Going Back 10,000 Years (3)

“—!”

“I know. The energy is getting stronger and stronger.”

The earth spirits were making a fuss, warning me to be careful. As they said, the intense energy felt from the front was strong and dense enough for not only me, but also Kai and Ian beside me to feel.

Especially Ian looked like he was about to throw up.

“Explain in detail what it was exactly. It seems like something I’ve never heard of before.”

“The first time I found this place was when I left home, led by the voice. I knew of the existence of this cave, but it certainly wasn’t here just a few years ago…”

While moving like this, I urged Kai to tell me first what was inside.

He told me in a trembling voice what he had encountered when he was used by the curse that tempted him in his despair and sorrow.

“It was like a huge pit. The source of this dense demonic energy must be sleeping inside it. It was that pit that called forth the goblin magical beasts.”

Kai described what he saw as a pit. The powerful curse emanating from this bottomless pit-like hole was the root cause that made all of this possible.

This was also what the earth spirits had warned about. As we ran through this not very deep cave, we discovered the pit Kai had mentioned ahead.

“What on earth is that…?”

Ian hesitated upon seeing it. Kai’s description of a pit wasn’t wrong, but it was a bit different. This huge, dark hole facing the wall rather than the floor was, to be precise, not a pit but a kind of dimensional gate.

Black branches that had grown like tentacles were spreading out, eroding the surroundings, and it was pulsating as if a heart was beating.

“Step back.”

The energy emanating from there created crackling sparks around me. Realizing that this was the curse of corruption, or rather the source of its power, I made Kai, who had just escaped the curse, and Ian step back.

“It’s dangerous after all. I think it would be better to just collapse it along with the cave…!”

“We can’t get rid of that in that way.”

Kai tried to stop me, saying it was dangerous, but I shook my head. I had an intuition that only the current me could eliminate that strange thing, whatever it was.

“The magical beasts!”

But as if refusing to be easily defeated, that black abyss resisted by spitting out a group of goblin magical beasts.

Those magical beasts that popped out from the black hole immediately bared their teeth and growled at us. Stained with dark and murky energy like Kai just before, they were much more ferocious and stronger than ordinary goblins.

“Collapse!”

I moved the earth spirits to attack them. Inside the cave, which is essentially underground all around, the power of the earth spirits is maximized.

As if bursting out accumulated anger through my power, the ground suddenly split open, causing the charging goblins to helplessly fall into its mouth.

Even the most excellent swordsman would find it difficult to be free from this kind of attack.

“You’re struggling to be eliminated, so I’ll do just that.”

As the ground containing the shrieking goblins closed with a thud, I walked on the ground where they were buried alive towards the pit.

“–?!”

Of course, as the earth spirits worried, the power I currently possessed might be slightly insufficient. But there’s no choice.

If I don’t do it now, it’s obvious that it will become more difficult in the future. And the reason I’ve been wandering around in disguise all this time isn’t simply to play around.

The power and proficiency I’ve cultivated in that process are not insignificant. Even my own power, which I still consider immature, has grown a lot through that process.

“Ugh…”

The moment I released the power I had drawn towards it, like the opposite poles of magnets that cannot touch, the powers we each possessed began to create strong repulsion.

The surging black energy thrashed wildly, and pure white sparks flew everywhere.

As strong impacts burst out one after another, threatening to fling my body away, I endured by moving the earth to bury my legs up to the ankles and summoning stone pillars to support my back that was about to be pushed back.

“Seems to be having an effect?”

It was painful due to the bursting repulsion, but I also laughed at the sight of it struggling wildly at the unexpected appearance of a natural enemy while trying to pull tricks.

After all, having completely wrecked the world I lived in, this calamity that remains even now, 10,000 years later, trying to torment those living in the new world.

This desire to erase and eliminate it was certainly not simple anger.

‘It’s shrinking.’

Along with my power rapidly draining away, the erosion that had been spreading its branches without knowing its place slowly began to recede. At this rate, it should be possible to completely eliminate it before my power runs out.

“Aaargh!”

But as if it couldn’t disappear like this, it began to resist, and instead of me who was fine despite its attempts to burrow in somehow, a scream was heard from behind me.

* * *

‘Was it a mistake?’

For a moment, my heart sank. Should I have sent them back right after receiving guidance? Was it wrong to bring them inside in the first place?

Complicated thoughts flashed through my mind in the brief moment I glanced back.

Clearly, I had completely driven out the curse that had overtaken Kai’s body. However, at this moment, Kai was once again overcome by the curse and went berserk.

Kai, trying to resist somehow, and Ian, not knowing what to do in his confusion, were just stamping their feet.

