Fffft-ft-ft-ft-ft—
The sound of a duster coat snapping in the wind.
A view changing at blistering speed.
Krrrrrrrrrrrrrumble!
Hands so perfectly elegant, beautiful, and gigantic came rushing to seize and caress me even once. Ah, lovely. So lovely!
“Wow, those hands really are statue-pretty!”
[Petrifying Miasma]
[Spell Boost: Maximize]
Fwooooooooosh—
A smoke laced with a petrification curse billowed out in all directions.
Jjjjjjjjjjjjjkk—
In an instant, the hands literally turned into beautiful statues. Good—so this level of curse sticks? Huge in size, but the mana density isn’t high!
“Arm wrestling!”
Barking out a nonsense kiai, I hurled massive sigils toward the petrified hands.
[Manipulate Inanimate]
[Control Structure]
[Chains of Dominion]
[Spell Boost: Multi-Cast]
Gugugugugugung!!
The petrified hands began to move on my command. Ivory-beautiful hands tangled with hands turned to stone.
There’s no need to block every attack anyway. The marginal ones—
Vrrrrrrrrrum!!
“Mr. Kim! Have you lost your senses?”
Seocheonseul caught up to me in a blink.
Kkajjijijik! KWAaaANG!
With a single sweep of his vajra staff, he shattered the hands I’d left.
Dazzling, beautiful petals whipped through the air as if to laud our feat.
“I-I’m n-not doing... so hot...”
Words slipped from my mouth against my will.
“Hm? Mr. Kim? What?”
“I-I’m sc-scared. There’s too m-many of that thing around he— No, don’t worry, I’m already maximally insane so I can’t get any more insane!”
If the other party were human, they might have sensed my problem, but fortunately Seocheonseul is not human.
“Is that so. Understood.”
Honestly, I’m not at my best.
To respond to simultaneous problems across a broad area, I need my perception as wide as possible—
But there’s just too much of “that” around here.
“Woof, woof, woof!”
“Uwaaaagh!”
Yeah, that! I turned in the direction where the sound wasn’t coming from—no, the direction where it was—no, anyway, to prove I wasn’t paying attention that way, urgh, my head is spinning.
“Urk— those are the dogs Mr. Kim let loose.”
Seocheonseul grimaced too, wearing the look of someone who hates <Humanity, polluted by an evil mind, gained craft and began enslaving other beasts. Long abused by humankind, they will one day begin their revenge.> A miserable face. Right? Great Captain? You know this horrid truth too, don’t you?
“A beast the goblin dislikes.”
That wasn’t me; it was the crow.
“Right. Mr. Kim, who was guarding this area, set those beasts loose to stop me.”
Ah, was that Go Gyeongsu?
I barely dragged up his nickname.
That bastard’s lost his mind, hasn’t he? Ugh, let’s just go to Paju. Paju. No, where are you even going? I still have things to solve here.
And then—
[System : Penalty trait ‘Feast’s Offering’ activates.]
[L-grade magitool ‘Soul Seal’ unique function ‘Call of Souls’ activates.
// Call of Souls: automatically triggers the rite for the descent of the ‘Great Source’ and its avatars.]
A message window popped up before my eyes.
“Wow, sir. How considerate.”
The snark spilled out of my mouth.
I don’t even own the [Soul Seal], yet they kindly inform me that its unique function has fired.
Thanks to the freshly injected info, I barely gathered my focus to one point.
“Great Captain. Phase 2 starts now.”
“W—what?”
“Stage two! The ritual just began!”
Krrrrrrrrrrrrrumble!!
[The rite for the descent of ‘Abyssal Entity – Life’s Source’ has begun.]
No priest in sight, yet the ritual started operating on its own.
The one who triggered that ability must be [Life’s Source] itself.
Chrararararararak!!
Right in the heart of downtown Busan, a grotesque crystallization of madness and love took shape.
A nightmare forest—woven of hands writhing, twining, coiling, knotting, twisting—began to expand at horrific speed.
[Life’s Source] spread like Tanhyeon, the phenomenon that kept growing without end to blanket Paju.
