Ch.163The End of Malice

# 163. The End of Malice

The moment I entered the fifth floor with Danya’s support, I realized that the uneasy feeling I’d been experiencing throughout the fourth floor wasn’t just my imagination—it had actually been diluted because we were on a different floor.

Before I knew it, I had pushed away Danya who was supporting me and was staggering forward at a run.

“Sunghyun!”

“Quickly, we need to go quickly!”

They say people exhibit superhuman strength in crisis situations.

I moved forward toward where the feeling of unease was growing stronger, forgetting my physical condition. Danya, who had been beside me, caught up immediately and simply hoisted me onto her back and started running.

“That way!”

“I know!”

When I grabbed Danya’s shoulder and pointed in a direction, she supported my bottom and ran even faster. With my weakened body, just her sprinting at full speed in Ayor form, and me being carried on her back, was enough to send warning signals through my body again.

‘Once we get off this floor, I’ll somehow restore my stamina.’

So please, let this uneasiness be unfounded.

“Sunghyun…”

“Ah.”

But not long after, my mind went blank when I saw the giant eyeball floating in the air and my raid members sprawled around it.

Seyeon, so severely injured I wouldn’t have recognized her if not for the shield lying next to her, and Soyu noona with the left side of her body charred black.

Yehyun noona and Arang, lying face down with their backs burned black, not moving at all.

Yuri, lying near the eyeball, injured as severely as Seyeon, somehow still clutching her axe and struggling to get up.

And finally Subin, the least injured of them all, but because of that, her expressions and gestures of frustration, fear, and resignation were all the more visible.

Setting aside that unidentified eyeball shooting beams from midair, seeing my raid members, my women, in this state made me feel like I was going to explode with rage and go insane, but…

“[Snap out of it!]”

I found myself shouting at them as their raid leader.

“[It’s not over yet!]”

Because getting angry and crying wouldn’t help my raid members survive. The priority was to quickly get Subin, who seemed relatively unharmed and would understand the current situation, back on her feet.

Fortunately, my intention seemed to get through. Subin, who had been hanging her head in resignation, heard my words and jerked her head up.

‘Good.’

Having confirmed that the spark of hope had been reignited, I asked Danya to evacuate the injured.

“Danya!”

“Got it!”

She dashed out at wind-like speed, picked up Soyu noona and Seyeon on either side, and was returning.

“What the hell.”

Was it because a new face had suddenly appeared, or was it just a coincidence that we arrived during a brief pause in its attacks?

I felt like the giant eyeball was glaring at me with displeasure, and I wanted to glare back, but knowing that the anxiety I’d been feeling was because of this thing, I refrained from looking directly at it.

Given the circumstances, why would the monster that decimated our raid members be shaped like an eyeball?

Though it was my first time seeing such a monster, any experienced player would immediately think there must be a pattern related to eye contact. My comrades wouldn’t have broken that rule and ended up like this.

While Danya evacuated the injured at incredible speed and Subin, who had regained her senses, was coming toward us, I racked my brain to assess the battlefield, my comrades’ conditions, and the monster, trying to formulate a plan.

“I’m sorry…”

“Report.”

While Danya, having brought all the injured, was preparing simple spells without provoking the eye monster, I urged Subin while keeping the monster in my peripheral vision. Biting her lip, Subin quickly reported the battle progress, packing maximum information into minimum words, and around that time, the eye monster began to move again.

“We need to dodge.”

“Danya.”

“Yes.”

“Please.”

“No need to ask.”

Danya jumped forward again to draw aggro. The eye monster immediately started firing beams. Danya dodged nimbly, buying me time.

“If you’re trying to read its pattern, like I said before, it’s impossible. The pattern can’t be read.”

“If you say so, that must be true. But for now, we need to buy time. At least until Soyu noona regains consciousness.”

“You’re… pushing yourself.”

“I have to. Otherwise, we’ll all die.”

Subin’s mental state seemed a bit broken after experiencing such a devastating failure, but I didn’t have the luxury to comfort her now.

“Subin.”

“…Yeah.”

“What’s different from the beginning until now?”

“The frequency seems to have decreased a bit, but I don’t know what will happen if we try to leave the battlefield from here.”

