[Sub Quest: Finish reading 'Theology and History of the Demon Realm'!]
[Quest complete.]
[Reward: KP 50 granted.]
To get straight to the point.
The otherworld summoning perk is invincible, and it is god!
Because since coming here, I have never once struggled with language.
In the Middle Realm I could communicate in Imperial or in Elvish, and reading books was no different.
One week.
For the time it took the Magic Power Core to settle completely into my body, I spent most of my hours, apart from meals and sleep, in the underground storeroom.
"In the beginning the universe existed, and with it the god was born……."
The Heavenly Realm, the dimension created along with the god's birth.
The Middle Realm, the dimension shaped from the god's flesh.
And last, the Demon Realm, the dimension born of the god's death.
This was lore from the game that I already knew.
But reading it over again, something itched at the back of my head.
'The Heavenly Realm waited first for the Demon Realm's ruin, and only then invaded the Middle Realm.'
Belios had said all of it was for the god's resurrection.
Perhaps those two things were connected to the resurrection he spoke of.
When I glanced sideways, a system window appeared as if it had been waiting for me.
[Main Quest: Prevent the ruin of the Demon Realm!]
'So this is what stopping the ruin meant.'
In truth, the identity of this system window that hands me quests even at this moment is still a mystery.
Whether it's some fragment of the god who supposedly died long ago, or what.
'Well, I gave up trying to understand that question long ago.'
What mattered in the end was revenge on the Heavenly Realm.
So I turned my eyes back and opened another history book.
The Heavenly Realm might have pulled some trick in the Demon Realm's ruin.
And my reason for suspecting so wasn't merely to give my hunger for revenge a pretext.
"The Heaven-Demon War that broke out five hundred years ago……."
A great war begun by the Heavenly Realm's sudden intrusion.
And the place where the war's prelude opened was none other than.
'The seventy-second Demon King's dungeon.'
This very place, the dungeon Enoch governs.
The Heavenly Realm's machinations in the future.
The Heaven-Demon War in the past.
The Demon God born at the end of that upheaval.
And me, regressed into the center of it all.
"……."
Was every bit of this really nothing but coincidence?
***
In the end, the books in the underground storeroom fell short of my expectations.
To put it precisely, they were tantalizing.
Getting only vague, fragmentary information ended up feeding my suspicion and hostility toward the Heavenly Realm instead.
And that feeling soon turned into action.
"What were you doing for the past ten years?"
I'd gone and asked the question I had never dared ask before.
And to that question, Enoch…….
"I go and kill."
Returned a rather savage answer.
No, I mean, what is it you go and kill?
"Is it something I'm not supposed to know?"
"Do you wish to know?"
When I nodded, Enoch looked me over for a moment.
"It will be dangerous."
"……Dangerous enough to die from?"
"Not to that degree. You, I think, could endure it."
I could endure it?
The conversation only raised more questions the further it went, but I'd have to keep it going to reach any answers.
"It is not a being that can be explained in words. You must see it yourself."
A being the future Demon God would go that far to describe.
As someone still unfinished, I was a little intimidated.
But I am Yujin, the Hero.
Not a man to bow before a threat of this size.
"I want to see it myself."
"Very well."
Once I had decided, Enoch said nothing more.
Then he laid a hand on my shoulder.
FWIP—
"Urk."
For an instant my vision shook.
It was the sign that Enoch was moving.
The feeling of space itself folding.
The scenery around us folded up and down like paper, and before I could draw a single breath, a new landscape had arrived before my eyes.
'Blink.'
That isn't its official name.
It's just what I call it.
A technique derived from an ability the Demon God…… no, the Demon King Enoch has possessed from the very start.
Flashing east and flashing west, exactly as the saying goes. It gave me no end of grief before the regression.
Even now, I'd wager we cleared something like the distance from Seoul to Busan in a single leap.
When it comes to mobility, I doubt there's any ability greater than this.
'And at the same time, it's a trait I'm after.'
Even at this moment, [Existence Analysis] was ticklingly prodding at something.
Just a little more.
A little more exposure to this and a "possibility" would open.
'Well…… that's that.'
Now was the time to focus on other matters.
Satisfied with the lingering trace of "possibility," I looked around the place we had arrived at.
As always, a plain.
Apart from the mansion and the walls that protected it, Enoch's dungeon held nothing but these desolate plains.
Though I didn't know whether even that was the aftermath of the Heaven-Demon War five hundred years ago.
"What's out here?"
Enoch silently pointed a finger in one direction.
It was the boundary line between the plain and the sky.
The horizon.
The place where the sun rises and the moon sets.
And from there, some black dot began to appear.
"……?"
Before long the black dot grew steadily larger.
Like ink dropped onto pure white drawing paper.
But spreading without any end, it went from a dot to a line, and the line became a plane that began to erode sky and earth alike.
"……!!"
In other words, that was.
'An outer god.'
I felt it instinctively.
That thing was not of this world.
The Void.
Literally, a being from outside.
Some colossal thing there was looking at this place.
And at the same time I felt as though my eyes had met it.
In that instant my head, no, my whole body…… my soul shuddered.
[Existence Analysis]
The Grade SSS trait that analyzes everything was attempting to "understand" that being.
Then "that thing" revealed an emotion.
That was simply how it felt.
Displeasure?
Because I had tried to "understand" it?
"Ha……."
Overwhelming.
And a sense of helplessness.
Set against it, I was as petty and fleeting as a microplastic in the vast ocean.
Only then did I understand why Enoch had called it "dangerous."
If I had been an ordinary human…….
Merely looking at it would have torn my soul to shreds.
The price for daring to look upon a gap that wide without permission.
But I didn't die.
