Episode 131.
Jung Si-woo came out to the surface after a long time with Soo Ah-rin and Yong Se-ha. It was because while clearing the integrated dungeon and leisurely clearing the Ant Cave dungeon for about a week (he didn’t create an integrated dungeon again as originally promised), he couldn’t overcome the pressure from Marina continuously calling him as soon as she cleared the 33rd level dungeon.
“Si-woo!”
“What? I thought you got hurt or something because you called so frantically, but you’re fine.”
Marina, who rented a whole cafe in as grand a fashion, as usual, waved to him from the middle of the empty cafe. There were also Seria and Lee Seo-hee next to her.
“Si-woo, I have good news and bad news. What do you want to hear first?”
“Bad news.”
As Jung Si-woo replied while Marina naturally pushed the cafe mocha in front of his seat, Seria calmly spoke.
“We encountered the traces of Laia in the dungeon. It was even in the form of Laia letting her subordinates intrude in the dungeon in a solidified form.”
“An intrusion…”
This couldn’t be anything but a very sinister echo. Jung Si-woo nodded grimly, considering the recent changes in the Sky Castle.
“May that be the Sky Castle, the gods’ influences, or even both that have changed, it’s not quite a good thing. Many players will die from now on…by the way, you mentioned Laia?”
Laia was a god that had her influence lowered to the fullest by destroying her temple and killing her incarnation. But now such a god had tried to invade Earth again…no, come to think of it, it had been a while since then. When Jung Si-woo said that, Marina formed a V with her fingers.
“Of course, I’ve broken it down nicely and reduced its influence again.”
“To be precise, it was possible because the power of others was added. It was actually very close.”
Jung Si-woo’s expression turned to a frown when she said that if Marina and Seria lacked even a little bit of power, they wouldn’t have been able to clear it. Everyone defeated the one with the god’s power together. Up to that point, it sounded like a beautiful story that would come out in old fairy tales, but after killing the monster, there’s always a problem of settling the spoils.
“Wait a minute, then maybe…”
“The good news.”
Marina opened her inventory and took out a fairly large piece of stone. What lay in it was the apparent power of Laia. It was even of a considerable amount.
“I’ve succeeded in monopolizing Laia’s power as a special achievement reward. I was worried since if I turn it into a bead, I’d have to share it with the people who contributed to the boss battle, but it was fortunate.”
“This kid.”
Marina stared at him, looking like a dog pricking up its ears as if she were to say, ‘I’ve done well, right?’ Jung Si-woo eventually laughed. He couldn’t hate her at all.
“But Si-woo, do you think this can be processed?”
“Like the power in Seria’s body?”
“Yes!”
Possessive rights to Laia’s fragment lay with Marina. And Jung Si-woo could process the god’s power to make it safe. Jung Si-woo lightly nodded.
“It’s possible.”
“Ah!”
Jung Si-woo added in a light tone to Marina, who was very happy.
“But it’s impossible to make it your Mana power.”
“Why?!”
Marina, like Seria, seemed to want to use the god’s power to boost her Mana after all. Jung Si-woo smiled bitterly and grabbed Laia’s fragment from her hand.
[How…dare…]
Laia’s intention trapped in it was conveyed, but it was impossible to invade Jung Si-woo’s mind with that much will. He repeatedly clasped and opened his hands with it as he reduced and killed the god’s will.
“Seria almost died then. She was on the verge of becoming a servant of Louisos. That’s too dangerous; I don’t want to ride that tight rope again.”
“So that’s how much Si-woo cares about me, O—Ouch!”
Soo Ah-rin and Seria hit Marina on the head in unison. Jung Si-woo continued.
“Anyway, it’s impossible to inject into the body. But I think it would be possible for an item modification…what do you want to do? Do you want to leave it to me?”
“As expected, Si-woo-nim.”
“Hngh, if Si-woo says so, what else can we do…”
“I’ll do it for free to pay my debt for the rifle, so give me your pistol.”
“Yes.”
The pistol that Marina drew out was A++ class, indeed fitting her reputation as the world’s sharpest shooter. She carried such an item when even A-class weapons were rarely made her fame truly evident.
“Maybe another plus might be added here.”
“Really? Si-woo, I love you!”
“Phew.”
Jung Si-woo ignored Marina’s love confession with a snort, placing Laia’s fragment on top of her pistol as maximized the dragon’s senses; he held both artifacts in one hand. At that moment, Laia’s debris began to meltdown with a strong spark. Two scary, intense Mana hit each other, and one side was overwhelmed by changing. Even if it wasn’t even a fierce battle and only a reaction of light from the Mana, people watched it breathlessly.
“Seo-hee, look closely. We have to go after that Mana technique.”
“Even if you didn’t tell me to…I was already watching it closely.”
It wasn’t simply done by Jung Si-woo’s natural ability. Of course, without the Takeover ability, it wouldn’t have been possible to try to use the god’s power, but to confirm the ownership with Takeover and instill that into an object was a stage that required a high level of Mana control.
“Alright, there we go.”
“You did it too easily?!”
