretended not to notice. Since this was a place he would be staying in for a long time, it didn’t seem all that bad to let it change like this.
Later, Yoon Sang-hyuk even got into it himself, adding three more prefabricated buildings and bringing in trees to plant. Whenever he put in saplings, Lilith would come and make them grow to full size in an instant.
Once even grass had been laid inside the fence, the place had become a perfect resting area.
When he asked why the Masked Mercenary Group members were fighting over whose turn it was to stay there, the answer he got was, "If we rest here for a day, our bodies feel incredibly light."
Yoon Sang-hyuk suspected the reason was the mana in the area. Ordinary people might not notice, but players could never separate themselves from mana. Unlike Eternal World, where mana filled the atmosphere, Earth’s air was thin with it. So when they rested in a place rich with mana, they naturally felt lighter.
After the living space expanded and the conditions for comfortable rest were in place, Yoon Sang-hyuk himself began spending many days here instead of returning to the Masked Castle after hunting.