episode_0144

CXXXVI.

[Candidate Gray?]

“Oh, sorry. Anyway, do you think this power is too much for a stickman? You’re not ignoring my women, are you?”

[Hehehe. You are truly a sight to behold. Please love and cherish me a lot. This is advice from an old man’s experience. Hehehe.]

The sight of the disciplinary guards standing on either side of her and grabbing her shoulders and pulling her might have been rude in some ways, but instead, she smiled and liked it, like a grandfather who sees his grandson bring his girlfriend.

[But that’s not the case. If you and your party are of a level that I and Gray can’t even dare to guess, you can win. Obviously. However, it will be difficult to win by minimizing damage like before.]

“Who’s going to die?”

[As I said, it is a backward place with no decent resources or special skills. I am not simply disparaging them as islanders, but because I made them that way. When I banished them, I killed all those who were deeply connected to the followers of the Demon Tribe and burned all their documents and secrets.]

[But they ‘survived’. They intentionally put a curse on themselves to kill their talents, but as time passed, the curse weakened, and in order to survive, their descendants became mean and base. And in the process, they became humans who resembled the demons.]

[They are greedy for small things, angry over trivial things, arrogant about everything, jealous of everything they do not have, incessantly lusting after sex, and gluttonous to the point of even putting human flesh in their mouths.]

[The Demon King was delighted to discover the staff and made contact with it first. The place had already changed to the point where it could be considered half a demon world.]

“The Demon World… … ?”

[Also, for some reason, the Imperial Palace of Zipangu disappeared from my sight at some point.]

What could be wrong with being out of his sight? I didn’t realize it.

However, the divine bow was surprised by those words as if something big had happened and called out to him, ‘Muheo-nim!’

[Perhaps I was a person destined to fail. Like Gray, I did not have the venomous mind to kill hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of people if necessary.]

[So instead of burdening Gray-nim with a heavy burden, as I said before, the unmanned cradle will follow Gray-nim.]

“Hmm.”

[I’ll also give you this.]

“Huh? What?”

[The innate ability I was born with, ‘the eyes that look down on the stars.’]

As I heard the calm words of Muheo and the shout of Shingung, “Ah, no! Your Majesty Muheo!”, I lost consciousness along with a bright light that seemed to blind me.

◈ ◈ ◈

One morning, four days after Gray entered the unmanned cradle.

Unusually, all the superhumans were gathered at Evergreen Academy.

To hear the news delivered by the Divine Bow.

“So the intermediate demons ran away? Where? Whose information did you get that from? Are you the last witness? If so, where is the last witness?”

Pope Judas pressed the shrine as if he was interrogating them. It was understandable, as the Caligo sect was very uncomfortable with Gray, who had been active for the past few days, disappearing and his final destination being the uninhabited cradle.

It was Pope Judas who was in a bad mood after seeing Dean Hu, who was on the same side as the unmanned cradle, urging Gray.

At that time, I was holding back my discomfort at the sight of Gray happily pouring out his anger on the Dean, and recently I was busy fighting the demons.

Above all, Pope Judas felt that not a single word of Gray’s was wrong.

As he said, the intermediate-level demons who were beaten with a fist wrapped in divine power were neither dead nor alive. As they kept beating them, they were soon in front of Gray, and Gray – or, more precisely, the Arcana Pope, who was part of Gray’s party – used his miraculous ability to obtain a confession from the demons.

After Gray entered the unmanned cradle, we haven’t seen him. One can’t help but wonder if he is Pope Judas.

“He is now in the cradle of the unmanned. With the emptiness.”

“I know that. Can we, can I come and find you?”

“No way.”

“… … .”

The shrine said no as if it was chewing on something and Judah did not get angry at her answer and just kept his mouth shut.

It would have been better if I had been angry.

But Judas just stared at the shrine with silent eyes.

“Hey, Pope Judas?”

“… … .”

Just in case, the Dean called out to Judas, but Judas did not look at him.

An awkward, stuffy silence falls over the spacious dean’s office.

It was such a silence that if anyone were to say anything nonsense here, it would be like a knife being drawn at any moment.

The Dean then turned his gaze to Shin-gung, hoping that she would say something.

However, the shrine did not say anything and just bowed its head.

‘It seems like anyone would misunderstand it!!!’

The Dean felt like going crazy and jumping for joy. Gray, who had been coordinating these people so nonchalantly, was once again considered amazing.

‘In the first place, those things with this multidimensional mental world are the ones that follow you so obediently… … No, that’s not what’s important right now! Aah! I don’t know! It’s annoying!’

In the end, Dean Hu also gave up on trying to mediate. He deserves praise for not showing his irritation on the outside.

“Ask again. Do you want me to see Gray?”

The Dean thought the situation was going to be a mess. Pope Judas’s words were very gentle, but the ferocity contained within them was not ordinary.

“I told you not to.”

In addition, the shrine was completely filled with oil. It was burning fiercely.

“Huh? Hoo… … . Just in case, I’m asking, but I already know where my and Caligo’s Black Unmanned Cradle are. So if you’re worried about spying on your family or something like that, you don’t have to. A secret? I’ve kept it and I plan to keep it. So I’ll ask again. Can I, check, on Gray-sama’s, safety?”

