Ch.129129. The Black Sea

Amon returned to his quarters after meeting with the Crown Prince.

“I’m back. No, no. Don’t get up, keep sleeping.”

Amon tucked Sonia back into bed as she rustled and tried to rise, then headed to a proper shower room for the first time in a while.

After his shower, Kathy was there to greet him in the living room.

Normally she would seduce Amon in black lingerie, but since they were staying in the royal annex, she had compromised with cute pajamas.

“You didn’t need to get up.”

“I was just sleeping until a moment ago.”

Though she said that, Amon could only offer a bitter smile, knowing she had woken up because she wasn’t used to sleeping on the heated floor.

“I’ll be your arm pillow, let’s sleep together.”

Amon offered his right arm for Kathy and his left for Sonia, who might feel left out.

Lying down with lovers on both sides, Amon closed his eyes in the fragrant comfort and fell into a peaceful sleep for the first time in a while. When he opened his eyes again,

He was standing on a black sea.

“?”

A black sea.

Faced with such a surreal sight, Amon instantly knew this place wasn’t reality.

‘A dream?’

Amon raised his vigilance to the extreme.

‘Is there a demon or ghost that can pull me into dreams?’

It wasn’t impossible.

Of course, concluding this was a dream might be hasty when he didn’t know what kind of space this was, but he couldn’t think of anything else.

He immediately grabbed his own finger and bent it until it hurt to verify if this was a dream.

‘Ouch. That hurts.’

Not only that, he could also check the time on his wristwatch.

From these two facts, Amon reached one conclusion.

‘This is not a dream.’

Instinctively, Amon reached for the sword that should be at his waist.

But there was no sword there.

Amon’s eyes narrowed.

He removed his watch and heightened his vigilance, ready to engage in combat at any moment as he began to survey his surroundings.

That’s when he noticed someone in the distance.

A figure in a trench coat staring at Amon across the vast black sea.

Male skeleton, race unknown, wearing a creepy skull mask, and as for weapons…

The next moment, the man vanished from sight.

The vanished man suddenly appeared before Amon’s eyes.

Instinctively, Amon aimed a punch infused with Divine Power at the man’s jaw.

The man dodged the attack with ease.

“Tsk.”

Amon was about to continue his attack with a click of his tongue, but stopped when he heard what the man said.

“Quite the hasty fellow. I admit my approach was somewhat rude, but I don’t think this is necessary.”

A deep voice flowed from beneath the skull mask.

Hearing this, Amon withdrew his fist as if nothing had happened.

Nod.

Still not completely trusting, Amon nodded slightly while maintaining his vigilance.

The stranger gratefully accepted the opportunity and began to speak.

“This is the boundary of the world I protect. If you’re a prophet too, I don’t think I need to explain further.”

‘You too,’ and ‘prophet’

From these two words, Amon realized the stranger was an ally.

Only then did Amon lower his guard.

“Name.”

“Now we’re talking. I abandoned my name. More precisely, it disappeared. When you mingle with nameless beings in this place, it tends to vanish.”

“Nameless things?”

“Beings from beyond the world’s boundary, constantly eyeing our world. Giving them names would make it easier for them to target us. So I erased mine.”

Only then did Amon realize the identity of this stranger.

The one who had defeated all the entities that ruled this world from behind the scenes.

The one who returned the lost night and blue sky to humanity.

The one who sacrificed his own history, name, and records to save this world once.

The protagonist of Punk City 2.

“Ghost of London…”

“I was called that once. Since I don’t have a name to go by, just call me Specter.”

“I’ll call you Ghost.”

After all, how could he call someone who saved the world once and continued to protect it a “specter”?

Amon deliberately named the man before him “Ghost” and continued the conversation.

“What do you mean by beings from outside?”

“Where should I begin? How much do you already know?”

At those words, Amon recalled the content of Punk City 2 where Ghost had been active.

Originally, this world didn’t belong to humanity.

Of course, thanks to the rapid development from the diesel revolution, it superficially appeared that humans had conquered nature.

But when night fell on the world—more precisely, when the darkness called night arrived—humanity was being farmed without even knowing it.

A red moon that drove people mad just by looking at it.

Parasitic monsters that ate humans and mimicked them.

