Ch.141141. Sacred Mausoleum of the Dead

The face-changing demon’s attack had happened several days ago.

The party had finally found safe lodging.

“We’re going to sleep in a mausoleum??”

Natural-born Confucian girl Sunhwa and Confucian boy Sunwoo were shocked.

Sleeping inside a tomb.

It was something they couldn’t even imagine.

But for the Westerners like Amon’s group, who valued practicality over propriety, the decision was firm.

“Whatever else you might say, there’s no security system more reliable than that of a mausoleum.”

For the past thousand years, this mausoleum had remained unknown to the public.

While the Vatican had managed it meticulously, the mausoleum’s own effects were even more significant.

“You can’t even approach the entrance of the mausoleum without a cross fragment.”

Amon showed them the bag provided by the Vatican.

It contained one of the 128 pieces of the Vatican’s most famous holy relic—a cross once carried by a saint.

Since this fragment was necessary to even perceive the mausoleum, Amon’s suggestion to stay nearby was perfectly reasonable.

“Besides, we’re not actually sleeping inside the tomb. We’re just parking the camper at the entrance.”

“Still, sleeping next to a tomb is a bit…”

“If we worry about every little thing, we might end up sleeping in an actual tomb instead.”

As he said, the previous night’s attack by Goetia had been a chilling experience.

Eventually, the siblings agreed to Amon’s proposal to stay at the mausoleum entrance.

“Now that we’ve found lodging, let’s rest in the camper today and talk tomorrow.”

*

A day passed, and the party entered the dungeon again.

“Today, you two should try facing the baby angels.”

It would have been possible for Sonia and Kathy to handle them like the day before, but Amon hadn’t forgotten why they had come here.

“You need to gain experience too.”

Under Amon’s encouragement, the two faced the baby angels.

For Sunwoo, who was already accustomed to dodging attacks and slashing, they weren’t particularly difficult opponents.

The problem was Sunhwa.

“Kuh.”

Her style of defending with a two-handed sword and striking with a short sword was bound to struggle against arrows that ignored defenses.

Of course, she didn’t just take it passively.

“Void Slash.”

She decapitated an angel with her specialty long-range sword drawing technique.

But once again, the slow firing speed characteristic of sword drawing techniques held her back.

“Sis!”

She finally took a red arrow to her thigh.

Without panicking, she followed the protocol they had agreed upon beforehand.

“I’ve closed my eyes.”

Baby angels had a critical weakness.

Each arrow caused uncontrollable love or hatred in those who saw them for the first time.

In other words, simply closing one’s eyes solved most of the problem.

The arrowheads themselves had no physical destructive power, and the baby angels themselves didn’t possess threatening combat abilities.

Therefore, just closing one’s eyes made baby angels manageable.

Remembering this fact, she closed her eyes. Meanwhile, her companions eliminated the baby angels around her and neutralized the effect with blue arrows.

“You should be fine now.”

Only after hearing Amon’s voice did Sunhwa open her eyes.

She nodded after confirming the blue arrowhead stuck in her thigh.

“Sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry about. We already discussed this.”

Everyone already knew that baby angels were her weakness.

“We just need to solve this before going to the lower floors.”

The baby angels themselves weren’t that threatening.

They would only be troublesome when encountered alongside other monsters on the lower floors.

Her task was to master dealing with baby angels before then.

“Let’s get used to dodging the arrows.”

Following Amon’s encouragement, she got up and faced the angels again.

Eventually, she mastered how to dodge the angels’ arrows.

“That step…”

“I learned it from you.”

The solution was simple.

The step she had copied from Amon in the past.

She dodged by running along walls, across ceilings, and spinning through the air.

“Is this a passing grade?”

The party unanimously gave her a passing mark.

After completely mastering the baby angels, the group descended another floor.

This time they encountered beautiful female angel… statues.

According to the information the party had gathered, these angels only attacked those who weren’t looking at them.

The important point was that they only attacked those “not looking at them.”

It didn’t matter if someone else was watching the angel on your behalf.

The person themselves had to keep the entire angel in their field of vision to prevent attacks.

The problem was the baby angels mixed in among these female angels.

If hit by an arrow even once, you’d have to close your eyes, and then the female angels would move.

‘This is why gimmick dungeons are difficult.’

It was much harder to deal with monsters that had specialized abilities working in synergy than those that were overwhelmingly strong on their own.

But on this floor, Sunhwa had many opportunities to shine.

“The pine tree’s roots run deep…”

Reciting the verse she had learned from her master, she blocked the female angel’s attack.

In the past, she had wondered why her master kept reciting such cringeworthy lines, but now she understood.

