Chapter 289
I wanted her to sleep in a proper bed, but Yeon-Hee hated crowded areas as people often recognized her. I let her use my arm instead of rotten wood as a pillow, and she fell into a deep sleep immediately. She breathed lightly, and the Kciphos dug into her arm.
Although I had been waiting for this day, I didn’t feel good when I saw her again. I felt so much compassion for her. She had tried to hide it with a calm expression, but she had clearly already been hurt a lot. The blood stains on her face could be erased with water, but nothing could heal the scars that had been left on her mind. She must have gone through many physically and mentally difficult times. I gazed at her and silently promised that I would protect her from now on.
On the next day at noon, we opened our eyes at the same time.
“You stay here,” I said after carefully pulling out my arm. Fortunately, she understood what I meant. She was hugging me, but she soon turned toward the Kciphos.
I sensed the Awakened far from the tent. Many guys were wandering around, looking for us. I followed the guild leader’s footsteps among them.
He asked as soon as he saw me, “What happened to the necromancers? Did you finish them?”
I retorted grumpily, “Are you my boss?”
“...”
I snapped, “Get out of here with all the guys you brought. Don’t annoy me.”
However, he still stood there and hesitated, clearly wanting to say something. He finally summoned the courage and said, “We captured the Undeads that were fully armed. They couldn’t be managed like that unless the necromancer was still alive.”
I asked, “Then why did you come here? There must be a necromancer somewhere there.”
“You don’t seem to know, but that necromancer is a demon that Mary has been chasing. Where is Mary? I should deliver this news to…”
“If this is a battle you guys will lose without Mary, then there’s nothing more to see.”
“Pardon me?” He looked confused.
I clarified, “You are already strong and ready, so you should be reinforcing your guard at a time like this. You all better prove yourself how you have survived up to this point.”
He said carefully, “That means…”
“Mary is out. I will make it clear this time. Let’s not deal with each other anymore, okay? That is what you have been hoping for all along. Isn’t this supposed to be good news to you guys?”
He finally asked, “...What should I call you when I see you again? I don’t even know your name yet.”
I responded, “None of your business.”
Because we won’t see each other again.
“If you understand that, don’t wake her up and get out of here right now.”
That was the end of my warning, and his face hardened. However, he was just pretending that he was upset. I saw the corners of his lips slightly moving upward, and he turned around hurriedly to hide it. I didn’t blow his head off this time because his battle against the Dead was just around the corner. The more I thought about them, the more disgraceful they were. They would soon realize what they had enjoyed in Yeon-Hee’s shadow only after she disappeared.
When I came back to the tent, Yeon-Hee was smiling while hugging the Kciphos.
“You didn’t like them, did you?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I told you. I’m just relieved.”
I continued, “We will have to catch the necromancer whether it’s on this or my stage. When will the quest pop up?”.com
She frowned slightly. “Your stage? Wait, but you still haven’t gotten the quest yet?”
This was the only notification message that had appeared for me so far.
[You haven’t selected the subject to use Life Vessel on. Please choose.
* Life Vessel hasn’t been activated.]
I had to be extra careful since I couldn’t cancel or reverse my decision. The first object that came to mind was one of the Valkyries. My plan was to hide the Life Vessel in a few defense layers, consisting of the storage box, Odin’s Golden Armor, and a Valkyrie.
However, the Seven Demon Kings would definitely see through a small construction like the storage box as even the First Evil and I could do that. Therefore, I should keep the Life Vessel somewhere else when I faced the Seven Demon Kings. Keeping it beside me would make the Life Vessel’s existence meaningless. In other words, I needed to conceal it in a safe place away from me… This was why I had spent so much time thinking about this and worrying.
Yeon-Hee said as she had misunderstood my gaze. “I know you missed me a lot… even though you don’t tell me.”
Her cheeks flushed as she became shy.
I interjected, “Let’s move first before the troublesome things stick to us.”
“Huh?”
***
Eight cities formed one district in Act Two, Stage One, five districts created one district in Act Two, Stage Two, and three districts were combined into one in Act Two, Stage Three. Therefore, this was a large stage where a total of one hundred twenty cities and land were intertwined and merged into one. In terms of surface area, it would be similar to the total area of the Korean peninsula.
We moved to the region where the leading guild’s influence didn’t reach. The place where we arrived that night was the first spot I had met Orca. The dungeon where Orca was trapped still remained there. There was Sean’s destroyed campsite beside the dungeon entrance, but it wasn’t demolished due to the vagrants’ attack. Given that the ghouls’ limbs were scattered all over the place and that the Awakened’s items were still neatly placed in the original spot, they must have been killed by the ghouls. Ghouls didn’t starve like zombies. They only followed the orders of the necromancers, so we didn’t come across a single body that had been bitten.
We passed through the area. Then I said, “It was here.”
[Class: E
Location: Forbidden Zone (Maruka Clan)]
The closed dungeon entrance reacted to us. As soon as the blue barrier appeared, I saw Orca rushing in hastily. The dungeon entrance was a type of gate. Now that it was open, it could exit, but it clearly knew I wouldn’t tolerate it. Therefore, it was just shouting behind the blue barrier instead of crossing it. It looked very desperate, but I couldn’t hear its voice at all.
