Chapter 48

“Mr. Jeong Suho!!”

Kang Ihyun clamped both arms around Jeong Suho’s waist. Even so, whether because he was a God of War or because his adrenaline had blown past the redline, all Kang Ihyun could do was barely keep him from plunging forward.

“Hey, please, get a grip. If you keep this up here we could be in real trouble!”

Each time Jeong Suho plunged his hand into the black liquid, it hissed and there was the smell of burning protein. He was obviously tearing up his arms.

A frown slowly formed between Kang Ihyun’s brows. He had no idea how to steer this any further.

Nari had been devoured by spirit energy, her identity had been exposed, and they had no idea how to get out of here. On top of that, he had to struggle to restrain his rival.

Worse, their relationship had been on the verge of mending. Just thinking that this reality was tying his rival and Nari together by his own hand sent a blaze of jealousy roaring up in his chest.

‘Ah, this is infuriating. Just…’

The look on Kang Ihyun’s face, usually all gentle on the surface and cunning at the core, turned steadily colder. His world was black and white except for Shin Bitnari, so he could not forgive the thought of his god loving someone else.

As long as Shin Bitnari was looking at him, he could endure anything. Nari was his god, his beloved, the one owner of the single sentence that had changed his world.

He had not wanted much. If he could just be allowed to stay by her side, that’d be enough. However,

Kang Ihyun looked at the man whose waist he was holding. It was because of him. This man was ruining his god.

Now that their lives, his and Nari’s, had finally gotten back on track, he was trying to drop another massive bomb on them.

He held it in and held it in, he smiled the way he always did, but Nari kept turning toward this man. His life was about to be wrecked again.

‘If it is going to be that way, then I should remove the first thread.’

[The Constellation, Staff of Purification, urges you not to think things like that!]

“I can’t help it, archangel.”

His voice shook uncontrollably. For some reason his eyes were full of rapture. The strength he had clamped on Jeong Suho was starting to loosen.

In front of someone so overwrought he could not understand words, Kang Ihyun raised a heat-dazed voice toward his Constellation.

“I have to live myself…”

Jeong Suho was trying to take Shin Bitnari from him, no, that was not it. Jeong Suho was trying to take Mr. Lude. No, he was not even sure what he was thinking.

It was fine if Nari did not look at him, as long as she did not look at anyone. But now…

“Pretty savage thoughts, huh?”

“?!”

At the voice that came from right behind them in an instant, Kang Ihyun jolted and spun around. The nape of his neck prickled. Sensing killing intent, Jeong Suho snapped back to himself at some point and turned too.

“Haha, you don’t have to be that startled.”

Black hair, pitch-black eyes, a black trench coat. Just over one seventy centimeters tall, skinny as a rail. Lude was looking at them. No—

“…Who are you?”

“Now that hurts my feelings.”

He was not hiding the murderous aura, and his eyes looked at people from far above. That was not Lude.

By reflex, Kang Ihyun drew the sword at his waist. Click. Having snapped to full alert, Jeong Suho leveled a pistol from who knew where.

[The Constellation, Staff of Purification, warns you that man truly must be handled with extreme caution!]

Even his Constellation sent a razor-edged warning. The man in front of them guffawed and looked at the two.

“Nari’s big brother.”

Big brother? Kang Ihyun glanced at Jeong Suho. Jeong Suho shook his head. As far as he knew, Nari had no brother. The man snorted and spoke again.

“I did not mean ‘brother’ as a human.”

“…Then you are Nari’s Constellation…”

“Strictly speaking, not exactly.”

Kang Ihyun’s eyes flew wide. The man stared straight at him and spoke.

“Let me just ask something to make sure.”

“…Yes?”

“My Constellation name is the Creeping ◼◼◼◼. Were you able to hear it?”

Noise was mixed in the words, a loud static that felt like it struck the brain directly. Kang Ihyun and Jeong Suho clapped both hands over their ears. Lude clicked his tongue.

“Then how about ‘Lord of Chaos’?”

“…We can hear that.”

“I thought so. You are half caught in the system huh... Fine. Stop getting in my way and get lost.”

With a bored flick of his hand, countless tendrils erupted from the floor, coiling tight around their bodies and gagging them. Kang Ihyun’s Constellation popped a translucent indirect message.

[The Constellation, Staff of Purification, protests to the being before you, demanding to know what he is doing to his Avatar!]

“Oh Nari. You fell all the way in here. See, I told you to be careful. Even I have to put in work to cradle your unconscious.”

The man checked the tub on the altar, or rather, the Lord of Chaos did. As if he could not even hear the protest, he reached his hand into the tub and swirled it around. Unlike with Jeong Suho, there was no sound of anything burning.

[The Constellation, Staff of Purification, lodges a strong protest, demanding to know why you are ignoring me…!]

“Quiet, archangel. What are you doing? This is ‘our’ turf. Do you intend to start another war?”

He waved his hand through the air and the archangel’s indirect message powdered away. The Lord of Chaos’s baleful eyes gleamed.

“Even Olympus is quiet, so you cannot be darting around like this now…”

Crackle. At those words, a blue, translucent indirect message flickered up in front of Jeong Suho and vanished at once. His cautious goddess must have started to say something and then shut her mouth. The Lord of Chaos snorted.

“You already knew Nari’s Constellation is ‘our father’, right? Ah, is that why you stuck Kang Ihyun to her?”

