Chapter 362: Japan (9)

“I don’t think Daddy made it out.”

The sentence was like a statement.

Since Hochi trusted Yong-yong more than anyone else, he quickly accepted what he was saying. But as much as he believed it, he also wanted to deny it.

“…Yong-yong, would you like to recheck it?”

Yong-yong, who heard Hochi’s words, shook his head.

Hochi had watched plenty of cliche dramas. A popular cliche was the character’s incurable disease. Every time the doctor revealed the patient’s limited time in the world, the people around him would always faint.

Hochi had thought about it before. When the same situation happened to him, would he be that shocked and sad?

He had always wondered about it because no one in Hochi’s family had died of a disease.

Even if it wasn’t a disease, he didn’t think anyone would pass away.

Lee Ho-jae used to say dangerous things about turning the Hundred Gods Temple upside down whenever he went outside.

Nevertheless, Hochi was not worried about Lee Ho-jae.

To Hochi, Lee Ho-jae was an absolute existence.

Hochi believed that no matter what happened, Lee Ho-jae would get through it on his own.

It wasn’t much different from the vague fantasies a child had of his parents.

Hochi had never felt anxious about his family dying or disappearing. To him, that fear was something that would only appear in novels or dramas.

That was why Hochi couldn’t accept Yong-yong’s words.

Hochi’s chest tightened painfully as he waited, with bated breath, for Yong-yong’s next words.

“The world went away to another place, not where it was supposed to end up in.”

“Can we go find it?”

Since Lee Ho-jae couldn’t get out of the world on time, he likely couldn’t have afforded to move. Or, the enemy might have held onto Lee Ho-jae’s trousers at the end.

Anyway, it was a different result than what Lee Ho-jae and Yong-yong had expected.

Hochi had no choice but to suspect that Lee Ho-jae was defeated by the enemy and forced to go to the place the enemy wanted.

“I can’t trace it…”

“Why?” Hochi asked in a high-pitched voice, unknowingly.

“I don’t know where it flew. I can’t trace it at all… ” Yong-yong explained, his eyes wet with anxiety.

Hochi eventually collapsed, feeling his legs give away.

* * *

Three days had passed since Lee Ho-jae disappeared.

Hochi was still hovering near the shore, waiting for Lee Ho-jae to return.

Yong-yong fell asleep for several days trying to find Lee Ho-jae’s new coordinates.

“Why don’t we go back to Korea?” asked Lee Joon-suk.

Hochi shook his head. He had already been to the flat in Korea once.

Hochi was going to wait here until Lee Ho-jae came back.

Lee Joon-suk swallowed back what he was going to say and sat down next to Hochi.

“It’s alright.”

“Yes?”

“It’s alright,” Hochi muttered as he fiddled with a few rocks lying near the shore.

He had met the Old man and Grandma in Seoul. When they heard about the situation, they laughed like crazy. The two said Lee Ho-jae would return on his own without any problems.

Instead, they grumbled, saying they were disappointed with Lee Ho-jae, who disappeared without contacting them.

Hochi was angry at the two who weren’t worried at all, but when Yong-yong stopped him, he couldn’t say anything more.

Yong-yong was stunned by Lee Ho-jae’s sudden disappearance and blamed himself for not being able to trace him, but he didn’t think that Lee Ho-jae would be in grave danger.

In the end, Hochi was the only one who was worried that Lee Ho-jae might be in danger.

“I didn’t say anything, though,” Lee Joon-suk said.

Hochi ignored the comment. He was upset that no one but himself was worried about Lee Ho-jae, after all.

Maybe it was because he was the weakest and not familiar with Lee Ho-jae’s power. Hochi couldn’t help but speculate that he was making a fuss for nothing.

But what can I do if I’m worried?

Maybe he should do what Joon-suk said: go back to the flat and rest.

But when he had tried to rest on the sofa, Hochi didn’t feel as though he were resting because he was so confused.

Even when he tried to read a novel, he couldn’t relax and enjoy it. Whenever he ate, no food tasted good.

It was most comfortable, just waiting here.

“Excuse me!” someone spoke up, knocking on the glass wall.

It was a Japanese woman.

“She’s here again.”

“Did you set the barrier up?”

