"Ugh…!"
"Did you wake up?"
An exclamation came out of ShiHoon’s mouth as KangWoo sat next to him.
ShiHoon slowly opened his eyes and looked at KangWoo.
He looked at him as if he'd seen a ghost.
Tsk. KangWoo clicked his tongue.
"Yes, it's me."
"H-hyeongnim! Ugh!"
He quickly stood up, but ShiHoon collapsed again while grabbing his stomach.
KangWoo grabbed ShiHoon and lowered him to the floor.
"Stay still. Your wounds haven't been fully healed."
KangWoo's Authority of Regeneration couldn't fully heal someone.
It could heal superficial wounds, but it couldn't heal tiredness and internal damage.
He'd received such damage that it wouldn't be weird if he died, so he wasn't going to be able to move right then.
"Why did you keep fighting like a dumbass? You should have sought the opportunity to escape and buy some time. Seol-ah said she would contact me."
"I'm sorry…"
"Haa."
He sighed.
'Well, I guess it would've been hard to escape.'
There wasn't one enemy but three.
There was a chance he wouldn't have gotten the opportunity to escape.
But even if he knew that, he couldn't help but get angry.
"B-but… rather than that… the demons…?"
"Two died, and one managed to escape."
To be honest, he'd let him escape.
"Ah."
Kim ShiHoon's expression darkened. He lowered his head.
"Then, once again, I—"
"I know what you're trying to say, but it's too cringey, so be quiet."
"…"
"Don't try to be dramatic and blame yourself—it looks too pathetic."
"E-ehem."
"You're always so dramatic. If someone saw you, they'd think you're probably going through a worse situation than anyone."
"H-hyeongnim!"
Kim ShiHoon's face became red. It seemed like he was embarrassed by it.
KangWoo laughed out loud.
"That's why you need to stop trying to act cool while shitting yourself. Just be quiet and lay down on the floor."
"H-hyeongnim… You don't seem to be your usual self."
Kim ShiHoon gulped at his comments.
KangWoo smirked.
"Really?"
It was true that he'd been crueler with Kim ShiHoon than he usually was…
But that was actually closer to how he really spoke.
"Mr. KangWoo!"
"KangWoo hyeongnim! Are you okay?!"
He saw Han Seol-ah, Kang TaeSoo, and Echidna running toward him.
"Hmm?"
He also saw a middle-aged blonde woman running toward them while holding Gaia in her arms.
It was Grace and Gaia.
"How did you…"
"I called her."
KangWoo turned his head to the source of the sound.
He saw Cheon MooJin, Baek HwaYeon, and the group that was in charge of getting rid of the monsters.
"Are you hurt?"
Cheon MooJin walked toward Kim ShiHoon. Kim ShiHoon tried to stand up but collapsed again while moaning in pain.
Cheon MooJin placed his hand on top of his body.
"The internal damage is quite bad."
He imbued Qi into Kim ShiHoon's body while his eyes were closed.
Kim ShiHoon's expression, which was distorted in pain, became more relaxed.
KangWoo turned his head from Cheon MooJin, who was healing Kim ShiHoon, and looked at Chae YeonJoo.
"Did you call Ms. Gaia and Grace?"
"Yes. Although, to be more precise, it was old man Cheon MooJin."
"Hmm…"
KangWoo nodded.
On the surface, the Guardians were a secret organization, but most of the world rankers or the heads of state in each country knew about their existence.
Cheon MooJin was the head of state in China and a world ranker simultaneously, so it wouldn't be weird if he had a way to contact Gaia.
"Mr. K-KangWoo… I heard that demons attacked Mr. ShiHoon. Is he okay?" Gaia asked in a worried voice.
She couldn't see, so she had no way of knowing what state he was in.
KangWoo nodded.
"Thankfully, the wounds have improved quite a lot. I also got rid of the demons."
"Hmm… but where are the demon corpses?" Grace asked.
"They became dust and scattered away after I killed them."
"Ah. Now that I think about it, that happened with Oriax before," Chae YeonJoo said while remembering the past.
Grace tilted her head.
"Really? That didn't happen when I killed a demon."
Obviously it hadn’t. A demon's body didn't turn into dust and disappear after it died.
Oriax had disappeared because KangWoo had used the Authority of Predation.
'But…'
He calmly opened his mouth.
"It seems like it's different from each demon. After all, we still don't know many things about them."
"That's true."
It's been only a few years since they began fighting the demons.
They didn't know many things about the demons, so the other people couldn't help but believe what he said.
'It's quite easy to set things up.'
It didn't matter what happened—he could easily explain things with an “oh, it's because that demon is different~”
"Rather than that. Mr. Cheon MooJin, seeing how demons have attacked this town…"
"It seems like the traces we found today were of the Demon Cult."
Gaia sighed and spoke to Cheon MooJin.
Cheon MooJin nodded.
KangWoo's eyes shone.
"You found traces?"
"Yes. Before I heard the news that Dragon Sword was attacked, I found traces of what looked to be the Demon Cult.”
