episode_0050

“I’m sorry.”

“This piece of shit─”

I was rejected outright.

What the hell is she going to do if she makes a wish and it doesn’t come true?

“Calm down! Calm down before you get angry!! Wow, I’m so scared I can’t speak, really.”

“Whew,” she continued, sighing.

“It’s not that I won’t listen to everything. I will give you as much as I can, considering how much you’ve worked hard for. Of course. I don’t plan on keeping my mouth shut and accepting the price you paid for me. ······However, a curse is something that sticks to your body. Once you use your lifespan, you can’t get it back. ”

“Then you’re saying that I can’t listen to you in the end, you incompetent bitch.”

“Listen until the end. You can’t save the warrior’s body. But you can save his soul.”

I crossed my arms and nodded my chin, a gesture that suggested I say it again.

“You, warrior… no, to be exact, you, gamer, are currently possessed by the body of warrior Luke, right? ”

“That’s right.”

“Then wouldn’t it be possible to later abandon the warrior’s body and possess another body?”

I opened my eyes wide because it was a method I had never thought of.

“···Is that possible?”

“If you succeeded once, why can’t you do it twice? That’s what is called reincarnation.”

but.

She continued, saying,

“It costs a lot of money to reincarnate···so when you reincarnate, you won’t have a body as strong as a warrior. Your appearance will also change quite a bit.”

“···I see.”

I nodded silently. It wasn’t an answer I particularly liked, but I guess there’s a way to escape the curse.

But she knew that this was not enough, so she added an explanation.

“Ah! But don’t worry. I don’t plan on just reincarnating you and leaving you alone. Sacrifice! Beauty! Moderate power! I can do that for you after I defeat the Demon King. So-called riches and honor! But if that doesn’t suit you···.”

She continues.

“We could even send you back to your old home.”

“······.”

It’s home.

‘···well.’

That’s not a very appealing option.

The damp basement, the creaking body, the feeling of slowly fading away at the bottom…

Dark thoughts were starting to creep up on me, so I quickly changed the subject.

“Let’s stop talking about compensation here. I’m pretty sure I understand that much.”

It’s not possible to completely escape the curse, but it’s okay since you can escape it by changing your body.

Thinking so, I thrust the holy sword I had been trying to cut her with just now and said.

“More than that, in the game, you can strengthen the holy sword at the end of each chapter. Is that possible here too?”

“Of course!”

As she said that, she immediately snatched my holy sword.

Then, he creates divine power and makes something thump thump.

While doing so, they say that this is originally a cost-intensive task, that the insufficient cost is supplemented through the Four Heavenly Kings, and that most of the cost is absorbed by the ‘Chungsul’ power, so it cannot be greatly strengthened.

There was a lot of talk, but I was still able to receive reinforcements.

“The received enhancements are limited to increased cutting power, increased durability, and minor physical ability buffs.”

“I can sense that much.”

To be honest, I was thinking that I might not be able to receive reinforcements at all.

It’s not as good as in the game, but if you think about it as a ‘skill’ that was used to hit the target, it’s not an unacceptable result.

When she received the holy sword back, she opened her mouth with a relieved expression.

“Whoa! At least this explains most of what I wanted to say! Do you have any other questions?”

“Well···.”

I thought about it carefully.

Let’s see, I heard why the difficulty got so crazy, I heard what rewards I would receive, and I heard why my curse was created.

I think I’ve heard most of it by now…

‘ah.’

Then suddenly, a question occurred to me.

The item I found in King Chung’s residence. That blue stone with all the strings broken so I couldn’t even see the item name.

That suddenly occurred to me.

This is clearly an item that existed as a bug in the game… so why does it exist here too?

“Come to think of it···.”

I opened my mouth to ask her about it.

“Huh?”

It stopped within a moment.

Intuition warns me.

A corner of my mind suddenly became cold.

It wasn’t my intuition as the warrior Luke… it was my intuition as the gamer ‘Kang In-woo’ when I was an Earthling.

──This is the kind of question that shouldn’t be asked.

All characters who used that item in the game were deleted, without a trace.

Of course, she wouldn’t delete it right away since she had invested so much in me… but at the very least, something bad was sure to happen.

“No, it’s nothing.”

So I had no choice but to muddle through.

Still, perhaps because she didn’t notice my awkwardness, she didn’t ask me about it separately.

An awkward silence enveloped us for a moment.

She watched me with a faint smile for a while and then opened her mouth.

“Hero. If you’re a hero, you probably know what number of hero you are.”

“··· It must be the 21st.”

This was a setting that appeared as a background explanation before the game started.

The twenty-first warrior chosen has appeared to subdue the Demon King.

Not many people know about it since it’s only a few sentences long, but I, a true game addict, remembered it.

“Yes, over the past two thousand years, the warriors have changed more than twenty times. Many of the Four Heavenly Kings have died and been replaced, and countless heroes have risen and fallen repeatedly. The only thing that has not changed over all these years···.”