It takes a certain courage to block and cut with a two-handed sword rather than a shield.

In such situations, reciting poetry to maintain composure significantly increased the success rate of parrying.

Clang!

She blocked the female angel’s attack without even looking back.

Her two-handed sword glowed blue, storing the impact.

The energy transferred to the short sword in her right hand.

“And finally shatters the rock.”

Slash.

She cut through the female angel’s body as easily as slicing tofu.

The angel fell forward, its upper and lower body separated.

She didn’t even spare a glance at the angel she had defeated and faced the next one.

In this space, she was stronger against the angels than anyone else in the party.

For her, a counter-type tanker who blocked attacks and returned them to her opponents, the female angels were a perfect match.

She continued her streak against the female angels.

Before long, she had annihilated all the angels.

“Good job.”

Amon approached to congratulate her.

However, when their eyes met, Amon noticed something was wrong with her condition.

“Amon. I love you.”

“…I see you took a hit.”

She threw away her sword and pounced on Amon.

Amon sighed and administered a blue arrowhead like an injection.

The effect was immediate.

She had been on top of Amon, but now she rolled into a corner with a flushed face, clearly back to normal.

“S-sorry!”

“It couldn’t be helped in that chaos.”

She couldn’t lift her face due to embarrassment.

Sonia glared at Sunhwa with narrowed eyes, while Kathy gave a bitter smile and shrugged.

And Sunwoo…

“Sis. Just think of it as making a mistake while drunk.”

“That’s not comforting at all.”

“I know. I wasn’t trying to comfort you.”

Thwack.

He earned himself a flick on the forehead.

*

After the battle with the female angels, the group continued to descend.

Following the female angels, the next monsters were eyeless angels.

These angels were sensitive to sound instead of sight and threw spears in the direction of sounds.

While Sonia was vulnerable to them, Amon had the advantage.

“Is that the space-folding technique you mentioned before?”

“Yes. It makes no sound and ignores obstacles in between.”

Amon, who had awakened to this new ability, was the perfect counter to these angels.

The next day, they encountered seductive angels.

These had the ability to induce suicide in those exposed to their voices for a certain period.

Sonia, who had the strongest burst damage in the party, was assigned to handle these angels.

The next angel they met was one Amon knew well.

“Why is this person here?”

An angel with heads on both front and back.

It was the same angel that had exchanged values in the Higgjen Group dungeon.

Of course, it wasn’t the same individual but a different person who had transformed, yet everything from abilities to appearance was identical.

It was somewhat disconcerting to see a boss appear as a regular mob, but Amon used his previous experience to defeat this angel.

Next was a fat angel.

Its ability was to devour all attacks coming from the front, so it could only be attacked from behind.

Amon and Sunhwa were assigned to handle this one.

It was a simple matter of going behind the angel and cutting its neck.

And finally, they met a handsome angel.

The Vatican had estimated this angel’s ability to be future prediction.

“Kathy. I’ll leave this to you.”

Kathy was assigned to handle this angel.

It used red threads to show strange futures and induce self-destruction, so it wasn’t a particularly difficult opponent.

Thus, Amon’s party dealt with each of the seven types of angels one by one.

When there were only one or two types of angels, some members could handle them, but when all seven types appeared simultaneously, everyone needed to cooperate.

While Sunwoo dealt with baby angels, Amon cut the back of the fat angel’s neck,

Kathy deceived the handsome angel’s future vision,

Sonia blasted the head of the singing angel,

And Sunhwa blocked the female angels’ attacks, fulfilling her role as the party’s tanker.

Thanks to each of the five members performing their roles effectively, the party was able to reach the mid-boss floor without any significant injuries.

“Is everyone ready?”

The group reviewed the records of the knights who had previously challenged the mid-boss and entered the boss room.

Inside, they were greeted by a giant floating eyeball.

[Ah… it begins again.]

Having seen all sorts of grotesque things, the party was no longer surprised by an eyeball speaking without a mouth.

Even when the eyeball spread seven pairs of wings, the party wasn’t particularly shocked.

But when the heads of the seven angels they had encountered appeared above the eyeball, forming a crown, Sonia grimaced for the first time.

“Ugh. We’re supposed to consider that an angel too?”

“Actually, that’s closer to the original form.”

Whether it was the Goddess’s taste or not, angels, unlike the common perception, resembled the mid-boss now before them.

Although they had seen photos beforehand, the visual was still hard to get used to in person.

Amon gathered his crumbling sanity and addressed the party.

“Let’s just do what we’ve been doing.”

With Amon’s thrown sword as the signal, the party’s mid-boss battle began.