Whales that invited ships into endless abysses, and more.

Monsters beyond imagination replaced people, killed them, played with them, and ultimately threw them beyond the veil of oblivion, all without humans knowing.

The problem was that these beings were all incredibly cunning.

Even though they were powerful, if they showed themselves openly, humanity might unite against them. Instead, they all hid within society and slowly strangled humanity.

Ghost was a hunter who hunted such beings.

However, there was no way an ordinary human could hunt such beings no matter what methods they used…

‘So he chose assassination.’

Of course, in the game there were skill trees for wielding large weapons like axes and cannons, but the protagonist’s identity was fundamentally that of an assassin.

Using any means necessary, targeting vital points when the enemy is most vulnerable.

Punk City 2 never strayed far from this approach throughout the game.

‘It’s also the game where I used assassination play the most.’

Amon began to drift into memories.

Then, remembering he was in the middle of a conversation, he refocused on Ghost before him.

“Where was I?”

“How much do you know about my past?”

“That you defeated the dream-eating moon and were remembered as the silent guardian by a few.”

“And after that?”

“I don’t know.”

Ghost nodded.

He explained his subsequent activities to Amon.

“I continued hunting aberrations afterward.”

“Aberrations?”

“What your era calls entities.”

Thanks to his efforts in the main story, entities capable of threatening humanity disappeared from the world.

Thanks to that, only beings that might be threatening to individuals but not to human history—like Red Shoes, Happy Baker, Bloody Mary—remained in the world.

Ghost, who had saved the world, traveled around to eliminate even these beings.

During this time, he realized something he hadn’t known in the main story.

“Entities can never be completely eradicated.”

The reason being that entities are natural phenomena themselves.

“Entities were beings excessively transformed by Divine Power.”

Beings with Divine Power cause phenomena that cannot be explained by physical laws.

Entities are beings transformed by excessive obsession reflected in such unique Divine Power.

“In other words, as long as humanity exists, entities cannot disappear.”

Red Mask, Infinite Stairs, Happy Baker, and so on.

All these entities were created from transformed humans.

In a way, demons could also be considered entities in the sense that they were beings transformed when humans overstepped into divine territory.

And in that sense, Sonia and Kathy were also halfway close to being entities.

The difference was that entities lost their humanity due to excessive obsession and went around harming others,

Demons lived with hatred toward all of humanity because they couldn’t repent for their past mistakes,

And Sonia and Kathy maintained their humanity because their direction was virtue.

Having realized this truth, Ghost abandoned his plan to eradicate entities.

Unless he caused a nuclear war to exterminate all of humanity, entities would be endlessly supplied.

But he didn’t give up.

More precisely, he couldn’t give up.

The moment he learned the secret of entities, he realized another truth.

“Entities have a lower ceiling than humans or demons who have realized virtue. Just as beasts cannot surpass humans, the lords of creation, beings consumed by obsession cannot be as strong as those who maintain their reason.”

Therefore, the threat level of an entity is typically limited to endangering a single village at most.

And that’s only when people don’t know how to deal with them. Once the countermeasures are known, it’s even possible to confine them in laboratories and extract resources from them.

But the entities Ghost had encountered until now were ones that couldn’t be contained and threatened entire nations.

And Ghost discovered where these exceptional entities came from.

“When beings from the outside world lend their power, they can transform into nation-scale entities with twisted reason.”

Ghost called these beings that gave power to such entities “Outers.”

“And now I’m stopping these Outers.”

No sooner had he finished speaking than a monster burst through the surface of the black sea behind Ghost.

GROAAAR!!!

It was a deformed being with eight legs covered in tentacles.

The next moment, Ghost disappeared.

After about two seconds, when he reappeared before Amon, the deformed being’s form began to collapse.

KIEEEK!!

In his hand was a lump of blood, writhing and trying to escape from him.

Ghost showed this to Amon and continued his explanation.

“I’m preventing creatures like this from entering our world.”

“Ah…”

“Dealing with these creatures has made it difficult for me to live in our world anymore.”

Amon understood those words.

Beware that when fighting monsters, you do not become a monster yourself.

Amon could sense an indescribable eeriness beyond Ghost’s skull mask.