“Step back, kid!”

And at that moment, an unexpected person appeared. The fox spirit beast I remembered seeing a few times in the city. I don’t know since when she had been following us, but she suddenly appeared holding a rifle and a staff, pointing the gun at Kai with an urgent voice.

“No!”

“It’s already too late. If he loses his mind and goes berserk, you and that person over there will be in danger!”

She shouted in a trembling voice, looking at Ian who was shielding Kai with his body, and then at me. Judging by her words and that look in her eyes, it seems she’s already seen everything that happened outside.

“Stop it, Ian. That fox beastkin is right. It’s already too late for me.”

“Uncle!”

However, Kai moved before them. He gritted his teeth, threw away the sword in his hand, and ran straight towards me. I flinched, but he hadn’t run to attack me.

Squeezing out his last remaining reason, he made his own choice.

“Don’t misunderstand. You didn’t fail. It’s just that the destruction of this body becomes the last method to seal this terrible pit.”

He grinned at me, who was surprised, while sweating profusely.

“When I first came here and willingly accepted the curse, the curse planted a seed inside my body. Like a medium, it cannot be erased unless this body itself is destroyed, so this is now the only way.”

“Don’t you regret it? There could be other ways, you know.”

“I can’t risk putting others in danger any longer by taking chances.”

Kai looked alternately at me and Ian, as if he had made up his mind. He had already fallen once and put many people in danger.

I couldn’t not understand his feeling that he couldn’t make a mistake twice. Above all, if that was his choice, I couldn’t deny it.

“Ian, didn’t I always tell you something? If something has already happened, don’t live bound by it. Of course, you probably won’t like hearing this, but I’m paying for it with my body because I failed to do that very thing.”

After leaving these last words for Ian, he threw himself into the pit without hesitation. Ian’s scream couldn’t stop it.

And as if that had been the last remaining restraint, the curse that had been resisting my power began to weaken rapidly and shrink.

“…It’s over.”

Kai’s determination was fatally effective against this unknown enemy to a disappointing degree. The dimensional gate that had completely disappeared left no trace, and the gloomy and sticky energy that had dwelled in the cave also vanished completely.

I muttered blankly and pulled out a small ore embedded in the wall. This mineral, as dark as obsidian and containing faint demonic energy, was the only remaining trace.

“Mysterious one, who are you?”

However, one obstacle still remained.

She, who had been checking on Ian sitting on the ground in despair, was looking at me with her tail standing straight up, seemingly tense.

“Do I really have to tell you?”

“If it’s not rude, you certainly appear to be an elf. The ears you have, especially the characteristic of ear lobes that don’t protrude outwards, is something only elves have among those with long, pointed ears.”

She was quite wary, unlike others might be. This was because she was a scholar and knew a lot. The more someone knows, the less likely clumsy lies are to work.

In fact, she instantly saw through my race using characteristics of elves that even I didn’t know about.

“But no elf I know has power and appearance like yours. Please tell me. The anomaly just discovered is a new kind of calamity that hasn’t been reported until now, so otherwise, I’ll have no choice but to do what I must in this emergency situation.”

Sticking her staff into the ground with a thud, she pointed the gun she was holding at me. I laughed dryly at the sight.

“I understand being wary of an unknown entity, but isn’t this too much? We solved a problem you couldn’t solve with great effort.”

“Th-That’s…”

“And to dare point such a thing at me.”

As I walked briskly towards her, she seemed flustered and couldn’t shoot despite having pointed the gun. Of course, even if she had shot, it wouldn’t have worked on me.

In fact, when I approached her and snatched the gun away in an instant, my expectation became reality. The all-too-familiar grip feeling.

Perhaps because I had just come back from reserve military training right before being dragged to the Tower, the familiarity still remained in my hand.

‘This gun is the same as me.’

A comrade that couldn’t rest in peace and was restored to exist again in this land after 10,000 years.

The gun in my hand was enveloped in pure white light and finely disassembled. It’s a power of the same nature as restoring artifacts that had been sealed by the negative power left by the Tower.

For me, the lone wanderer of the era who is now the only one left in this world out of countless people who entered the Tower, I have the power to awaken that era as well as the power to put it to rest.

Whether I wanted it or not, it was ultimately allowed only to me alone; I smirked watching the gun scatter into shining powder.

Although I doubt there will be any need to use it, that gun I sent back to the spirit realm, it’s possible to restore it again.

“Ah…”

Seeing this, she seemed to lose strength in her legs and collapsed on the spot.

Her pale face showed an expression that couldn’t even imagine resisting me anymore.