[The Constellation, Staff of Purification, keeps silent at the Lord of Chaos’s words.]

“I thought our side had wiped your brats out… Guess not?”

He laughed at the archangel’s silence.

“Haha, hahaha! Ahhahaha! Ahaha, haha! Ah, ah, ah, that is rich. You know it is too funny. Ah.”

When he had laughed enough to wet his eyes, he wiped away the tears with a fingertip, then looked back at Kang Ihyun and Jeong Suho.

“Did you think that would work? Look at Jeong Suho next to you. Even the chief gods of Olympus, whom you once treated as demons, are still stout!”

[The Constellation, Staff of Purification, looks to the Lord of Chaos, demanding what you mean by ‘treated as demons’.]

“Don’t be ridiculous. Are not some of the demons recorded in the Lemegeton cribbed from Olympus’s gods?”

Jeong Suho’s goddess gave no answer. Kang Ihyun’s archangel neither. Silence sometimes meant the answer.

The Lord of Chaos smiled lazily and opened a rift in the dimension. Jeong Suho, who had no immunity to mental assaults, squeezed his eyes shut from the headache.

“We end the three-way here. I should go find the real Nari. If I keep throwing my weight around in an unpermitted unconscious state… the dream’s owner gets mad.”

At those words, deep in the cave’s darkness there was a grinding sound. Crawling globs of slime rolled, coming toward the bound Kang Ihyun and Jeong Suho.

Wobbling, the slime formed shapes once it reached them. Shin Bitnari, her chest holed through where the heart should be, stared at them with hollow eyes.

“Here.”

Nari looked up at the Lord of Chaos with vacant eyes. He put a black half-scissors in her right hand, then pointed at Kang Ihyun and Jeong Suho.

“Intruders. For our Nari, you need to deal with them, right?”

Slowly, Nari looked at Kang Ihyun and Jeong Suho. A shocking chill raced up their spines. From a wind that held nothing in it, a murderous will swirled around them.

Nari… no. He had said he was going to find the real Nari, so this was a product of Shin Bitnari’s unconscious. When that thing gripped the black scissors, spirit energy began to spread.

Black, mistlike spirit energy scattered in all directions. Seeing it, the Lord of Chaos grinned and began stepping into the rift he had opened.

“Oh right. Archangel, want me to tell you something good?”

Just before his last step, he looked back. He smiled so wide his mouth split to his ears.

“We decided to try imitating you.”

Boom!! With that, the cave with the altar shook as if an earthquake had struck.

Stalactites hanging from the ceiling crashed down, striking Jeong Suho and Kang Ihyun’s heads and bodies again and again as they lay bound on the floor.

“Urk…!!”

[Trait :: Vampire of the Living Flame activates!]

Holy fire rapidly healed Kang Ihyun’s wounds. That did not erase the pain. It had been a long time since he had felt the pain of limbs being torn off.

He had hardly had cause for that when acting with Lude, so biting the gag in his mouth, he endured the long-missed sensation.

He was not with Nari now.

Thinking that far, Kang Ihyun’s eyes flew open.

‘What about Mr. Jeong Suho?!’

At the sudden thought, he writhed. Jeong Suho had no healing skills like this. Nor did he have a way to protect his mind from Nari’s malignant bent. In this situation, only Kang Ihyun could protect him.

For someone who had been entertaining extreme thoughts moments ago, he pulled himself together fast.

The quake stopped, the stalactites fell no more, but a murky black fog still wrapped around them and he could not see a hand before his face.

No one could tell how Nari’s unconscious would act next.

‘Damn it, if only I did not have this gag, I could use some skill somehow.’

Whoosh, even holy fire did not burn it well. Deciding that finding Jeong Suho came first, Kang Ihyun planted his knees to stand, but then—

“D-Don’t move.”

At the same time, someone came up without a sound and took his hand. When he flinched, the person pressed his hand down to keep him still and sliced the ropes fast with a rasping sound.

“…This was a gift from my goddess, so, it is, um, really sharp… it, it cuts.”

A hoarse voice like someone who had not spoken in a long time. He had never heard it before, and yet Kang Ihyun, recognizing who was behind him, let out a laugh around the gag.

Jeong Suho was infuriating. Kang Ihyun knew exactly which opponents he could beat and which he could not.

Jeong Suho was someone he could never beat. Was he not the one who had given Shin Bitnari’s life its great turning point?

No, even if that was not it. No matter what he did, he realized he would always lose to Jeong Suho.

While he sat helplessly accepting the situation, Jeong Suho had been quietly slicing his ropes with a knife, trying to break through somehow.

How could someone this admirable ever lose to someone like him, sly and full of scheming.

“…You can talk.”

“…Y-Yeah, a condition was met.”

After saying that, Jeong Suho stood and took a step forward. Kang Ihyun finally pushed himself up by his knees.

In front of them, Nari’s unconscious was readying the black half-scissors.

“T-That is Nari’s unconscious, right?”

“I think so… can we calm it down you think?”

“Not by myself. C-Can you help? I am really, really dizzy.”

Beside him, Kang Ihyun only nodded. His vestments and Jeong Suho’s cloak flared in the black spirit energy.

“Yes, of course.”

[Priest Exclusive Basic Skill :: Formula Trinitaria]

[Ranger Exclusive Basic Skill :: ‘Domain Declaration’]