Chapter 84: And the World Collapsed?
Noah gazed intently at Jeolmi being taken to the infirmary before following him out of the meeting room.
“Hang on a sec, I’m going to check on Jeolmi’s condition. You all keep introducing yourselves!”
Once Noah left, the folks still in the meeting room finished up their hellos and scattered to their various tasks.
‘Now that I think about it, where’s Pia?’
While wandering through an endless corridor that had zero windows, thoughts of Pia’s absence popped into my head, and I couldn’t help but recall ‘that scene.’
‘Ugh… just thinking about it makes me blush. I really need to apologize the next time I see her. Could she be avoiding me because of that incident?’
As Lian got lost in thought about Pia’s misstep in the hallway, Pia herself was in a pitch-black room, all the lights switched off.
“Lian, Lord Lian is back! He really came back!”
She knelt with her hands clasped together like she was praying and started mumbling in a voice filled with rapture.
Her eyes gleamed dangerously.
“Ah, finally, my salvation…”
Thanks to past traumas and the cruel spells from the dark sorcerer, Pia’s battered mind had latched onto ‘Lian’ like a lifebuoy, leading her to develop a blind devotion towards him.
Feelings that were way beyond your standard affection or love.
‘Worship!’
‘Devotion!’
‘Reverence!’
Lian had unwittingly become a god-like figure to Pia. Her faith, bordering on madness, was impacting Lian in a totally direct way.
The mark on Lian’s left hand, one that he barely remembered, began to glow softly, etching out geometric patterns like roots growing. The change was slow but definitely happening.
But Lian had yet to notice any of this.
“Lian, Lord Lian…”
As Pia’s fanaticism deepened, it was only a matter of time before someone would notice. But for now, it was under wraps, meaning no one could reign in her escalating obsession.
And so, the seed of ‘religion’ was planted without Lian being any the wiser.
*
‘Whoa, a traitor!’
After living a day that was almost too peaceful, it turned out the guy who slipped on a banana peel was actually a traitor!
Nest was thrown into chaos. The fact that a traitor had somehow snagged a seat in the inner circle left everyone shocked.
An epic purge began within the organization.
While it was easy to weed out the regular members, pinpointing traitors among the executives was like searching for a needle in a haystack.
I ended up being dragged into the hunt for the traitor because of my instinctive detection. Luckily, we didn’t find any more traitors among the executives.
‘This isn’t foolproof though.’
Since it only kicked in if someone tried to threaten me, there could still be hidden traitors out there. Noah said that was good enough, but I still felt a nagging unease.
‘If it’s a threat big enough to bring the organization crashing down, that’s when my power should kick in.’
Pushing my anxiety aside while thinking of the hellish Leviathan, I focused back on the here and now.
Once the traitor drama wrapped up, a peaceful daily routine awaited me. Although it seemed like everyone was busy zipping around, none came back wounded.
‘If I end up needing to visit a shrine, I’ll definitely get my holy water first.’
While I was busy rolling around in the arena, the kids ended up with a mix of small and large injuries. Some lost fingers, while others ended up with wounds that would make them limp for life.
Fortunately, these weren’t crippling, so as long as I used the holy water known for its miraculous powers, they would all be back to normal. I began saving money for that day.
…Well, to be honest, I didn’t really have that much to spend since I hardly ever left the headquarters building.
Sure, I could go out, but I had to take at least ten of my organization’s members with me to get the okay.
Dragging ten members from Nest—who had claimed the western region—was just plain uncomfortable, so I opted to stay put.
In short… I was bored!
‘Grr… The knight coming to pick up Iris is still ages away from Cardishian!’
Even if I wanted to shout and bail out of Cardishian, Nest was settling in comfortably. This might actually be the safest I’d ever been. My boredom was proof of that.
Jess was off getting a similar education with kids her age, and Iris was busy learning swordsmanship from Noah.
There was literally no one to hang out with!
‘Isn’t there anything to do… hmm?’
As I melted into the sofa, vacantly staring around the room, something shiny caught my eye. I blinked, got up, and wandered over to investigate the sparkling thing. It turned out to be a piece of black gemstone lying on the floor.
“Oh? This is…”
It was a fragment of the gemstone I had seen earlier in the underground storage of the Nest dining hall.
‘Didn’t I leave it in my bag?’
Curiosity getting the better of me, I picked up the gem and started to turn it around in my hands.
Ouch.
“Ah!”