"To be honest, I came here because I heard from Mr. Cheon MooJin that they had found traces of the Demon Cult, and while we were coming here…"
"We heard that Dragon Sword was attacked."
"…"
KangWoo's eyes narrowed.
'Then they didn’t come here for ShiHoon in the first place.’
He had found it weird that they'd arrived so quickly, but it made sense if they had been on their way before they heard the news.
'But…'
"What traces did you find?" He asked Cheon MooJin.
"Do you remember the magic circle they used to summon a demon? That’s what I found."
"There were monsters stronger than the one we fought against in Manchuria, too."
Chae YeonJoo approached him. She gave KangWoo an item she had in her hands.
"And we found this in the middle of the magic circle."
"This…"
It was an inverted cross.
KangWoo's expression hardened.
'A Fissure Fragment.'
—The object the Demon Cult had used to weaken the Gaia System.
'Judging by its condition, it seems like it hasn't been long since they installed it.'
It didn't have a single particle of dust on it.
That meant that there were members of the Demon Cult around there that had installed the stake.
"This seems to be the reason for the uptick in monster attacks recently."
"The monsters around here were more aggressive than usual."
Baek HwaYeon nodded at Chae YeonJoo's words.
"…"
KangWoo remained silent.
Kim ShiHoon, who was being healed from his internal wounds, spoke while raising his body.
"I think that, if that's the case, it was probably the Demon Cult that attacked the town."
"I also think that, Guardian Kim ShiHoon."
'No.'
KangWoo shook his head.
Malphas, Phenex, and Halphas…
He thought of the three demons he'd just faced.
'They weren't related to the Demon Cult.'
They were underlings of Lucifer, who had come from the Ernor Continent.
They weren't related to the Demon Cult that was on Earth.
'But…'
* * *
Fissure Fragments, demonic monsters, and magic summoning circles…
He didn't think that Lucifer's underlings had done that.
KangWoo's eyes shone.
'Then…'
Suppose he thought that the two incidents weren't related… Then there was only one possible explanation.
'The Demon Cult has started moving.'
Lucifer’s underlings had become coincidentally involved.
It was probably the Demon Cult that had turned monsters into demonic monsters and made them attack the indigenous people.
The tips of KangWoo's mouth went up.
'Are you going to do it again?!'
He was waiting for Lucifer to take the bait.
But to make sure he didn't get bored while waiting, the Demon Cult had gotten onto the fishing boat on their own.
"Seeing that there wasn't only one magic summoning circle… we should consider the possibility that they're going to do another large-scale summoning."
'Mr. Demoonn Culltt!'
He clenched his fists.
A smile appeared on his face.
His Demonic Energy stat had increased its maximum value 130.
He was thinking about how he would reach that, but the Demon Cult had solved that problem for him.
He almost thought of them as lovely for doing that.
'Why did you appear just now? Where have you been all this time?'
To be honest, it was about time they made a move.
They hadn't made any moves after planting the Fissure Seeds.
He was excited enough to want to dance because of the timing that couldn't have been more perfect.
He was missing one step before unlocking the eighth Awakening attribute, so he couldn't help but be happy after learning they were preparing another large-scale summoning.
'I always believed in you.'
He'd been worried that maybe the Demon Cult had gone under after failing the Fissure Seed plan, but they didn't give up.
He knew that they wouldn't give up. They would defeat all sorts of difficulties to execute their plan of immersing the world in darkness.
'I know Mr. Demon Cult is going to succeed!!'
He didn't know what or how many demons they would summon.
But in that situation, unless it was an archduke, there wasn't any demon KangWoo would struggle against.
'And the chances of it being an archduke are very low.'
They said that there was a magic circle drawn that was similar to the one they used to summon Oriax.
Archdukes didn't exist in the 9th hell, so there was no way they would be able to 'summon' one.
There was a chance they might summon Lucifer, who had fallen to the Ernor Continent, or other archdukes that had arrived in other dimensions, but seeing that, until that point, most of the demons or demonic monsters they had summoned were from the Hell of Nine Skies, the chances of that being the case were very low.
That basically meant the only thing he had to do was to eat the meal prepared by the Demon Cult chefs.
'I won't forget the taste of this delicious lunch box that the Demon Cult has prepared for me…'
All the praise toward Tyrion had melted like snow after the blessing given to him by the Demon Cult.
'You ungrateful person.'
He recalled all the painful memories of the past ten thousand years.
He was trying too hard to protect the world and give himself to the light, so he wasn't able to recognize the real hero.
Why couldn't the light give him as many things as the Demon Cult did?
He felt like crying.
At that point, he felt that his previous self that had lamented over Tyrion’s vanishing was pathetic.
'The one I should serve isn’t the light.'
It wasn't time to praise trash like Reinald.
KangWoo clenched his fist and raised his hand.
As the day went on, the sky was starting to turn dark.
'From today onward, the one I should serve is the Demon Cult!'
‘The light has betrayed me!‘
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