Chapter 177
Chapter 177
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 177
Chapter Title: ACT.32 Paradise (3)
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“So there are research facilities this far in, too...”
We descended along the mine shaft.
Min Ji-ah must have never been outside the research lab.
Everything she saw must have been both fascinating and horrifying.
I ignored the monstrous shapes I glimpsed through the windows and hurried us along.
“Where did those kids go?”
“They're preparing to destroy this place.”
“Those kids...?”
Min Ji-ah's eyes widened.
It was true, they didn't exactly look like they possessed great power.
They'd gotten better than before, but they hadn't completely shed their gentle demeanor.
“Being young is an advantage. It means they have a lot of room to grow. Ah, please wait a moment. It'll only take a few minutes.”
I picked up the pace and entered the deepest part of the mine.
I prioritized securing the remaining S-rank Stigmas, and mined any A-ranks that weren't too deep.
It was worth considering giving any useful ones to the twins after I'd gathered them.
“Alright, I'm done. Let's go.”
“...You didn't come here for just one simple reason, did you.”
“If you're going to do something, you should make sure to profit from it.”
Min Ji-ah fell silent and followed behind me.
After moving a short distance, I found the twins waiting for me, fully prepared.
When I gave them the signal to proceed, the twins grinned and thrust their arms forward.
“One, two, three!”
*Fwoosh!*
The twins, in perfect sync, unleashed a massive torrent of flame down the mine shaft.
Flame Resonance.
A trait possessed by Jo Min-ah and Jo Min-woo, one that has no effect on and cannot be acquired by anyone else.
Its effect is to greatly amplify their power when they combine their strength.
*KABOOM!!*
A tremendous roar echoed from within.
The entire mine shook, and stone dust rained down from the ceiling.
Before long, the Stigmas would cause a chain reaction of explosions, and the whole place would collapse.
In the distance, I could faintly hear the panicked shouts of Paradise's players.
“A huge success!”
“See? I told you! It gets way stronger when we do it like this!”
The excited twins high-fived and laughed cheerfully.
I guess they'd never properly used Flame Resonance before.
Feeling the vibrations in the ground intensify, I got everyone's attention.
“Our work here is done, so let's get out. There's another secret passage this way.”
“I thought it was like a maze, but there really are a lot of secret passages, aren't there?”
“That's why we could so brazenly come this deep inside.”
“Um, Kim Se-hyeon-nim. If there was a separate exit here, was there a reason to leave those soldiers... back at the research lab?”
“They're serving their purpose: buying us time to escape safely.”
When everyone who went toward the research lab loses contact, they'll naturally become suspicious.
But by the time they notice something is wrong and take action, we'll already be long gone.
The assassin unit was a means to buy that time.
*CRASH!*
This time, I opened the passage door not with a keycard, but with force.
The cleanly sliced door fell into the passage, and the kids entered as if they'd been waiting for it.
‘Using the keycard now would just reveal our position and let them close the net on us.’
As I wondered what to do with the keycard in my hand and tucked it away, I sensed a strange presence.
There was someone else wandering the mine shaft.
An enemy?
No, their presence was too faint to be an enemy.
It wasn't that they were concealing their power; it was the faintness of a life about to be extinguished.
“Save... me... Take me... with you...”
When I turned my head, I fell silent at what I saw.
Someone, half-transformed into something inhuman, was begging for help.
He looked like he'd barely escaped from a cell; his condition was beyond words.
After getting those words out, he collapsed with a thud.
“Oh, my... God...”
Min Ji-ah, who saw it as well, had a deeply pained expression.
It was a mix of the thought that she could have ended up like that and fury toward Paradise for conducting such experiments.
Helping this person here would definitely earn Min Ji-ah's favor.
But I didn't.
“If we delay any longer, we'll either be crushed by the collapsing mine or caught by the Paradise bastards swarming to catch us. Let's go.”
“But we can't just leave someone so injured...”