I nicked my finger on the sharp edge of the gem, and blood began to trickle out. The moment my blood touched the gemstone,
“…Huh?”
My vision rushed blurry, and my ears started ringing. Just as I felt myself sway, everything went black.
*
“Ugh…”
I clutched my throbbing head and forced my eyes open.
“Where am I…?”
Thick, white mist surrounded me, and I found myself lying on a pitch-black surface that I couldn’t identify. I was in a place that felt entirely alien.
I stumbled to my feet and looked around, but the fog obscured everything.
“Noah? Iris? Jess?”
I mindlessly called out their names, but no answer came back.
‘Did that gemstone teleport me?’
Scratching my head, I wondered.
‘Hmm, first things first – Gargandoa.’
As I muttered this to myself, crimson blood flowed from the mark on my palm, and with a bang, the demonic sword appeared in a flurry of sparks.
[Where’s the enemy!?]
“Uh, there’s no enemy, but I felt like this was a dangerous place so I called you,” I replied.
[Dangerous place, huh… Sounds just like my type of hangout!]
The sword rambled on about how dangerous places could have super scary foes, but I only half-listened as I pressed on.
*
Someone was quietly spying on Lian. A figure resembling a bundle of pitch-black shadow spoke in a thin feminine voice.
“Kukuku, foolish Asterias. Who could’ve guessed you’d lose your only messenger like this?”
Asterias was the god of the dark fantasy world and a name tangled with the god of humor, known as the white-eyed finch. This smarmy black mass thought Lian was the last messenger left in a world on the brink of collapse.
This belief stemmed from the divine mark etched on Lian’s left hand. The divine mark left by a god who advised him to seek help inadvertently drew the attention of an external deity, who assumed Lian was a saint or divine messenger.
“Walk and walk through this infinite mist until you eventually lose your mind. Hehehe!”
Imagining Lian driving his sword into his own neck sent waves of ecstasy through the figure, making it tremble with delight.
And thus, a day ticked by.
“…As expected of a divine messenger. Others would have gone bananas ages ago.”
Seeing Lian holding onto his sanity after a full day, the figure couldn’t help but let out a small awed breath.
And another day plodded on.
“Geez, if he had this much mental toughness, I should have just snatched him up. Tsk, what a waste of potential.”
After two full days of Lian pacing the same stretch, the figure was in total awe.
And yet another day lumbered by.
“Could he possibly be a dragon? Maybe a polymorphed dragon? No, no way. Dragons don’t wander around with demonic swords… right?”
Three days into observing Lian’s ceaseless wandering, the figure began to doubt reality itself.
And another day drifted on.
“What the heck is going on? Why—why hasn’t he lost it yet? Why? What gives?”
Confusion had set in, as the figure grappled with the unreal reality around them.
And yet another day passed.
“…”
Watching the same scene repeat like a broken record, the figure stared blankly without uttering a single word.
And once again, a day went by.
“…? …? …?”
Numerous hooks began to surface in the figure’s mind, and it started thinking of Lian as ‘something’ other than human.
And yet another day rolled by.
“…Huh?”
Staring blankly at Lian, the figure suddenly felt its vision splinter and realized that its very essence was warping.
The misty grave, designed to shatter the minds of sentient beings, had never kept anyone trapped for so long before. A typical sentient would crumble within a day.
“Agh, no…!”
Being a sentient being itself, the figure could easily have its own mind destabilized—and that fact was now proving itself.
It desperately attempted to escape this hellish place, trying to shut down the space, yet couldn’t.
“Why…?”
Only then did it realize that control of this space had slipped away to someone else.
“Oh.”
It dawned on the figure that in this misty realm, a T-rex, a two-legged elephant, and a flyer-distributing lady couldn’t possibly exist.
From the moment Lian stepped into this dimension, the misty grave began to dissolve under a humorous filter, morphing into Lian’s very own world.
Because of this twist, even the odd creations (like the flyer-distributing lady) seemed like they’d always been a part of the misty grave. The entire reality itself had bent out of shape.
“No, no!”
In a panic, the figure dove toward Lian, who looked up at it in confusion.
The ominously dark mass transformed into a meteor and rocketed toward the ground.
Boom!
And the world collapsed? It was the perfect gag-world ending.
And just like that, Lian woke from his dream.
*
“…Wow, it’s been ages since I had a gag dream… Ahem.”
With heavy eyelids, I muttered while feeling an incredible scratchiness in my throat. Coughing, I glanced around to find I was on a bed.
End of Chapter.
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