◈ Episode 456. Darkness Descends (5)
Status Ailment: [Corruption].
The AAU and the Magic Tower.
Even the Goddess’s Church, which had been exercising the utmost restraint when it came to external activities,
had ventured into the Collapse Rifts in search of a way to suppress the Corruption.
In the middle of the sea, far removed from the influence of the Corruption.
Even if it was the Kingdom of Yusra,
they could not simply remain idle.
A group of roughly a hundred explorers.
Leading the alliance of players and Arcanians was the romantic explorer Lorentz. Explorer and NetTuber Park Hwigang anxiously shuffled his feet. It still did not feel real.
“I never thought I’d get to ride a ghost ship.”
The ship floated gently upward.
Quite literally, the ghost ship took the alliance’s explorers aboard and flew through the sky.
Lorentz let out a hearty laugh.
“It’s utterly shabby compared to the Iron Castle of the Dwarf Kingdom, but… Well, the effort that went into them is different. Be satisfied with this much.”
How could they not be satisfied?
“Of course we are.”
Fabian Delong, the head of the Explorers’ Alliance.
A living legend and an object of admiration.
He wiped the cold sweat from his brow before Lorentz.
The scale truly exceeded all imagination.
“So the legend of the Sabers really was true.”
To think he had summoned the legendary Sabers into reality.
Did this not surpass the influence of a mere explorer?
His admiration lasted only a moment before Fabian swallowed a sigh of relief.
“We’re incredibly fortunate to have received your help, Lord Lorentz. His Majesty King Hakuna gave us the order, but we weren’t certain that we had the ability to carry it out.”
Hakuna, the king of Yusra, had commanded the Explorers’ Alliance.
He had said that their strength was desperately needed to seize a clue to the Corruption. They could not refuse. The Kingdom of Yusra had accommodated the Explorers’ Alliance’s needs more than once or twice.
Of course, even if their relationship had not been such, they had intended to act.
Lorentz shrugged.
“Put the formalities aside. I’m not acting as a member of the Alliance, nor am I moving to help the Alliance, you know? If you insist on putting it that way, am I not a member of the Allied Forces of the Holy War? It’s only natural that I should investigate and study the Corruption.”
“Regardless, thank you, Lord Lorentz.”
“Is that so? I’m the one who doesn’t feel at ease.”
“Is there something that concerns you?”
“Because the situation is ominous.”
Lorentz’s gaze suddenly turned toward the sky.
“To the point that I can’t even come up with an inspiration.”
There, embedded in the sky, was the Evil Eye with the pupils of the Ten Seats.
The boy who never grew old because he had never lost his romantic spirit.
Lorentz had witnessed countless spells and sorceries while exploring the continent.
“Even I find it so alien that I can’t begin to guess at it. I’ve entered Hell and escaped, yet I know nothing whatsoever about the Demon World.”
Lorentz possessed a purer desire for exploration than any other explorer.
The thought of the Demon World, which he had failed to conquer as an explorer, caused his enthusiasm to surge.
But Lorentz soon regained his reason.
“So don’t expect too much help from me. All I can do is drop you off near a suitable Collapse Rift.”
“Even that is more than enough.”
“You keep thanking me every other sentence. This is why I traveled alone—it’s burdensome.”
“I’ll try to correct that.”
“Tsk. That answer is burdensome, too.”
The ghost ship crossed over the city.
They were in the middle of dispersing the adventurers around the Collapse Rifts one by one.
Park Hwigang and the other players suddenly froze.
[A Half-Blood Demon, the ‘Demon of Confinement,’ has appeared.]
“A demon has appeared nearby!”
“…”
“What exactly is a Demon of Confinement?”
“I don’t know, but even the name sounds terrifying.”
Park Hwigang shouted urgently and raised his camera.
Even as a NetTuber, he knew how to distinguish right from wrong.
This was a thermal-imaging camera, not one for broadcasting.
An Oddity that fused two entirely different concepts.
“I don’t know if this counts as an Oddity, but anyway…!”
Even as he said it himself, his conscience pricked him. However, by the standards of ‘that someone’ who considered even Internet searches to be an Oddity, Park Hwigang’s actions did indeed qualify. And Oddities had to find a way to make themselves useful somehow.
