Chapter 330

Chapter 330

“Ha! Fuck.”

Eloy sank to the floor.

Her legs were trembling so badly she couldn’t stay standing.

She weakly lifted her head and looked at Zeon.

It truly had been a dramatic entrance.

If his arrival had been even a little later, all these people might have been wiped out. The thought drained the strength from her body.

“Damn it! Once I get back to Neo Seoul, I’m retiring as Supervisor.”

She had only come to supervise whether the expedition was going well, yet somehow, she had ended up responsible for the lives of countless people.

During the short time she had led the group, it felt as if decades had been shaved off her lifespan.

Now that Zeon had arrived, she felt as though she could set down that crushing responsibility and fight with a lighter heart.

After gathering herself, Eloy approached Zeon.

“Human! You should’ve come a little sooner. No, thank you for coming like this. Hah! Fuck.”

“You’ve been through a lot.”

As the tension drained away, Eloy began rambling, and Zeon lightly patted her shoulder.

Only then did Eloy regain her composure.

“Whew! That’s an experience I never want to go through again. I’d rather face a massive monster than have a comrade I was fighting beside moments ago turn into a zombie and attack me.”

“It seems the master of this space is a Necromancer.”

“A Necromancer? That would make sense. If it’s that cursed kind of being…….”

“Do you know anything about Necromancers?”

“No! Just that a class like that exists.”

“Hmm! I thought so.”

Zeon was not disappointed.

This was the first time a Necromancer had appeared on Earth.

Naturally, there was almost no information available.

The only one who might know the details would be Cerian, who had crossed over from Kurayan.

In the end, they would have to face the Necromancer without any prior information.

‘But before that, I need to find the others. If we leave them like this, they’ll be defeated one by one.’

After organizing his thoughts, Zeon said to Eloy,

“We don’t have time to rest here. We need to save the others and regroup.”

“Right! The more time we give them, the stronger their forces will become.”

“That’s what makes a Necromancer terrifying.”

“Then let’s get moving.”

They had no time to rest idly.

Even now, the Necromancer would be growing his forces at a frightening pace.

For every person who died to the zombies, his strength increased.

That was why they could not give the Necromancer time.

Time was on his side.

Old Man Go approached Zeon.

“If our opponent truly is a Necromancer, wouldn’t it be better to face him with a small elite group?”

“That’s what we’ll do. Once we save everyone else, please lead them out of the barrier, sir.”

“If we do that, your fighting strength will be weakened too much.”

“It’s still better than letting the Necromancer’s forces grow.”

“Mm!”

Even so, Old Man Go could not hide his anxious expression.

Like Zeon’s Sandmancer, Necromancer was an Awakened class appearing on Earth for the first time.

There was no data on it whatsoever. Naturally, they had every reason to feel uneasy.

Zeon walked ahead and said,

“Let’s save the people first. The longer we delay, the more victims there will be.”

“Very well.”

Zeon’s group hurried forward.

Behind them followed hundreds of Awakened who had survived the zombies’ attacks. They moved again without even having proper time to rest, but not a single person voiced a complaint.

They, too, wanted to escape this hellish place as quickly as possible.

They would rather fight the Kraken occupying the Mana Stone Mine than ever fight the dead again.

Zeon moved to find the second group.

Hundreds of people were following behind him, but not even the faintest breath could be heard.

Though they had been driven into a corner by an unexpected situation, they were still elite Awakened.

They knew how to behave in a situation like this.

They had to move as quietly and orderly as possible.

They had to keep their senses wide open and their mouths shut.

Only then could they detect even the slightest change and respond.

Fortunately, finding the next group was not difficult.

After walking for about thirty minutes, they heard a clamor from ahead.

“Block that side! If they break through there, we’re all dead.”

“Fuck! If you die, you become a zombie. Hold out somehow.”

“Aaaaargh!”

People’s desperate screams and shouts mixed together, painfully stabbing at their eardrums.

Zeon ran ahead and said,

“Let’s hurry.”

“Indeed.”

Old Man Go quickly followed him.

A moment later, a vast underground cavity appeared before them.

Inside the underground cavity, hundreds of Awakened were fighting zombies and other undead.

Many must have already died, because some of the zombies were clearly Awakened.

The Awakened who had become zombies used the Skills they had possessed in life to attack the survivors.

Though their power had dropped sharply compared to when they had been alive, that alone was still more than enough to make them a serious threat.

Zeon said to Old Man Go,

“Please.”

