Chapter 58
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Translator: 8uhl
Chapter: 58
Chapter Title: The Voice of the Dead
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Luon, who had shaken off a clinging corpse with sheer core strength, slammed his fist into the jaw of another that had crept close enough for him to feel its breath.
He shoved the creature whose lower jaw had been torn clean off with his shoulder to make space, then gripped Ruin with both hands and swung wide.
*Fwoosh—*
Red runes bloomed like fire across the blade, revealing an unfiltered animosity toward the wicked beings.
As Luon faced the wave of living corpses head-on, a grotesque fan of blood, flesh, and bone spread out from his feet, growing ever darker.
At the fan's apex, Luon cut down the charging dead without hesitation, as he always had. It was his first time facing an enemy so numerous they showed no sign of thinning, but his spirit remained unbroken. Instead, a surging desire for victory gifted him a strange heat.
Luon willingly surrendered to that heat, moving in a trance-like state. As he swung his sword, threw punches, and slammed down his elbows, crushing the lifeless beings, a brilliant flash of light erupted in his peripheral vision, making him turn his head.
At the same time, a horrific scream echoed out.
“Kieeeeek!”
In that instant, the corpses that had closed in on him began to collapse like marionettes with their strings cut.
*Igor?*
Beyond the corpses toppling like dominoes, he could see his companions.
Luon roughly wiped the blood dripping from his chin with the back of his hand and slowly started walking.
Seeing him trudging over, a mountain of corpses behind him, Kyle let out a dry laugh and said,
“Is any of that blood on you your own?”
“You’d probably find some if you looked hard enough.”
“So you’re not hurt…”
Luon gave a slight shrug, pushed his hair back from his forehead, and approached Igor.
The priest, sensing his presence, turned with a faint smile. He said,
“You’re back.”
“Looks like you did something.”
Igor nodded.
“Because you held back… no, because you took care of most of the undead, I was able to find an opening.”
“Is that so?”
After his short reply, Luon tilted his head at the creature sprawled at Igor's feet. It was the one that had greeted them when they first entered the cavern.
“It kept reviving even after its head was cut off.”
“It was a being that consumed corpses to sustain its own life. This time, I burned it from the inside with holy power before it could do so, so you don’t need to worry about it reviving.”
Strabo, spitting bloody saliva onto the ground, said,
“So all these corpses are victims of human sacrifice? Then what was all that talk about being an army?”
Igor answered the dwarf, who was prodding a fallen corpse's torso with the tip of his boot.
“Judging by its words, it seems the sacrificed corpses were exposed to Belducias’s power for a long time and were reborn as a single being sharing one consciousness. I’m not sure if it’s a good analogy, but it’s like an ego sword…”
Before he could finish, Ruin trembled, and a red light pulsed on and off along its blade, as if it were offended.
Finding it rather distracting, Luon gripped the sword's hilt tightly and muttered inwardly,
*Stay still.*
Meanwhile, Kyle tilted his head at Igor, who was quietly kneeling and clasping his hands.
“…Didn’t you say there would be no prayers earlier?”
“This is a prayer for the poor souls who were violated by the Great Demon’s will even in death.”
“Ah, I see.”
In the priest's quiet prayers for the departed, it was hard to find a sense of duty or blind faith in his goddess. There was only a warm sincerity.
Kyle, watching him blankly, muttered,
“Maybe I’ll stop by the grand church when this is over.”
He stopped, a startled expression on his face, and began slapping his own mouth with his palm. Then he turned to Luon.
“You told me not to say things like this… What happens if I do?”
Luon smirked at Kyle’s wide-eyed expression and replied,
“Usually, you die.”
“Sh-shit. Can I take it back?”
Strabo, who had been picking his nose, cackled and chimed in.
“Luon, is that a tradition from where you’re from? ‘Don’t run your mouth if you don’t want to die’… something like that?”
“Something like that.”
“Where is that place, anyway?”
Kyle, scratching his head with a troubled look, muttered,
“I think I heard it once when I was traveling with Amella… Dae, Dae… what was it?”
The conversation seemed to be veering off course, but there was no reason to force a grim atmosphere, so Luon slowly spoke.
“The Republic of Korea.”
“Ah! Right. That was the name.”
As Kyle clapped his hands, his question answered, Strabo muttered with interest,
“The homeland of the Warrior of the Forge… Sounds like a place full of romance. Am I right?”
*Romance? I wonder.*
Luon gathered his thoughts for a moment and said,
“It might not be the kind of place that fits your idea of romance, but it’s still a place where people live, just the same.”
Hearing this, Strabo grinned and replied,
“Then let’s all go together next time! Surely you weren’t kicked out by your father like I was?”
Luon neither told the innocently smiling dwarf that such a thing was impossible, nor did he make a promise he couldn’t keep. He simply offered a faint smile.
He said,
“Looks like the prayer is over.”
“Hey, your answer…”
Just then, Igor dusted himself off, stood up, and walked toward the group.
“Thank you for waiting.”
