Chapter 56
Chapter 56
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: MadScientist
Chapter: 56
Chapter Title: Falling Again
-----------------------------------------------------------------
“Tch... Dammit...”
When I opened my eyes again, all I could see was a space covered entirely in yellow wallpaper.
A carpeted floor that gave off a strangely damp and sour smell, and the noise from the lights made it an unpleasant place.
“Lady Kshnax!! Lady Indicron!!”
There was no answer, no matter how many times I called. I tried my best to sense their presence or attention, but I couldn't even feel a trace of them.
It felt as if the connection had been completely severed.
“I'm screwed...”
I checked my wristwatch.
“Ah... It's broken...”
The wristwatch had stopped, as if it had been damaged during the transfer. The smartphone I had was also turned off.
“Summon Pitch-Black Wheel! Summon Abyssal Pillar! Salamander!”
Nothing responded. Even my summoning arts were completely blocked.
“Cheshire. Cheshire. Cheshire. Please...!”
Overwhelmed by a sense of anxiety, I pressed the button to call my guide, Cheshire, over and over, but as expected, there was no reaction.
It felt like it had already been five minutes since I first pressed the button...
“Hey. Hey! Wake up. This isn't the time to be sleeping.”
I shook Melherae, who was lying next to me, snoring peacefully, to wake her up.
“Ugh... Wh-where is this...?”
“I don't know. I opened my eyes and we were here. Do you happen to know if this place is... well, anywhere?”
“I-I don't know. What is this...? This gloomy, unpleasant place... Are we... dead?”
“I doubt it. Probably not.”
Melherae shuddered slightly with anxiety, wondering if we had died and dropped into such a strange place.
“You said you didn't care if you died just a moment ago.”
“...”
At my words, Melherae blushed and lowered her head in embarrassment.
As I thought, there's no way she actually wanted to die.
I left Melherae, who couldn't answer, and looked around.
‘Is this... the ground floor? It looks completely different from what I imagined.’
It was a place with a hallway that had no end in sight, and a scenery that made it hard to tell if it was a room or something else.
There was no visible exit, just endless walls covered in yellow wallpaper and a damp carpet stretching on forever.
Black mold was blooming here and there, and the sound of the fluorescent lights was strangely grating on the nerves. A gloomy and unpleasant place.
How should I put it. It felt like I had accidentally stumbled into a game's test room or a developer-only area.
“Stop worrying and get up. We need to find a way out.”
“Got it.”
“Wait. Before we wander around, take this first.”
I rummaged through my bag and handed her an account creation card.
Since I don't know what will happen from now on, I need to have her Awaken as soon as possible.
“This is...”
“It'll make you a Player.”
At my words, she nodded and tore open the silver vinyl wrapper.
Flash!
“What came out?”
“Uh... Oh.”
The class she drew was Fallen Angel.
A class that perfectly suited her situation. A fallen angel. Honestly, it was the class I expected.
If a former angel has lost its wings and halo, all that's left is to fall.
“What? It suits you well. Why the long face?”
“To be so blatant about it... a fallen angel... it's quite...”
She seemed quite shocked by her own class.
It was an obvious result, so I don't know why she's so sad about it.
“Yeah, in a way, it was an inevitable result... ever since the moment I fell...”
Muttering in denial of reality, I grabbed Melherae's hand and started walking forward.
It's been a few hours since we fell here, for all I know. We need to find a way out quickly.
‘Judging by the atmosphere, it seems the underground security squad won't be chasing us all the way here.’
Instead, I felt a sense of anxiety that a monster even greater than the security squad might be lurking inside this place. I prayed that we could safely get out of this strange place. Of course, to my two evil gods.
“But do you know the way?”
“No. But we can't just stay here, can we?”
“That's... true. Hey. I see something over there.”
“Where?”
“You can't see it? A black shape... Huh?”
I turned my head in the direction her finger was pointing.
“Gyaaaa!!!”
There, something was standing with half its face peeking out, watching us.
“Th-that damn... what the hell is that...?”
“That's my first time seeing something like that too. It's not a demon... maybe a being more ominous than a demon...”
The black figure stood far away at a corner, not moving an inch, just watching us silently.
The bastard was laughing.
“I-I, for now... don't take your eyes off it... let's get as far away as possible...”
“Got it. That thing... looks very ominous.”