She raised her index finger.

“Devil King.”

The lord of ten thousand horses. Eternal and immortal. Absolute. The scourge of the continent that has protected the throne for the past two thousand years.

The fact that the warrior appeared 21 times meant that the 20 warriors before him had failed to subdue the Demon King.

“It is a difficult path. It is a path that no one has succeeded on. I cannot even guess how many thorns lie ahead of that path.”

“You’re really good at making people do that.”

“Because there was only you.”

She continued.

“···That game was made without even knowing if I could break it or not. You broke it dozens, hundreds of times. I trust you. ”

“······.”

Somehow the difficulty level was really hard.

I really don’t know whether I should be happy or sad that people call me a game addict.

If I had played games a little less, I wouldn’t have been dragged here.

Knock, knock.

As I was thinking about that, a white halo burst out from around me. It seemed like they were about to wrap up the conversation.

She opened her mouth again with an innocent smile.

“Okay, it’s time to say goodbye. Oh, by the way, from now on, it would be better to close your eyes!”

“Why is that?”

“You might have mental problems!”

That moment when I tilted my head because I didn’t understand what he was saying.

‘Something’ appeared behind her. Something whose appearance was impossible to properly gauge, something that only revealed an enormous presence.

“By the way, I forgot to tell you this. The next Four Heavenly Kings are the puppets. The puppet masters are the Net. The Demon King’s army will also be a bit stronger as the bans are slightly relaxed. You probably know the puppet master well, so please be careful. ”

She was blurting out something important, but it fell on deaf ears.

An even more shocking scene filled my vision.

After staring at ‘something’ for a long time, I was soon able to realize what it was.

This is her true self.

A chill ran down my spine.

··· In [Demon King and Hero Party], the level is quite difficult to raise.

To begin with, the highest level is only 100.

Because I have never reached level 100 in nearly a thousand rounds.

Even if the Demon King’s seal is released to its limit.

Even if you push the warrior’s growth to the extreme.

Eventually, you will reach the late 90s and never be able to reach the max level.

That’s why I thought I was blocked in the system.

It was just a level that existed in name only. I thought it was impossible to actually reach level 100.

“Oh, before you go, let me warn you of one thing.”

No it wasn’t.

The wall was just so high that I just gave up.

Doesn’t it exist right in front of you?

Inside her body, which was difficult to capture in one’s field of vision, a small status window could be seen blinking.

[Lv 100]

So vividly that it gives you goosebumps.

As if this were the truth.

Soon, the clone that I had thought was Enen opens its mouth softly.

“Please be more polite from now on. I am a person who values manners.”

That concludes it all.

I went under the clouds.

*

“Cough···! Cough···! Ugh!!”

“Hero? Hero?! Are you okay?!!”

When I opened my eyes, I was back in the prayer room of the church.

I gagged with my mouth shut.

The saint looked at me with a worried expression from the side.

My head hurts so much it feels like it’s going to split. My stomach feels like it’s twisted.

It felt like my brain was rejecting something I shouldn’t see.

I cursed inwardly.

Crazy, it’s not even the Cthulhu Mythos.

You’re saying this happened because I saw you for a moment? I couldn’t believe it.

Enendo, who possesses such immense power. And I, who was helpless and frozen in front of him.

At first, I remembered swinging the holy sword at the goddess.

At first I thought I had dodged it just barely, but I was wrong.

In the first place, it was clear that even if you cut it, it wouldn’t take any damage since it was a clone.

‘From beginning to end. You just watched me…’

Should I say I was deceived… I felt pretty bad.

I said this while looking at the saintess who was making a fuss next to me.

“It’s okay···. I felt dizzy for a moment. I made a fool of myself.”

“Are you sure you’re okay? Are you sick or something?”

“Yes, it’s really okay. More importantly, how much have I been praying?”

“Yes? It hasn’t been that long. About 5 minutes or so···.”

“Only 5 minutes have passed?”

I thought we had been talking for quite some time, but it only lasted five minutes?

I couldn’t help but be embarrassed.

‘God is God···.’

It’s amazing how they can do such incomprehensible things so casually.

My head was spinning, perhaps because I was exposed to too much information at once. Or perhaps because I had just encountered her true self.

“Sorry. I need to take a break.”

‘Of course. Should I help you? ”

So I decided to take a little break.

I need some time to clear my head, even if it’s just for a moment.

The saint supported me with a worried look on her face, and I sat down on a nearby chair to catch my breath.

Perhaps because the bright sunlight was streaming in through the cracks in the window, the seat itself was comfortable.

But the break didn’t last long.

bang!

“We’re in trouble. Madam! Hero! ”

Because someone kicked the door open and came in.

It was a messenger from somewhere.

You can see that his hair is disheveled, as if he ran quite quickly.

Finally, he spoke with an urgent expression.

“The Demon King’s Army has attacked!”

At those words, we jumped up from our seats.