“Yes.”

If he hadn’t put up the barrier, she would have come close and bothered him with this and that.

It was better to block access in this way because even if one person was blown away, others wouldn’t be affected.

Three days ago, the wave on Japan’s eastern coast ended.

The gods must’ve had a lot of questions about the black hemisphere and the humans who appeared at the end of the wave.

The victims were controlled by the Japanese government and the Awakened Society, but reporters were camped out a little further out.

The Japanese government thanked Hochi’s party and wondered whether they would be able to recruit him to Japan at the same time.

They tried to invite his party to Tokyo several times, but Hochi’s party did not wander

wander astray from the shore.

Hochi did not even know what they had in mind. But whatever it was, Hochi was far from interested.

“Hyung, have you thought about it?” asked Lee Joon-suk.

Hochi didn’t know what Lee Joon-suk was asking about, so he had to ask back, “What?”

“What are you going to do later? You said you’d think about it in Japan.”

Of course, Lee Joon-suk knew that he didn’t have a chance. He just wanted the somber Hochi to think about something else.

Hochi scratched his head. There were several options. Kim Min-hyuk had recommended becoming an Awakened officially. But after experiencing Japan, he didn’t think he’d fit in.

First of all, Hochi himself was not interested in humans and, instead, was rather annoyed with them.

Saving and helping someone might be a good thing, but that was it. Above all, this experience had eliminated Hochi’s desire to live a life of danger.

Lee Ho-jae once asked if he should do a job related to books. Hochi didn’t seem to like that either.

Of course, he liked to read books, but he didn’t want to go beyond his hobby and make it his job.

Novels were a kind of escape for Hochi.

For Hochi, born and raised in the desolate 60th-floor world, stories in novels gave him an indirect experience of the new world.

They meant nothing more than that.

“How about… a dungeon?”

“Dungeon?”

Lee Ho-jae had also once said, “Why don’t you take charge of dungeons?”

Hochi came to Japan because of the condition that they hand over the dungeons that Ho-jae had collected from the Rulers.

But that was also…

“I don’t know.”

In fact, he was thinking about what to do before he came to Japan.

However, after coming to Japan and going through many things, Hochii had no time to think about such things. And now that he was waiting for Lee Ho-jae, he wondered if that was important.

“Are you going to continue being an Awakened?”

“I have to continue! Now that I’ve got my item back from Ho-jae…!”

“After receiving?”

“Yes, yes. Of course, I still had enough power before, but being able to use my abilities freely is another matter.”

Lee Joon-suk started talking about himself.

Seeing him speak with his eyes glowing, Hochi may have wanted him to tell this story before.

“When I first came out on Earth, I felt so empty. After all, I had a power I couldn’t use, but why on earth was I so obsessed with it? Nearly ten years. I was just an average Awakened person with the ability I had. But now that’s changed, I can regain what I had lost!”

He’s excited, very excited, Hochi thought to himself.

“I’m sure there’s a lot more to do on Earth, but I’m going to follow Ho-jae hyung. If you look, there are places where he would need my powers. Oh, and Ho-jae hyung said he’d train me separately.”

Looking at Lee Joon-suk speaking enthusiastically, Hochi clicked his tongue softly.

This guy was another monster, too.

Why was he trying to find Hell on his own?

He looked fine on the outside.

Hochi bowed his head while listening to Lee Joon-suk’s story for a long time.

Inside the box around his neck, the mantis sitting on the miniature sofa looked at Lee Joon-suk and Hochi’s face, interested.

“Is there anything you want to do in the future?”

“I want to eat more.”

“What?”

“…What else?” the mantis rolled its eyes and replied.

He didn’t have to ask what it wanted to eat.

It wanted to eat everything alive. It would be better if he had stronger powers.

“Is there anything else you want besides eating?”

“Well, not really.”

Lee Ho-jae had once explained his hypothesis about the Rulers.

It was a hypothesis. Rather than a monster eating to fulfill his desires somewhat and finding his past sanity, Rulers could just find sanity and power from an old, long-lasting desire.

Hochi thought the hypothesis might be right.

“You don’t want anything but to eat?”

“Yes!”

“…so if you eat well, you’re not going to complain about being locked up like this, are you?”