We kept our eyes on the figure, gripped each other's hands tightly, and slowly backed away.
The bastard just kept watching and laughing, but didn't get any closer.
“That thing... isn't it dangerous? It's not chasing us?”
“No, look at its appearance.”
“Just from its looks... it definitely looks disgustingly dangerous.”
Melherae agreed with my assessment.
As we cautiously backed away, we soon felt our backs hit the wall. We slowly turned our bodies to escape its line of sight and ran.
“Hah... hah...”
“J-just a moment...”
Maybe because I was too tense, as I was catching my breath, Melherae grabbed my shoulder tightly.
“What?”
“Th-there...”
The bastard had gotten closer to us.
“Tch...!”
“Doesn't look like we can avoid it. What should we do? Fight?”
As I was debating what to do, the figure that had been watching us started to approach slowly.
💥 CRITICAL HIT! 💥
-??? HP
It's coming!
“Tch!! Ruée!! Huh..?”
The skill won't activate.
No matter how many times I shout 'Ruée', the purple light gathers in my hand for a moment and then gets released.
“Damn it!! Let's go together!!!”
Melherae was already running away. I ran like crazy after her. At that moment.
[Run this way.]
A voice I had never heard before in my life.
A voice that feels like I should know it, but I don't. A girl's voice that I don't remember at all, but feels like I've known for a long time.
“Hey!! Mel!! This way!! Follow me!!!!”
The voice was pointing in a certain direction.
My instinct is telling me. I must follow that voice.
And the thing chasing us right now is the kind of enemy we can't beat.
Especially since we can't even use our skills right now.
Soon, Melherae changed direction and stuck right behind me.
“Kiyaaaa!!!!”
When we started running for our lives, the bastard let out a shriek and started chasing us on all fours. Melherae and I ran like crazy, barely able to even breathe.
Even though our skills are sealed, our stats are still being affected, so we don't tire easily.
“Damn it!! Do you even know where we're going?!”
“I don't really know either..! Just..! This way!!”
“What do you mean 'this way'?! Is it even safe to follow that?!”
“Aish!! I don't know!!”
“Hey! There!! There's a door over there!!!!”
“Kyaaaaa!!!!”
As we dodged the bastard and turned corners several times to escape, Mel pointed in one direction with her finger.
There was a door with what looked like an emergency exit sign.
“That way!! It's that way!!”
Melherae, who was ahead of me, opened the door, and the moment I dashed out, she closed it.
Boom!! Boom!!!
The moment we burst out, the doors slammed shut. The unidentified monster chasing us slammed into the door so hard it looked like it would break, letting out a shriek. After a while, when no more sound could be heard, Melherae and I finally caught our breath.
“Hah... hah.. We, we made it!!”
Outside the door we escaped through was the rooftop of a building in an unknown location.
“But where is this... It doesn't look like a supermarket rooftop...”
“This looks like a human city, but it seems no one's here. It's quiet.”
A city where not a single streetlight was on. This ghost town, shrouded in darkness, didn't have a single bird flying around. There were no zombies or anything else. Only silence enveloped us.
We had come out into a strange space where there wasn't a single person.
“Damn it...”
“I can't get a grasp on this at all... What is going on...”
I felt like I was going crazy. For a moment, seeing the cityscape, I thought we had escaped.
But we were still trapped in the 'ground floor'.
“Hey..!”
At that moment, someone approached us from behind.
Melherae naturally raised both hands and took a combat stance.
I immediately drew the dagger I had for emergencies and aimed it.
Even here, I still couldn't use my skills.
“Are you guys trapped here too? Hey! Don't be tense! I'm a drifter too! I want to cooperate!”
The one who approached us with a smiling face was a red-haired foreigner.
He must be speaking a foreign language, but my brain was interpreting it automatically.
It's a bit strange that I can communicate with the other party, who is a foreigner and not an NPC in the game.
‘Why can I understand what that bastard is saying?’
Could it be that the effect of being able to communicate smoothly with all demons is activating right now?
Or maybe it's just a characteristic of this place.
It doesn't matter. The fact that that bastard is suspicious remains unchanged.
“Hey. Don't come any closer.”
Since the Slave Mark skill is sealed, I can never let my guard down.
Especially since there's no way I can trust a stranger I meet in such a strange place.
“J-just a moment..! I'm telling you I want to cooperate with you guys!!”
