The Abyss Fence
“This material quality is pretty solid…”
A soft rustle of movement.
“You startled me!”
Someone had wrapped her in a sudden embrace. Emilton, who had been examining magical reagents, nearly jumped out of her skin.
This was her personal laboratory. No one without clearance could enter. Which meant the person holding her had clearance—and of all those people, only one would ever hug her like this.
“Dimerof! You scared the life out of me!”
“Why so jumpy? Were you plotting something wicked?”
“I was, actually. Something wicked enough to shake the entire empire.”
“Is that the sort of thing you should say in front of the emperor?”
“Then go ahead and arrest me.”
“I think I’ll just keep you right here in my arms instead.”
He pulled her tighter.
“What if someone sees…?”
“Who could even get in here? Anyone who tried would be dead before they finished the thought.”
“Honestly…”
Dimerof and Emilton exchanged a shy glance. Behind them, someone was already frowning as if he had just walked in on something he would rather not have seen.
“Sorry to interrupt while the mood’s so nice, but mind handing Emilton over for a second?”
“Gah!”
“Eek!”
At the sound of Do-ha’s voice, Dimerof and Emilton both shrieked and sprang apart. This place only admitted authorized personnel; they had never expected anyone else to be present.
“Ba… Baek Do-ha?!”
“How did you even get in here?!”
Emilton pointed an accusing finger at him, her face drained of color. The laboratory had been expanded after Do-ha’s disappearance. Canteas might have been recognized, but Do-ha’s presence had never been registered.
“There’s nowhere I can’t go, little mortal.”
“That’s something Canteas says all the time.”
“Ah, damn… I caught it from that bastard.”
Do-ha slapped his own mouth. That damned skeleton had infected him with the weird speech patterns.
“Ahem… We were just… huddling for warmth. Don’t get the wrong idea…”
Dimerof straightened his clothes and cleared his throat. Emilton’s face was still deathly pale; Dimerof’s cheeks burned bright red with embarrassment.
“They say late-blooming romance is the scariest kind… Forty years stuck together and now everything suddenly feels brand-new, huh?”
“Th-that’s not it at all!”
“Ahh, youth. Enjoy it while it lasts.”
“Shut your mouth, you bastard!”
Dimerof threw a punch. Do-ha snickered and tilted his head just enough to let it sail past.
Well, this was awkward. Maybe he really should have given them some privacy.
“Emilton. You remember the day of our final battle with Ryukan?”
Orc King Ryukan. The one who had once commanded every orc across the continents, and who had warred against Do-ha’s forces for a very long time. They had originally signed a peace treaty promising mutual non-aggression, but when the orc population exploded, Ryukan had launched a preemptive strike on the empire. The fighting had been brutal, and in the end they had taken his head.
“Of course I remember. I got my thigh punched clean through by a magic-sealing arrow and suffered like hell.”
“Do you know where this guy and Je-woo went that day?”
“I do. Straight to a tavern. While I was groaning in pain. Ugh, just thinking about it pisses me off all over again.”
“There’s one more fact you don’t know.”
“Something I don’t know?”
“You… don’t tell me…”
Seeing Do-ha’s expression, Dimerof’s face went pure white. He wasn’t about to bring that up… right? No. No way.
“While I was passed out drunk, he and Je-woo…”
A hand clamped over his mouth.
“You crazy bastard!”
Dimerof had lunged forward and sealed Do-ha’s lips. You absolute son of a bitch! What the hell had he done to deserve this bomb being dropped right now?!
A frantic sound transmission crackled into Do-ha’s mind.
-You… you suddenly show up and pull this?! What did I even do wrong!
Dimerof was a knight who used aura, but sound transmission was well within his abilities.
-Do-ha! Buddy! I have no idea what I did, but let’s just calm down, okay? If you say that, I’m dead…
“What are you two doing?”
A hard shove.
“Ugh, you bastard! Why does your hand smell so rank… ptooey, ptooey.”