“There, there’s a heat signature inside the building!”
That was when it appeared.
The demon.
It began to creep—
No.
It began to writhe.
“……!”
The building was convulsing as if it were alive.
They rubbed their eyes and looked more closely.
Its outer walls were completely covered in something that made them knit their brows.
Lorentz and Fabian spoke.
“Red veins…?”
“Do you have any idea what they might be?”
“Would I? I don’t know everything either.”
“Ah…! The shape is similar!”
Park Hwigang cut into their conversation.
“Capillaries! In other words, in the science used in the real world, those vein-like things are called capillaries. Which means… that building is a living organism… No, then does that mean the building itself is the demon?!”
Park Hwigang’s deduction was sharp.
Rumble.
This, too, was an effect of the Corruption.
The demon had swallowed the entire building.
Its veins began to writhe and move.
The players watching the situation clicked their tongues.
“Is it the Demon of Confinement because there are people inside the building?”
“So we can’t clock out until we take it down?”
“Insane! What kind of horrifying mob is that?”
“I told you. It’s all because of that Evil Eye floating in the sky!”
One player irritably raised his eyes.
“…”
“Huh?”
A sight that made him doubt his own eyes unfolded before him. The Evil Eye, whose pupils had been rolling ominously only moments ago, had vanished without a trace.
“W-What? Where did it go?”
“What are you talking about all of a sudden?”
“N-No, it’s not that…”
“Focus on what’s in front of you!”
But they had no time to dismiss it as a hallucination and move on.
Park Hwigang was shouting frantically.
His voice was restless.
“If that’s a demon, then the citizens inside the building have been eaten by the demon, right? What are we supposed to do? What, what are we supposed to do…?!”
Fwoosh.
No one could say who moved first.
Lorentz and Fabian.
The two of them raised their torches.
The green flames of Hell blazed.
“Inside a demon’s stomach. I’ve entered the belly of an ill omen before, but never a demon’s stomach. This is fortunate. Wouldn’t knowing what its insides look like help us hunt demons?”
“Indeed.”
“You’re awfully stiff even in a situation like this.”
A boy seemed to be scolding a middle-aged man with graying hair.
Yet Fabian could not answer back, even at the jab. He had never imagined that Lorentz would share the flames of Hell with him.
‘The Alliance’s Hellfire was given to Lord Hoyeol.’
The reason was simple. They had believed that Hoyeol could use the Hellfire more properly. Yet they had never imagined that they would encounter these flames again through Lorentz.
So there was no hesitation.
“Are you really all right?”
The common sense of players.
Combat and non-combat professions.
The limits of a class could not be overcome.
In other words, no matter how hard an explorer trained or struggled, they could not make a major contribution in battle.
Park Hwigang asked worriedly, but the two men disembarked from the ghost ship.
Then they issued an order to the concerned explorers.
“Take care of any survivors. I’m counting on you.”
“Yes, y-yes! Of course!”
“Then shall we go?”
Whoosh.
The two explorers burned away the demon’s veins with the torches of Hell.
They opened the sealed door and entered the building—and the demon itself.
The instant they crossed inside, the surrounding air suddenly turned cold.
“……?”
A chill ran down their spines.
Park Hwigang was not the only one imagining it.
The explorers whispered among themselves.
“I suddenly feel strange…”
“What is it? Can’t you see something in front of you?”
“The system message? I don’t think so. It’s quiet.”
The system was quiet.
That alone allowed Park Hwigang and the other players to breathe a sigh of relief. The fact that no appearance message had appeared meant that it posed no threat.
However, it did not take long before everyone was left aghast.
Soon, a sound rang out.
Click.
Where the sound that shook their minds had come from, there stood a man.
For some reason,
his short silver hair had grown long and hung down around him.
But there was no mistaking him.
It was Hoyeol.
“C-Commander-in-Chief!”
They were on the verge of rejoicing as if they had encountered a savior.
Crack.
At the same time as the merciless sound,
something hot yet lukewarm
splattered across their faces, their forearms, and their clothes.
“E-Eeeeeek!”
Blood and chunks of flesh flew in every direction.
The demon that had become one with the building had burst apart.
It was not magic, a skill, or an Oddity.