“Cooperate, my ass. How am I supposed to trust you? I can't. Absolutely not.”
“J-just a moment. Listen to what I have to say..!”
As he said that, the bastard subtly grabbed the axe tied to his waist.
The moment he put his hand on the axe, it was game over.
I immediately swung my dagger at him. He barely dodged my dagger and started running away, turning his back.
“Damn it! Shit! This is why I hate Easterners!!! Their instincts are disgustingly sharp!!”
As I thought, he approached us with malicious intent.
In that case, we absolutely cannot let him go here.
He might call his allies or inform a larger group of our existence.
If we hadn't encountered him, that would be one thing, but since we have, the only option left is to kill him.
“Get him!!”
“Got it!!”
As a slave, Melherae immediately ran at my command. She quickly caught up to him from behind and launched a dropkick.
“Grraaa!!”
Melherae's dropkick, from her 190cm tall, voluptuous body, hit the bastard square in the waist.
The bastard's waist bent like a folding phone folded backwards, and he screamed as he tumbled forward.
“Kua..! Kuaaa!!! Damn it!!! You bitch!!!!”
I approached Melherae, who was holding the fallen bastard tightly.
“Hey. Mel. You kill this guy.”
“What?”
“Kill him quickly. You need to level up, right? Even if you can't use your skills, you need to raise your stats, don't you?”
“That's certainly right. Got it.”
Melherae took the dagger from me and brought it to the body of the bastard lying on the ground.
“J-just a moment!! Please..! Just this once, spare me..”
Stab...!
“Sorry. I hope you go to heaven.”
Melherae, as if she didn't want to hear any more of his words, stabbed his neck and twisted the dagger once around.
The bastard, who now had a hole drilled through his neck instead of just a stab wound, screamed in pain, writhed for a moment, and then went limp, dead.
“I've leveled up. My stats have increased too.”
“So it seems. Phew. Let's see...”
Melherae's skill, Carnage Vampire, was like the Enhanced Form, with only one option.
And despite being level 1, her basic stats were on the level of a level 15 Player.
I never expected the difference in racial values to be this big. Of course, I'm higher thanks to the Magic Power Increase effect.
Even when she had no stats, she was faster than me, so if you take all that into account, she might possess physical abilities higher than her actual stats.
“Profane Blessing... a physical enhancement type.”
“Didn't you say you can't use your skills anyway?”
“That's true. I was just checking.”
We rummaged through the dead man's bag.
His bag was filled with various tools.
From ropes and tools to start a fire, to things for survival.
“I'll make good use of these.”
I also searched his pockets. Then, an old photo and a notebook came out.
In the photo, the man who had just died and an unidentified woman were pictured. I roughly tossed the photo aside.
“Let's see...”
The writing in the notebook wasn't Korean.
It was written in English. Of course, I couldn't read any of it. Still, thanks to my experience, a few words could be interpreted, but the writing was in cursive, so with my already poor English skills, I couldn't possibly understand the entire content of the notebook.
“I can't read it.”
“Give it here.”
“You can read it?”
“I was an angel, you know. A human language is nothing.”
“I see, it's useful here. You're handy, Mel.”
“Ahem.”
I stroked her head, and then Mel read the contents of the notebook.
It was his diary, a survival record since he fell into this place.
“Damn it... So this place is...”
“So it seems. A collection of glitches. This place seems to be a facility for imprisoning glitches that destroy world lines.”
Surprisingly, this abnormal-looking city was a place called 'Glitchers'.
Meaning, it was a place where possessors, reincarnators, regressors, returners, and regressors were imprisoned.
“Hoo... Damn... Keep reading.”
“Got it. Ahem. In this city, skill usage is restricted. The maximum level is probably limited to 20. And all glitchers who fall here have their levels reset.”
“Wait. I came in at my original level, so that means I'm not a glitcher?”
“It seems so. Maybe it's because our way of entering is different from theirs.”
These bastants woke up and found themselves here, but we came in by opening a door directly, so it seems different rules apply. Maybe because we entered legitimately by opening the door, we're treated as visitors.
“Keep reading.”
“Got it. All food found inside here is rotten or spoiled. The only things you can eat are the occasionally found lemon-scented water and other glitchers trapped here. It says you can't survive without cannibalism... Ugh...”