You have secured the [Soul Seal].
You may manifest one of its unique traits into reality.
[L!U!C!A! : bubble— burble-burble—]
Yes, that’s possible. That action requires no check.
[System : Penalty trait ‘Feast’s Offering’ activates.]
[Unique trait of ‘Life’s Source’, ‘Children of ___’ activates.]
Damn it, something else is firing.
“Mr. Kim! What are you trying to save? What can I do to stop that abomination?”
A splendid goblin—far steadier and calmer than some ❀ Nоvеlігht ❀ (Don’t copy, read here) deranged mage—pressed me.
For Seocheonseul, I had to spell out the challenge we needed to clear right now.
“Over there!”
[Chaos Radiance]
Pazzzzzzzzzzzk!
A seven-colored, gaudy ray lanced toward the direction I pointed.
Targets struck by this spell take fire, acid, lightning, poison, cold, petrification, blindness—okay, fine, hands don’t have eyes.
Anyway, seven random effects crackled and whooshed open a path.
Chwararararararak!
Far ahead stood an outrageous structure made by hands twined together. What those hands held between them was—
“Aha, that?”
“Yeah! In that call van—no, that car—are the [Blade of Flesh], and the medium!”
Just as the [Soul Seal] can replace the ritual required for descent, the [Blade of Flesh] can stand in for a medium.
And Jang Hyundeok is the best medium in this [Cthulhu World]!
If they seize even one of the two, Phase 3 will begin.
Krrrrrrrrrrrrrumble!!
Hands don’t have ears, but [Life’s Source] seemed to sense our plan.
More hands clamped onto the call van. I couldn’t even see it now. And—
Krrrrrrrrrrrrrumble!!
The giant “dragon” that had devoured Cheongho—no, [The Laughing One]—reared up between us and the van.
Krrrrrrrrrrrrrumble!!
Not one. Two, three, four. And five.
Did swallowing the [Soul Seal] let it wield more mana?
A grotesque five-headed dragon—each head shaped by ten massive hands twisted together. The hands that formed each dragon’s head opened—
“KyAAAAAAAK!” “Kyarurururuk!” “Gyeeeeee!”
Horrifying roars burst out.
“Bahahahaha! Clear at last! Begin!”
It’s a blessing to have a comrade who can laugh in this mess. But truth be told, I felt uneasy.
‘I did inscribe powerful wards on that call van—so why, even now...?’
A trap?
Maybe ramming those five dragon heads is itself a trap—but I’m about at my limit.
“Get ouuuuut of the way!!”
Mana fired into the sky. A magic circle of tremendous size swallowed the night.
[Meteor Summon]
[Spell Boost: Multi-Cast]
[Spell Boost: Chain Explosion]
[Spell Boost: Maximize]
Krrrrrrrrrrrrrumble!!
Ripping the ominously swirling night, blazing-red meteors cascaded down.
“Ho— what an outrageous...”
A surreal sight that made even the guardian of the Hall of Thousand Gold stare blankly up.
[System : ‘Precision Aim’ trait activates.]
KWAaaaaaANG! KWAaaaaaANG!! KWAaaaaaaaaaaANG!!
Colossal detonations erupted everywhere.
Dozens of meteors fell across all of Gijang County, but not a single one landed in a wrong place.
I tuned each meteor’s enormous momentum perfectly and dropped it exactly where it was needed most.
“Magnificent! Bahahahahaha!!”
Seocheonseul flew between the falling meteors—golden whirlwinds of the Great Captain’s authority roaring around him.
KWAaaANG!
I was streaking forward at insane speed, chasing the dashing Seocheonseul—yet where, exactly, am I right now?
No—because of my expanded perception, I had to face a stupid problem!
This area was still crawling with absurd numbers of hands, hazards, threats, malice, hostility, madmen, madness—and four-legged beasts with furry tails?
“Woof-woof-woof-woof!”
[‘Madness – Dog Phobia’ manifests.]
[System : You attempt to resist confusion with your Will stat. Will check... success!]
