◈ 398. [Side Story] Bottom (2)
《Who the hell is the real ‘you’?》
“… .”
“If you can’t clearly define it, there’s no reason to get out of here and go outside. Your own purpose, justice, and wishes will all be disrupted like a mirage.”
Salome shrugged and turned her body backwards.
《Even if you struggle to climb to the ground, there will be only suffering outside anyway.》
“… .”
“In that case, come into my arms. At least I’ll make you have a happy dream.]
Salome smiled and walked away.
《The fact that they fell all the way to the bottom while they fell together… … It might not be a bad ending, right?”
“… .”
“I’ll be waiting. forever… … .]
Salome left behind a faint laugh.
I snorted as I glared at him. Salome’s proposal was bullshit that didn’t even deserve to be heard.
… but.
It was true that he read my memories. He knew exactly what I was thinking about.
I was afraid.
A long road ahead of me. A heavy burden I must carry.
There will be many fights left, and there will be many, and I will have to carry on with the deaths of my colleagues and subordinates. As it always has been or more.
“… Ugh.”
When I was carrying a burden on the road, I was able to endure it by inertia. But now that I had been pushed off the road and collapsed, I couldn’t bear to dare.
can i do it again
can you go all the way
– Is it really ‘you’ wish?
Is what I’m about to do at the end of this long road really what I want it to be?
One in a million really one in a million.
As Salome said, if that wish is different from mine now.
If you give up that wish… … .
Maybe there is no need to fight so hard?
– Defeating the flag is very difficult at first, but after that it gets so easy. because it’s already broken
It was then.
Suddenly, the words of the fairy queen, Skuld, echoed in my mind.
– Once you start compromising, you’ll bend endlessly. In the end, you’re going to live with your face down. like me.
“… .”
Grieving this, I picked up a stone from the floor again and threw it back into the sewer.
Fuck!
A stone that strayed far could not even go into the sewer and bounced out. Damn I clicked my tongue.
***
District 10 farms.
“need… .]
The Plague Corps Leader Raven growled in a boiling voice as he strolled through his territories.
《A stronger poison requires a more deadly pestilence… … .》
This place, which had been pampered by the owner just half a day ago, had now turned into a living hell.
The fruit trees that bore fruit, the grains that yielded ears, the young livestock that grew in barns… … .
They were all dead and decaying.
The venom and plague the Raven spewed ravaged my farm like locusts. However, even while watching the farm disappear without leaving even ruins, Raven did not know how to stop.
“It’s not enough. This much is not enough. Not enough… … !]
Raven stopped in front of the ‘field’ where she had planted the seeds of the plague.
In the meantime, the strong men of all the races he had captured were rotting alive, and each became a breeding ground for different plagues.
Charleureuk!
Raven reached out and absorbed all of the plague.
but.
“I need more, more, more… !]
Not enough.
There’s no way.
Not quite like this. Stronger curses require stronger blasphemy.
Raven let out a desperate cry.
“I need more to kill him… !]
The plague corps is extremely powerful when dealing with a large number of people.
The real plague emitted by Raven’s body and the phantom pain emitted by his clones.
The pain that spreads without time to distinguish what is real and what is fake is more effective when the opponent is a large army. Death spreads, terror intensifies, and the few survivors of that hell re-spread the plague on other humans.
A chain of endless despair.
Among all the forces of hell revived in the Lake Kingdom, there is no monster as powerful against the majority as the Plague Army.
However, its weaknesses are also clear.
Whether it’s plague or phantom pain, you can’t cut off your opponent’s breath at once. It can inflict pain for a long time by making the opponent suffer, but it cannot immediately lead to death.
That’s why they are vulnerable to elites who are strong enough to withstand the plague.
Even in her lifetime, Raven had always struggled with a small number of elite superhumans. Even after suffering from a plague, they continued to rush forward with potions and recovery magic, and eventually turned into a handful of blood, but they often thrust their swords into Raven’s throat.
After repeating these things, Raven in her lifetime was eventually subjugated. to one human being.
Raven, who was originally a doctor from the Lake Kingdom, was banished from the kingdom at the end of corruption research and became a plague himself and swept the world.
And they came to their homeland with great vigor. He was thinking of showing the good wizards who were ignoring him.
And it was only one sorcerer who stood in his way.
The wizard at the time was the director of the research institute leading the research of ‘Peninsula’, the elixir of invulnerability cultivated after research in the Lake Kingdom.
And Raven collapsed in front of him.
None of the poison and pestilence curses he possessed could pierce the blessings that enveloped the man.
It was a Raven that rotted and killed countless lives on the entire continent, but it had to perish without being able to withstand just one human.
《I’m sorry! Complaint! Complaint! How resentful!]
Tears of poison flowed from Raven’s eyes as she recalled that time.
And time passed – Raven was resurrected in the darkness of this Lake Kingdom.
The revived Raven first looked at the production route of the elixir and found the farm. It was already in ruins, but many precious elixirs were still asleep.
Raven restored the farm again. If you can recreate the elixir that defeated you from scratch, then you will be able to find a way to break through that immunity yourself as well.
So- Raven has been running the farm here, cultivating old elixirs and harvesting new plagues at the same time.
But what were those damned hundreds of years worth?
Raven’s plague still couldn’t pierce that peach that the Lake Kingdom’s leading scholars and wizards had created after research – and that peach was taken away absurdly, and once again, one human being had to become invincible.