Perhaps he might be an entity transformed by his mission to save this world.

While Amon was lost in such thoughts, Ghost burned the blood lump and met Amon’s eyes.

“I brought you here to talk about this.”

Ghost had invited Amon to the world’s boundary through his dream.

So this black sea was the boundary between dreams, reality, and worlds.

“I’ve been keeping an eye on you since you eliminated the eye from beyond the world that I missed last time.”

“…What’s that?”

“Hm? You didn’t know?”

Ghost brought up the story of Kathy’s brother, Owen, whom Amon had dealt with in the past.

Owen, who had merged with a computer and transformed into a snail at the end.

Amon tilted his head at the sudden mention of Owen.

“What does that guy have to do with anything?”

“His fusion with the computer was only possible due to an Outer’s intervention.”

“Ah. I see.”

From Amon’s group’s perspective, they had only seen Owen make eye contact with Amon before melting away on his own,

so they hadn’t even guessed that the incident was related to Outers.

‘So that was the result of an Outer’s intervention.’

It was quite surprising.

But it was merely surprising, not enough to make him forget the conversation.

“So, you called me to talk about Outers?”

“Yes. Those demons of Goetia you’re so fixated on. They came here a few months ago.”

At the mention of Goetia’s demons, Amon’s hands naturally tensed.

“Those bastards?”

“Yes. They made contact with Outers here and went back. I’d like to chase after them and slaughter them, but…”

Ghost pointed beyond the horizon of the black sea.

In that direction, a giant of unknown identity made eye contact with Amon.

Ghost stepped between their gazes to meet the giant’s eyes, and teleported toward the giant just as he had with the previous monster.

But this time, Ghost didn’t deal with the giant.

More precisely, he chose not to.

Ghost teleported back to Amon as if he had remembered something.

“Right. It doesn’t feel right to ask for a favor without giving anything in return. Let me give you a clue about your ability while we’re at it.”

“Huh?”

Only upon hearing Ghost’s words did Amon recall something he had been forgetting.

Divine Power holders typically possess special abilities.

Sonia’s recoil absorption and Kathy’s prophetic abilities were examples.

In contrast, Amon still hadn’t discovered any special ability of his own.

He had simply been resolving incidents thanks to his overwhelming Divine Power and the excellent physical abilities based on it, so he had completely forgotten about it.

“You know about my ability?”

Ghost nodded at Amon’s question.

Then he handed Amon a sword he had summoned from somewhere, and said,

“I’ll weaken that giant to match your level. You finish it off and try to get a sense of your ability.”

Caught up in Ghost’s pace, Amon nodded in bewilderment.

Soon, Ghost teleported with Amon to the giant’s presence.

And in three seconds, he dismembered the giant’s limbs.

Amon prepared to finish off the incapacitated giant using everything at his disposal.

He used his Four Eyes to identify weaknesses, poured Divine Power into his sword, and stabbed at those points.

Squelch.

Amon’s sword pierced through what should have been thick skin without resistance, reaching the soul’s weak point.

When Amon cut through that spot, the giant instantly lost its form and collapsed.

However, its reaction was slightly different from the monster Ghost had dealt with earlier.

That monster had melted into a writhing blood-like mass.

In contrast, the giant disappeared without leaving a trace.

While Amon was confused by the clearly different results, Ghost nodded with satisfaction.

“Yes. That’s it.”

“I have no idea what’s going on. Can’t you just tell me?”

“I’ve given you enough hints. Find the answer yourself.”

With those words, Ghost made a gesture.

Then, just like when he was pulled into this world, Amon began to gradually move away from the black sea.

As Amon drifted away, Ghost spoke to him.

“I wish we could leisurely chat over tea, but I apologize for only being able to discuss business.”

“You don’t need to apologize for that.”

There was no way he would hold such thoughts against someone who was protecting his world.

Instead, Amon said with a bitter smile:

“If anything, I should apologize. I wanted to at least keep you company.”

“I appreciate the thought nonetheless.”

The remnants of humanity behind the skull mask expressed gratitude.

And so Amon vanished from above the black sea.

Looking in the direction where Amon had disappeared, Ghost murmured:

“May you meet a happier ending.”