Even though it was a knock, just a tiny tap, the aftermath was anything but small.
Part of the outskirts of the Bamboo Forest in White Mist sank, and the magic technique inscribed with the character for eye was unrecognizable in form.
Literally in a “erased” state.
Yena stared at me with her mouth agape.
[Shook, shook, shook, shook, shook]
[Laughing so hard]
[No way]
[Wow]
[Knock (Planet destruction)]
[Well, if you opened the door earlier, lol]
[That’s not what knocking is, though…]
“Not everyone is dead, right?!”
“Don’t worry. I evacuated all life forms, whether alive or dead, outside the danger zone.”
Outside, aside from the Bamboo Forest, some plants, animals, and ascetics were wandering around, but I moved them all to safety just before the knock.
They were completely unharmed by the effects of the ‘knock.’
‘The terrain might have suffered a bit, though.’
I believe it won’t matter much since we can restore it later.
“The important thing is that the door is open.”
“? That’s true.”
With the disappearance of the Bamboo Forest and the magic technique beneath it, a small passage appeared.
It looked like a tunnel leading underground, and the energy of Mokmujin seemed to flow strangely from it.
I couldn’t tell if Mokmujin was down there, but someone empowered by him was definitely around.
“Shall we go in?”
“Sounds good.”
“Hmm. Just in case, it’s better to stay close to me.”
“Got it.”
Since Yena is a user, Mokmujin’s mental attacks won’t work on her, but she’s still merely at the Avatar Phase level.
If Mokmujin decides to attack, Yena’s chances of survival are close to zero.
I cast a shield on Yena before stepping towards the cave leading down.
Stepped.
Swish…!
[?]
[What the?]
[???]
[It suddenly changed]
[Where is this?]
“!”
“It’s teleportation.”
I stepped into what appeared to be the entrance of an underground cave, only to find myself inside a strange building.
An endless expanse of rooms and hallways, with paintings of eyes hanging in between them.
The building had no windows, and while I had never seen this structure before, I had seen something similar.
“…It’s similar to Lord Jeokmu-hyang’s Palace?”
The palace that the former Lord Jeokmu-hyang had fortified.
It wasn’t exactly the same, but back then, there were looping spaces, traps, and monsters appearing as well.
Monsters weren’t visible yet, but seeing the ‘eyes’ painted in the hallways made monster appearances a foregone conclusion.
The monsters have yet to show themselves, but looking at the pictures of ‘eyes’ hanging in the corridors, it’s a given that their appearance is unavoidable.
The only difference is that while it used to be a structure that went ‘up,’ this time it was laid out in a straight line.
[Gross eyes]
[Can we just smash them?]
[Let’s knock once more, Lily.]
[Oh shoot!]
[Look at those eyes rolling around!]
[Hahaha]
[Instant chills ;;]
[Those eyes are moving!]
“Meow meow meow meow meow!!”
“What is it, Miss Yena?”
“T-That thing is moving!”
While checking the corridor, Yena jumped back in shock.
The culprit that startled Yena, the ‘eyes,’ were rolling their eyeballs and were blatantly staring at us as if they had no intention of hiding anymore.
“Of course, it’s moving; it’s an eye.”
“No, it’s just a painting….”
“It’s not just a painting.”
It’s a space that Mokmujin, who seems to have been influenced by the True Immortal, created, so it can’t just be a simple painting.
I left the panicking Yena behind and checked the nearest first room.
The moment I opened the door, another eye next to me was staring at me intensely as if it were moving somewhere else.
It was looking so hard that its eyeballs were rolling up and down, side to side, diligently observing me.
“What are you looking at?”
Whoosh!
“Kiiaaa!!”
[Hahahaha]
[What are you looking at, lol]
[Lily’s getting fierce…]
[What’s with the eye stabbing?]
[Big Lily]
[Now that I think about it, poor Mokmujin…]
[Whoa…]
[Eye stabbing, haha]
A clear liquid started to drip from the small eye that had a spear stuck in it.
The eye seemed to lose interest and turned away from me.
“It wasn’t eye stabbing; it was LASIK.”
“Huh?”
“The eye wasn’t moving normally; it was moving all over the place without control. So I fixed it, you could say.”
I hadn’t meant to harm the eye by stabbing it with a spear.
In fact, maybe it should be thanking me instead.
Yena tilted her head in confusion and then turned her gaze away.
I corrected one eye, but there were still dozens, hundreds of eyes left in the corridor.