Do-ha shoved Dimerof off and wiped his mouth. What the hell had this guy been doing for his hand to reek like that?
“What is it? Tell me. Now I’m curious.”
“Ha… haha, it’s nothing. This idiot Do-ha’s just spouting nonsense.”
“Dimerof. I asked Do-ha, so move.”
When Dimerof tried to block her, Emilton simply pushed him aside. She was far too curious about whatever he was about to say. What exactly had Dimerof and Je-woo done?
“So back then…”
-You bastard! What do you want?! You clearly want something if you’re pulling this!
-You’ll give me anything?
-Yes, you son of a bitch!
Do-ha grinned and nodded.
“Back then, the two of them ran all over the place looking for healing medicine because you were in so much pain. They never found any, so later they brought a Divine Physician instead.”
“……That’s really all you were going to say?”
“Yep. You two were being all lovey-dovey, so I figured I’d share a heartwarming story.”
“Aww, and here I thought it was something big~ Dimerof. You were that worried about me? That makes me happy.”
“Ha… haha, of course I was.”
Dimerof wiped the cold sweat streaming down his face. In truth, Do-ha had stayed behind at the inn that day while he and Je-woo had crossed into the Eastern Continent, joined the Mount Hua Sect’s master, and gone for a second round of drinks with courtesans at a pleasure house. The bastard Baek Do-ha had been about to spill all of it. They hadn’t done anything improper—just drunk—but Emilton would never have believed that so easily.
“You… just wait. I’m going to get you back for this. Calling yourself a brother… hah…”
“Just leave the imperial treasure vault unlocked for me later.”
Do-ha clapped Dimerof on the shoulder and walked over to Emilton. The real reason he had come was the bead taken from Heo Won-sa’s body.
“Emilton. Take a look at this.”
“What is it?”
She picked up the bead resting in Do-ha’s palm. It looked ordinary enough, yet a strange energy clung to it.
“Where… did you get this?”
“Why? You recognize it?”
“It’s a forbidden ancient technique. It’s called the Abyss Fence—extremely difficult and finicky to create.”
“Forbidden? Why?”
“Because this bead is made by sacrificing humans. Once it’s formed into a bead like this, the soul is completely annihilated. It can’t even reach the Underworld. That’s why the ancients banned the technique. They said it trespassed on the domain of the gods—and that the gods’ wrath would fall if it was misused.”
“Makes sense.”
“More than that, creating one requires something truly horrific.”
First you needed a human who still had a family. You bound that person and, right before their eyes, slaughtered their family members in the most brutal ways imaginable. Simple pain wasn’t enough. You had to torture them for as long as possible before killing them. And at the exact moment the captive watched, screamed, and their mind shattered, you extracted the soul and processed it into the bead Do-ha now held.
In short, a technique that destroyed an entire family.
“Tell me. Where did you get this?”
“A Blood Cult bastard was using it.”
“The Blood Cult?!”
Dimerof, who had been listening with arms folded, hurried over.
“Why? Has the Blood Cult shown up on the Western Continent too?”
“Je-woo contacted me as well. Disappearances have been rising all across both the Western and Eastern Continents lately. Then entire families start vanishing at once. We’ve already got reports of more than twenty households.”
“Blood Cult work, then.”
“Most likely. This bead is so hard to form that roughly ninety percent of attempts shatter during creation. That’s why they have to sacrifice so many people.”
Emilton shared everything she knew. She had found the information in ancient records.
“They’re the Blood Cult—they use human blood as a matter of course. Making these beads probably doesn’t even register as a crime to them.”
The Blood Cult had always treated humans as materials or tools. They used people to grow their own power. They killed people to refine their own abilities. They hunted people to expand their own influence. That was the Blood Cult.
“These dog bastards…”
Thick killing intent rolled off Dimerof. Slaughtering even ordinary civilians and turning them into tools… Now he understood why entire families had been disappearing.
