A Precious One in a Shabby Place
...
I had cut down every demonic human in that place, yet I didn't move. These were future heroes dying—and with their deaths, more people might well die someday down the line.
'Something about this leaves a bad taste in my mouth.'
If this mission had been purely about revenge, I wouldn't have given it a second thought. But heroes were dying because of me, and the thought sat heavy on my chest.
"Contractor, are you well?"
Right on cue, Cheongun parted the gate and emerged, having no doubt sensed the turmoil in me.
"I'm fine."
"...You would do well not to push yourself."
"Thank you."
With that, Cheongun wound himself around my neck as if to offer what comfort he could. I stroked him gently and let my emotions settle. 'Situations like this will come again.' I couldn't let my heart lurch like this every single time, so I steeled myself once more.
Whatever they had been in life, I would kill the demonic humans all the same. The only exceptions would be those who had been turned against their will. 'Everyone else dies.'
With my resolve fixed, I turned my back on the scene. There was no time left to linger here.
"Cheongun."
"Are you yourself again?"
"Thanks to you."
"Then shall we be off to hunt the boss?"
"Mind pointing me the way?"
In a place this vast, finding the boss would take days on my own—and the Scouting Footwork wouldn't change that.
"Go straight right from here, and you shall find it."
"Got it."
In that respect, at least, luck was squarely on my side—my partner was an Imugi with dominion over water. Following Cheongun's guidance, I made for where the boss monster awaited.
"Kieeeek!"
The boss was a Blue Lizardman—a breed far more attuned to the water element than the common lizardman.
"Kieeek!"
The Blue Lizardman began hurling spell after spell my way. Basic Footwork: Speed. I slipped through the barrage on light feet. Its power seemed closer to A-rank than S; the gate had likely earned its S-rank designation through sheer expanse and monster numbers alone.
Illusory Fog Footwork: Mist Dance. A boss with the strength of an average A-rank gate's was easy prey. Basic Footwork: Break. I blotted out its vision with Mist Dance, then struck through the fog with Break.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
The moment the boss went down, the messages poured in.
You have defeated the Blue Lizardman, boss monster of the Green Marsh.
Closing the Green Marsh.
Settling experience.
Level UP!
When the cascade of messages ended, a blue gate opened before my eyes. Achievement evolutions were exceedingly rare events. 'And to think I'd actually land one.' Evolutionary achievements stayed hard to come by even in the late game—having one in hand would only help.
"Cheongun, head back to Cheonji for now."
"As you wish."
Cheongun nodded and returned to Cheonji. There was no telling who might be waiting when I stepped outside, and it was best to keep every card in my hand hidden as long as possible.
'Home first, then.'
"They report the cleanup is finished."
"Is that so..."
The Association Chairman answered the Director of Enforcement's report with unmistakable bitterness. He and Park Kwon-sung had been friends despite the considerable gap in their ages—comrades who had leaned on one another, each watching the other's back, when the Great Cataclysm first began.
'Go on ahead. I'll be along before long myself.'
The Chairman knew, on pure instinct, that little of his lifespan remained. 'Before I go, there is much yet to accomplish.' His plan was to achieve all he could while the reins were still in his hands, then step down—so that the next Chairman would not have to suffer for it.
"I find myself craving a drink tonight."
So the Chairman murmured, gazing up at the night sky. Today of all days, he was aching for soju and a steaming bowl of pork gukbap, that restorative pork-and-rice soup.
From the day I filed my official report with the Association, I threw myself into running as many gates as I could manage. The goal: collecting elixirs.
'So tomorrow's the day, huh.'
Lost in those frantic days, I'd let nearly a month slip past. Tomorrow, the Sword Demon and the Gray Witch would set foot in Korea. I'd already gotten our stories straight with the Chairman and Guildmaster Han Min-joon—as far as that day was concerned, I didn't exist.
'They're both good men, after all.' Each had his sly old serpent streak, but I was certain their hearts were fundamentally kind. 'Probably.'
In any case, the gate I was running now was my last: the B-rank gate, Sky Castle—a dungeon themed around an ancient castle adrift in the heavens.
"Kieeeek!" "Keeeak!" "Kieeeek!"
Which explained why the place swarmed with aerial monsters. Those pterosaur-like things would come diving at me at the slightest opening.
"Cheongun."
BOOM!
So I answered force with force and released Cheongun into the sky. Loosing bolt after bolt of lightning, he hunted the monsters to his heart's content.
Cheongun has defeated a Rockpato.
Cheongun has defeated a Rockpato.
Cheongun has defeated a Rockpato.
⋮
Every time Cheongun dropped a single bolt, the kill notifications came rustling down in an unbroken stream. 'Looks like he's having fun too.' He flew in Cheonji as well, but the space there was hopelessly confined. Perhaps that was why roaming skies this open seemed to suit him so beautifully.
"Contractor."
'What is it?'
"Might I range a little farther out?"
'Go ahead.'
No monster in a gate of this caliber could so much as scratch Cheongun. He would be doing the slaughtering; getting hurt simply wasn't on the table.
"Then I suppose I'll start on the castle myself."