While not as bad as the one I just corrected, the movements of the remaining eye still seemed somewhat erratic.
“Hmm. Now that I think about it, that makes sense.”
“Right?”
“Meow meow. Let’s correct all the remaining eyes.”
“Good idea!”
[What the???]
[Is that right?]
[LOL]
[Lasik, for real, haha]
[I’ll put in my lenses.]
[Doctor Lily is coming.]
[Ah haha, it’s supposed to fix your vision.]
[Hey, Lily!]
■
I realized while going around correcting that the number of eyes and rooms almost matched.
What I mean is, next to every room, there’s inevitably one or two eye pictures hanging up.
Whenever I tried to enter a room, the eye pictures started to indulge in me like they were having a seizure, and every time, I ended up giving them free lasik.
The eyes that had lasik for free were shedding tears of joy, but there was no need for them to be grateful.
“Why, meow?”
“Thanks to you, I’m enjoying free food and lodging, aren’t we both winning?”
By the way, the inside of the rooms had wealthy houses that even a typical ascetic would find astonishing.
The households were piled high with expensive spirit herbs and spirits, and in the lake, there were avatar-phase level carp that could elevate you just by eating them.
Even in the study, there were books that would make even display cases and the Master of Marriage Device drool, so any ascetic would absolutely not pass this place up.
“Ah! Lily! There’s a Marriage Device-level secret technique of the Myojok here!”
“Really?”
“Myeosin Jeollan Gak?! Is it a kicking technique? It looks somehow good… meow…”
Yena kept glancing at me.
And rightly so, because everything in this place was a ‘trap.’
I nodded as I closed a Marriage Device level book called Gwaishin Gyeok, one of the advanced techniques.
“Can I take this?”
“Is it for real?”
“Yes.”
Meow~!
As soon as she heard my permission, Eina hurriedly started gathering up everything related to Myojok or daggers.
Not stopping there, she recklessly stuffed expensive spirits and carp into her bag, and carp, and carp.
‘She really likes fish.’
The real Yena never liked fish that much.
“Hmm…”
Maybe she’ll grow to like them over time?
[Can we just leave that?]
[Hmmm, Lily…]
[What the heck, why is she collecting so many fish? LOL]
[Yena’s so excited, haha]
[She’s basically a cat now.]
[Did a ghost that died from not eating fish attach to her?]
[Isn’t that dangerous?]
“That much is no problem.”
This room is dangerous.
No, not just this room, all the rooms I saw in the hallway earlier were dangerous.
Once you fall into a room’s charm, you’ll feel like you don’t want to leave and gradually lose ‘yourself.’
“You’ll end up losing yourself.”
“Of course, just grabbing a few secret techniques and some spirit herbs won’t make you lose yourself right away.”
“But what if it keeps repeating?”
“There are many rooms here. Incrementally losing yourself… if you continue, eventually nothing will remain. You’ll return to nothingness.”
That’s why this space was extremely dangerous.
To be precise, it was dangerous before I had LASIK on my eyes.
“But there is more than one eye in each room. If we can neutralize those eyes, the shame of losing oneself will drop significantly.”
“Nyaa~”
“Above all, someone like Miss Yena should be fine. She’s a user, after all.”
How much can you really take ‘self’ away from a user protected by mental safeguarding?
At most, you’d erase memories like ‘the breakfast eaten a month ago’ or ‘a person I ran into on the road three weeks ago.’
That level of forgetting is something that naturally fades with human ‘oblivion’ anyway.
While diligently exploring rooms and repeating LASIK, I discovered a peculiar room.
“? There are so many eyes here, nyang.”
A door twice the size of other doors.
Next to the door, there were five eye drawings, shifting their gazes around, observing me and Yena.
For the record, the eyes may seem to just be watching, but they were actually attacking as well.
As before, Mokmujin’s eyes could slice through souls just by looking.
“Hmm…”
However, since my level had risen to that of a Marriage Device, it simply didn’t work on me.
[Gross]
[LASIK gogogogog]
[Let’s just break the room itself, Lily]
[Woah]
[Is this a boss room?]
“I guess this room is special. We should be a bit careful.”
“Hmm! Got it, nyang.”
After giving all five eyes LASIK surgery, I opened the door.
A transparent light engulfed Yena and me, and soon we fell somewhere.
A place completely different from where we had been…
[?]
“…?!”
“Where is this…?”
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