Her face gone pale,
the Vampire Viscount
Ariella
stared at Sergeant Shin Youngjun.
“No... I— I understand what you’re thinking— no. I don’t understand it, but I grasp it.”
“What? You’re babbling.”
“Of course I am.”
As if to ask what on earth he was saying,
Ariella looked at Sergeant Shin Youngjun and pressed:
“You’re saying you’ll go meet the thing that wiped out that great civilization? On purpose?”
“Yeah. Why? Not allowed?”
“It’s not that it’s not allowed...! No. It’s not allowed!”
Ariella shouted, dumbfounded.
“If you provoke it wrong, not just you and I— the world up there could be annihilated as-is!”
“Ah... you don’t have to worry about that part.”
“Sir?”
“The [Gate Summon Ticket]— turns out it’s a pretty good reward.”
[Gate Summon Ticket]
[Entities inside a summoned Gate cannot affect the outside if the summoner does not permit it.]
Unless Sergeant Shin Youngjun permitted it,
anything inside the Gate... could not affect the outside.
“...It’s still suicide.”
She frowned.
“Haven’t we already accomplished the objectives we came here for? I don’t see the point of going there.”
“You don’t need to.”
At that,
Ariella thought to herself:
‘Master is... off right now.’
He was a man who overreached even on ordinary days.
But there had always been grounds for that overreach.
A guaranteed profit.
Something for his own people.
Or a conviction it wouldn’t be dangerous.
Right now—
not a single one applied.
Which is why...
Ariella could guess the reason.
‘It’s something to do with Master’s mind.’
In the past,
when she’d drunk Shin Youngjun’s blood and skimmed some of his memories,
she’d dimly realized one thing:
‘Master... is mortally afraid of death.’
By itself, that wasn’t a big problem.
Bluntly— who in this world isn’t afraid of death?
But—
perhaps because this ruined world doesn’t allow humans to stay “normal,”
Sergeant Shin Youngjun looked fine on the surface,
yet his fear and fixation on death were grotesquely warped.
To evade the death that would someday come,
he didn’t mind sticking himself into places that could get him killed.
‘A self-contradictory act...’
The easiest case to see how twisted that fixation was:
[Those Who Could Not Properly Die].
And because he was that Shin Youngjun,
he couldn’t just pass by what lay below.
“I roughly get it. But we don’t have a method.”
Their bond might be half-forced by contract,
but she didn’t purely dislike this master.
Whatever the back and forth,
the meals he served were worth wagering all she was to taste.
If the master died, so would the grace he bestowed.
“No matter who you are, going lower than this— where the miasma is thicker— will be hard.”
“Well... you’re not wrong.”
So she’d tried to talk him down, somehow, but—
“Thing is.”
“Sir?”
“As a rule, whatever it is—”
his feet were already
pointed downward.
“—you don’t know until you try.”
“...!”
****
“No matter who you are, going lower than this— where the miasma is thicker— will be hard.”
In truth,
she wasn’t wrong at all.
Even Ariella had long since been invaded by the miasma.
She minimized the damage with the protective suit’s resistance,
and covered the rest with regeneration.
I’d gained a measure of regeneration thanks to drinking her blood,
but unlike a true vampire, my knockoff-level regeneration...
wouldn’t tank all this miasma.
“As a rule, whatever it is—”
Still, somehow—
“—you don’t know until you try.”
—I had a peculiar certainty
that it would work.
“Master!?”
When I stepped into that miasma,
a cry of alarm rang out behind me.
Fssssss...
“Hm. Figures.”
A level of miasma beyond imagination.
Ordinary things would probably melt on contact.
Even the protective suit and Nepenthes resistance couldn’t fully block it;
the venom was so overpowering
I could feel my skin slowly burning.
But—
I took another step forward.
“Master! You absolutely won’t endure it.”
“You only know that if I try.”
I remembered the CBRN drill
back in basic, when I’d been issued a defective mask.
Every recruit went in tense for that drill.
Not knowing my mask was faulty, I went into the chamber; when the gas filled it a moment later,
my whole skin seared like fire.
Opening my eyes felt like dozens of needles stabbing in.
Even breathing was an agony,
but holding my breath brought that suffocating terror [N O V E L I G H T] that I might truly die.
A wretched stretch of time.
‘I really thought I’d die.’
But—
‘back then too... I held out somehow.’
People were horrified I’d endured at all,
but I always had a knack
for enduring.
