We’re moving southwest along the Seocheon–Gongju Expressway.
And at the far end of that southwest...
[eeeeeeeeeeeeee—]
A faint siren from far away.
[VOOOOOOOOOOOM—]
A gale whipping through with menacing force.
"Front! Front! Rocks incoming!"
From the back seat, Park Gwangrim thrust an arm between me and Jang Hyundeok and shouted.
[KRARARARARUM!]
"We can dodge it!"
[Screeeeeech—]
A brutal hairpin turn.
I locked my body in place with mana, but Park Gwangrim smashed his forehead on the window and screamed, "Aaaagh!"
It really looked like it hurt, but I had no attention to spare for him now.
"Hyundeok, more incoming!"
"I can’t dodge that!"
"It’s fine!"
[Distortion Field]
[weeeeeeeeeee—]
A hemispherical distortion field wrapped the car.
With a whirring hiss, the incoming mass caught the field and ricocheted away to somewhere else...
"That! That’s not a rock, is it!?"
Park Gwangrim cried out in horror.
"Yeah! Even I can tell it’s not!"
What came screaming in with missile-like force was, unmistakably, a human corpse.
[CRACK!]
Another one.
No—three, four, five!
[CRACK!] [SPLAT!] [CRUNCH!]
Bodies flew in and slammed into the road.
None fell on the car, so I didn’t bother to block, but we had to pass through the blood-mist the corpses belched out.
[SSSSHHHHH!]
In an instant, the windshield went bright red.
Clotted viscera and flesh slapped against the bodywork.
"H-heh?!"
He made a weird sound with his mouth, but with his hands Jang Hyundeok snapped the wipers on and cleared our view.
[eeeeeeeeeeeeee—]
The farther we drove, the louder the siren grew.
[KWHOOOOOOM!]
Explosions from far ahead. Faint screams.
The reek of blood creeping into the cabin before we noticed.
"That! That! That shadow out there!"
With the keen eye of a detective who specializes in finding people, Park Gwangrim pointed.
"Yang Seohu! It’s Yang Seohu!"
Between clouds, a human-like silhouette flashed and vanished.
A rolling thunderclap followed right after.
A mad wind howled; vortices writhed in every direction.
"Do something! You said he’s your wizard friend!"
"Not yet!"
I tensed as I watched the clouds being shoved around at insane speed, but—somehow the siren stopped. We slipped out for a moment?
"Anyway, meeting Yang Seohu isn’t the goal right now. Don’t worry."
"What if he shows up again?"
"Tsk. Yang Seohu advanced faster than expected, so we’re a bit late. Hear how the siren’s gone?"
"The siren? Oh—now that you mention it."
"It’s the siren the Foreigners Management Agency switched on. If you don’t hear it, you’re outside Yang Seohu’s attack radius. So relax."
"W-wait. Attack radius?"
Gwangrim cut in.
"Yeah. Attack radius. Anywhere you can hear the siren is inside Yang Seohu’s attack range."
"H-how does that make sense?"
"You just saw it! Don’t stop—keep moving. From here on, I’ll clear whatever’s in the way. Just drive forward."
"R-right!"
[Giant’s Grasp]
I swept trees aside with a spell and said,
"And Gwangrim—start getting [Dowsing] ready."
"Preparation complete."
[weeeeeee—]
The pendulum dangling from Gwangrim’s fingertips rose into the air, its silver chain swaying.
Excitement and tension on both their faces.
"Well... in a way, maybe bringing them was the right call?"
Either way, there’s a target to focus on here and dangerous stimuli to occupy them. No time for brooding or gnawing thoughts.
"Good. Let’s go. And don’t get confused. I kept saying Buyeo because the cult’s base is there, but our destination is somewhere else."
"Ah, of course. I know."
"Mmm, right. We’ll leave the road soon and keep west—see that? Chilgapsan. There’ll be people over there tearing up the ground."
Chilgapsan is Cheongyang administratively.
"That ruin you mentioned? The one with the dangerous item."
"Yeah. We need to lift that first, before we meet Yang Seohu. Becoming friends with him comes after."
"What if the cult already dug it up?"
I absently rubbed my mask and answered,
"I sent a nasty piece of work to slow them down. Don’t worry."
