Chapter 55 (1/2)

Seo Jin-Wook

‘Geek… Geeek!’

Unlike that of Park Chang-Hee, the curse of Han-Seol did not even get a chance to try and infiltrate my body.

The seed implanted in my heart had evidently first attacked and penetrated with its tentacles. With this, the seed of Han-Seol struggled, spreading something like a red tentacle around it.

‘It’s perishing.’

Witnessing this scene made me wonder about the curse’s mechanism that the system message did not fully expound on.

Why did it want to attack and destroy a seed that had already lost its host?

‘Geeeek!’

The seed of Han-Seol had now clearly reduced its size. A similar phenomenon occurred once more.

A psychological wave had begun to seep from it, connected by the tentacles of my seed. I could now hear a voice.

‘He’s going to be the greatest hunter on Earth. Even if I survive the collapse of Siheung Dungeon, I can’t be as strong as him.’

Voices gradually overlapped, echoed, and changed into different senses.

The life of Han-Seol unfolded before my eyes like a vision.

*

The introduction had begun with a hunter’s desire for heroism.

‘Oh, I have Prophecy! I’m special. I was chosen!’

It was both self-delusion and hypocrisy to say that she didn’t need other people’s recognition and was only doing her duty. Han-Seol wanted to stand out. She wanted to be recognized by people all over the world. However, she found out that she couldn’t rise to be the best, even if she continued to live away from her scheduled death.

‘I can go up to the SS-Rank with this potential Mana. But that’s it.’

The Hunters she had seen in the future had the ability and strength that was the equivalent of a God-like state in her standards, which they had long transcended beyond the boundary of SS-Ranks.

‘If I stay like this, I’ll only be a prophet.’

Jealousy bloomed in her mind. Even though [Prophecy] was her unique skill, she couldn’t perfectly control it. Prophecies always came to her out of the blue, delivering incomplete scenes and information about the future, and then disappeared.

With this in mind, she changed her direction.

‘The kid that will become the most powerful hunter in all of humanity.’

The overwhelmingly strong one, as she had seen him in the future.

However, he was close to a tyrant who committed soaked in madness, beyond the boundaries of law and morality. The state couldn’t act against that one hunter. Even with their all-out efforts, they could not contain him. Han-Seol saw him fight in a scene her Prophecy emitted. She trembled.

‘What if I could own that kid?’

His only weakness was his anxious mind.

‘By being with him from a very young age, to make him only listen to me.’

She had to become the only light that he never had in his childhood.

The plan seemed to be going well for a long time.

Even in the process of his madness worsening, Seo Jin-Wook trusted only one person in the world and followed Han-Seol sincerely.

However, recently, everything had gone wrong.

‘The future has changed.’

After Park Chang-Hee died, Seo Jin-Wook suddenly began to get out of her control.

‘Moreover, he’s gotten stronger at a much faster rate than I had seen in the prediction!’

Seo Jin-Wook’s performance under the guise of Bill Russel was indeed frightening. This was the power of a hunter that only Awakened three months ago. At this rate, he could become much more powerful than she had predicted in decades. First of all, she couldn’t find the same madness in him as before, and she couldn’t control him as she once did.

‘If I can’t have him···’

Han-Seol had not realized that a shady madness had now mixed into her desire.

‘If I can’t have him….I’d rather…!’

*

I frowned at Han-Seol’s life as it flashed in front of my eyes. The curse’s effect that controlled her was the same as Park Chang-Hee’s. Its goal was to amplify a person’s desire, the most vivid feelings, and to flood it with madness.

‘All the nonsense she said in front of me was true. She was just trying to kill me because she didn’t think making me her puppet would work anymore. She wanted to kill me before I could grow even more.’

The moment she had decided to kill me, she had been completely devoured by madness. How could one understand a crazy person? I shook my head.

‘Like Park Chang-Hee, there is no specific memory of someone planting a curse.’

Han-Seol’s memories had rushed through me in an instant, but it was quite time-consuming to compare them and analyze them one by one in order to find suspicious commonalities.

‘Nothing to see after the madness has completely taken over. I’ll have to look at her process of reaching that point.’

I needed to find clues hidden within her memory. It wouldn’t happen in a day or two.

‘First of all, I should return.’

I completely erased the traces of Han-Seol and began to move with Nicole’s body, which had been mutated by the immortal. As I approached the portal that led to the second stage, I saw two lost expedition members that were unable to move due to the thick fog. One of them pointed their finger at me.

“Oh, look over there! It’s Bill Russell!”

It was now time to go back to Earth.

*

I knew it was necessary to mix truth and lie in moderation. This was in order to explain why two Hunters had suddenly died when the dungeon attack had already been completed. I revealed that an alien race from a different dimension had decided to invade as soon as it was cleared. The proof of my argument lay in Nicole’s body, which had been mutated by the parasite. The existence of an alien race with unexpected abilities now shocked the world.

“It parasites in the human body and changes the flesh? And then it pretends to be human, and even manipulates it?”

“How many of them are there? What’s the number of species?”

“If many of them were to infiltrate the Earth, wouldn’t humans be completely devoured?”

So far, the alien race that we had encountered in the dungeon had already existed within some predictable category, whether it was friendly or hostile.

However, the new species had completely changed the concept of potential enemy classification.

Each government now struggled to come up with a manual on how to respond if they were to reencounter such creatures.

‘Well, it would be hard to come up with a reasonable plan right now.’

I was rewarded as Bill Russell upon successfully playing my part, and I returned to the United States after rejecting all the fuss about being rewarded by order of the Nation.

It was now the time to shift my place with the real Bill Russell.