The Imugi's Nest
My destination was Cheonji, the lake atop Halla Mountain.
Jeju Island saw few gates open, perhaps owing to the nature of the land itself.
And who would ever have expected a gate to open inside Cheonji of all places?
In time, this gate would trigger a gate break and leave heavy casualties in its wake.
And though it only came to light later, a hidden piece had lain within Cheonji—already annihilated, of course, by the time the gate break erupted.
This time, I'm taking it.
A hidden piece destined to vanish regardless; there was no reason I couldn't be the one to claim it. If anything, dealing with the gate now would mean those lives were never lost at all.
"Well then, let's head in."
Holding my breath, I slipped into Cheonji. Diving toward the center of the lake, I spotted it—a gate standing open at the deepest point. I plunged straight through.
You have entered the Imugi's Nest.
Once inside the gate, I wrung the water from my clothes. Moving in that waterlogged state was a misery.
"The Imugi's Nest, hm..."
A boss monster not yet become a dragon—that was an imugi. It could ascend into a true dragon mid-battle, which meant caution was warranted.
First, the hidden piece.
No one had ever set foot in this gate, which meant exploring everything from the beginning.
Exploration Footwork. Search.
My senses stretched outward, and the gate's interior carved itself into my mind. Fortunately, it wasn't an especially vast space.
The layout resembles Halla Mountain...
If this place mirrored Halla Mountain, the boss would be waiting at Cheonji, and that narrowed my search considerably.
The imugi of Cheonji becomes a dragon soon.
Working from that assumption, the hidden piece would lie far from the imugi—and if it sat opposite Cheonji, that meant the very base of the mountain.
I'm about midway down the slope, so...
A round trip down and back would be a chore, but if I was wrong, I'd simply start the search over from scratch.
Basic Footwork. Speed.
It had been a long while since I last ran the footwork; recovery had made practice impossible.
So this is the speed I remember.
Cool wind streaming past, I drove myself down the mountainside, and five minutes of running brought the base into view.
I should stop around here.
Any farther and I would reach the "end." Disturbing the end carelessly invited catastrophe—the gate could collapse on the spot, or the boss might spiral into a rampage.
One more sweep, then.
Exploration Footwork. Search.
My five senses and my mana unfurled around me, and something snagged against that widening awareness.
This is... divine power?
What my senses had caught was divine power—the might of a god, diluted into a form mortals could wield.
To feel that inside a gate...
Curious in its own way. I set off for the source, footwork carrying me there.
Basic Footwork. Speed.
Where I arrived stood a small lake—a watered-down echo of Cheonji itself.
The divine power is beneath this lake...
I dipped just my face beneath the surface to scout it out. It ran deeper than it looked.
No way around it—I have to go in.
Perhaps because I'd been soaked once already, every part of me balked at the idea. Still, out of options, I lowered myself into the lake.
The water swallowed me with a resounding splash. I dove as deep as I could go, holding my breath for dear life, determined that this dive would be my last.
The effort paid off.
"An underwater cave."
At the very bottom of the lake, I found a submerged passage. I surfaced, climbed out, and wrung out my clothes again—though after two soakings, they barely gave up a drop.
"This is getting old..."
Why the Primordial Humans insisted on such tedious errands, I still couldn't fathom.
"The divine power's coming from deeper in, then."
A path wound through the underwater cave as if beckoning me onward, and the divine power pulsed from somewhere along it.
No other leads, so in I go...
And yet something felt wrong. Profoundly wrong.
"Haah..."
Sighing, I followed the passage inward. Before long it opened into a cavernous chamber, and at its center rose a temple built in the Grecian style.
First Trial
⚔ Kill the gatekeeper.
☠ Otherwise, you die~
The message appeared the instant my eyes found the temple. That tilde at the end grated on me more than anything.
"So where exactly is this gatekeeper?"
I swept my surroundings warily. Nowhere did a gatekeeper reveal itself, and in a situation like this, vigilance was simple common sense.
It doesn't register on Search.
Perhaps it was a creature versed in stealth. But no matter how long I waited, no gatekeeper ever appeared.
The system doesn't lie.
Easing my guard a fraction, I approached the temple—and at its entrance, I came upon a shattered statue.
You have defeated the gatekeeper.
The system message chimed the moment I spotted the broken statue. I had never felled any such thing—which meant someone else had.
Someone else is here.
The thought that my hidden piece might be stolen out from under me sent me rushing into the temple. I had no leisure to wonder why the message had credited me with the statue's defeat.
Second Trial
⚔ Prove that you are a scholar.
☠ If you cannot, you die~
Another insufferable message. The trouble was, I was never granted the chance to prove my scholarship.