He had burst the demon apart through nothing more than a gaze.
Even among the adventurers who were quick to judge a situation,
Park Hwigang’s mind worked especially fast, and he realized—
“?!”
Yes, the survivors he had detected inside the building with his thermal-imaging camera.
The two explorers who had entered the building to save them.
Lorentz and Fabian, the head of the Explorers’ Alliance.
His gaze darted toward them.
“Aaaaah!”
Park Hwigang felt relieved at the screams erupting around him.
Everyone had been covered in the demon’s blood and flesh, but…
They had all survived unharmed!
“Phew. That was a horrifying experience.”
Lorentz shook his head from side to side.
Then he looked at the shattered magical instrument: 《Contract with a Minor God: The Everlasting Signature Pen》.
“So even a minor god is still a god? In any case, we survived thanks to its protection.”
What would have happened to us if we had not been carrying the pen?
Lorentz looked up at the sky.
There stood Hoyeol, who had reduced the demon to pieces.
“Let’s see. If it was the Commander-in-Chief’s skill…”
Even if we had been inside the demon’s stomach,
he would have hunted only the demon with precise manifestation.
However.
Didn’t the pen, shattered into pieces, say otherwise?
Fabian muttered.
“…”
“There must certainly have been some circumstances behind it. Otherwise, perhaps he believed that we would protect the citizens once we entered.”
“Oh? He reached that conclusion in such a short time?”
“Indeed. If it was none other than Commander-in-Chief Lee Hoyeol, whom I have observed… He must have foreseen and calculated everything, then put it into action.”
Lorentz nodded.
“If you say so, then it may well be true.”
His action did not stem from any genuine agreement with Fabian’s words.
Lorentz had never taken his eyes off Hoyeol’s.
‘But I see things a little differently.’
That was right.
Hoyeol’s gaze had not turned toward them even once.
He had shown no special treatment to those covered in blood and flesh, nor to those who would have been reduced to blood and flesh themselves if not for the magical instrument.
His gaze was utterly impartial, directed nowhere in particular.
Lorentz thought.
‘Did he see through the existence and effects of my magical instrument as well?’
If not…
“Were we simply lucky?”
Lorentz could not be certain.
Having been swept back from the ill omen, he knew very little about Lee Hoyeol. So perhaps he ought to look at things from a more objective perspective.
“Exactly who you are.”
*
In front of the television.
Lee Yelim grumbled.
“He hasn’t shown his face even once.”
“He must be busy. He was on the news earlier, wasn’t he? Not only did he blow up that Evil Eye in the sky in one go—bam!—but he’s also appearing here and there, hunting demons.”
She was talking with her younger sister, Lee Jiyoon, when…
“I heard it too!”
Their niece, Arang, blocked the screen.
Lee Yelim snatched Arang up, hugged her, and tickled her.
When had she grown so much?
“Well, well. You don’t have a baby lisp anymore?”
“Heehee. It tickles, Auntie.”
“You only call me Auntie instead of Uncle when it suits you, huh?”
Lee Jiyoon snorted.
“Uncle has to show up before you can call for him.”
Under normal circumstances, he ought to have appeared on camera or in the news by now. After all, their one and only younger brother, Hoyeol, had developed such an unusual way of speaking after becoming a player.
Concern could be heard in the voice of No. 1, Lee Eunhye.
“Could he really be so busy that he doesn’t even have time to breathe?”
“He probably is. He hasn’t contacted us for days.”
“I told you, didn’t I? He’s going through puberty.”
No, wait, did he really call himself the Heavenly Demon…?!
Lee Yelim continued talking animatedly,
but the ears of both women were open only to the sound of the television.
Perhaps their earnest wish had reached him.
-…
“We are receiving word that the appearance of Player Lee Hoyeol has been captured for the first time. This is an exclusive report from VBC Today’s Arcana team!”
“Hey, hey! Lee Yelim, be quiet!”
But it’s true!!
“Hmph.”
The moment Lee Yelim tightly shut her mouth after being scolded by her family,
Hoyeol’s figure truly appeared on the television.
At the same time, Lee Yelim’s downcast pupils trembled.
“?”
Because what she saw was long, flowing silver hair.
“What happened to him…?”