Seeing him rejoin them, Strabo seemed to realize it was no longer the time for idle chatter and tactfully shut his mouth.
Kyle, who had been scanning the vast cavern, pointed his index finger somewhere.
“There, that. Looks like a path.”
Following his finger, they saw a large, irregularly shaped entrance.
At this point, there was no need to weigh their options, so Luon nodded and replied,
“Let’s go.”
***
Unlike the previous passage, where carved murals and flagstones clearly indicated artificial construction, the path ahead felt raw and natural.
The ceiling and floor, studded with jagged stalactites and stalagmites, resembled the inside of a giant monster’s maw, and the damp, gloomy air felt somehow ominous.
Luon, leading the way down the unworked path, suddenly perked his ears at a sound.
*Drip—drip—*
From the sound, repeating at regular intervals, he could easily picture droplets of water falling onto a surface.
Just then, Strabo sniffed the air and said,
“It’s getting more humid. Must be water seeping up through the bedrock.”
At the mention of water, Igor gulped. A look of anxiety was plain on his face.
“I-I can’t swim.”
Hearing this, Strabo scooped up a pinch of dirt with his index finger and thumb and unhesitatingly brought it to his mouth.
*Here we go again.*
Luon, having seen his dirt-eating antics before, said nothing, but the other two grimaced openly.
Kyle stammered,
“Wh-why are you suddenly eating dirt? Igor, I think Strabo’s been consumed by madness. Shouldn’t you say a prayer or something?”
Ignoring them, Strabo mumbled for a moment before spitting and saying,
“It’s not deep enough to worry about swimming. Not even close. Ankle-deep at most for you lot.”
Kyle asked the confidently-speaking dwarf,
“How do you know that?”
“My ability to commune with nature might be a bit lacking, but I’m a proper druid! This is nothing.”
Kyle muttered under his breath,
“‘Nothing,’ he says. That’s not something you say while tasting dirt…”
After proceeding through the natural cave for a while, a wide expanse of groundwater greeted the party, just as Luon had expected.
As Strabo had said, the water was only ankle-deep, but because the cavern was so dark, the light from Ruin alone wasn't enough to properly gauge its depth.
Was that what made him nervous? Igor quickly conjured a few orbs of holy light and sent them floating into the air.
Only then did their restricted view open up.
*What is this?*
In that instant, Luon felt a powerful sense of déjà vu wash over him.
The dark, gloomy air, the murky water rising to his ankles…
The scene before him matched an image the Master of the Magic Tower had shown him long ago.
At the same time, Ruin began to throb in his hand. The will contained within it was clearer than ever before.
-Danger!-
“Everyone, be careful—”
*Swish—!*
Before Luon’s warning could finish, ‘something’ shot through the water at incredible speed and struck Kyle.
“Ugh!”
Kyle, who had instinctively raised his shield, was lifted off his feet. The sound of his body helplessly flying and crashing into a limestone pillar echoed through the cave.
But Luon didn't look back. An unknown entity was already rushing toward him as well. He moved his relaxed shoulders with explosive force. A red afterimage followed the blur of his arm, clashing with the incoming attack and scattering sparks of light.
Behind him, Igor and Strabo shouted something, but the sound was muffled by the splashing water.
Suddenly feeling a prickling sensation above his head, Luon swung his arm upward without even looking. Parrying a heavy impact, he twisted his wrist, and something like a metal skewer plunged into the ground beside him.
Having effectively deflected the attack, Luon swung his arm without hesitation. It was a strike relying purely on upper body strength, without the power of his lower body, but it was enough to sever the skewer-like object before him.
*Gurgle—*
With a sickening sound, what fell into the water with a splash was not a metal skewer.
*A tentacle?*
The slimy tentacle, covered in suckers like that of a cephalopod, evoked a visceral disgust just by looking at it.
Just then, a low voice echoed from the distance.
“Have you finally made it here?”
*Hard to listen to.*
Luon furrowed his brow at the bizarre tone, where the pitch and speed of each syllable were completely different.
He spoke toward the ominous, writhing figure beyond the reach of the light orbs, in the darkness.
“Why? You were waiting for me, I take it?”
In response to his words, a low laugh came from the darkness. In truth, calling it a low laugh was generous. It sounded more like hundreds of people taking turns to say “ha,” “ha,” “ha,” one syllable at a time—an utterly chilling sound.
The creature spoke.
“Of course. How could I not wait, when you, the one chosen by the celestial vermin, have come to find me yourself?”
Instead of a hasty reply, Luon began to focus his vision. His night-piercing eyes glowed, taking in the opponent's horrific form.
It was three giant hands.
Red, yellow, and black hands of different races were tangled together. And what formed those hands were hundreds of corpses.
Its bizarre voice was coming from the mouths of those very corpses, speaking in sequence.
Luon stared at the most horrifying enemy he had faced since coming to this world and gripped the hilt of his sword tightly.
He suppressed his animosity and growled lowly.
“Belducias.”