Chapter 317 - Tournament Chapter (13)

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[Lee Yeon-hee]

“Tell Kirikiri to send my regards to Terrapin.”

Would the situation have changed if I had not followed that remark? I didn’t know.

The God of Nature, who I met after clearing the 40th-floor stage, talked about information control against Tutorial challengers and hinted that I was already entangled in a similar situation. Information control through privacy settings and keywords.

I asked Kirikiri to tell me the truth, but she just laughed, as usual. We were eating cake together, chatting, and carefreely spending time with each other. She always comforted me and smiled prettily without a positive or negative attitude.

The answer was clear. I’d rather Kirikiri be honest, but Kirikiri never told the truth or lied, as she had always done.

It was easy to see that the keyword of information control was “Terrapin.” I was keeping all the chat messages and letters I had with him. Among the records, it wasn’t hard to find one word that had a sense of incompatibility. Furthermore, at that time, I asked what a Terrapin was. Kirikiri didn’t answer, and I had dismissed it at that time since I thought it was a nickname or a slang that only Kirikiri and he knew. The feeling I felt at the time was jealousy.

I had envied the link between the two. I wanted to get in between them.

I was about to challenge the sixth floor when Mister made me say keywords. The sixth floor was one of the toughest stages. It was also a stage that I’d been stuck at for months. Every day the skull soldiers had been cut off by a rusty knife, and a bowl of blood had been thrown out by a mana explosion. Whenever a contracted spirit got extinguished, I fainted from the pain akin to my hair being pulled out. I also had to cut out my leg flesh to find a new spirit and try contract magic using it as a medium.

In those days, all I could see was my blood, flesh, and decaying skeletons. The only things that sounded in my ears were my screams. The stench of blood and rotten flesh had permanently found its home beneath my nose. The constant pain made me suffer from phantom pain, even when I was in the waiting room.

Thanks to his help, there was no severe death crisis. Those were the impoverished days when I thought it would be better to die.

When I couldn’t even meet Kirikiri until I cleared the stage, I exchanged letters with Mister. It was the only source of joy. I wanted to quit right away, but I gained strength by reading the letter and went on without collapsing.

But he… At that time, I thought of using the letter to deceive him and use it as a private seat on the 61st floor.

“…Are you listening?”

When I first came in, he consoled me, showing pity, but he was undoubtedly pleased. It was not because a colleague and a savior had come in…

“Hey. Are you listening?”

“I’m listening,” I answered the one who was talking in front of me. In recent years, people often drowned in their thoughts. I did that while talking to others. It seemed much more apparent now because after becoming adjusted to being the lone challenger in the early Hell Floors, talking to someone itself was awkward.

“Anyway, I’ve never seen a case as dirty as you.”

I narrated a story, and it was another lame story. The man who has been talking to me for a while was a challenger of Hell’s Difficulty in the other dimension of the Tutorial. We met through the main body of the temple.

“How can there be only two survivors? Can they even get to the 60th floor? That’s somehow amazing.”

He was a man of ability, of use to me. But he indulged in useless talks.

“Can it not be avoided?”

No. The gods wanted to check the situation on the 60th floor somehow. That was the deal in the first place. They’d direct me to the 60th floor at all costs.

“Do you have the confidence to clear?”

It was a question I’d already asked several times, but I had no choice but to ask again. It was because I wasn’t confident.

“Of course. You’re nervous because you don’t know what an apostle means being. An apostle means that there is a god with you. Why don’t you be an apostle? You said you had a lot of proposals.”

There were many proposals, but I didn’t accept any apostle position. Above all, even if I were an apostle, I wasn’t sure I could beat him. The gods would despise it if I said this. When I finished, I had to leave at least one hole to survive.

That’s what he always taught. Everything was a matter of probability. Always predict the odds carefully and become immersed in it.

To me, who was deliberately slowing down the attack, he had said he could get out of the 60th floor by himself. I didn’t think that was a lie. If he disappeared, the chances of me leaving the Tutorial on my own were gone. Rather than being left behind forever, I had no choice but to bet on a slim chance of victory.

One question is, why was he waiting for me without leaving the 60th floor? Of course, I told him to wait, but that was not the reason for his stop.

It could be a lie. Being able to get out of the Tutorial alone may be just a lie to get me up there quickly. Then his chances of winning on the 61st floor would be higher. But the problem was that it was not a lie.

“The feeling of a god’s power in my body is really… I can’t explain this if you’ve never experienced it. It really completes me.”

Ignoring the man who talked endlessly about things I didn’t care about, I stood up from my seat. I came back to the room I was using as my accommodation.

It was quiet again. There were times when I wanted to get out of this silence somehow. When I met people and faced a noisy crowd, I thought it was more comfortable.

It was a shame. I was upset and disappointed, and a singular thought kept haunting me.

If I hadn’t said the keyword, if Kirikiri hadn’t fooled me, if I had gotten the information on the 61st floor in time, we might not have been like this. Even so, I would still have felt betrayed. Still, I would have been able to get angry and resolve this disappointment. Even if our relationship went sour, we could have found a way together. Our link may not have been cut off so completely.

I knew it was a lingering attachment. Even if I did, my sacrifice on the 61st floor might not have changed. Still, I kept thinking that way.

If I did something else, could there have been any other ending? A slightly better ending.

-Beep….

Suddenly a beeping sound rang in my ears. Someone had triggered the alarm again.