“...He's already dead.”
That's what his status looked like through my Extreme Eye.
Min Ji-ah bit her lip hard, then turned and followed the kids.
I slowly closed and opened my eyes, trying to erase the image of his now-cold corpse.
‘An experiment to create a Demonic Human.’
The subjects of that experiment become something other than human, with no way to ever return.
They live out their lives as war machines, writhing in eternal agony, moving and acting only on Paradise's orders.
Dying like that might have been a mercy for him.
I offered a brief moment of silence in my mind and turned away.
***
We destroyed the last mine without a hitch.
With this, we'd dealt Paradise an irreversible blow.
And since we destroyed all the research facilities there as well, from Paradise's perspective, it was like being robbed blind dozens of times over.
It must have felt like their stocks had crashed overnight.
“Unni!”
“Dan-ah!!”
On one side, a touching reunion between sisters was unfolding.
Jeong Ha-yeon, who must have heard some of the story while protecting Min Dan-ah, wore a look of relief.
“Nothing happened, right? You're really okay?”
“Yeah. But you were the one who went missing... I looked for you for so long.”
Min Dan-ah wiped away her tears.
Something had felt strange.
In the original story, the place where Min Dan-ah died was far from here.
I never even ran into her properly at the residence while playing the game.
Min Dan-ah had been wandering all over, risking danger to find her sister, and had coincidentally run into us this time.
‘Moving around looking for someone is the easiest way to stand out, so it must have been simple for Paradise to find her.’
Asking around for someone means your own information gets leaked as well.
For Paradise, it must have been an effortless gain.
But they probably never imagined we'd be protecting Min Dan-ah first.
During the Red Zone incident, all of Paradise's personnel were subdued, so they couldn't have passed on any information.
“Thank you so much. Thanks to you, my sister and I were able to meet safely like this.”
Min Ji-ah approached and bowed her head deeply.
“It's nothing. Now that you've been reunited, be careful not to get separated again.”
“Unni. I'll help you get stronger too! I've been training lately, so I've gotten a lot stronger, you know?”
“Really? How did you become a player? And how did you meet these people?”
“Well...”
As if they had a lot to catch up on, Min Dan-ah led Min Ji-ah away, chattering.
The dark expression Min Ji-ah had in the research lab was almost gone.
I recalled the look on Min Ji-ah's face when she glanced back at me for a moment.
A look of slight suspicion and wariness.
After what happened just before we escaped the mine, it was unavoidable.
“They're really terrible people.”
Watching the two sisters leave, Jo Min-woo crossed his arms.
“Paradise... Aren't they the same ones who led the player hunts before?”
“That's right. Those wicked people.”
“As if that wasn't enough, now they're kidnapping, imprisoning, and even performing human experiments...”
At the mention of human experiments, Jeong Ha-yeon's expression soured.
She was clearly trying to suppress her anger.
In a simple war, there are no villains or heroes.
People just kill each other for their own goals and beliefs.
But having witnessed this ugly side of them firsthand, Jeong Ha-yeon must have already firmly labeled Paradise as 'evil'.
The same would go for Zadkiel, who was behind her.
As long as we had Jeong Ha-yeon's 'Judgment,' I wasn't worried about an all-out war with Paradise.
No matter what reason Paradise had for its formation, or what beliefs they held.
‘The Donghae Guild will take care of the Guide of Destruction.’
The Guide of the Abyss is dead. And we've recovered the Guide of Madness before she could awaken.
The only Guide left is the leader of Paradise, the 'Guide of the Deep'.
Jeong Ha-yeon fidgeted with her fingers and asked.
“Will they come after those two again?”
“It's not impossible, but I doubt it.”
“You sound certain.”
“They've already failed once. They must have realized that we were protecting the two of them so thoroughly, as if we knew in advance. Now that all their Stigma mines have been destroyed and their own house is on fire, they won't make a high-risk, low-reward gamble.”
