Despair and Awakening
We had escaped, carried away by an unknown benefactor.
A sudden prickle of suspicion surged in my chest over who could have possibly helped us, but I forced the thought down and surveyed our surroundings. The place we had been teleported to was none other than the Adventurers Guild. Our abrupt materialization threw the nearby adventurers into sheer pandemonium.
Was it thanks to my hard-earned experience and instincts honed over countless crises? My mind kicked into overdrive, and without a heartbeat of hesitation, I erased our presence.
Stealth (S)
Before, maintaining Stealth had drained me dry in just a matter of hours. Even though the burden had now tripled with three people to shroud, I wrung every last drop of mana from my core, grabbed our luggage, and bolted blindly toward a carriage bound for the nearest city.
Ah, of course, not before settling one small score.
“Aaaargh! Ow! That hurts! Who the hell is hitting me?!”
“You bastard! You absolute scumbag! If it weren't for So-so, you'd be dead ten times over!”
“Ow! Stop!”
After beating the receptionist who had fed us false pings like a mangy dog, I climbed into the carriage.
Clack-clack—!
Clack-clack—!
Unlike before, only three of us occupied the compartment: myself, Selena, and Yeong So-so. Severe lacerations coated So-so's entire body. Yet, perhaps owing to that monstrous martial prowess of hers, a familiar notification appeared.
Currently regenerating biological tissue.
Just as she had done for me in the past, she steadily reknit her shattered flesh, regaining consciousness before long. Even after having her entire frame mangled, she forced her heavy eyelids open and rasped a question.
“Where… are we?”
“Inside a carriage. We managed to escape because you held the line.”
“I see…”
She seemed utterly crushed. It was understandable. To the Young Cult Leader of the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult, she had likely believed herself to be the ruler of the world, looking down on lords and sovereigns beneath her feet. Instead, she had slammed headfirst into an insurmountable wall.
Mordred, the Knight of ‘Betrayal.’
Yeong So-so’s ultimate technique had been terrifying enough to induce chills, but Mordred stood on an entirely different plane. That white-and-crimson flash I witnessed at the very end—had I pitted my greatest strike against it, could I have endured for even a hundredth of a second? No. Before our blades could have even met, the atmospheric pressure alone would have crushed me into paste. A hundred percent guaranteed.
“…Haha. Hahaha—!”
I suppose I was cut from the same cloth as So-so and Selena after all. Rather than being broken by the gap, a vicious competitive fire ignited in my gut. It flared so intensely that it crossed the threshold into raw greed. Even though she was an existence that had nearly snuffed out our lives seconds ago, a singular desire consumed me.
I want it.
Her technique, her physical capacity, every single piece of her power. It wasn't hideous lust or mindless frenzy, but pure, unadulterated avarice directed at her.
Thump—!
Thump—!
A pitch-black darkness seemed to swallow my consciousness, and something that had remained tightly suppressed within me burst into bloom.
Hidden conditions have been met.
Acquired Player-Exclusive Skill: Absorption (F).
An inky-black haze gathered in the palm of my hand. Instinctively, I comprehended how to wield this energy. No, the understanding was etched directly into my mind.
Fission Earthworm (Lv. 5)
It was a creature clinging to the wooden carriage, barely even classified as a monster. If I remembered correctly, its distinctive traits were ‘Regeneration’ and ‘Division.’
Grab!
Without hesitation, my hand closed around the wriggling worm.
Screeech—!
The creature let out an ear-piercing shriek as it dissolved, sinking into the pores of my palm. In the next instant, its biological data, technique, memories, and inherent traits flooded my brain, condensing into a single concept before being digested whole.
Regeneration.
Skill: Absorption (F)
Absorption Probability: 70%
Absorption Successful!
Absorbed Skill: Regeneration (F)
“…Haha!”
The power to completely consume an opponent and assimilate them into myself. Despite the mundane name of Absorption, it was fundamentally grotesque. Not only did it swallow the target's reason whole, but it dismantled their soul and life history to reconstruct them as my own. Viewed through ordinary human morality, it was sickening beyond measure.
Yet, what did that matter? The mere fact that a viable path toward overcoming the Round Table had opened before me sent laughter bubbling up from my throat.
Even setting that aside, Mordred's caliber was ridiculous. Even if an expansion pack introduced the entire martial arts faction, I could confidently say she possessed enough sheer strength to conquer the whole setting alone. Her wall was just that colossal.
I glanced toward Yeong So-so. No matter how proud she was, she had to be stewing in despair right now. Perhaps a word of comfort was in order—
Shiver—!
The moment I turned my head and met her expression, a chill ran down my spine. The real lunatic wasn't Selena; it was her. To put it bluntly, she was the exact same breed of monster I had just caught myself being. Despite having her body torn apart and nearly meeting her end, she was grinning, laughing under her breath.