“You’re not normal, Master... really...”
“I told you I don’t want to hear that— from a monster!”
Enduring the pain the miasma inflicted,
I went deeper down.
A zone hard to handle for the soldiers,
and even for the vampires.
A zone only I could set foot in—
the abyss of this mine.
Yet—
I felt like I could reach it.
‘It’s really not far now.’
Because unlike the darkness until now,
down below...
‘light.’
The light Corporal Seo Suhyeok said he’d seen from above—
I could...
see it too.
****
“Khah...”
Just sticking my body in a moment
made me feel like I was burning alive.
It wasn’t just my skin.
My eyeballs.
Between my nails.
Inside my mouth, and through every pore of my body—
the dense miasma that delivered burning pain
poured into every gap of me.
“Grrrk...”
With pain this extreme, I might lose my mind if I slipped.
I patted myself down,
opened a pouch at my belt,
and cracked it just enough
to reveal several kinds of jerky protected from the miasma.
[War Chef’s Combat Ration for Miasma Resistance, made with all-out effort]
Originally, it was for when a protective suit broke—
a dish you could pull once from the pouch to somehow endure the miasma and retreat to the surface.
‘If I eat this... I won’t get any extra buffs on the way back.’
Even if I could force my way down,
it meant I’d have no help coming up.
It would be hellish pain.
If I passed out down there, I might be pickled in this miasma until I died.
But—
Heh.
‘Since when did I ever move with the aftermath in mind?’
I
tore the pouch and dumped the ration into my mouth.
Chomp—
Before the miasma could soak the jerky,
I chewed as fast as I could and packed it in.
Sweet meat juices seeped out,
and I felt the miasma filling my mouth get pushed back by the juices.
—Tding.
[The effect of the dish is applied!]
[By the effect of ‘Absolute Palate,’ the dish’s effects apply strengthened.]
[Active dish effects — (1)]
[Trait — Hundred Poisons Cannot Invade]
“Khh... That’s better.”
The sting still lingered,
but it no longer felt fatal.
And—
that wasn’t all.
Because the pouches were few, each trooper got only one.
Once opened, the miasma would invade; you couldn’t pack several in, so
most troopers had a single dish in their pouch.
But—
‘I’m different.’
[By the effect of ‘Absolute Palate,’ dish effects stack.]
Even if I ate multiple dishes at once, I got every effect—
a busted trait.
With that kind of trait,
why would I pack only one ration?
[Active dish effects — (2)]
As the jerkies slid down and melted in my gut—
[Active dish effects — (3)]
I felt power flood me
almost too much to bear.
[Active dish effects — (4)]
[Hundred Poisons Cannot Invade]
[Sleipha’s Fleet Legs]
[Honmar’s Great Strength]
[Masir’s Muscles]
“...Haa!”
Beyond [Hundred Poisons Cannot Invade], other traits layered in
to resist the miasma.
‘Dish durations are short.’
So—
within that window, once I reached the depths,
I had to find a way to solve this Gate’s miasma.
Krrrrk—
I braced my legs;
Honmar’s Great Strength settled into them,
Masir’s springy muscles received that force,
and with Sleipha’s Fleet Legs I drove my feet hard—
FWOoooooooosh!!!
At insane speed,
my body shot downward.
‘As fast as possible before the dishes wear off!’
At the fastest pace I’d ever felt in my life,
I sprinted for the deepest core of the mine.
****
The miasma...
no—
what filled this mine—
[The Pain, Grief, and Resentment]
grew thicker
the farther I ran.
Fsshh—
Even with extra resistance traits stacked,
it felt like I was burning up.
‘I can still endure it.’
Right.
The damage from the miasma was endurable.
I’d tanked a broken-mask CBRN drill, after all.
But
the problem wasn’t the pain from the poison.
That deepening “Pain, Grief, and Resentment”
wasn’t the same as the miasma merely getting stronger.
—HurtsHurtsHurtsHurtsHurtsHurts.
“...!?”
As I ran toward my destination,
an unidentified voice rang in my head—
a scream soaked in agony.
“Are you the master of this mine!?”
—HurtsHurtsHurtsHurtsHurts...
“Answer me!”
I shouted toward the voice,
but no answer came.
One reason I’d insisted on coming—
I did want to release, at least a little, the one suffering below,
unable to properly die.
But
that wasn’t because I was kind
or anything like that.
