“It really is here.”
GRAB.
A small pouch without so much as a speck of dust on it.
In a place where enormous clouds of dust rose with every step, this item alone was perfectly clean.
【Bottomless Gold Pouch】
Grade: Rare
Type: Summoning Item
A money pouch without end.
A pouch that bestows wealth upon you.
[Item Effect]
Once per day.
A random amount of money is produced.
[Special Notes]
The money will be converted into the currency of the user’s country.
If the user wishes, an item of equivalent monetary value may be produced instead of currency.
Grin.
“This is what I was looking for.”
The Bottomless Gold Pouch.
An item that endlessly produced money.
Of course, despite being called endless, the amount it produced was not particularly large.
In its current state, the most it could produce was one million won.
“‘In its current state,’ that is.”
This item could be forcibly upgraded.
In the future, this item would reach Mythic Grade.
And at Mythic Grade, the maximum amount it could produce approached one trillion won.
‘Of course, once it’s upgraded to Mythic Grade, it gains a limit on the number of uses.’
It would be limited to five uses.
But Yugeon knew something.
He knew how to input the exact amount he wanted into this pouch.
‘That was how the guild that owned this pouch became filthy rich practically overnight.’
Yugeon placed the item into his bag and immediately left the hidden space.
There was nothing else to obtain here.
At most, the place could be used as a safe zone.
Monsters could not enter this space.
“There’s no point leaving it open.”
After all, situations dangerous enough to require such a place almost never occurred on Floor 2.
CREEAK.
“Been a long time.”
After retracing his memories and returning home, Yugeon looked around the house with a faint smile.
The home where he had lived with his family.
It had been decades since he had last been here.
‘Was it eight years from now…?’
Monsters would swarm into this area, reducing it to ruins.
Because of that, Yugeon had eventually been forced to move elsewhere.
“I’m home.”
After putting down his belongings, Yugeon walked toward his family.
“Been a long time.”
TAP.
With a bitter smile, Yugeon picked up his family.
No.
A photograph of his family.
His family members were smiling brightly in the picture.
“Back then, the alarm went off so suddenly that I couldn’t even take the photo with me.”
Yugeon removed the photograph from its frame and tucked it inside his clothes.
His father.
His mother.
His younger brother and younger sister.
All four had died during the Second Monster Wave.
At the time, Yugeon had been shoved by the fleeing crowd and fallen into a sewer.
Thanks to that, he had survived the monster attack unharmed.
But his entire family had died.
Three of them had gone shopping to buy a present for his youngest sibling, his little sister, only to be swept up in the Wave.
His grandmother, who had been at the senior center, had survived with the help of Awakened.
Yugeon had grown up under his grandmother’s care afterward.
Eventually, his grandmother had also passed away due to old age.
TAP.
Yugeon returned the now-empty frame to its place and turned away.
He missed them.
He wanted to see them.
But he had no time to drown in grief and whine about things like that.
He needed to use that time to carry out his plans instead.
Only then could he see his family truly alive again.
For the briefest moment, a thought crossed Yugeon’s mind.
‘It could’ve sent me back fifty years, to when my family was still alive.’
But he quickly dismissed it.
He should be grateful simply to have returned forty years into the past.
He should be deeply grateful that he had been given another chance to correct the past.
‘I don’t know how I regressed, but….’
He now knew that regression itself was possible.
After all, he was experiencing it firsthand.
Then if he used the Holy Grail, he should be able to achieve a proper regression.
A regression that would return him to the exact point in time he desired.
CREEAK.
THUD.
After spending the entire day resting at home, Yugeon headed outside early the next morning.
From this point onward, he needed to move quickly.
‘There’s a sword I need to obtain within a month.’
If a month passed, that sword would fall into the hands of another Awakened.
But as he had just thought, he only needed to secure that sword sometime within the next month.
‘So for now, I need to obtain a different weapon.’
Yugeon smiled.
In this life.
Someone who would become his sword and shield.
The first companion who would become a member of the Godslayers.
It was time to recruit the Heavenly Killing Star, Cha Mincheol.
The destruction of the world.
Naturally, the greatest cause behind humanity’s downfall had been the monsters spewed out by the Towers.
Powerful monsters that emerged without the slightest warning.
However, there had also been numerous other factors that accelerated the destruction of the world.
There were roughly ten major ones.
One of them was Genocide.
An international organization of psychopaths and one of the primary forces that accelerated the world’s destruction.
Genocide was an organization composed of powerful Awakened.
They were madmen who claimed that humanity had to be reset in order to usher in a new age.
As a result, mountains of Awakened corpses piled up at Genocide’s hands.
Eventually, the number of Awakened available to stop the monsters dwindled, and nations gradually began to collapse.