But Jung Si-woo had done such a hard thing in a very short time. He leisurely smiled as he pushed the pistol, which completely absorbed Laia’s fragments, towards her.
“We had an instance where we had to grow with another god’s power in a place that you girls don’t know.”
“Hehe, one more ‘+’ was added indeed. Thank you, Si-woo!”
Marina, who was trying to stick her head out and give him a thank-you kiss, was stopped by Seria. Jung Si-woo nodded to Seria and finished off the cafe mocha.
“If you come across an instance to retrieve the god’s fragment, don’t dare to do anything by yourself and bring it to me. Much better if you just give it to me.”
“You’re asking for something great without a hitch.”
“I’ll give all of them to Si-woo-nim. With all my will.”
“Yes, then I will now…uh, well.”
All three women’s eyes were shining too bright for him to say that he would leave now that the business was over.
“Si-woo, what have you been up to?”
“That’s right. Where the hell have you been for the past month?”
Jung Si-woo, who didn’t want to incur a grudge, eventually had to hang out for their chatter for two hours. It didn’t end just by telling them what he had been through. As if they had been waiting for this moment, the three women rushed to spill what had happened to them one after the other. How they completed the artificial island, how the Master of the Yongseong Guild tried to hit it on Marina and Seria…
“So, Si-woo, don’t you want to make a false engagement with me?”
“No.”
“Oh, why not?”
Jung Si-woo raised his head, snorting at Marina, who had been asking for impossible requests. In a cafe that no other customers were around other than them, the TV installed on the wall showed a news screen.
“It’s a monster attack.”
“It often happens these days. I don’t think it’s Korea, but it seems to be a big one.”
“…Hmm?”
Just as he was about to agree to them, Jung Si-woo’s eyes caught a strange sight. At first, he thought it was because the camera was closely observing it. Still, somehow, he thought the appeared monster in the middle of the city was quite…very…no, ridiculously big.
“Hey, isn’t that about the size of a Luinos Lizard?”
“Luinos Lizard? Oh, you’re talking about the monster then. Speaking of which, how hard was it for us to pull that out without destroying any other buildings…huh?”
Marina grumbled and turned her head after him, and when she caught the monster on the screen, her eyes opened wide.
“It’s really big…”
“I told you.”
He was thinking recently that the Ant Cave dungeon occurrence was rare these days. Who could have thought that such a gigantic monster could come in with a sucker punch without a sign? As Jung Si-woo was thinking about whether they could solve it only with the people’s workforce of that country, the party’s phones began to ring simultaneously.
“WPC Treaty…”
“The conditions were to support the monster outbreak that players in the country alone couldn’t solve.”
“Let’s get up. Hurry up.”
Of course, if they were in the Sky Castle at that time, engaged with other monsters, or had just recently carried out a treaty, they would be free to sit it out. Still, unfortunately, they weren’t under such conditions. Most of all, they all were thinking that they wanted to fight that giant monster.
“Where are you?”
“Würzburg, Germany.”
“Well, I don’t have a single idea.”
“You don’t have to know. The important thing is-”
Marina immediately picked up her phone and led them by contacting her brother.
“There’s a gate in the B&Y Berlin chapter. Let’s go there for now!”
The group headed straight for the B&Y building in Seoul, where they headed back to the B&Y chapter in Berlin. A plan to build gates in each country’s capital was being pursued with the cooperation of the United Nations and B&Y, but the majority of players had yet to benefit from the gate, as production had only just begun.
“That means that we’re most likely the first to arrive!”
“Why do you keep trying to sit in the back seat of the bike when you got wings?”
For additional information, Caina wasn’t called. The smithy was just finished, and she was now helping Beto with his smithy work. Jung Si-woo thought it wouldn’t be too late to call her later if he judged that they needed her help.
“Do you feel it? The Mana wave is amazing.”
“But that’s a relief.”
Jung Si-woo was able to grasp why Marina said it was fortunate.
“You don’t feel any traces of a god, do you?”
“Yes, at least it’s not blessed by a god.”
These days, only monsters that praised a god’s name, always mentioning a god’s blessings, were stressing them out to the edge. Wouldn’t anyone be annoyed if only the same pattern were repeated endlessly? It now even felt that a monster without the power of a god was novel!
“Let’s go fight peacefully and rest since we feel refreshed.”
“Oh, these people’s perceptions are all messed up…”
Only Soo Ah-rin lamented at her sanity. None of the party cared about her. After three minutes of continuous flight, the group arrived in Würzburg, a small-medium-sized German city, and found a huge monster causing a disturbance by destroying a small and beautiful cathedral. It was a terrible monster that trampled on players and received all the resentment of humanity.
“It’s a teddy bear!”
“It’s only a monster that looks like a teddy bear.”
Jung Si-woo was also full of desire to criticize the colossal monster’s look, but there was something he had to criticize before then. Of course, others may not have recognized it, but it seemed too clear to him.
‘Alien world…tunnel?’
There was a passage that seemed to consist of pure Mana only because the power of a god contained in it was so weak. As it had just opened, there was a passage that somehow might disappear in five minutes.
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