Poison Resistance Activated
Passive: Poison Resistance has been activated.
Passive: Poison Resistance has been activated.
Passive: Poison Resistance has been activated.
The repeated message chimes pulled my eyes open.
But the world in front of those open eyes was pitch black.
Why is it so dark?
I tried to move my hand to feel what was ahead of me. My hand, however, was bound by something and refused to budge.
A man’s voice reached me then.
“Wait—doesn’t it look like this one just moved?!”
I held perfectly still and kept my breathing silent. Something was very wrong.
“It’s not a corpse yet, so of course it can still move.”
“That so?”
“Don’t worry so much. There’s no human who can walk around fine after eating two Extreme Bliss Berries.”
I was lying down, being carried by someone. What the hell was going on?
While that thought circled, my eyes slowly adjusted to the dark and I began to make out shapes. Thin air. Faint light leaking in little by little. I was covered by a scratchy, thin cloth.
Clunk—
The men carrying me stopped walking and set the wooden board I lay on down somewhere. Somewhere strong light was spilling out. And that place felt strangely warm.
“Time still okay?”
“No problem. It’ll take another two hours for the heart to stop.”
Then a familiar voice.
“As expected, you’ve got talent. Snatching up an adventurer who cleared the fifth floor this easily every single time.”
“I’ll do anything for revenge.”
“Good mindset, Bartier.”
Bartier?
My chest dropped. I dug back through my recent memories. I’d eaten a delicious meal at Bartier’s house, then dessert. While I was eating the fruit, dizziness hit. And then Bartier had given me one more fruit…
Only then did I understand. Bartier had deceived me.
I bit down hard on my lower lip and clenched my fists. The thick taste of blood filled my mouth.
“Well then, we shall begin the ritual.”
After the man called that out, three knocks sounded somewhere, and a flute began to play. A fierce wind started whipping across my thighs. The warmth vanished for a moment, and a man began to chant.
“Oh— Rita— Kar—na Seva—”
C-could this be…?
I remembered a video I’d once watched on YouTube. The words and rhythm coming from that man’s mouth sounded exactly like a spell. And not a friendly one…
I couldn’t just lie here and take it. Anyone could tell this chant was bad news.
Inventory!
Cloth covered my eyes, yet the inventory window still appeared right in front of me.
Thank god… Equip dagger.
Dagger
A hologram flickered over my bound hands and the dagger settled into my grip. The lucky part was that I hadn’t been wearing the dagger at my waist. When it was in the inventory I could summon it straight into my hand, but if it had been hanging at my side I would have needed to touch it first to store it. Well… I did have a spare dagger, so I could have cut the ropes either way, but dual-wielding needed two blades!!
Good thing I stashed it in the inventory before heading over to Bartier’s place.
I let out a quiet breath of relief and, with quick fingers, reversed my grip on the blade and began sawing through the rope around my wrists. The rope parted with soft, steady slices. Even as I freed myself, none of them reacted. Between the chanting and the instruments, noticing anything would have been strange.
Done!
With free hands I ripped the cloth off my face and flung it aside. The scene that met my eyes was…
A bald man was reading from a thick book. Surrounding me on their knees, heads bowed, were people wearing pointed red hoods with eye holes cut out. Behind me a large bonfire roared. Beneath it sat raw red beef that reeked, a goblet filled with dark-red liquid, and the severed head of a black goat. I looked down at the floor. A white magic circle had been drawn under my feet—an inverted star. A pentagram.
Damn it, what the hell is this?!
I finished untying the rope around my ankles and climbed down from the wooden board. The moment the cloth was gone, the stench flooded my nose.
Clack—
At the sound, the bald man stopped chanting and raised his head. The red-hooded figures around him lifted their bowed faces and stared at me.
I shouted at them.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?!”
One of the red hoods from the back stepped forward, stood beside the bald man, and leaned in to whisper.
“What is the meaning of this?”
“I don’t know either, Priest. I definitely fed it to him.”
They muttered between themselves, then the bald man addressed me.
“Brother, you suddenly collapsed, so we were performing a healing ritual.”
“What? A healing ritual?”