The Guide of the Deep isn't one to take gambles.
He's a safety-first kind of guy.
Unless he's been completely replaced by a real-world person instead of his original character, my prediction won't be wrong.
‘The leaders of the other major factions haven't changed.’
Not the five great guilds of Korea, nor the Pentagon Eagle guild from across the sea in America.
It's obvious when you think about it.
The gap between second-generation players like me and the existing first-generation players is over a decade.
Even if a newly awakened person gathered hidden pieces and grew rapidly, it would be impossible for them to take over the leadership of an already established organization.
“Are you keeping in touch with the east?”
“Of course. I'm getting reports from both Jun Bo-ra and Lee Seon-yul, just in case. I'm also keeping an eye on communications from Busan.”
“Good work. That's a smart call.”
Choi Yeon-soo lifted her chin proudly.
I wondered if I'd praised her too much, but she did a good job.
If we get too focused on the war with Paradise, we'll suffer a huge blow from the monsters when they catch us off guard.
We can't let our guard down on either front.
“...She's a ticking time bomb.”
Hwang Chan-jin, who had been silent a short distance away, muttered.
“To think that instead of eliminating the Guide of Madness before she awakens, you'd actually plan to make her an ally. Only you could come up with something like that.”
“I've never actually done it before. It was impossible in the original game.”
“Mark my words, Kim Se-hyeon. If Min Dan-ah suddenly awakens and stabs us in the back, it means we willingly brought a troublesome enemy into our own home.”
“I know. That's why I'm preparing for that possibility.”
Hwang Yu-jin, who had been watching us, cautiously bowed his head to me.
Was he apologizing on behalf of Hwang Chan-jin's aggressive tone?
I gave a faint smile, my expression indicating it was nothing.
“Is Han Hyeok-jun moving as planned?”
“You don't have to worry about that guy.”
By now, Han Hyeok-jun should be raiding Paradise's branches one by one.
Han Hyeok-jun's target is, and always has been, the Order.
In other words, he goes crazy over anything related to the Order.
‘He's simple to handle, in a way.’
Paradise and the Order are connected, so digging into Paradise might reveal important information about the Order.
When I put it like that, even Han Hyeok-jun, who had been ready to rush to the front lines and fight Paradise head-on, was convinced and moved according to my instructions.
‘By now, he's probably reported what he's found, too.’
The person in charge of the second mine, whom I deliberately left alive.
With those injuries, he wouldn't have been able to run properly, and my Extreme Eye confirmed he had no movement-related traits or skills, nor high agility.
Even if he returned and reported, the third mine would already be gone, so he'd more likely get an earful.
“Then Paradise must be burning with anxiety by now.”
“They'll be too restless to stand it.”
So far, everything is going according to the plan we discussed.
As for what Paradise will do right after this.
‘It's obvious.’
What Paradise, with all its limbs cut off, will do.
According to the original story, there's only one thing.
‘All-out war.’
While hoping their other allies come to their aid as quickly as possible.
Like burning their own body to keep the fire going just a little longer.
At the same time, this is the most crucial moment.
The main event isn't the war with Paradise.
It's the fight against the Disaster that comes after.
We have to proceed with this war while preparing for that.
“So, what's this method you have for controlling the bomb?”
Such a stickler.
I clicked my tongue inwardly and spoke to the twins.
“You remember what I said earlier, right? Tomorrow, take Min Dan-ah-ssi to that place near Dongmyo Station and pick up the item I ordered.”
“Yes!”
“...Dongmyo Station? Have you already established a connection with the blacksmith?”
“What's so surprising? How do you think I got this sword, which didn't exist in the game?”
Hwang Chan-jin's long silence was his only reply.
I visited Old Master Wang's place before arriving at the residence.
I've already requested a piece of equipment to control Min Dan-ah's madness.
The two master craftsmen boasted they would combine their skills, so it should already be finished by tomorrow.