50 – Prayer (4)
“I’m sorry.”
“You fu-“
I was instantly rejected.
“f*cking hell, what am I supposed to do if even wishing won’t work?”
“Calm down! Take a deep breath before you explode!! Seriously, I’m too scared to speak.”
Taking a deep breath, she sighed.
“I’m not saying I can’t tell you everything. Of course, I’ll do my best to help you as much as you’re suffering. I won’t just let it go and accept the value you’ve given in exchange. But… the curse is attached to that body. Once you use it, you can’t undo it.”
“Then it means you ultimately can’t help. You useless woman.”
“Listen to me till the end. The warrior’s body cannot be saved. However, the soul can be saved.”
I crossed my arms and tapped my chin. It was a gesture asking her to repeat what she just said.
“You, the gamer, are currently possessing the body of the warrior, Luke, right?”
“That’s right.”
“In that case, can’t you abandon the warrior’s body and possess a different body later?”
I widened my eyes. It was a method that I had never considered before.
“Is that possible?”
“Can’t we say that if it succeeded once, it can succeed again? It’s commonly known as reincarnation.”
But…
She continued.
“Reincarnation also has a high cost for possession… If you reincarnate, you won’t have a body as strong as the warrior’s. Your appearance will change significantly.”
“I see.”
I nodded silently. It wasn’t a satisfying answer, but it still gave me hope of escaping the curse.
However, she seemed to know that it wasn’t enough. She added further explanation.
“Oh! Don’t worry though. I won’t just reincarnate you and leave you alone. Sacrifice! Beauty! Adequate strength! If it’s after defeating the demon lord, I can give you whatever you want. It’s enjoying a rise to glory! And if you don’t like that either…”
She continued.
“I can even send you back to where you originally lived.”
“…”
Home.
“Well.”
That isn’t a very appealing choice.
A damp basement, a creaking body, the feeling of slowly being forgotten from the bottom…
Dark thoughts started to arise, so I quickly changed the subject.
“Let’s skip the reward talk for now. I’m pretty much convinced at this point.”
I may not be able to completely escape the curse, but if I can change my body, it will be enough.
Thinking that way, I pushed the Holy Sword that I had been trying to unsheathe until just now and said, “By the way, in the game, they would enhance the Holy Sword after completing a chapter. Is it possible here as well?”
“Of course, why not!”
She replied like that and immediately intercepted my Holy Sword.
Then, she generated divine power and started doing something swiftly.
While doing that, she said that this was originally a cost-demanding task, and that through the Four Heavenly Kings, it could compensate for insufficient costs, but it wouldn’t bring about significant enhancements as most of the costs were absorbed by the ‘Hongshu’ ability.
There were many words, but I was still able to get enhancements.
“The enhancements you received are increased cutting power, durability improvement, and a slight boost to physical abilities.”
“That’s quite impressive.”
Honestly, I thought that there was a possibility that I might not be able to receive any enhancements at all.
Although it wasn’t as good as in the game, if I thought of it as a ‘Hongshu’ bluff. I could accept the results without much objection.
When I got the Holy Sword back like that, she opened her mouth with a relieved expression.
“Phew! I guess I did most of the explanations I wanted to with this! Is there anything else you’re curious about?”
“Well, hmm…”
I pondered over it.
I had heard why the difficulty became so ridiculous, and that there was a reward for me, and also heard why I had this curse.
I guess I’ve heard most of it…
‘Ah.’
Suddenly, a curiosity came to mind.
That thing I found in the residence of the Lich King. The blue stone that had all its strings broken so that I couldn’t even see the item name.
It suddenly came to my recollection.
It was definitely an item that existed as a bug in the game… Why does it exist here as well?
“Come to think of it…”
I opened my mouth to ask her about it.
“Yes?”
I stopped immediately.
My intuition warns me.
A corner of my mind suddenly became chillingly cold for a moment.
It wasn’t the intuition of the hero, Luke, but the intuition of the Earthling, Kang Inwoo, who was a gamer.
──This is the kind of question that should not be brought up.
The characters who had used that item in the game were all deleted. Without a trace.
Of course, she wouldn’t delete me right away, considering how much she had invested in me, but at the very least, something bad was bound to happen.
“No, it’s nothing.”
That’s why I had to play it cool.
Still, I wondered if she had noticed the awkwardness, but she didn’t ask me about it.
A moment of awkward silence enveloped us.
She watched me with a subtle smile for a while before finally speaking.
“Hero. You’re a hero, aren’t you? How many times have you been a hero?”
“… The 21st time, I guess.”
This was the background explanation that appeared before the game started. The hero, selected for the twenty-first time, appeared to defeat the Demon King.
It was just a few sentences of explanation, and not many people knew about it, but as a dedicated gamer, I remembered it.
“Yes, over the past two thousand years, the hero has changed more than twenty times. Many of the Four Heavenly Kings have died and been replaced, and countless heroes have been born and perished. The only thing that hasn’t changed over those countless years is…”
She raised her index finger.
“The Demon King.”