“Calm down, Dimerof. Do-ha, what about the one who used this?”
“Kept moving even after his head exploded. Kept using sword techniques even after his bones were shattered.”
“Hmm… That means the bead’s owner was a martial artist. And the people tortured to death to make the bead were his family…”
“A martial artist? Did they use one of their own Blood Cult warriors?”
“No chance. Those bastards would never cut into their own flesh. They probably used an Orthodox or Unorthodox martial artist.”
“Strange, though—the body this bead was controlling still had pride in the Blood Cult.”
“That’s because it was engraved. The bead’s creator imprinted his own will into it. It’s a forbidden technique, but the Blood Cult wouldn’t care about that.”
“They’ve gone completely off the rails since joining hands with the Demon God Cult.”
“That’s part of it, but they’re probably even more arrogant because of the new Blood Demon.”
“New Blood Demon?”
“Yeah. After you wiped the Blood Cult from the face of the world, things stayed quiet for a while.”
The Demonic Cult had remained, but the Blood Cult had vanished completely. Then a new figure had appeared: Cheon Yeong. He had erased the old Blood Cult and founded a new order under the name Great Blood Cult.
“So that’s why that bastard kept spouting off about the Great Blood Cult. I just thought he was grandstanding…”
“He’s a man with a lot of rumors around him. They say he’s stronger than the former Heavenly Demon, Cheon Seol-gyeong…”
“Well, they go around calling their Blood Demon a god with their own mouths, so of course they’d claim he’s strong.”
“No.”
“?”
“The Demonic Cult said it.”
“Huh?”
Do-ha’s eyes widened at Emilton’s words. The Demonic Cult had said he was stronger than Cheon Seol-gyeong?? Even if the Heavenly Demon was dead and gone, the man had still been called the sky itself. And yet they claimed this Cheon Yeong was stronger?
If even the Demonic Cult acknowledges it…
If they were willing to admit someone surpassed the man who had once been their own heaven, then this Cheon Yeong might actually be that strong.
“If the Blood Cult reappeared, why didn’t you just go kill them all yourself?”
Do-ha looked at Dimerof. He himself was on Earth, but this guy had remained in the world of Belhart.
“We were planning to wipe them out with Je-woo, but…”
“They founded themselves on the Northern Continent, where the cult used to be. That’s why we couldn’t go.”
Emilton shrugged. If they crossed to the Northern Continent to strike the Blood Cult, the Western or Eastern Continents might come under attack, so they had stayed put. But now that the Blood Cult was moving again, they could no longer sit still.
“Still, Canteas would recognize this bead too. Didn’t you ask him? If you give it to him, he should be able to track whoever made it.”
In this field, Canteas actually knew far more. The technique for creating the bead was closer to black magic, after all.
“Canteas is busy.”
“That guy’s busy?”
Dimerof and Emilton both tilted their heads. The skeleton was supposedly addicted to games or whatever and lounged around the house every day. Was he seriously calling that “busy”???
“The Blood Cult also scattered strange artifacts everywhere. He’s busy collecting all of them.”
“Artifacts too?! Wow… these bastards are going all out.”
“They even bred monstrous birds and brought them along.”
“The thing you hate most.”
“Exactly. So I killed them. There are probably more left, but I’m going to burn every last one.”
“We’ll text you the moment any Blood Cult news reaches us.”
“Wow~ Look at you, saying ‘text’ like a natural.”
Do-ha regarded Dimerof with genuine admiration. Once the worlds began interacting, Dimerof had bought a smartphone. Back then he had grumbled about carrying something so small and fragile; now he actually looked like someone who used a phone regularly.
“Emilton, I’m heading out. Things are about to get busy.”
Dimerof turned on his heel with a hard expression.
A hand clamped onto his shoulder.
“Don’t try anything cute. Open the vault.”
“……You damn bastard.”
At Do-ha’s words, Dimerof’s face crumpled into a miserable pout.