I’d warned him in advance; he should perform.
Thinking that, I looked west.
In the distance—mighty Chilgapsan loomed.
Same time.
West of Kim Sinhwa’s position.
An octagonal pavilion set on a peak of Chilgapsan.
"Kheh-heh-heh— proof that this broken world is raging."
Wearing Cheongho’s form, the [Laughing One] snickered and hefted a large plastic canister beside him.
He tilted it back and chugged the liquid inside like it was beer.
"Kheh— good."
[eeeeeeeeeeeeee—]
A nasty siren from the southwest.
[KWHOOOOOOOOOM!]
A hideous roar.
[rrrrrrrrrrrr—]
Shock rippled through the air.
Beyond the ridge, shattered boulders, uprooted trees, and smashed, crumpled trucks were flung skyward.
A coalition of hundreds of cultists and reckless criminals with no sense of self-preservation was "delaying" Yang Seohu’s advance beyond that ridge.
"Kahahahahaha—"
The [Laughing One] watched and delighted in it.
Blood Marquis, who’d been hovering at his side in agitation, finally couldn’t hold back.
"Enough. How do you guzzle diesel like liquor?"
"It’s over anyway."
The [Laughing One] tossed the empty jerry can as he spoke.
For a moment, Blood Marquis thought he meant the can was finished—then realized he meant the work was nearing completion.
"Over? Did you sense something?"
"Hm. I smell it. Time to make trouble again?"
Cheongho said that and flipped his mask down.
An exotic mask with nothing but a thin half-moon line at the mouth.
Only one mouth, set in a smirk to the world.
With no eyes or nose on that face, the [Laughing One] turned his body north.
Down below—a strange construction site came into view.
"Pull! Pull harder!"
"You can do it!"
"Come on! Faster!"
Cultists worked with frantic, headshaking urgency.
This is the very ruin Kim Sinhwa mentioned earlier.
To rescue those who went down to find the [Soul Jade Seal] and got trapped, the cultists were carrying out a massive excavation.
It had been secret until yesterday, but not anymore.
Yang Seohu is coming! Yang Seohu is coming!
Terrible screams rose from the site where ground was gouged and rock shoved aside.
There’s no time.
While their comrades bought time, they had to find it—the transcendent artifact hidden below! Find it, and they could slay that dreadful Yang Seohu and save Dok Go-gyeom!
Dozens of wire ropes trailed down into a giant pit torn open by heavy machinery and superhuman abilities.
"Back! Back!"
"Pull! Pull!"
They’d brought in several large cranes, but some of the wire ropes were being hauled by human strength.
[KRRRRRIP!]
"Clear out! Clear out!"
"It’s coming up!"
A truly absurd megalith was being dragged up from underground.
A roar of Ooooooh!
Any expert who saw the site would have clutched his neck and fainted at the shoddy, reckless methods, but every laborer here was a cultist with superhuman ability.
In the end, they succeeded at an excavation that should have been physically impossible.
"I see it!"
"A person!"
"We found them! It’s over now!"
Joy and elation—briefly.
With a clack—rattle—krkrkrkr— something came flying from the sky.
"That! What is that!"
A humanoid shadow drop-kicked the megalith the cultists had barely hauled up.
[KWHOOOOOOM!]
By proportion it was an egg thrown at a boulder—but the megalith dozens had barely managed to raise...
[grgrgrgrgr—]
Wavered under his strength.
"No! No!"
As the nearly stabilized mass shifted its center of gravity, a few wires screamed, skreeeeee— on the edge of snapping.
Ping—! With a shrill report, a wire parted.
[SSSSSHHHHH—!!!]
It whipped away at murderous speed and split a cultist’s head in two. Blood geysered. Dust plumed.
Ping! Ping! Bzzzzt!
A chain of snaps. In an instant the ropes went twang-twang-twang and the megalith... "Oh, no. This is a joke, right?" ...toppled into the site.
[GURURURURURUM!!]
"Aaah!" "Move! It’s falling!" "Run!" "Help!" "Oh, God!" "Damn it! No!" "Bloody hell!" "Aaargh!" "I don’t want to die!"
[KWHOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!]