The master of demons. Immortal. Absolute ruler. The scourge of the continent for over two thousand years.
The fact that the hero had appeared 21 times meant that the previous 20 heroes had failed to defeat the Demon King.
“It’s a difficult path. No one has succeeded on that path. Even I can’t gauge how many thorns lie ahead on that path.”
“You’re asking for quite the task.”
“Because there’s no one else.”
She said.
“From the beginning, I created that game without knowing whether even I could beat it. You’ve beaten it dozens, maybe hundreds of times. I believe in you.”
“…”
For some reason, the difficulty level felt incredibly challenging.
I wasn’t sure whether to be happy or sad about being called a gaming addict.
If I had played the game a little less, I wouldn’t have ended up here in the first place.
Tock, tock.
As I was having those thoughts, a white light began to burst around me. It seemed like they were slowly wrapping up the conversation.
With an innocent smile, she spoke again.
“Well, it’s time to say goodbye soon. Oh, by the way, I’d recommend closing your eyes when I start talking from now on!”
“Why is that?”
“It could be a problem with your sanity!”
At that moment, when I couldn’t understand what she was saying, I tilted my head in confusion.
‘Something’ appeared behind her. It was something that couldn’t be properly discerned, but exuded an immense presence.
“By the way, I forgot to mention this. The next Four Heavenly Kings are the Puppets. Puppets’ Master is Net. The Demon Lord’s army has become stronger as the restrictions have been gradually lifted. You should be well aware of the Puppets’ Master, so please be careful.”
She was conveying something important, but it didn’t register in my ears.
What captured my attention was an even more shocking sight in front of me.
As I stared at ‘something’ for a while, I soon realized its true identity.
It was her true form.
Chills ran down my spine.
··· In [The Demon Lord and the Hero’s Party], achieving a high level is quite difficult.
The highest level is only up to 100.
In nearly a thousand episodes, I have never reached level 100 even once.
Even if I unlock the seal of the Demon Lord to its limits.
Even if I push the growth of the hero to the utmost extreme.
In the end, I can only reach the late 90s, never reaching the max level.
That’s why I thought it was a restriction in the system.
It was just a level that existed in formality. I believed that it was impossible to actually reach level 100.
“Oh, before you go, let me give you one warning.”
I was wrong.
I had simply resigned myself because the wall was too high.
Right in front of me, there she was.
Inside her elusive true form that was hard to capture in my sight, I saw a small status window flickering.
[Lv 100]
Clearly enough to give chills.
As if this was the ultimate truth.
The figure that I had always thought was Enen finally opened her mouth.
“Next time, show some respect. I am someone who values manners.”
With those words.
I disappeared into the clouds.
“Cough… Cough… Ugh!”
“Hero? Hero?! Are you okay?!”
As I opened my eyes, I found myself back in the prayer room of the church.
I retched with my mouth clenched shut.
The saintly maiden looked at me with a worried expression.
My head was throbbing as if it would split, and my insides churned.
It felt like my brain was rejecting what I had seen, something I shouldn’t have looked at.
I cursed inwardly.
This wasn’t even the Cthulhu Mythos.
And I ended up in this state after just a brief glimpse? It was unbelievable.
Enen, who possessed such dark power, was no different. Even I, who had been rendered helpless before it.
First and foremost, I remembered when I had wielded the Holy Sword against the goddess.
Initially, I had thought I narrowly dodged her attacks, but that wasn’t the case.
It was clear that, as a divine avatar, I wouldn’t have received any damage to begin with.
“From start to finish, I was just a spectator…”
Should I say I felt deceived? I felt rather disappointed.
Looking at the saintly maiden who was fussing beside me, I spoke.
“I’m fine… I just had a moment of dizziness. I must have made a spectacle of myself.”
“Are you really okay? You’re not hurt anywhere?”
“Yes, I’m really okay. More importantly, how long was I praying?”
“Huh? It hasn’t been long. It was only about five minutes, I think…”
“Only five minutes?”
I had thought we had been conversing for quite a while, but it had only been five minutes?
I couldn’t help but be surprised.
“God is truly God…”
It was as if the gods could perform such incredible feats effortlessly.
Perhaps my head was confused because I had absorbed too much information at once, or maybe it was because I had confronted her true form.
“I’m sorry. I need to rest for a bit.”
“Of course. Can I assist you in any way?”
Because of that, I decided to take a short break.
I need some time to organize my thoughts, even if it’s just for a while.
The saint supported me with a worried expression, and I sat down on a nearby chair, taking a deep breath.
Maybe it was because of the sunny sunlight coming in through the window, but the atmosphere itself was comfortable.
However, the break didn’t last long.
Bang!
“Something bad has happened! Your Grace! Sir Hero!”
Someone forcefully pushed open the door and entered.
It was a messenger who came from somewhere.
He must have rushed here as his hair was disheveled.
After a while, he spoke with an anxious expression.
From Noble mtl dot com
“T-the Demon King’s army has attacked!”
At those words, we all stood up from our seats.