Judas sighed, not raising his voice after that, as if he was thinking of a snarling predator, but the Dean thought that if someone asked if it wasn’t okay, he would hit the back of the head of the person who asked.

‘I’m not okay at all!! Please, Shin-gung-ah!’

“I told you not to?! Anyway!! Even if you visit the unmanned cradle, you can’t check it!! Gray is with Muheo (無虛).”

Crispy―!

I could hear the sound of someone stepping on a well-baked cookie.

It’s not like I stepped on a cookie. Instead, something broke. The tea table where the superhumans were sitting was shattered into tiny pieces.

The tea and teacups on top that no one drank from also had no choice but to meet the same fate.

“Can I take that to mean that you are currently detaining Gray?”

“Huh! Think whatever you want!!”

The Dean couldn’t understand Shin-gung. Why did he keep pouring oil on a burning house?

“Hey, hey. Shingung. I think what you said is a bit harsh… … ?”

“Huh! What is it!”

The shrine was like a hedgehog. Even the Dean, who had been talking to it without reason, could not help but cower like an animal pricked by its thorns.

Is it that day? The magic happens?

‘No. What kind of magic is a superhuman!’

“I guess the unmanned cradle is quite amazing?”

“That’s amazing. Who did you thank for making you a superhuman?”

“… Are you saying that I became a superhuman thanks to the Cradle of the Unmanned?”

“!!”

Only then did the shrine realize what he had said.

However, it is impossible to take back words that have already been spoken. The problem was that the current state of the shrine was not something that he wanted to do at all.

To Shingung, Muheo was his father, his teacher, and the person he respected the most.

I still have so much to repay, I don’t have much time left, and the Demon King is invading the continent, so I can’t be by your side.

However, that void is consuming Gray’s remaining life force by giving him a ‘power’ that he has never heard of.

It is impossible for the Shin-gung to be at ease, having come here to deliver the unspoken words without being able to see what may be the last time.

The Pope of Judas is angry in his own way, and the Shrine is angry in its own way.

The atmosphere gradually became more and more tense, and eventually all the superhumans had no choice but to stand up.

“Cradle of the Unmanned, can we see it as the meaning of the whole?”

The Pope’s voice was not one of cheerful playfulness that suited his appearance. Just as his voice was heavy and full of something, the content was not something that could be easily overlooked.

“Shingung… … . Haa. For now, I will follow the will of the Shingung (神弓).”

As always, the Sword Immortal supported the Shingung.

“I honestly don’t really care.”

The moment the other superhumans felt relieved at the words of Mu-Gwang, who shrugged his shoulders and stepped back,

“… But, if it’s to convey the words of the unmanned cradle, then there’s nothing I can do. If it’s not unauthorized, then it’s not.”

“Okay.”

Kwakwakwakwa!

Pope Judas was not at all intimidated by the three opponents. In fact, the aura emanating from his body was so great that he could overwhelm the three on his own.

He was proving with his whole body that he was not the oldest among them for nothing.

Of course, the battle of superhumans is not decided simply by the amount of divine power. In fact, at the moment when Geomseon was about to draw his sword,

“Once you pull out that sword, it’s war.”

The superhuman who spoke with a sharp tone unexpectedly was not Caligo’s sword. Freya spoke as if warning.

Even as Mu-Gwang was about to step forward, the King of Death, Advakiel, stopped him and shook his head.

The momentum that had been focused on the three was now completely concentrated on Shin-gung.

Sword Immortal and Martial Madness had relaxed their momentum, but they looked at Shingung and Pope with pitiful eyes.

In fact, the reason the two are not actively taking action is because they do not understand the Pope’s position.

Even if a superhuman, or at least a master, were to say, “It’s all thanks to me that you’ve reached that level!”, would anyone be able to tolerate it?

If you have a hundred, you should start by drawing out a hundred weapons. Even if it really helps, you shouldn’t do that.

Moreover, the Pope is a religious person who believes in God.

He was the leader of a group of fanatics who believed that his rise to superhuman status was entirely a gift from God.

To someone like him, saying, ‘It’s thanks to the Cradle of the Unmanned that I became a superhuman’ is no different from saying, ‘Let’s have a religious war!’

He’s the Pope?

Geomseon couldn’t understand why Shin-gung would say something like that, but he sighed and put his hand on his sword. After all, Shin-gung was his comrade-in-arms.

There was no one among the gathered superhumans who did not know that he was about to draw his sword.

“Hey, hey, don’t do that.”

After the dean came forward and tried to stop him, Geomseon bit his lip as he looked at Frey, who was blocking him.

The Sword Immortal’s sword was half-drawn, and Frey’s ‘Fragarach’ rose from behind her.

Wu Guang put one foot diagonally forward so that he could jump out at any time, and the King of Death took out his dark weapons and held them in both hands.

When Dean Hu and Vice Dean Fletcher were at a loss as to how things had come to this,

Srrrung―.

A noise comes from a completely different place in the Dean’s office. A bookshelf has been pushed over!

“What are you doing now?”

And a voice full of reproach.