[Divine power: 8]
[Divine power recognizes a certain entity.]
Something inside me
was acutely aware of that thing.
‘If I think back to when I first felt this tug...’
It was when the mine’s miasma
changed from [Corpse Miasma] to [The Pain, Grief, and Resentment].
In other words,
the being spraying out those feelings
was pulling on something inside me.
“What, exactly, are you...!”
What could it be
that had the power to wipe out a world—
and yet
was suffering in the depths like this?
“What the hell are you... that you’re pulling me.”
Why
were my stats reacting to it?
I had the firm conviction
that I had to confirm it.
‘If you won’t answer, that’s fine too.’
I kept heading down.
If it wouldn’t answer,
‘I’ll just see it with my own eyes!’
With every step,
the emotions saturating the space grew denser.
—HurtsHurtsHurtsHurtsHurtsHurtsHurtsHurtsHurtsHurtsHurtsHurts.
Pain.
—Whywhywhywhywhywhywhywhywhywhywhywhy.
Grief.
—Unforgivableunforgivableunforgivableunforgivableunforgivable.
Resentment.
“...Ghh.”
Like a parrot,
it spewed the same emotions.
Stacked and stacked over long ages,
the place had become like a deep bog,
brimming with hatred of staggering density.
‘Feels like the emotion is being jammed straight into my head...’
I’d felt this once before.
The “Mental Language” the Pope used gave a similar sensation.
‘Damn it, it’s obviously an absurd ability...’
If the system messages were right,
it was half a corpse at best.
‘And at that, it has this much power.’
It sent chills up my spine.
But—
no matter how dense the emotional surf blocking my path,
[‘8’ of Divine power nullifies external interference!]
I
gritted my teeth and kept going down.
A being with power like this—
why was it
‘stuck here, unable to die... muttering this echo?’
I had to—
see it for myself.
I ran for a long time.
I had long since passed the 20-kilounit mark the engineers had set as a breakthrough goal.
Perhaps because I’d drilled this deep—
‘What is this sight now.’
As the will thickened,
unfamiliar scenes began to bleed into my vision.
It wasn’t hard to guess why.
‘Will this dense is starting to affect sight.’
What I saw wasn’t much:
small life-forms walking the surface,
vast nature unscathed by any mark of civilization,
a heavy darkness,
and a certain monster staring at me as it died in pain.
‘What am I even looking at.’
For a “magi” civilization, the scenes—
were oddly close to the wild.
I clenched my teeth, ignored it all, and sprinted down—
“Finally...”
I
reached my destination.
‘A cavern?’
Bathed in blue light,
a place too beautiful for the deepest core of a mine.
And at its center—
‘A gigantic... piece of flesh?’
Enormous,
but half-rotted—horrible and grotesque.
The one I’d been hunting:
[Those Who Could Not Properly Die]
was there.
No—
to be precise...
‘a part of [Those Who Could Not Properly Die].’
What kind of thing
was wedged here, rotting like that?
It wasn’t hard to answer.
[Ingredient Appraisal (Enhanced)]
And
the answer to my question—
was fairly shocking.
[A Divinity Who Could Not Properly Die]
[Lord of Magi — Morzan’s Chewed-Over Flesh]
“What?”
I didn’t have time to properly confirm
whether I’d read that right.
[A world brimming with rich mana, Morzan.]
[An entity that once reigned as the chief god sharing the world’s name.]
[One with the concept of magi, a god-tier being who held ceaseless mana.]
[Morzan’s thigh-flesh, a minute part thereof.]
[For certain reasons it reached death, but its excessively high rank and resentment barred complete extinction.]
[For cooking, first trim the flesh to a manageable size—]
The closer I got, the more the emotions thickened—
that will, dense to the point of excess.
[Extremely condensed will bores into your head.]
[‘8’ of Divine power protects your reason!]
“...!?”
And the memories within it
began to drive into my skull.
****
A hideous sensation, like something forcing itself into my head.
Feeling it,
the first thing I felt was
a sense that seized my whole body—
‘absoluteness.’
A transcendent sensation that I could do anything,
surging through me.
...As if
I had become a god.
And—
‘...Not an illusion.’
When I opened my eyes,
I stood in the middle of a natural scene I’d never seen,
looking down on a great mountain range.
No—
I wasn’t just looking at it.
From a sky unspeakably high,
I was
‘looking down.’
‘How tall is this thing?’
Not my eyes—
someone else’s.
