The ones who died in that grotesque way in Bongamdang’s yard were all cultists.
[Old Voice]
They had originally been a small circle you might call a social club or a prosperity society—elderly men from Sokcho’s landowning families and houses with some local clout.
But one day—
A whisper that leaked from somewhere in Seoraksan seeped into their heads.
From that day on, slowly—the loose club founded to protect the fellowship and interests of the rich turned, little by little, into a sect pursuing the revival and return of the [Great Origin].
Even so, it’s not a large-scale sect.
As I said beforehand, this place is more favorable than others for attempting the descent of an Abyssal being.
On top of that, compared to other cultists whose actions are restricted, they can exert strong social influence within Sokcho.
In game terms, I thought it was decent balance, but now something strange is happening.
[KWA-KWA-KWA-KWANG!]
Doldori sprinted down the mountain at incredible speed.
“Uaaaaaaaah!”
Kim Seonghwan’s scream.
“Ugh, let go! Don’t grab me—grab that!”
How did I end up moving together with a cultist of this subpar caliber...
I came out here to prevent the descent of the [Great Origin] and to take down the cultists of the [Old Voice] who are plotting that descent.
And Kim Seonghwan is a cultist of the [Old Voice].
If we continue the syllogism, I should eliminate Kim Seonghwan.
But...
“Please! Take me with you!”
“Why would I?”
“Money! I’ll give you anything you want! Take me to where Yeonam Construction is!”
“Huh? Where?”
“If you go that way, there’s a construction site made by a place called Yeonam Construction...”
“No, I know that. Why are you going there?”
“My colleague is there! Director Moon Gyeongnam of Yeonam Construction—he’s my colleague.”
“Aha—?”
So Moon Gyeongnam had that flag set on him.
Or something’s changed from the game’s settings.
I hesitated for a moment, but the conclusion I reached was—
“I am precisely the fixer Director Moon Gyeongnam brought in.”
—to say that.
I need variables on my side right now, even small ones.
And then, the event that follows as a matter of course.
[System : ‘Heightened Vigilance’ activates.]
“Kkiiiiiik!”
Along with the notice from [Heightened Vigilance], Red’s cry rang from overhead.
Red, who had been flying above us, lowered altitude and cried again.
“Kkii-iii!”
“I know! Back up!”
I waved at Red to get clear.
“W-what? What’s happening!?”
Kim Seonghwan’s face was a picture of confusion.
“Looks like people have come swarming to catch you, mister.”
“What!?”
[whooosh— whoosh]
That distinctive noise came from all directions.
The sound of magestone bombs incoming.
[BOOOOM!]
Explosions followed.
“Hrrralala-cha!”
The unique function ‘Evacuation’ of the S-grade armor ‘Pyro-Vulcan’ activates.
// Evacuation — When you open the umbrella, it auto-casts an S-grade protective array that blocks flame, electricity, shock, and physical attacks.
[viiiiiiiin!]
I swung Pyro-Vulcan and blocked the force of the blast, but those veteran old men’s attacks were craftier than that.
[screeeeeech!]
Trees ahead, blasted by the shock, toppled toward us.
“Ah, damn! Doldori!”
[grrrrrrk!]
As if delighted, Doldori scraped stone on stone while dodging the falling trees and incoming blasts pouring toward us.
[KWA-KWA-KWA-KWANG!]
“Aaaaaugh!”
Kim Seonghwan’s scream.
Doldori’s flat top is great for lying on or clambering onto, but it’s not exactly ideal as a mount.
Catching Kim Seonghwan with telekinetically shaped force just as he was about to be flung off, I flared my Perception outward.
Afterimages, moving at insane speed from tree to tree.
The [Sangnok Mountaineering Club].
Shouts from the old men carried from afar.
“Hand over that cultist!”
“Give us that bastard back!”
“If you block our revenge, we’ll kill you too!”
The mood is ripe.
I thrust a hand toward Kim Seonghwan and shouted at him.
“Hey! Mr. Kim Seonghwan! Mr. Kim Seonghwan!”
“Aaaaah! Aaaah!”
“Mister! Get a grip! Why are those elders this furious at your people?”
