Episode 224 Question (2)
* * *
After.
Shin Tae-ri and Jo Jin-ho watched Sang-hyun's battle while recovering their stamina, which had rapidly depleted during the previous fight.
At first, they had expected a fierce battle where Sang-hyun and Crocodile would exchange attacks intensely. This
was because of the imposing presence emanating from Crocodile's appearance.
However, their expectations were wrong.
Crocodile was thoroughly toyed with by Sang-hyun from beginning to end until he died.
The reason was simple.
His resistance to the status ailments Sang-hyun created had dropped significantly.
At some point, it even began to feel as though Sang-hyun was checking his status ailment skills one by one.
“There are just too many.”
“I know. Even though I have a pretty good memory, I get confused about which skill is connected to which status ailment.”
“One thing is certain: if we went one-on-one with Sang-hyun, we would definitely fall victim to some status ailment.”
“I agree. We would struggle without a dispel artifact.”
Jo Jin-ho and Shin Tae-ri were marveling at Sang-hyun’s diverse repertoire of skills.
Of course, these two are players with high core stats, so they won't be defeated like the crocodile.
The reason the crocodile became Sanghyeon's prey was that its resistance to skills was practically zero.
However, these two were not in that situation; they were able to sufficiently resist and halve the effects.
Of course, that doesn't mean they can completely neutralize the skills.
If they resort to a war of attrition using multiple skills, they will inevitably suffer severely from some of them.
Anticipating such a future, I felt both admiration and fear at the same time. What
if I were to face Sanghyeon as an enemy? And what if he had grown even stronger than he is now? It
naturally occurred to me that he would be by no means an easy opponent. It
was not a fear born of weakness, but an objective conclusion derived from cool-headed judgment.
"It seems interest is slowly picking up on you, Sanghyeon. Talk about you in the community has increased significantly recently."
"I saw it, too. I heard that the media dealing with sensational news is talking about the 'Top 6' instead of the 'Top 5'."
“Yeah. It doesn’t seem like a good trend. There aren’t exactly guys who would coolly welcome the arrival of a new competitor, are there?”
“Jung Hee-sun, whom I saw today, is a prime example. She’s going to find a way to get back at Sang-hyun no matter what.”
Shin Tae-ri frowned.
This is why vested interests are so terrifying.
Of course, judging by domestic guild standards, it wasn’t really her place to say such things, coming from a member of the Eden Guild, which is the epitome of all kinds of vested interests.
So she just thought it to herself and didn’t actually speak it out loud.
In any case, five players are dividing honor and power equally under the name of “Swordsman Named.”
Given that they are mentioned together whenever the topic is raised, whether domestically or internationally, the situation carries immense symbolic significance.
What if one more person were to join?
People would naturally be more interested in the new face joining than in the existing five, who have become stagnant to the core.
If that person were Sang-hyun, people’s attention would naturally be drawn to him.
The interest from guilds, associations, and overseas entities goes without saying. It is self-evident that he would be the center of attention.
Moreover, he would be constantly virtualized against the existing five, generating countless rumors.
The one benefiting from this is the newcomer Sang-hyun, while the ones suffering are the players with bad reputations.
Shin Tae-ri thought that those "bad-reputed" players would definitely try to harm Sang-hyun.
“But do you think we’re going to lose? If we fought based on skill, I think we could definitely hold our own.”
Jo Jin-ho pointed forward.
Crocodile, reduced to a punching bag, had his arms severed before he knew it and was panting heavily, gasping for breath. He had
been frozen by Sang-hyun’s skills, trembled from electric shocks, and been inexplicably dragged away to be beaten.
Was it because he felt that he was no match for Sang-hyun in any way, going beyond mere mockery?
At some point, Crocodile completely let his body go limp, signaling that he had no intention of resisting.
It wasn’t a plea to be spared.
It meant to be killed quickly.
Sang-hyun no longer toyed with an opponent who had pathetically raised a white flag. Honestly, it wasn’t fun.
So.
*Pfft!*
His head was severed.
Since his body was already in a tattered state, seasoned to the brim, the crocodile died as a headless ghost.
But then.
“Huh?”
A buff was simultaneously activated for Sang-hyun, Shin Tae-ri, and Jo Jin-ho.
[Vashunat Language Learning – You can understand and speak the written and spoken words of the Vashunat language.]
“……Language learning?”
As soon as the buff activated, information related to the Vashunat language was injected into the three of them at once.
They could not resist, as if forcibly inserted by an absolute power, and it happened in an instant.
It is a language that does not exist on Earth.
It was impossible for a language from Earth to have been suddenly learned in an unknown space.
Ultimately, it occurred to them that this was the language used by the enemies they had just encountered, whose speech they couldn't understand.
Sang-hyun asked,
"Isn't that a bit strange?"
While gaining buffs happens often, obtaining a language buff is unprecedented. It was the same in their past lives.
Shin Tae-ri and Jo Jin-ho nodded. Because it was such an unexpected phenomenon, they kept tilting their heads in confusion.
Jo Jin-ho said,
"We need to investigate this more thoroughly. Nothing in this space feels familiar."