I turned and looked behind me again, then pointed straight at the goat head.
“You can say that while looking at this? Why is there a black goat’s head if you’re healing someone?”
“Well… that is…”
“It’s true, Giseok!”
The red-hooded figure who had been whispering beside the bald man pulled the covering from her head and spoke.
“You… Bartier?”
“Giseok, it’s true. We were only trying to treat you.”
“That’s right. Please lie back down at once. Eat this…”
In the bald man’s hand sat a red berry. How much of an idiot did they think I was?
“You filthy bastards. You think I’ll fall for that again? Bartier! I never thought you’d do something like this to me.”
The corner of Bartier’s mouth curled up. She exhaled and answered coldly.
“The filthy ones are you humans!”
The bald man tried to soothe her.
“Haha, Sister, what are you saying…? Giseok, we are good priests. We truly were only trying to heal you.”
Heal, my ass. The things behind me were the exact materials I’d seen on YouTube for summoning a demon.
“Hey, real priests? These days do priests summon demons too?”
Lying to my face that they were priests? I said it with a smile, and for a moment silence fell.
Then the bald man suddenly grabbed his own face with both hands and began to peel. Flesh tore away. No—it wasn’t flesh. Beneath the stripped skin another face waited. Purple skin, sharp fangs. The classic look of a demonkin straight out of a fantasy novel.
“How did you know this was a ritual?”
As the demonkin peeled off the skin, the hooded figures around him one by one removed their coverings and began stripping away their own face-skins. Every last one of them was a demonkin.
“Since you’ve found out, we can’t simply let you leave. Kill that human!”
The surrounding demonkin charged me all at once. There looked to be about twenty of them. I dropped the first one that reached me with a kick.
“Ugh!”
A hard side kick straight into the gut. To me they were barely ordinary people now.
“What? You’re weaker than I expected.”
I kept going and drove a punch into the next one’s face. One of the demonkin clicked his tongue at the sight.
“Tsk! Everyone, prepare!”
From somewhere a few meters away came the sound of chanting. Three demonkin were intoning a spell. Their mouths stopped, and they spoke a single word in unison.
Slow
The instant the word left them, the enemies’ attacks suddenly looked a full step faster. No. I had become slower.
Damn it, I got careless!
A blade came flying toward my shoulder. With my slowed body I spammed Acceleration and barely managed to block it.
Acceleration
Slow and Acceleration. The two opposing forces shoved against each other, and that was enough for me to keep reacting to them.
“I’ll make you eat some gas!”
I activated Poisonous Afterimage. Green smoke began to rise and coil behind me.
Toxic green residual smoke trails the user’s movements.
“What the hell is this smell?!”
The demonkin crossing blades with me sniffed the smoke, his eyes spun, and he collapsed on the spot. I put a hole through the fallen demonkin’s chest and charged forward without slowing.
“Watch out!! That’s suspicious smoke!”
With a sharp clang I brought my blade down on the one at the front. I had to finish this fast. Acceleration and Afterimage each burned MP and stamina. There were a lot of them. Second strike, third strike. I kept cutting, carving through them. Just as I thought I could actually pull this off, a woman’s voice cut through the air.
“Even under Slow, that speed… Then try enduring this as well, Gi-seok.”
Bartier. She began chanting. Her lips stilled, she pressed her index finger downward, and she spoke a single word.
Gravity Manipulation
“Ugh!!”
Sudden weight crashed onto my shoulders. My head drooped under the force; my knees strained just to keep from buckling.
“Bartier! What the hell did you—!”
The demonkin who had been the bald man spoke from beside me.
“Our sister may be low-level, but she possesses a special attribute and a special skill to match. Haha… You’ve worked hard. Farewell, Brother.”
I couldn’t hold the weight any longer and slammed my head lower. A demonkin’s blade came flying in.
Is this the end…?
I squeezed my eyes shut.
Then—tak!—a man’s voice sounded. An old man’s voice that felt somehow familiar.
“Open your eyes, young man!”
At the quiet words right beside me I slowly opened my eyes.
“A young person dying in a place like this simply won’t do.”
Standing in front of me was the lecherous old man I had met two days ago.