《It can’t be in vain,》
murmured Raven, still thirsty after harvesting all the life and pestilence on the farm.
《It can’t be in vain, it can’t be in vain, it can’t be in vain- There’s no way this plague master can’t overcome the research of mages who died hundreds of years ago.》 I’ll show you
.
That one individual’s corrupt will can crush the lofty collective intelligence.
The fire that sets the world on fire always always starts with just one match.
“I have to prove this… !》
To cover the whole world with his plague.
So Raven decided to gamble.
Raven jerked her hand up. And
pooh!
pinned to my chest.
He clutched his spiritual core in his hand and- Cheng-
G-Rang… !
It was shattered by his own will.
Pooh-!
Raven’s body shattered in all directions.
From the time he became the Plague Lord, his body was completely rotten and rotten, and he couldn’t even leave a shape. His body was nothing more than a form processed by magic after gathering the mediators of the plague around his own spiritual core.
And since his spiritual core was broken, all kinds of crows, insects, rats, and fog that formed his body were scattered in all directions… … .
Immediately after, the mediums rushed again.
They clung to Raven’s shattered spiritual core and ferociously devoured it.
It was a spiritual core scattered by one of the world’s greatest incarnations of evil. The spirit was mighty, and small creatures instinctively struggled to consume it.
《Eat it.》
Raven’s thoughts murmured as his whole soul was gnawed at by countless insects.
《Eat, eat, eat- eat and scatter more finely.》
In a voice that grew weaker and weaker.
《… With this, I will transcend to the next level… … .]
Eventually, Raven’s voice disappeared.
His spirit core disappeared into the belly of the worms without leaving a trace.
Waves of black, turbid monstrosity flooded what was once a farm. Crows, worms, mice, the fog began to multiply endlessly, swelling and bursting.
and… .
***
It’s been a few days since I’ve been here at ‘the bottom’.
No, how many days is it right? is it a day or three days? or a week?
Being in a place like this dulls the sense of time. I didn’t do anything, just threw a stone in front of the sewer and so pointlessly killed time for several days anyway.
I’m hungry, so I’m going to take out one of the fruits that Salome found earlier and eat it.
“… .”
“… .”
Here, I met the eyes of one of the residents of the bottom village.
He was a scruffy kid. Like everyone else in this village, he had messy long hair and was wearing frayed clothes.
The kid was staring at the fruit in my hand.
“Um… .”
I’m not such a shameless person to just ignore and eat. I peeked at the fruit.
“I want to eat?”
nod
The little boy nodded. I cut the soft fruit in half and threw the other half to the kid.
“eat.”
widely!
The kid who caught the fruit I threw and swallowed it in one bite. no… Chew on that. Chehala.
“Are there more?”
The little boy asked boldly. I laughed in amazement.
“There is, but… You can’t give it away for free.”
“There’s nothing worth paying for in this town.”
“… It does look like it, though.”
It is an extremely poor village that could be used for promotional purposes by an overseas Hunger Refugee Relief Foundation.
Giving up on getting paid, I just tore the fruit into small pieces and threw them one by one. The little boy ate well. It’s good to have a good time when you’re skinny.
After feeding the kid some more fruit, I decided to just ask him some questions.
“What do you eat for a living in a place like this?”
“I’m not going to eat.”
“what?”
“I can live without eating.”
I couldn’t understand the kid’s answer, so I only blinked my eyes, so the kid explained additionally.
“Because our villagers have also been cursed with eternal life.”
“ah… .”
“If you don’t eat, you don’t die, if you don’t sleep, you don’t die, if you don’t breathe, you don’t die. Just stay alive.”
“Then, after the Lake Kingdom became like this… Have you ever lived here?”
“huh.”
The little boy laughed.
“Even though it looks like this, I am much older than you. You can call me brother.”
oh my god.
This kid… … No, I asked after looking blankly at little brother.
“If you were cursed with eternal life, are you all citizens of the Lake Kingdom?”
“no. We are not people.”
Little brother shrugged.
“A slave.”
“… .”
“The Lake Kingdom had a three-level caste system. royalty. citizen. and slaves.”
A bitter smile crept across the little brother’s lips.
“Slaves are not people. You can’t be a citizen because you’re not a person. We were called ‘non-nationals’.”
“… .”
“Non-citizens have no name, and since they have no name, nothing can be left behind.”
Lake Kingdom, the most magical country of the time, which was destroyed 500 years ago.
What kind of deformed structure was this country? I swallowed dry saliva.
“We lived doing odd jobs outside the civic enclave. All the dirty work that noble citizens couldn’t handle was ours.”
“… .”
“Anyway, the inside of the Lake Kingdom was a good place to live. Our villagers also worked hard to get into it. I want to become a person. I want to get a name.”
Little brother said that and shrugged his shoulders.
“To obtain ‘citizenship’.”
“citizenship… ?”
“It was a dream for non-citizens like us. There was a saying that giving a huge amount of gold coins would raise your status. So we all worked hard together to save money.”
Haha- little brother looked up with a dry laugh.
“I wonder what the point is in coming all the way to this yard… .”
“… .”
“Still, the village elders are collecting money. Even after falling to the bottom like this, I cherish the gold coins in my arms and collect them one by one in the village safe. I believe that if I become a human, I can escape this hell.”
Little brother grinned as he mumbled the last piece of fruit I handed him.
“All those ‘people’ are having nightmares up there.”