I had searched the island's outskirts until now, but nothing of note had turned up. Which meant the clear condition had to lie inside that ancient keep.
"Now, what might be waiting in there?"
With a faint flutter of anticipation, I pushed open the castle's outer gates. Say "ancient castle," and something does spring to mind, doesn't it? Living Armor—suits of plate that walk on their own.
'Not that I knew whether they actually existed.' At least among the gates discovered before my regression, I'd never once heard of Living Armor appearing. Still, show me a man who hasn't imagined a Living Armor at least once.
"That aside... it's awfully bare in here."
As though nothing had ever been here to begin with. Not a single artwork, not a single ornament. You could have called it a hollow tin shell of a castle, all dust and cobwebs, and nobody could have argued.
'Well. Let's scout it.'
Scouting Footwork: Seek.
TANG!
I unfurled the footwork to map my surroundings—and it failed outright. It felt as if some colossal wall had seized my senses in its grip.
'A mere B-rank gate is sealing my senses?' Something was deeply wrong. My sixth sense had worked flawlessly inside S-rank gates. No B-rank gate had any business shutting it out.
"Something reeks in here." And it reeked big. A powerful hunch gripped me: there was something in this castle.
'Cheongun, can you hear me?'
"What is the matter?"
'The link with you seems fine.'
"Our link has been growing faint for some time now. Has some trouble befallen you?"
'No, nothing's wrong.'
True, my connection to Cheongun had weakened—but it posed no real problem. The link had thinned, that was all. 'Nothing to fret over.' My own strength hadn't dimmed in the slightest, which meant forcing my way through this castle would be no trouble at all.
Basic Footwork: Speed. If my instincts couldn't chart the place, I would simply run it down on my own two feet.
Footwork carrying me from corridor to corridor, I began circling the castle. 'Something's off.' Turn right—same passage. Turn left—same passage. Sprint straight ahead—same passage again. The identical stretch of road simply refused to end.
And the connection to Cheongun had grown nearly imperceptible.
'Cheongun, can you hear me?'
"Contr..."
'I'm screwed.'
Cheongun's voice, too, had all but faded out. And this was no illusion—if it were, the Siren's Necklace would have reacted.
'Then all I can do is run, for now.'
I left a mana mark on the wall beside me. A mark woven from mana would be recognizable no matter what happened to it.
Basic Footwork: Speed. Falling back into rhythm, I pressed on with the search.
And then I confirmed it beyond all doubt: I was not the victim of an illusion. 'The mark never shows.' The corridor repeated itself any number of times, yet the mana mark I'd carved into the wall never appeared once. Which meant I was not looping through the same space at all.
'A weakened link to Cheongun, and a road that loops forever.' Exactly one phenomenon fit those conditions: a subspace. I had stumbled into an artificial space crafted by another's hand.
'How powerful must one be, to build a space this size?' Even the subspace I had once made was smaller than this. Whoever had forged this place was stronger than I had been before my regression.
'There's no way something like this belongs in a B-rank gate.' Cold sweat trickled down my back. Face to face with a powerhouse of that caliber, I wouldn't even have bones left to gather—I'd be ground to powder outright.
'First, then—how do I get out of this subspace?' That was priority one.
The Cheonji gate refused to open, for starters. I tried again and again, but with my link to Cheongun so attenuated, not even a flicker of it stirring showed itself.
'Which leaves me two options: shatter the subspace, or find the medium anchoring it.' With my senses sealed off, hunting down the medium was realistically impossible. That left breaking the subspace itself. 'Let's give it a go, then.'
I loosened my body and set my footwork in motion.
Cracks began spiderwebbing through the space around me with the stride.
I didn't stop at one step—I drove straight into the next.
The surrounding space begins to shatter outright.
BOOM!
The moment Horizon Breaker landed, the space around me began breaking apart in earnest. Before long the entire space lay shrouded in fissures—and then it shattered.
"Contractor!"
'Cheongun, you alright?'
"Quite well—save that the link snapping back so suddenly gave me a start."
'Then you're fine.'
"And you, Contractor—are you unharmed?"
'Never better. I just took the long way around.'
"If the Contractor says so, then so it must be."
Assured that I was safe, Cheongun returned to his hunting. I cut the exchange as well and surveyed the space I'd landed in.
A studio apartment—no, a space perhaps even smaller than one. In that cramped room sat a desk, a chair, and a single book. And one corpse.
'May the departed rest in peace.' Paying the dead at least that much courtesy, I turned to inspect the book on the desk.
You have acquired a Skill Book.
One look was enough to tell it was the sort of skill book tamers would kill to get their hands on. 'I'll put it up on the black market later.' I had no particular use for it—I had Cheongun, after all, and my bond with him ran through the legacy of the Primordial Humans anyway.
"Hm?"
I was on my way out of the room when I spotted a flower blooming from the corpse. Its crimson petals flung wide open, it was—strangely—a beautiful flower.
"This is—?!"
The moment I saw it, I clapped a hand over my mouth. One look at that flower, and a single phrase rose unbidden to my mind:
'A precious one like you—why in such a shabby place as this!'