I continued, “You know that, right? The nobleman of the Maruka clan. It was guarding the sealed spot.”
Yeon-Hee remarked, “Ah, you managed to keep it alive.”
Yeon-Hee looked at Orca as if it was more interesting to see it not coming out and just standing there. I had not only kept it alive but also told Sean and his party multiple times to maintain the dungeon. Although they could never conquer it with their abilities, I hoped that the dungeon would open the way for me to start again.
I stated, “Assign this spot as the returning point, and follow me.”
She continued to stare at it. “You mean that thing is an aristocrat? That’s great. I wanted to see them again.”
I took a step first inside the dungeon, and Orca backed away in a hurry. Yeon-Hee soon came in, and the dungeon door immediately closed. It had turned back to a normal wall.
I shushed Orca as it was trying to make a noise. While Yeon-Hee was interested in Orca’s unusual reaction, her pet Kciphos was emitting weird energy that felt like it was about to explode. After seeing the tentacles on Orca’s snout drooping, I spoke into the air. I was talking to the System that created all sorts of quests to wake me up from the seal.
“Open the door back to my stage. That’s where my main focus is. It’s more efficient to integrate and proceed from there instead of restarting in this kind of stage.”
I counted numbers in my head.
Three, two, one.
Then, I went closer toward the blocked wall. The blue barrier and a slanted passageway appeared. It was still connected to Sean’s campsite.
Motherfucker.
The System was using the Awakened as a chess piece. It acted like I was also a regular piece with a crown even though a majority of its power was concentrated on me. It didn’t respond to my request as if it was an absolute being who had created everything on the stage. Whatever the truth was, the unchanged scene seemed to be telling me that.
We opened the closed door again and returned to the dungeon. Yeon-Hee’s eyes were black as she looked up at Orca, and Orca was not moving as its eyes had lost focus and were now blurry. Meanwhile, the Kciphos was on the ground, wary of me. When I tried to approach Yeon-Hee, its entire fur stood on end. It was obvious that it would enlarge its body if I approached further. We were in a deep ocean. A monster who lived only by instinct wasn’t smart enough to consider the location, so it had to stop walking on the way.
A few minutes later, Orca shuddered and showed extreme despair on its face. The reaction was different from what I had seen after I killed it countless times. It had shown fear toward me, but it was never distressed to that extent.
“What’s wrong with it?” I asked.
She responded, “It thinks that it has committed a sin against its tribe and can never go back to its family again. I went inside the clan’s memory warehouse by using it as a window. Just leave it alone. It won’t commit suicide.”
Yeon-Hee continued with a smile, “It has died countless times, so it’s sick and tired of dying. This guy is so funny because creatures usually remain calm when faced with death if they have experienced it multiple times.”
I shrugged. “If it was going to kill itself, it would have done so already. So what did you see there?”
As expected, Yeon-Hee was more powerful than the Second Evil in the past.
She shook her head. “I couldn’t access the memories of the original species. This guy looks like a nobleman, but its position is pretty low. But Seon-Hu. Have you heard of the ‘Old One’?”
I frowned. “Wait a sec.”
“Huh?”
I replied while pointing at Orca, which was in despair. “It understands a lot more than we think.”
“Shall we go out then? Don’t kill it. When will we ever meet such a tame guy again? If you say so, then it will even pretend to die.”
***
Yeon-Hee’s explanation continued after coming out of the dungeon. It was about the true nature of the System, the ‘Old One.’
“You said previously that we shouldn’t treat the System like a person, but the Maruka clan has a different opinion. Their thought process is pretty reasonable if we consider the situation so far.”
I thought for a bit. “Hmm…”
She continued, “It’s more like a will rather than a personality. The System is like a defense mechanism that the will has created. It's like what you said a long time ago. I think our Old One chose a way to blend in with the current culture of mankind.”
The Old One was a name that couldn’t be eerier. At least, we shouldn’t have called it that way because that would make more fanatics.
The name Old One was supposed to have disappeared, just like how bitcoin had been buried in 2008 without seeing the light of the world. The System was just a system, no more or less. It was just a supernatural phenomenon, and that was it.
Yeon-Hee changed the subject as she made an expression that she understood my thought process, “You were talking to the System to open the door, right? It’s just my assumption, but I think that is the reason why it sent you here. Out of the eight stages, this one seems to be the worst and weakest. The leaders of the other stages wouldn’t have been like me. I didn’t leave the strong alone. Well… I squeezed everything out of them.”
“Revolucion and Tomorrow?” I asked.
Yeon-Hee nodded with a slightly stiffened look.
I shrugged. “I would have done the same thing. That’s the responsibility of the pre-Awakened.”
When I organized the World Awakened Association, I didn’t know the truth of the Stage of Advent. This was a battlefield. In the past, the monsters continued to invade the earth even after the Stage of Advent was over because we had been defeated. If we had won here, then the war would end at this point.
The best scenario was keeping the world intact even without the World Awakened Association! All we had to do was go back outside and remove the rest of the monsters. I wasn’t sure if that was possible, but I would still have more power even if the System recouped the capabilities it had handed over to me. I would have more financial power by then.
Around that time, the worries that I had for a while were put to a stop there. The war in the Stage of Advent needed to end in our victory. Therefore, the safest place on the stage was…
“I want to ask you a favor, Yeon-Hee.”