Chapter 35
Usually, when you run a dungeon—especially a story dungeon—if there’s an important mechanic, the game gives you some kind of heads-up. In other words, an NPC like Adam or Abrea, who are with us right now, will subtly drop a hint like, “If we do this, I think this part will be easier!” to tell you how to proceed through the dungeon.
Or else an interactable object will sparkle so obviously it practically screams for attention. Not everyone in this world is good at games like me and Jaesugang, so it’s the game company’s way of being considerate to users.
My strength drained right out of me. Was being a veteran player one of the conditions for progressing this hidden quest? Otherwise, this situation, with not a shred of consideration in sight, made no sense.
……No, no. What’s done is done, so let’s empty my mind and think positively. We suffered like dogs because we missed the mechanic, so once we figure out how to handle it, we should be able to clear the next trash mob section without much trouble. Even if, this time, the game company didn’t tell us and we had to realize it on our own.
[Party] Jaesugang: The problem is how we’re supposed to figure out the mechanic when we’ve already killed all the trash mobs
After that, Jaesugang said nothing and began wandering around the garden. I stood still, turning only my camera as I followed his movements.
Jaesugang first searched for objects that seemed likely to have something hidden. He stared for a long while at a broken mirror set meaninglessly in a corner of the garden, and he also approached a flowerbed where a slightly large flower had bloomed. But perhaps he couldn’t find any suitable object, because he wandered around for a bit, at a loss.
After a while, Jaesugang seemed to try something else and went dododo running toward the edge of the garden. Then, like a robot vacuum cleaner, he walked in a straight line along the wall. When he was walking just fine and encountered a bush bearing strange flowers, he changed direction and walked straight again.
His character was walking elegantly and with discipline, but Jaesugang’s left index finger was probably mashing the F key so he wouldn’t miss an object. Like how a robot vacuum diligently sweeps underneath its body.
It pricked my conscience to make only Jaesugang search everywhere, so I quietly stuck to the hedge wall opposite him, on the left side, and went clockwise. But, to be honest, I didn’t think we’d get the information Jaesugang wanted no matter how diligently we roamed around like this. Since we had already killed every last trash mob, there was also a good chance that the device for handling the mechanic had disappeared.
Just as I decided I’d go around half a lap first and then talk to Jaesugang, my character had arrived not at a hedge or a flowerbed, but at a large archway where the garden ended and the building began again. Wondering if there might be something nearby, I moved my mouse and looked around here and there, and a shabby metal sign hanging vertically beside the door caught my eye.
[PULLPULLPULLPULLPULLPULLPULLPULLPULLPULLPULL]
It was the word Koreans were worst at reading. I guess the monsters here weren’t very good at reading it either?
Other than that, I couldn’t see anything worth investigating. I was sure of it, since nothing popped up even when I hovered around the “PULL” sign and pressed the F key.
I left the investigation of the archway at that and trotted off to examine the other side. It happened just as I was passing through the exact center of the archway.
All of a sudden, with a tremendous noise, a huge padlock fastened itself onto the closed archway. Then several chains shot out from both sides and wrapped tightly around the door. Startled, I naturally pressed my evasion skill and retreated backward.
[Invaders clad in falsehood, I know not how you discovered this place, but…….]
[Party] Jaesugang: ?
[Party] Kkulppang: Huh?
Text appeared in the air, and a bizarre, high-pitched voice recited incomprehensible lines. Its tone was like a recorded voice being fast-forwarded.
Afterward, something glowing green shot out from the padlock on the archway and flew toward the center of the garden. It was like the angel that had been showing us the way. Its movement and its shining form were exactly the same.
[You shall be the last “gods” to discover this place.]
Then the screen began to shake, and a cutscene started playing.
[Party] Jaesugang: ?
[Party] Jaesugang: What did you do?
[Party] Kkulppang: ??
[Party] Kkulppang: Walked??
[Party] Jaesugang: ?
[Party] Kkulppang: ??