As the megalith crashed down, the site became a hellscape in a blink.
"Who’s there!" "Yang Seohu?!" "What, Yang Seohu?!" "Has he already gotten this far!?"
"No! That bastard’s back again!"
Cheongho appeared through the dust.
It was the [Laughing One].
"Kahahahahaha! Yes— the one who loves you so dearly is back!"
It hadn’t been long since the day Kim Sinhwa sent the [Laughing One] here—
But the [Laughing One] had become the nightmare of this construction site.
Of course, the name they feared and hated wasn’t the [Laughing One] or Cheongho.
"It’s Kim Sinhwa!" "Kim Sinhwa is here!" "That monstrous freak!"
"Uhihihihihi— good. Good. Yes. Curse Kim Sinhwa. Fear him. Kheh-heh-heh—"
The [Laughing One] capered, delighted.
"This time I’m catching you!" "Grab him!" "Drag that bastard down!"
A few cultists leapt and attacked the [Laughing One].
"Kheh— yes, hate Kim Sinhwa."
His skin split—and from the gaps, grotesque shards of bone erupted.
[KRZZZAK!] [KRKRKRRRK!]
The corpse-golem-based body reconfigured into impossible geometry and "hugged" the incoming cultists—
"GYAAAAAH!"
Their bodies, caught in a jig of knife-like bone, turned to crumbled meat in an instant.
[KRK—CRK—BZZZT—]
Like a monster’s maw swallowing prey, he constricted and chewed the chunks—then returned to Cheongho’s masked form.
"Withdraw now!"
Blood Marquis’s voice carried from afar.
"Hmm—"
Even hearing it, the [Laughing One] didn’t move. No—he smiled and lowered his gaze.
Where he looked lay the deep pit the cultists had dug.
No—lower still.
At the very bottom of the deep pit.
A ruin that may not have seen daylight for thousands—tens of thousands—of years.
And in that ruin, huddled together—people.
The missing persons the cultists so desperately sought.
Emaciated like seventy-year-olds, hair gone white, mottled blotches blooming across their bodies.
They looked up at the [Laughing One] and opened their mouths.
"Shishak— whirr— cha— k, t’ah."
Words no human could understand.
But the [Laughing One] listened and burst into laughter.
"Khe-he-he-he— shi— k, t’ah, cha— wogh— whee— you came looking for the [Soul Jade Seal]. Fools. Without even knowing what it is."
Muttering that, Cheongho tried to recall the terms of his pact with Kim Sinhwa—uh, what was the restriction?
"Right— , was it?"
Those down there in the tunnel—the missing ones holding the [Soul Jade Seal]—couldn’t we classify them as cultists at the construction site?
They were cultists originally, weren’t they? And this is a construction site, right?
"Cheongho! Withdraw, now!"
Blood Marquis’s voice again.
"Khihihihihi— if I hit them with the same attack as before—oh? I might accidentally eat the [Soul Jade Seal] myself. If that happens, then..."
"Hey! Stop at once! Come back!"
Blood Marquis’s voice again.
Hearing it, the [Laughing One]’s face—Cheongho’s mask-covered face—twisted monstrously.
[zzzzzzzt—]
Eyes rolling up stark white.
Mouth splitting too wide to both sides.
An unreal smile spread beneath the mask.
"That would make things very hard for Kim Sinhwa, wouldn’t it? I must be careful not to make a mistake."
The [Laughing One] clutched his belly, laughed loud, °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° and leapt into the dark pit.
The cultist fighters arrived late, far too late.
"Ah..."
Hidden in the shadows between slopes so the others wouldn’t see him, Blood Marquis shivered with a groan.
"He really went in..."
From the deep, dark pit came [CRACK!] [KRKRRRK!] [SSSSHHH!]—the noise of it.
The sound of bone breaking and flesh tearing.
[kaduk— kaduk—]
[kkk-k-k-k— uhuhuhu—]
Blood Marquis stared, shuddering, at the pit vomiting those awful sounds.
He kept shaking.
"Truly... truly... just as His Reverence foretold. His measure is deep and wide indeed. Ah..."
Quivering with awe for Kim Sinhwa, Blood Marquis turned his head.