It was as though encountering a wall taller than herself brought her sheer, rapturous ecstasy. She was deliberately slowing the regeneration of her wounds. And whenever the skin managed to close, she dug her nails in, carving the sword gashes back open with deliberate intent.
Crazy bitch. A complete, unhinged lunatic.
She was voraciously inspecting the sword scars carved into her own flesh, retracing every cut to formulate a countermeasure against Mordred. An obsession bordering on sheer madness. It was a concept I had never truly understood before, but now I felt I had caught a glimpse of what it meant to be the Young Cult Leader of the Demonic Cult. A being who competed against other successors with death at her heels every single day, someone whose very existence was synonymous with martial arts.
“You battle-crazed maniac…”
“……”
“Wow, she's so focused she doesn't even hear me.”
They say you feel revulsion when looking at someone too similar to yourself. Feeling that exact distaste, I turned my attention away from So-so and shouted to the coachman.
“Where are we headed?”
“We're heading toward the capital, sir.”
“The capital?”
“Yes. Is there a problem?”
Hell no. Absolutely not.
The capital was the direct base of Avalon. I pulled a handful of gold coins from my pouch and slipped them into the coachman's pocket.
“Ahem! My, I suddenly feel an irresistible urge to change our destination.”
“Is there a notable city nearby?” I asked.
“Well, around these parts… the ‘Mercenary City’ is by far the most famous. It's bustling with activity, but its biggest claim to fame is having the ‘Queen’!”
“A Queen? I don't know who that is, but let's head there first.”
“Understood, sir!”
According to the coachman, the city was officially known as the commercial city of Zarbnok. It was founded after the Demon King was completely vanquished, serving as a sanctuary where out-of-work mercenaries and adventurers gathered. They said the mercantile hub had flourished thanks to a patron known as the Gold Lord. In any case, for us, desperately short on funds, it was the ideal destination—a brand-new map essential for founding our guild and operating smoothly.
“A DLC area, huh? A whole new expansion. Now the game is finally getting interesting.”
Between the naga and Mordred, it had been a thoroughly cursed yet refreshingly novel day.
“You have already crossed paths with two of them. You truly are an unfortunate soul…”
Watching from afar, the half-blood—no, the master of illusions—swung her staff. Mist gathered in the empty air, coalescing into a viewing pool that reflected Seo Juhan resting inside the carriage.
She had watched everything.
His despairing cries upon dropping alone into this alien world. His desperate excursions into dungeons while starving without a copper to his name. His fateful master-disciple bond formed with the woman from the East. And finally, his encounters with ‘Clash’ and ‘Betrayal.’
Countless times, she had wanted to step in and pull him away. Her knuckles had clenched so tightly and frequently that they were practically weeping with sores. In truth, he was someone who never needed to shoulder such a cruel fate. If she brought him back to Avalon right now, he could live out his entire life in absolute luxury and peace.
Yet, she could not.
Swirl—
Countless images drifted through the misty illusions. Within them lay the diverging paths Seo Juhan could have walked, along with the possibilities of futures yet to come. In some timelines, all misunderstandings were untangled, allowing Seo Juhan and the Round Table to coexist in serene harmony. In others, he lived peacefully on Earth, having never been summoned across dimensions at all. There were worlds where a single misstep led to his death in a dungeon.
And in the most catastrophic future of all…
The Upper, Middle, and Lower realms were completely obliterated without exception. In that desolate ruin, Seo Juhan lay dead, bleeding out helplessly onto the scorched earth. It was a manner of death that shattered human comprehension. Though the other knights of the Round Table threw their full might into avenging him, their resistance had proven utterly futile.
Entities that would soon reach their tendrils across every dimension were arriving. While the lower and intermediate broods could somehow be repelled, the higher entities rendered all resistance hollow. From a certain turning point onward, those cosmic invaders would stretch their limbs across all realms. It was not merely a matter of strength; they existed on an entirely disparate conceptual plane.
Just as a venomous ant is crushed instantly beneath a human boot, those beings were the humans, and all mortal life was mere ants.
Even so, she had searched across every conceivable timeline for a single thread of possibility that could shatter that grim inevitability. Among the countless futures her illusions had witnessed, there remained one fragile path to survival—and right now, she was recreating the precise circumstances needed to forge it.
No one could know this truth. No one must ever find out.
“Even so, being forced to merely watch is agonizing.”
Just a little longer. She only needed to endure a little longer. Each second stretched out like an eternity, but his journey was unfolding precisely as foreseen.
Truthfully, from her perspective, the destruction of the world did not matter in the slightest. But because she knew her master would detest such an end, she waited. And waited.
Within that fleeting instant that felt like an eternity, she remained seated beneath the Round Table at the highest tier of Avalon.