The doors have all been destroyed.
They looked to have been the kind that opened once you solved a riddle, and someone had simply smashed through them and moved on.
This person is a lunatic.
I hurried through the ruined doors as well. A little deeper in, a new message awaited.
Third Trial
⚔ Find the golem's core and destroy it.
☠ Leave the core intact and it regenerates forever~
The same format yet again. The problem: there was no golem for me to fell. Only its corpse lay where it had collapsed, broken and ruined.
Something's off here.
I had now witnessed three trials in all, and every last one had been bulldozed through with brute force. This golem, too, had most likely died to a single strike through its core.
This isn't human work.
No human squanders strength so recklessly, no matter how badly the messages grate.
This is a monster's handiwork.
Yet rack my brain as I might, the only monster I could picture wielding this much power was the imugi itself. But an imugi was an intelligent being. It would never stoop to something so crude.
"Besides... the divine power keeps growing stronger."
The deeper I pressed into the temple, the larger and more unmistakable it grew. At first I'd taken it for an artifact steeped in the stuff; somewhere along the way, I'd changed my mind.
This is the divine power of a living creature.
An imugi carries no divine power. Which meant this was no imugi.
There'd been no trace of anything leaving, so whatever it was, it had to still be inside.
Divine power hadn't crawled over my skin like this since that day—the day I stood face to face with the Four Great Angels descended upon Earth, and their leader, Michael. Nothing since had come close.
Is what waits in there an angel?
If so, every trace I'd passed made sense. The question was whether to step into that inner sanctum at all.
One thing was certain—the hidden piece was in there.
The Ring of Earth had been trembling faintly for some time, as if aching to tell me a sibling waited within.
You could have just said so.
Ever since it had unleashed the power of the earth in my battle against Envy, the thing had sunk back into slumber.
"Staying out doesn't appear to be on the menu, then."
I drew two daggers from my belt. I'd toyed with other weapons now and then during my recuperation, but the daggers still sat most naturally in my hands.
"Hoo."
If it came to that, I was ready to burn a Limit Break. A dagger in each hand, I walked toward the heart of the temple.
Where I arrived, a short while later, was nearly identical to the chamber where I had once claimed the Stone of Earth. There was a single difference: an angel stood guard over the altar.
You have cleared all trials.
Take the hidden piece or leave it, whichever you like~
Insufferable to the very end. Swallowing my irritation, I addressed the angel.
"Hey there, Mister Angel?"
"......"
At my call, the angel's face rotated slowly toward me. And the moment its eyes found me, it went berserk.
"KYAAAAAK!"
No intelligent being could produce a scream like that. Still shrieking, the angel hefted a greatsword larger than I was and came charging.
Illusory Mist Footwork. Mist Step.
I unfurled an illusion without delay and shrouded my body.
CRASH!
The angel that had lunged at me brought its greatsword down without mercy on the very ground where I'd stood a heartbeat before.
CRASH! CRASH! CRASH!
Watching from the sidelines, I felt a chill crawl up my spine. Had I still been standing there, there wouldn't have been enough of me left to bury.
That's less an angel than a berserker.
Watching it now, who would ever think angel? Barbarian, perhaps. Never angel.
"Let's test it, then."
Had that thing been a true angel, I would have fled on the spot. But this berserker angel was no true angel.
An Angel Pow.
A counterfeit angel of some kind. No human hands had made it, so its creator was either an angel or a demon.
CLANG!
My daggers weren't getting through. I swung both in turn, and both were batted away. Mana-woven attacks, at least, seemed to bite.
It reacts to mana?
The counterfeit angel had been hammering one spot this entire time—only the ground where I had been standing, over and over.
To beat this thing...
Frankly, I couldn't see the road there. That angel was stronger than Envy had been before Leviathan took her body. It was stronger than me.
Come to think of it, I don't actually need to win, do I?
The system had never ordered me to subdue the thing. That had been my own assumption, nothing more.
In that case...
I drifted toward the altar, unhurried, and pulled up the item's information. When I'd glanced earlier, no jewel had been set into the ceiling—which meant the reward atop this altar was very likely genuine.
◈ Type: Orb. Yeouiju (dragon pearl)
◈ Description: An orb left behind by one of the Primordial Humans—the one who commanded dragons. Because the orb is empty, it will accept any magic power.
◈ Effect: Store your own magic power within it; should an imugi consume the orb, it can be tamed.
The reward was real, just as I'd guessed. And a taming item, no less. Any ranker alive would kill for—
CRASH!
The altar before my eyes burst into fragments—under the greatsword the angel had hurled.
I'm fucked.