“And nothing changed when the mage disappeared?”

“Not yet.”

After hearing Subin’s report, a hypothesis formed in my mind.

That this monster must have a ‘limit’.

‘No matter how shitty the game is, there might be difficult or terrible monsters, but there can’t be an untouchable monster. Even if it’s an entity that wasn’t in the game.’

It wasn’t simply about a weakness, but an assumption that there would be limits to its very existence.

The fact that ‘alchemy’ required extensive preparation, that it showed signs of trying to absorb large amounts of blood when the mage commanded it, and that the attack frequency had decreased compared to before.

After watching Danya’s evasive maneuvers while repeatedly pouring potions into Soyu noona’s mouth and even feeding her directly mouth-to-mouth several times, Soyu noona weakly coughed, made eye contact with me, and then, seemingly startled, spat the potion in her mouth onto my face.

Under normal circumstances, I might have made a joke about holy water from a saint, but now I just hurriedly helped her up.

“Are you okay?”

“Sunghyun…!”

“Yes. It’s me.”

I put my hand on her shoulder as she tried to grab my face and embrace me, and turned toward where the injured were lying.

‘Sorry, noona.’

Like with Subin, I didn’t have the luxury to comfort Soyu noona’s mental state. Seeming to understand my intention from my actions, noona forcibly gulped down a mana potion and began healing Yehyun noona and Arang first, who were less injured.

‘This is killing me.’

Even Danya wasn’t evading comfortably, and the strain on my body was building up.

If my hypothesis was correct, the way to deal with this monster was to buy time.

It seemed like my body would collapse before Danya failed to dodge.

‘Even if Yuri and Seyeon are healed, they probably won’t be able to return to battle immediately.’

What to do. What should I do.

Just enduring passively seemed too reactive, and it didn’t make sense that there would be only one way to deal with this.

“Subin.”

“Yeah.”

“Have you considered that maybe it’s not just that one time it absorbed blood?”

“…Huh?”

“Even if not blood specifically, it might be consuming something as fuel to fire those beams.”

Subin’s eyes lit up at my speculation.

“So we need to find and destroy that.”

“Yeah. Can you do it?”

“I have to. No matter what.”

Subin’s mental state seemed to have returned. She immediately downed a mana potion in one shot, closed her eyes, and concentrated. Then she started throwing fireballs here and there into the empty space, and began bleeding from her mouth.

“Subin!”

“I’m fine.”

Soyu noona continuing to heal despite trembling and having burst blood vessels in her eyes from excessive mana depletion, Subin continuing to search despite tears of blood from her eyes and coughing up blood, and Danya having to maintain her precarious balancing act.

Using “One for All” here would truly be an act with no turning back, but…

If we fail, there’s no turning back anyway.

Seeing Subin continue to cough blood even when using simple magic, the battlefield itself seems extremely challenging for using magic.

“Subin. You’re concentrating, so just listen.”

“…”

“One minute.”

“…!”

“Let’s take a gamble.”

If either Seyeon or Yuri had been able to return to battle, I wouldn’t have considered gambling. But no matter how I looked at it, I couldn’t see a way out of the current situation.

What if my assumption that we just need to endure was wrong?

Of course, by that logic, my second assumption that there must be some fuel source for the monster could also be wrong.

But what’s certain is that we can’t hold out much longer like this.

In a situation with nothing to reference, I decided to trust my thoughts and intuition.

[One for All has been activated.]

[Ability – Mana]

[The caster’s mana decreases, and the mana of all allies except the caster increases.]

“Begin!”

**

‘That idiot!’

I was angry.

And yet, I found myself reassured by his every word, naturally following him.

Taking a gamble.

I wanted to stop him but didn’t. I understood too well that he, like when he made his desperate charge, had judged this to be the best option.

So Subin endured the pain that felt like her intestines were being torn apart and her eyes were being ripped, searching the surroundings thoroughly.

‘Already about 30 seconds have passed…!’

I saw a beam graze Danya’s collar as she dodged, and Sunghyun, who had been pretending to be fine, drop to one knee and cough up blood.

Subin made a decision.

And she began gathering mana in her ‘eyes’—something she had never done despite countless magic research and practice sessions.

Soon, the world cracked.