Was it purely thanks to the Holy Sigil dwelling in my soul?
No. It wasn't.
I had just understood its emotion properly.
Which meant that bastard.
"Over someone as small as me……."
Was still displeased with me.
Because.
"You're afraid."
Because I had already killed it once.
I shifted my gaze and looked up.
There stood Enoch, watching the devoured horizon.
'What I killed before the regression…….'
Was not Enoch.
It was "that thing," which had swallowed Enoch's body.
So I couldn't help laughing.
Because "that thing" clearly recognized that it had died once.
――――――――――!!!
In that instant Enoch swung his sword.
With that alone, a being that had felt unfathomably vast was split in two.
As though the process had been omitted and only the result remained.
And so the Void that had been devouring the world withdrew, anticlimactically.
Then Enoch asked.
"Why did you laugh."
I answered with a grin.
"Because it's less of a match than I expected."
At that, Enoch nodded and laid his hand on my shoulder again.
"Let us return."
DING!
[You have acquired a new trait.]
[Blink (Grade F)]
***
Back at the mansion, I closed my eyes for a while.
The Void.
The monster I killed with my own hands before the regression.
And at the same time, the monster that will kill Enoch.
So in the end, to prevent the Demon Realm's ruin, I had to prevent Enoch's death.
But how, where, and why he dies in the future, I still didn't know.
So to keep him from ever reaching that death, there was nothing for it but to grow strong myself.
At least as strong as I was right before the regression…….
'No, stronger than that.'
I could tell the moment I faced the Void.
It had swallowed Enoch's body, but perhaps as the price, it had lost part of its power.
Maybe, before the regression, Enoch had still been resisting the Void even then.
In any case, reasons for me to grow stronger always existed, just like this.
'Hmm…….'
In that spirit, I looked at the landscape of the mind spread before me.
Leaves swaying gently in a wind whose source I couldn't tell.
The Mind Tree absorbing the energies of the enormous sun and moon hanging in that sky, slowly feeding on their nourishment.
The tree that had once been a mere sapling had become a full-grown tree.
'Reassuring.'
The countless leaves that had grown in were the traits I held, and the many branches reaching toward the sky offered up innumerable possibilities.
And the sun high in the sky was the "Holy Sigil" carved into my soul.
While the one that stood for the moon…….
'The life Enoch handed over to me.'
That was a piece of himself that Enoch had left in me sixteen years ago, when I was a newborn dying of a magic power rampage.
Because a Demon King is one with his dungeon.
It amounted to a qualification that such a Demon King had left me.
It was also why I call Enoch father.
Because that was a portion of this dungeon's authority.
Having received the authority of the Demon King who guards the Demon Realm, I survived the magic power.
And that was the very proof that Enoch had taken me in.
'Because the quality of my magic power is shared with the dungeon's growth.'
There were surely other ways to grow, but no method raises the purity of magic power as efficiently as growing the dungeon.
'Which means that for me to grow stronger, the dungeon has to grow too.'
But.
There was one question drifting through my head.
……How?
In what way was a dungeon supposed to be grown?
I went straight to Enoch to resolve that question, and.
"I do not know."
If you don't know, then what am I supposed to do?
"I merely guard."
The only answer that came back was the sort a knight crazed with loyalty would give…….
In the end I scratched my head awkwardly, and just as I was about to leave the room.
"One month."
"Yes?"
"Before long, spend one month outside the mansion."
An exile order, out of nowhere.
Is asking a single question really such a terrible crime?
***
……is what I grumbled, but.
What could I do when the master of the mansion told me to leave?
When I asked why, he only repeated "it is dangerous" like a parrot, so in the end I had no choice but to go down to the underground storeroom.
-The King is in need of rest, yo!
"Is rest something he can only get with nobody in the mansion?"
-I don't know the reason either, yo?
"Ah, whatever."
I'd gotten my hopes up for nothing.
Then again, what would a creature that only tends the underground storeroom every day know?
It hadn't even known I'd been living in the mansion for sixteen years.
-What is that insolent look, yo?!
"What, am I not allowed to make my own faces?"
-You're a stupid poop-head, yo!
"Why would you say something so cruel?"
-I'm only saying whatever I please, yo?
It really is a hard spirit to get close to.
-But I really don't know, yo. Only, the reason the King separated this basement is that very rest, yo.
"He separated the basement because of the rest?"
-That's right, yo. Once every hundred years, the King cuts off all contact for a month, yo. That is why this basement was separated, yo.
"Hmm……."
Enoch had called it dangerous, and the spirit called it a rest period.
Danger and rest. There was certainly something in the gap between them.
"Anyway, thanks for telling me, Blackie."
-……What, yo? What did you just call me, yo?
"I said thanks. Blackie."
-Bl-Blackie?
"Yeah. A black sheep. So, Blackie. Cute-sounding, isn't it?"
-EEYAAAGH!
The furious black sheep charged at me!
But how much could a sheep that barely came up to my knee accomplish by thrashing about!
"Heh heh. If it bothers you, tell me your name."
-……EEYAAAGH!
Naturally, I was never going to hear its name.
Because the names spirits hold are somewhat special.
So all I did was smile.
"Well then, I should take a few books from here before I leave the mansion."
Now that I had acquired the trait Magic Power Core and could wield magic power far more freely than before, I had to find ways to put it to use.
'I'd like something that pairs well with the [Blink] I just got.'
But my understanding of magic power was sorely lacking, so I'd come down to the storeroom hoping for even a clue about it.
In truth, I hadn't expected much.
After all, I lean heavily on the Mind Tree's traits, and I don't have much experience developing something myself in order to grow.
And yet.
"Huh."
There was one.
A way of using magic power that even the pre-regression me had known.