If there's really nothing to eat, I'd have to resort to cannibalism, but it still feels a bit sickening.
With a frown, she continued to read the contents of the notebook.
“Also, it says you should be especially careful of a Chinese man named Zhang Quan among the regressors who have settled here. He has an especially severe glitch, so he copies himself every day, and he levels up by eating himself. It seems he has broken through what was considered the practical limit level of 15 here.”
“Hah... It's trouble after trouble. Is there no way to get out of here?”
“Wait. I'm reading. Hm... This guy also seemed to have struggled to find a way out. He failed at everything, but it seems he found a suspicious place.”
“Where is it?”
“The center of the city. It's written that there's a sinkhole there. But there's... a snake there... A snake.”
“A snake?”
“A snake. It's described that a snake periodically crawls out, swallows the glitch clumps, and then disappears again. And around the sinkhole... it's where Zhang Quan has settled. There's a map this guy drew here.”
“So in the end, we either have to take down that Chinese bastard or avoid his sight.”
“According to the notebook, it's written that Zhang Quan has formed a legion made up of themselves here. Can the two of us break through that?”
“We won't know until we try... but if we stay here too long... we might have to resort to cannibalism, so we have no choice but to go.”
I checked the items inside my bag.
“Hah...”
All I had were the medicines I bought earlier and the fireworks I brought just in case.
With my luck... I'll definitely be able to pull out the Dragon's Breath among these five random fireworks.
I really hope I can pull it out.
“I'll try until I succeed.”
I grabbed one of the five bundles of fireworks, and then I heard the same voice I heard when we were running away earlier.
[Not that one. The one on the right...]
“Did you hear that sound just now?”
“What sound?”
“It wasn't a hallucination... never mind.”
Melherae couldn't hear it this time either.
Then this is a voice only I can hear.
Something is helping me. I quickly put the firework I just picked back into my bag and grabbed the one on the right.
‘It feels similar to when I first encountered Kshnax or Indicron.’
Could it be the appearance of a new evil god here?
“Let's go down now.”
“Let's.”
We looked around from the rooftop to get a rough idea of where we were.
Then we went down the building. Fortunately, when we opened the rooftop entrance, it didn't lead to the same strange place as before, but clearly to the lower part of the building.
We arrived on the first floor and walked towards the center of the city as written in the notebook.
On the way, we didn't encounter anyone.
That is, until we got close to the sinkhole.
Click...!
Lights turned on from all directions and aimed at us.
“Hahaha!!! A new glitcher!!! Welcome!!! To my kingdom!!!”
Hundreds of people were looking at us. They all looked identical. Among them, the one who was draped with bone-made canes and accessories was probably the leader of the Zhang Quans.
“So that's the leader, Zhang Quan...”
The damn Chinese regressor was waiting for us.
“Kill the man! Save the woman!!! Today is a meat party!!”
He gave an order to his own kind.
Then, the identical bastards all let out a battle cry and charged at us, each wielding their own weapon.
“Damn it... I guess this is the end. Can you lend me your dagger? I'd rather die than be raped by those kinds of bastards.”
“Wait a minute!”
I hurriedly lit the firework with a lighter.
In the meantime, the Zhang Quan swarm had already gotten right in front of us.
The fuse on the firework was about to burn out completely.
I pointed the firework at the charging bastards.
Then, something burst out from the end of the long firework...
⚡ SKILL ACTIVATED ⚡
Dragon's Breath
Massive Area-of-Effect Explosion
It let out an explosive sound that was enough to paralyze the eardrums.
For a moment, the intense light blinded my vision, and the shockwave pushed my body back. The surviving Zhang Quans were the same.
“Run!!”
Along with Melherae, I ran like crazy towards the sinkhole.
“Get them!!!!”
For some reason, the leader Zhang Quan and the remaining underlings were chasing us from behind.
“Damn it!! What was that just now!?”
“Dragon's Breath!!”
“T-that kind of item..!”
Soon, we arrived right in front of the sinkhole.
[Come quickly...]
The voice I heard again.
Behind us were swarms of Zhang Quans. There was nowhere to run. There's no reason to be afraid of jumping down now.
“Grab my hand. One! Two! Three!!”
I grabbed Melherae's hand.
“Damn it. I'm falling again.”
As I listened to her self-deprecating laugh, we jumped into the bottomless sinkhole.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