“T-that’s...”
“Say it straight. If you don’t, I leave you here.”
[BOOM! CRASH!]
In the middle of the bombardment.
Even if I dropped him here, he wouldn’t die from a stray shot. The elders of the Sangnok Mountaineering Club would carry him safe and sound back to Bongamdang—then drive stakes through his limbs.
“P-please! Don’t! Don’t! I’ll talk!”
It was a question I could have asked back at Bongamdang—but if I had, he’d have started scheming, dodging, lying...
With death about to fall on his head any second in the midst of the shelling, Kim Seonghwan had no leeway for lies or tricks, and blurted the truth.
“We... we... killed the shaman of Bongamdang...”
Aha?
Not a truth I like.
Well, that’s generally how cultists function in this game.
“...And the [Bongam Grimoire], by any chance?”
“T-that too, we burned it. It had a spell written to interfere with our sorceries...”
“Haah—”
“But suddenly, from the next day, the Sangnok Mountaineering Club started attacking us...”
So he really isn’t worth helping.
There’s probably a filthier story behind this than what he admitted.
By the look of it, the filth these bastards cooked up turned the [Sangnok Mountaineering Club], once a fixer group, into a mad crowd on par with cultists.
I decided to use this guy only until the point I meet Moon Gyeongnam, and shut my mouth.
But how do we break out?
I could drag him along and dash all the way to the site, but Gwak Daeyong’s crew are not the kind of opponents he can handle.
[System : The [Offering of the Banquet] trait activates.]
[System : ‘Heightened Vigilance’ activates.]
Urk—what?
A creepy sensation coursed over my skin.
[bzzt— bzt— ssssss—]
Far off, a pitch-black shadow—a giant shadow in a grotesque shape—came into view.
“Danger!”
That was a shout from the Sangnok Mountaineering Club somewhere in the trees. Ah, thanks for the concern. No, that wasn’t meant for me.
The old men who had been chasing me so energetically suddenly shifted their movements.
And from far ahead—in the direction Doldori and I were headed—came a crow-like—no, more like the blare of a badly made wind instrument—an uncanny noise, a screech, a wail.
“Tekeli-li!!”
A bizarre cry that sounded like tekeli-li—or tekerrik—or maybe kekeri-li.
“Throwing everything at me today, huh. What a day.”
[KWA-KWA-KWA-KWAK!]
That pitch-black, monstrous mass devoured the trees blocking its way—and surged in like a tide of sticky mud.
Ugh—an actual Shoggoth!
A monster as famous in the [Krululu Mythos] as those of the deep sea! A creation of the Elder Race, a shard of the [Great Origin]!
“They have come! They have! To save me! To save us! Descendant of the [Great Origin]! Heir of the rock racing north! Box of possibility! Primordial builder! Protect the one who hears the old voice!”
Kim Seonghwan cried out in rapture—or madness.
Classic cultist optimism. But really? Did it come for Kim Seonghwan?
[grrrrrrrrk!!]
Doldori writhed with an instinctive aversion.
Yeah, Doldori, I’m thinking the same thing. A Shoggoth appearing—of all directions—right where we were headed.
Do we charge straight through?
My Intelligence stat gives me high-speed thought and calculation—and near-perfect memory—but in the end, judgment is on me, not the stat.
Run through? Avoid?
“Let’s go! Our god is protecting me! Hurry—this way!”
“Cultist scum! That monster! The monster!”
Shouts from Kim Seonghwan and from the Sangnok Mountaineering Club.
Ah, hell!
“Doldori, keep running!”
If we flee in any other direction, we’ll just be chased by the Sangnok Mountaineering Club.
[grrrrrrk!]
Doldori groaned in distress, but in the end followed my call and kept charging toward where the Shoggoth barreled in.
[BOOOOM!]
[ruuuuuuumble!]
Chaos.
As Kim Seonghwan expected, the Shoggoth did not pursue me. But that didn’t mean safe passage awaited us.
The Shoggoth attacked everything around it like a mindless beast.
“Tekeli-li!!”
“Ah, damn!”
Again that clattering, grinding roar.