Even though they had entered a Break Spot connected to a rift, the structure of the dungeon still follows that of a dungeon.
In other words, while the monster composition or environment may differ, the basic framework itself does not change. That is the system.
However, the background of this space felt highly alien. Although
Jo Jin-ho and Shin Tae-ri had visited countless dungeons, rifts, and Break Spots before,
this was the first time they had encountered traces of a near-future civilization that was a step more advanced than modern civilization.
This was true even based on references to other guilds and globally shared databases.
“I’ll take the lead. I’m the most specialized at escaping the scene if something happens.”
Shin Tae-ri stepped forward.
Sang-hyun didn’t stop her.
After all, reconnaissance was her specialty. Instead, Sang-hyun intended to respond according to the unfolding situation. Things like
using Recovery to remove status effects or using Perfect Shield to activate invincibility.
This was because he was overwhelmingly specialized in enhancing stability while responding immediately to variables.
“What on earth is this terrible space? What is it connected to? Is this really a Break Spot?”
Even Jo Jin-ho, who always maintained his composure, was starting to show signs of agitation.
The presence of the Vashunat language, which had just been learned in the form of a buff, was decisive.
He could sense all too easily that it was not an Earth language. In short, it was an alien language.
Feeling as though he had been swept up in a massive vortex, Sang-hyun also became less talkative.
When fighting the Crocodile Trio, they had to deal with the enemy right in front of them, so they fought faithfully, running their mouths (?).
But the reality they faced here again was clearly ominous. Everything, from start to finish, was shrouded in mystery.
* * *
How far had they gone in?
If the initial engagement had taken place on the outskirts of the city,
the place the three of them were in now was right in the middle of the city. In terms of South Korea, it felt like the center of Seoul.
Needless to say, there were no people to talk to, nor any monsters to test their strength against.
However, if asked if this was a space where no one had ever lived, the answer was absolutely not.
Because there were skeletal corpses everywhere. Perhaps because
they had died before human hands could even touch them, the postures in which they met their end were all different.
It seemed certain that they had died while fleeing from something.
Perhaps that is why the skeletons that appeared to belong to a mother and daughter, or a mother and son, were found dead embracing each other.
“Did a nuclear war break out?”
“The city looks too intact for that. It just feels like the people completely vanished at some point.”
Jo Jin-ho and Sang-hyun exchanged their thoughts. Shin Tae-ri had entered a building earlier and had not yet emerged.
Jo Jin-ho said,
“I don’t know what we will discover in the future, but we need to make a definite decision on whether to keep it a complete secret or reveal it.”
“I agree. Either open everything up completely or hide it thoroughly. We need to make a clear choice.”
If asked about his true feelings, Sang-hyun leaned toward the latter.
If he accepted and embraced this information with good intentions, it would result in exploring unknown territory together.
However, twisted greed and misguided interest are bound to exist. Sang-hyun generally did not trust the people of the Association. He
agreed with their value, but he absolutely did not agree that they were right.
Just then.
“There is a morgue inside!”
Shin Tae-ri, who had returned quickly, said, pointing to a building not far away.
Upon closer inspection, it looked like it might have been used as a hospital, or perhaps a research institute.
It was the kind of place where it would not be surprising to find a space for storing corpses. The
group immediately entered the building and began opening the lockers in the morgue one by one.
Perhaps because it was connected to the solar panels on the building's rooftop, the freezing conditions were excellent.
"This… is completely alien."
Sang-hyun tilted his head as he looked at the corpse, whose appearance was entirely different from that of a human.
The three monsters he had fought outside earlier were humanoid.
Although their base was animal, they ultimately possessed human forms. That is why they felt less alien.
However, the corpse stored here was a form that suited the word "alien" perfectly.
It had four eyes, two of which were even located near its temples.
Its body was so thin that one wondered if it might break at any moment, yet its head was twice the size of a human's.
The appearance suggested that the strain on the neck bones was so immense that it wouldn't be surprising if they broke.
Just in case, I looked around the morgue and spotted several helmets of a special design.
“It appears that this alien wore those helmets. They don't just sit on the head; they seem to be attached to and secured to the body.”
It appeared to be a device designed to reduce the strain on the neck bones.
I concluded that it likely wore those helmets until it became a corpse.
Sang-hyun’s gaze fell upon a laminated memo placed alongside the alien’s corpse.
“March 1, Hagi 392, Sector A Invader……. Massacred a total of 1,392 Vashunat people and was executed.”
Thanks to having learned the Vashunat language, the text was perfectly deciphered.
However, the content was the problem.
They used the special expression "Hagi" instead of "Anno Domini," the abbreviation for the Western calendar, and employed the designation "Sector."
On top of that, they used the special term "Vashunat People," rather than the concept of Earthlings.
There was one more memo.
Unlike the laminated memo seen earlier, this one was written in a hurry. There were even unintelligible characters in the middle.
"A rift suddenly appeared, and what emerged from it was not [something], but these guys."
At that moment, Sanghyeon and the two looked at each other.
Could the victims of the rift not be limited to Earth alone? The contents were sinking deeper and deeper into a labyrinth.