People dying, roads wrecked, buildings collapsing—and why, why, WHY is that <And the Lord said unto Noah that He would scour the land; “Build a ship of gopher wood and bring aboard every beast of the world, but know there is a beast that must not set foot upon the ship”—yet Noah, not knowing, let that beast aboard> scampering around in perfect health!
“Kim Sinhwa! Focus!” “Stop! Narrow your perception!” “It—it’s dangerous!”
My mouth howled three voices at once.
“Shut up! How am I supposed to fight with my senses narrowed!?”
KWAaaAAANG!
“Bahahah! Mr. Kim, now!”
“Right, I don’t know what ‘now’ means, but now must be now! Hryaah!”
Through the gaps carved by the meteors’ destruction and Seocheonseul’s vajra staff, I thrust my mana.
[Thunder Fang]
[Spell Boost: Maximize]
Krrrrrrrung!!
A razor-bared bolt shredded the colossal hands gripping the call van. With a soft whomp, beautiful petals flooded the world.
The hands peeled back, revealing the half-ruined van—and inside it, Jang Hyundeok.
I don’t know what happened, but Jang Hyundeok’s hair was drenched, stained a vivid red.
“Jang Hyundeok! You idiot! Get up!”
How many times is this idiot going to be grabbed, possessed, and kidnapped? Can he please stop looping the same pattern!?
[Veil of Flame]
Fwooooooosh!
Wrapped in a mantle of roaring firepower, I reached the van—
“You’ve come to save me, Magus?”
—said... a red-haired Jang Hyundeok wearing a horrific smile?
“Ah, damn it. Now the hallucinations start?”
Sitting in the van were Jang Hyundeok and... that is, Jang Hyundeok and Jang Hyundeok and Jang Hyundeok and Jang Hyundeok.
Hmm. I did come looking for Jang Hyundeok, yes?
Is this sharp-looking redhead your Jang Hyundeok? No. My Jang Hyundeok is an idiot with soggy, trailing blond hair—no, that’s not the point!
Krrrrrrrrrumble!!
Two giant hands seized the van top and bottom and tore off the roof.
Wajijijijik!
Like a pose offering a ring for a proposal.
But instead of a ring, the box held...
In short, five mass-produced NPCs who looked almost exactly like Jang Hyundeok sat in the call van.
“Magus!” “Magus!” “Magus!” “Magus!” “Magus!”
[L!U!C!A! : bubble— burble-burble—]
Yes. It was risky, but in the end you lured them in.
The Jang Hyundeoks began to mutate.
“Krorrororork!”
“Kyarurururuk!”
Beast sounds came not from their mouths, but from somewhere wrong. From the crowns of their heads.
Just as the cultists of Cure Medical Care had hammered animal traits into their bodies—
The Jang Hyundeoks—no, the mass-produced NPCs who resembled him—were all transforming into some kind of beast at once.
A human head split with a rending crack.
From the gap of the sundered skull, huge fangs jutted out.
A neck twisted with a grinding crunch.
Limbs flipped, fur bursting over them.
What used to be belly turned into back, and back into belly, completing the shape of a certain beast.
“H—haha— hahaha—”
An empty laugh leaked from my mouth.
[‘Madness – Dog Phobia’ manifests.]
“Mr. Kim!!”
Seocheonseul’s voice from far away. My head rang; I couldn’t hear properly. Maybe he really was farther than he sounded?
Is this even reality?
[System : You attempt to resist confusion with your Will stat. Will check......]
Colossal hands converged from every side.
As if to mock me—y’know, that thing. The hand shapes you make for shadow play?
Those hands were mimicking the form of some beast.
“Ha-ha— that’s funny.”
[Failed!]
My mind drifted, far and faint.
Then where did the real Jang Hyundeok go?
Has the [Blade of Flesh] already been taken? No—then why is it still only Phase 2?
[System : Due to ‘Madness – Dog Phobia’, status ailment ‘Confusion’ occurs.]
A voice carried from far away.
“Magus!”
Ugh, I’m so sick of Jang Hyundeok—
Wait, but that one...