First of all, I built a barrier around the room to not let anyone in. Having finished several layers of defense, I focused my mind again.

The alarm went off when someone approached one of my clones. I moved to one of the clones that had set off the alarm.

The place where I opened my eyes was in front of the portal of a public server. There was a giant woman about four meters tall, in front of the portal. It was a familiar face. She was one of the challengers of Hell’s Difficulty, at my present level. She was also an apostle of a god.

“Where are you going?”

“To your server. Didn’t you say you were from Earth?” the woman answered me, unsurprised.

Why?

“Why on the Earth server?”

The woman replied with a troubled face. “Information gathering purposes.”

“I remember I gave you all the information.”

“Well, yes. There’s something else I need to find out. There are some proposals over there.”

What was that stupid woman saying so calmly? I was sure I’d banned contact.

“Tie her up.”

The spirit of containment had become visible. It was in the form of a tight chain, binding the woman’s body. Rather than struggling to get out of it, the woman just looked dumbfounded.

“What are you doing?”

She couldn’t get out of it. It had been a long-improved means to subdue Ho-jae. Now it had become an entity that could not even be called a spirit.

“Do you know what you’re doing now? You’re oppressing a God’s apostle.”

“I know.”

I had already prepared for this occasion. It was not a plan to prevent the actions of the gods. It was more of an act to escape the eyes of the gods. It was an act that would disappear at once if a god wielded his power, but unfortunately, a god could not intervene immediately.

A god could project his power on the apostle without any price, but a procedure was necessary. I was not sure exactly what the procedure was, but it took about 30 seconds to a minute.

30 seconds. It was enough time to kill someone. I took the bow out of the inventory and prepared the black arrows.

“You- You crazy bitch! Do you know what you’re doing?!”

Of course, I knew. I was trying to kill the apostles. Of course, it would prevent them from going to Earth’s servers to demonstrate power properly. But I couldn’t just miss the chance to kill the apostles.

I aimed at the woman’s heart.nAn attack was set up.

“Argh! Untie it now! You crazy b*tch, you can’t even thank someone for helping you. How dare you act like this! God will have you…!”

The black arrow pierced the heart of the apostle. She seemed to have tried to defend herself amid a clamor, but the black arrow nullified all her attempts. Black marks spread rapidly around the woman’s body, the black arrow at the centre. Because she was wearing long clothes, I had to check it out by looking at her face. The black mark soon reached the woman’s forehead.

“…Save, save…”

“Devour.”

With that command, the black arrow began to devour the woman’s body. The woman’s body became stained with black marks and quickly sucked into the black arrow. In less than ten seconds, the place where the woman had been only had a Spirit of Containment and the Black Arrow.

It was too simple. The Black Arrow was retrieved, and the Spirit of Containment returned to the usual mode. There was a little time left. I could feel the power of a god. The plan that I had made was shattered.

╔═══════════════╗

[The God of Fame is angry.]

[Voting begins]

[Yes: 386 No: 6422]

╚═══════════════╝

That was it. They decided not to intervene in the apostle’s death.

╔═══════════════╗

[The God of Dawn is angry with you.]

[The God of Darkness harbors bad feelings towards you.]

[The God of Darkness glares at you.]

[The God of Darkness…]

╚═══════════════╝

Ignoring the message, I changed to non-visual mode. I let the portal continue its work and transfer me to a different place.

It was a small, quiet room again. That was why I didn’t accept the apostle position. At least within this Tutorial, the apostles cannot guarantee victory.

I didn’t want to think about it.

I squatted down on the side of a small room. I felt uneasy again. Time quickly passed by and I’d soon reach the 60th floor.

It was scary. When I met Mister, I only hoped that I would be calm without showing any emotions.

* * * * * *

[Lee Hochi]

I was playing a card game with Yong-yong, when I got called out. I had a guest who came to see me, but I remembered meeting all the guests. In response, I said that I would no longer meet other guests.

However, Park Jung-ah went to the Order of Vigilance headquarters for some reason. Yong-yong left with Baek Sung-woong. I’d met many guests, but there had been few pleasant meetings. And I strongly felt that this meeting would be the same.

“It’s a private meeting?”

“Yes, it is,” replied the man of short stature. He was a man from whom politeness seemed to permeate from head to toe. Although he was only a little taller than Yong-yong, I could feel that he was a mature person.

“For what reason has the apostle… “

“For the retrieval of power.”

The time had finally come. Damn it. What should I do? Should I run away with Yong-yong?

[Don’t make a fuss and just listen to me.]

How could I not make a fuss? I never thought the apostle would come in person to take back the power I stole.

“Well, I… I didn’t steal it. I didn’t do anything. The gods gave it to me. I just came back home because I felt burdened. Yes, I never thought about stealing from the beginning…”

I was just babbling and making excuses. The accusation of stealing was a huge blow to me. Lies were added to theft, and my conscience began to ache even more.

“No, it’s not you.”

“…Eh?”

The exceptionally short man spoke in a calm voice. “I want to retrieve the power that the god of duel presented to challenger Lee Ho-jae.”

[Tell him to stop bullsh*tting and get out of there.] Lee Ho-jae spat out a curse at once. Of course, I didn’t repeat his words.

“As the power was duly supposed to be handled by Lee Ho-jae, taking away a portion of your god-given powers will be an adequate replacement to pay the debt.”

[Huh..]