I bounced incoming shrapnel with Pyro-Vulcan’s ward, while at the same time flinging telekinetic force in all directions—grabbing the fallen trees and the magestone bombs the Sangnok Mountaineering Club had hurled, and pitching them all toward the Shoggoth. At the same time—click!—I sprayed the [Toy Gun] wildly. “Red!” With a keening cry, Red discharged mana—then from the sky poured a massive flood.
A vision shaking wildly, a cacophony and quake like a storm, dust and wood chips flying everywhere, water falling like a waterfall, landslide, downpour, magestone bombs and arrows dogging us with vicious persistence, the tekeli-li! shriek, Kim Seonghwan weeping with joy, sparks of [Madness of the Abyss] snapping—crackle!
“Uaaaah! We broke through!”
Damn it—we didn’t fight it. We just scared it and ran.
“Why— why? Why!?”
“What do you mean why! Mister, shut it!”
If Red hadn’t been there—or if the Sangnok Mountaineering Club hadn’t—I might really have died.
“Phew—thanks to that, we got out.”
It’s not time to relax.
The direction the Shoggoth appeared was the direction I was headed.
In other words, where the construction site is.
That sensation earlier—undead golems getting smashed—was most likely that Shoggoth’s doing.
“Damn it, I keep feeling a beat late. Doldori!”
[grrrrrrk!]
Doldori picked up speed.
Gwak Daeyong and his men hadn’t been idle.
Following the “head office manual,” they’d scraped up debris and junk from the site to build a kind of barricade, and they seemed to have collected most of the bodies that had been strewn about.
Which is to say, traces of that remained.
The barricade they’d set for defense was completely wrecked, and fragments of undead golems lay scattered everywhere.
And the people who had been here, including Gwak Daeyong...
No one.
At least one witness remained who could tell me what happened.
“Achilles!”
[krrrii-ri-ri— kkkadd-deud-deuk—]
Scattered junk gathered and formed the shape of a dog.
[krrrii-ri-ri—]
“Good. Achilles, this way.”
[krrrii-ri-ri— wood-deu-deuk— kkadd-deud-deuk—]
The other undead golems, too, absorbed my mana, repaired their bodies, and approached.
“Uaaaaah—”
Kim Seonghwan screamed at the sight.
Ignoring him, I questioned the undead golems.
“What was it? What happened?”
[krrrii-riik—]
One of the golems raised a hand made of scrap and pointed at the cave I’d walled off.
I had blocked it with rebar and heavy equipment remains, but it had been cleared completely—
“Lots of footprints.”
The cave mouth was crowded with blood-soaked footprints.
[wwwwwwwoooooom—]
An unpleasant sound oozed out from the cave. Like a sinister song that seemed to lure people in.
Well, that’s intuitive.
They all trudged in there, stepping on that pool of blood with blank faces, didn’t they?
I moved to enter the cave without hesitation—but—
“Wait.”
All day today, everything’s getting tangled in a bizarre way.
Where did it go wrong?
Did things tangle this badly just because I can’t use ma—gic?
Did this happen because my nerves were tied up with the madness and I moved a day late?
Or was coming to Sokcho in the first place the wrong choice?
Too many things are off, unlike usual.
What action would I even have to take to clean up the mess so far? No—can it even be cleaned up?
“Hmm—”
Do I rush? Or play it cautious?
Another dilemma.
In the night sky, the storm clouds writhed together in a grotesque braid.
Right then—a trrrring—bell tone rang.
A call?
Park Gwangrim.
“Hello?”
— Kim Sinhwa! Kim Sinhwa! Aaaah! Aaaah!
“What the— Park Gwangrim? What’s wrong?”
Now what?
Park Gwangrim screamed, as if thrown into confusion—no, into madness.
“Hey! Calm down! Get a hold of yourself! What happened? If you can call, you can speak properly!”
— Yang Seoho! Yang Seoho!
“Yang Seoho?”
— Yang Seoho is dead!
“What?”
Park Gwangrim kept talking, and talking—rambling. I couldn’t quite make out what he was saying, but he went on and on, trying to relay the bizarre and horrific thing he’d witnessed.