‘And the person who eventually becomes Genocide’s leader.’
The Heavenly Killing Star.
Cha Mincheol.
More precisely, it was because of Cha Mincheol’s Unique Ability.
He did not possess only the Heavenly Killing Star Trait.
Mount Tai.
That was Cha Mincheol’s other epithet.
Originally, his known epithet was Mount Tai, while his hidden Trait was the Heavenly Killing Star.
With both the Heavenly Killing Star and Tanker Traits, Cha Mincheol eventually became an unstoppable great evil.
In the end, he was betrayed by Genocide and killed.
‘So this time, I’ll bring Cha Mincheol over to my side….’
Yugeon would turn him into someone who saved the world.
TAP!
After checking the time, Yugeon quickened his pace.
The moment when Cha Mincheol would become a Murder Demon was rapidly approaching.
The basement of an old commercial building near Gwangmyeong City Hall.
THWACK!
“Ghk!”
A dull impact echoed through the dark office, followed by a groan.
“Hey, Cha Mincheol! Why do you keep making me out to be the bad guy? Say yes while I’m still asking nicely.”
THUD!
“Ugh….”
A heavily built man lay facedown on the floor with both hands bound behind his back.
Cha Mincheol.
Despite having Awakened only recently, he had already reached Level 50.
He was a man who had made it this far through sheer trial and error without a master.
As a former fitness trainer, his entire body was packed with muscle, but after being starved and beaten for several days, he was in terrible condition.
A tattooed man stood before him.
GRAB.
Lee Hyeoksu, the boss of the Guseong Gang, grabbed Cha Mincheol by the hair while exhaling cigarette smoke.
“Your big bro here sees potential in you and is offering to keep you around. Why do you keep acting so difficult?”
“…How many times do I have to tell you I’m not interested?”
Cha Mincheol spat out the blood running from the corner of his mouth and glared at Lee Hyeoksu.
“I told you I’m not working with gangsters!”
“Hey, we’re not gangsters. We’re businessmen!”
Lee Hyeoksu shrugged as though deeply wronged.
“Human trafficking, organ trafficking, and drug distribution count as business?”
“If there’s demand, there’s supply. If someone needs a person, we supply them with a person. If they need an organ, we supply them with an organ. And when life gets too harsh and they want a little escape, we supply them with drugs. It’s not like we force our products on people who don’t want them. They want them, so we sell them! If that isn’t distribution, what is?”
They were no different from ordinary merchants.
If someone needed a weapon, merchants sold them one.
If someone needed a Mana Stone, they sold them a Mana Stone.
If someone needed armor, they sold them armor.
All Lee Hyeoksu had done was broaden the range of products he sold a little.
“Organ trafficking? Sure, that’s right. I’ve sold some organs. But one of the people who bought an organ from me saved his daughter. Another man saved his father. Do you know what those people call me? Their benefactor. They contact me every single day to thank me. To those people, I’m a hero. Do you understand what I’m saying? To you, this might look like evil, but to someone else, it can be salvation and a blessing.”
“….”
“So stop looking at everything through such a biased lens and change the way you think. In a chaotic world like this, more people can survive precisely because people like us exist.”
SPIT.
SPLAT.
Cha Mincheol sneered and spat the blood in his mouth onto Lee Hyeoksu’s chest.
“You think I’m going to listen to that bullshit?”
Anyone listening would think the man was some great humanitarian saving mankind.
He murdered people, scrubbed away every trace, and sold their organs, yet what?
A hero?
“Do you really think those people would’ve accepted those organs if they knew innocent people had been murdered for them?”
“…….”
“You think I don’t know you disguise yourselves as hospitals and lie to buyers that a donor suddenly became available?”
“…Sigh…. You really insist on making me the bad guy, don’t you?”
Lee Hyeoksu brushed the blood from his clothes, let out a deep sigh, and straightened from his crouch.
Flick.
Then he gestured to the subordinates behind him.
CREEAK.
The inner door opened, and one of his subordinates dragged someone out.
An older woman.
Her hair was disheveled, bruises covered her face, and her hands had been bound behind her back.
It was Cha Mincheol’s mother.
“Mom!!”
Cha Mincheol struggled wildly to get to his feet.
THUD!
Lee Hyeoksu kicked him in the stomach.
“Whoa, whoa. Calm down. Calm down.”
“You fucking bastards!! You dare touch my mother?!”
“That’s why you should’ve just cooperated from the start. Then neither of us would’ve had to go through all this trouble. I’m only asking you to clear Floor 45 with us! I’m not telling you to kidnap anyone or rip out anyone’s organs. All you have to do is clear Floor 45 with us. We need a Tanker. What do you say? I’m already making a hell of a concession here.”