While Jaesugang and I were amicably exchanging question marks, the scene of the garden floor splitting apart appeared vividly before us. The fresh grass and the wildflowers blooming here and there trembled, then rose abruptly together with the cracked earth. The pieces of broken ground varied in size and shape. Some chunks even had plant roots embedded in them intact.
The cracked clods of earth and fragments of soil gathered around a single point. What was formed like that was none other than a golem. A giant doll said to have been created by an ancient race called “spirits.”
It had been mentioned briefly in passing in an old story cutscene. In ancient times, the spirits were said to have been erased from existence for the crime of envying the power of the gods and causing all manner of disasters in order to exterminate the Shina race, who were like the gods’ own children. But the spirits had not been evil beings from the start.
Before they were erased, they lived peacefully while managing nature, and sometimes, using various elements of nature as a medium, they would create dolls called “golems” and play by doing things impossible with their small and weak bodies. Just like how I use a game character to do things I can’t do myself.
However, spirits no longer exist in the present. As I said before, it was because the spirits had “plotted rebellion against the gods.”
For that reason, golems that had lost their masters became unable to move, and throughout the time I’d played the game, I had never once seen a golem placed in a dungeon or field move. Since the one who would log into the game account and move the character had disappeared, they simply waited helplessly for their account owner, breathless, here and there throughout ancient ruin dungeons.
And that very golem moved, alive, for the first time in this dungeon.
[- Abrea: “How can a golem move? It was known that those couldn’t move without the power of ancient spirits……!”]
[- Adam: “A golem that absolutely cannot move unless it’s by the power of spirits is moving. There’s only one answer, isn’t there?”]
Abrea turned his head and looked at Adam. His blue eyes were lost in confusion, unable to find their bearings.
[- Adam: “A spirit is alive here.”]
No sooner had he finished speaking than pale green light flowed from the outline of the golem’s body. Only the color was different from the light of the mineral Abrea had found at the trading market; it gave off the exact same aura.
The golem, which had been trying to force its rough, stiff body upright, began to move its joints flexibly. Looking closely, I saw that the spaces between the golem’s joints, which had been clacking against each other with dull sounds, were floating as if magnets of the same polarity were pushing one another away. As its movements gradually became more natural, the golem even rapidly clenched and unclenched its thick fingers.
Before I knew it, the golem had risen and was standing straight, looking down at us. It was about three times the height of my character and had a burly build.
[- Abrea: “A spirit is… alive? B-but spirits were surely erased by the gods in ancient times for the crime of insulting the Shina race…….”]
Abrea was confused as reality unfolded differently from what he knew to be true. Adam drove the wedge deeper into him.
[- Adam: “There’s no need to try so hard to deny it. You’ve been traveling with ‘that child’ all this time, haven’t you?”]
That child. Adam was saying that the angel within the mineral, the one that had been showing Abrea the way here, was in fact a “spirit” said to have been annihilated in ancient times.
After hearing that, Abrea couldn’t say anything. I could roughly understand why. The fact that a spirit, supposedly destroyed by the gods, actually existed would create two shocking questions for him, who had grown up as an ordinary member of the Shina race and as a holy knight.
First. “Were the gods incompetent?” If the omniscient and omnipotent beings said to govern all things in this world could not destroy a race called spirits, that pointed to the incompetence of the gods. And even if that image was exaggerated, even if they were not actually transcendent beings who governed all things, the second question still remained. “Then did the gods tell us a lie?”
Was there any need to conceal it with a lie, when they could simply have said that they had suppressed and exiled the spirits who had committed a grave crime? In truth, although they had failed to annihilate the spirits, the gods boasted to the Shina race that they had eradicated the race of spirits itself. As a result, despite lacking power unlike what was known, the gods were able to establish themselves as omniscient and omnipotent beings from ancient times to the present.
Either way, it contradicted the image of the gods that Abrea knew. Adam, the very one who had led Abrea to this place, probably wanted to know how he would react and what he would think when confronted with this truth.
Abrea stood still with a blank look in his eyes. Adam, who had tossed a bomb at him with a carefree face, watched with an interested gaze for a moment, then heartlessly turned his body toward Jaesugang.