“Yes! Master puts rice in here every day.”

Its words were slightly contradictory.

“Master?”

“Yong-yong!”

Hochi thought about releasing the mantis from the box and putting this greedy, stupid monster in the sea. He stopped after thinking about it.

It was obvious that Yong-yong would be sad.

Instead, with his chin resting in his hands, Hochi thought, ‘Why are there only idiots around me?’

“The sunset is so beautiful,” Lee Joon-seok mumbled as he turned west.

The mantis answered, hearing those words, “It’s almost dinner time.”

“Yes, it’s pretty. It would have been better if the sun was setting on the side of the ocean,” said Hochi, ignoring the mantis’s words.

The third day of waiting for Lee Ho-jae was drawing to an end.

* * *

[Lee Ho-jae]

The raging flames had finally been brought under control. I didn’t control the flow well, but the dying fake eventually lost consciousness.

I gathered all the stray energy that had been flowing around with my hands.

When the flames blazing around me wrapped around my hands, the surrounding landscape began to appear.

The planet that had been the background of the world was no longer recognizable.

The flames had destroyed the planet in a short time, but what was gathered in my hands was calm more than anything else.

No matter how powerful and destructive the power was, a power without a will could not hurt a god no matter what.

The fake, who wielded this divine power, had lost consciousness.

It wasn’t difficult to draw the power that was out of control into my own, either.

The God of Hope drove his power into the fake and made him attack me, but the limit was clear. If the God of Hope had been here, he wouldn’t have been consumed by the power.

It was the limit of those who failed to rise to the rank of a god.

[What do you want to do with him?] Seregia questioned about the unconscious fake.

I pondered for a moment.

“Let him be.”

Let him burn up by the remaining heat.

Once eaten up by power, he may have been destroyed in a multitude of ways, and I didn’t want to experiment with that.

I just wanted to let him do what he wanted. If he survives, so be it. [1]

I felt Yong-yong shut down the space itself.

He seemed to be trying to send it away.

Well…

[You’re not going out?]

“Yes, I’m not going out.”

It was not enough to go out right now. I called out to the God of Evil, who was still begging inside me.

“God of Evil.”

[Please…]

[Please listen to my request. Please let me go…]

Even now, he was continuing his pleas, on a subject that was long lost.

“Yes, I will accept your request.”

[…really?]

[Then the God of Hope… He came on behalf of our representative… to liberate me.]

‘Our’ representative.

It felt weird to hear that the God of Hope, a Hundred Gods Temple member, and the God of Evil, who was not a member of anything, used the word “our.”

(T/N: It’s kinda hard to translate this without changing the whole sentence. I hope y’all got what it means. Basically, the god of evil is using ‘we’/’our’ before the word ‘representative’ but I cannot write ‘we representative’… so, yeah. The line before it as well, the god of evil uses ‘we’.)

“Yes, but there’s a problem. The God of Hope is a little busy.”

[It can’t be… that can’t be true… the God of Hope will not abandon me…….]

Ignoring the bewildered God of Evil, I asked what I wanted to ask.

“So, I’m going to have to visit him myself. You know where the God of Hope’s temple is, don’t you? The coordinates.”

[I know…]

That was easy.

Now, I could easily fool him.

It had been worthwhile to digest the God of Evil.

The God of Evil, who had, at first, refused to give information, now began to regurgitate everything he knew.

[Are you going to invade?]

Of course, I was thinking of invading.

By swallowing the God of Evil, I had intended to find out the location and information about the God of Hope and his hideout.

I was in a hurry to find out about the God of Hope. If I gave them time, they would attack again. I wanted to finish him as soon as possible.

[My power is almost exhausted. Why don’t you connect the earth with the 60th floor and put it off after you get more power?]

“It’s alright. The God of Hope isn’t that powerful.”

The God of Hope had given all his power to the fake and ran away.

I didn’t know how much he’d recovered, but it wouldn’t be that much.

“And I have this power.”

The power that was still in my hands.

The God of Hope poured out his power, amplified it several times, and handed it over to a fake.

The fake had left a lot of power without even using it up.

I didn’t know how big the temple of the God of Hope was or how many beings would be in there.

But the remaining power I had would be enough.