“Leave it to me.”

Old Man Go stepped forward and unfolded a dual barrier.

The twins, as though it were only natural, placed their hands on his shoulders and helped him.

The translucent barrier expanded explosively, pushing away the zombies that had been attacking the Awakened.

Once only the Awakened remained inside the barrier, Zeon unleashed Sand Mixer.

GRIIIIIND!

Outside the barrier, sand rotated at a terrifying speed.

Everything caught in the sand was ground away.

The Awakened watched as countless zombies threatening them instantly turned into bloody sand and vanished without a trace, then collapsed to the floor.

“Fuck! Are we alive?”

“We’re alive, you cripple!”

“Hah! I think I’m going to cry.”

“The Sandmancer really is incredible. He ground down that many zombies in one go.”

The Awakened who had barely survived looked at Zeon with eyes full of reverence.

“Hah!”

“Whew!”

Zeon and Old Man Go sighed at the same time.

Both had consumed a great deal of mana from using powerful Skills one after another.

At least Old Man Go had been able to save some mana thanks to the twin sisters’ help, but Zeon had to bear everything entirely with his own strength. The backlash was far from small.

Zeon steadied his ragged breathing and looked around.

With both groups combined, it seemed around five or six hundred people had survived.

He decided not to think about how many had died.

Right now, rescuing more survivors was more urgent.

Seo Tae-ran approached Zeon.

“Shouldn’t you rest for a little?”

“The more we rest, the more people will die.”

“I knew you’d say that. All right, then let’s move immediately.”

Seo Tae-ran nodded and took the lead.

Seeing that, Briel frowned.

“She pisses me off.”

“I agree.”

Eloy chimed in.

Just then, Levin approached Briel.

“You went through a lot getting here.”

The situation had been too urgent until a moment ago for him to greet her properly, so he had come over now that they had a brief moment of leeway.

Briel looked Levin up and down and asked,

“Are you hurt anywhere?”

“No!”

“Were you bitten anywhere?”

“No! Do you turn into a zombie if you get bitten?”

“No! You only become a zombie after you die. If you get bitten by a zombie’s teeth, it just hurts.”

“Ah!”

Levin looked embarrassed.

He had thought he would become a zombie if one bit him, so he had desperately avoided being bitten.

“Really?”

“That’s how it was in Kurayan. Unless they’ve evolved, it should be the same on Earth.”

“Then they’re nothing special. Brother Zeon has joined up with us, so he’ll grind up zombies like that in no time, won’t he?”

“Do you think zombies are all a Necromancer controls? Zombies are nothing more than a Necromancer’s servants. The real things will appear from here on.”

“What kind of real things?”

“If it’s a high-level Necromancer, then something like a death knight. If the master of this place is really Pilgram…….”

Briel shuddered as though she did not even want to imagine it.

Levin asked her when her words trailed off.

“Who’s Pilgram?”

“He exists. The ruler of death, born in the most sinister place. If that bastard really got dragged to Earth, this won’t end with just this.”

“You mean there’s someone that terrifying?”

Levin’s expression grew serious as well.

He knew better than anyone that Briel did not talk nonsense about things like this.

The expression on Briel’s face now was one that appeared only when she was truly afraid.

He could not even imagine how terrifying a being had to be to make Briel look like that.

Even so, Levin held on to hope.

“Still, we have Brother Zeon.”

“Yeah!”

Briel nodded without the slightest hesitation.

Zeon was the strongest person she knew.

Some might bring up Mayor Jin Geum-ho, Kim Hyun-su the overlord of the West District, Xiaolun of the South District, and others, but Briel believed Zeon was the strongest.

It was only Briel’s intuition, but she thought Zeon had never once fought with all his strength.

Even while hiding his full power, he had built up an influence that matched the overlords of the other districts and Jin Geum-ho.

There was no way a Zeon like that would lose.

Even if his opponent was the legendary Necromancer Pilgram.

Briel sincerely believed that, and her faith had never once wavered until now.

Levin patted Briel on the shoulder and said,

“We need to save the others first. If we’re even a little too late, we may have to face a zombie army made up of Awakened.”

“We can’t let that happen. All right! I’ll get a grip.”

SMACK!

Briel slapped both her cheeks with her hands.

Only then did her mind clear.

Before she knew it, she was following behind Zeon with bright, sparkling eyes.

They did not know how long they had walked.

Before any of them noticed, the scenery had changed.

“What is this?”

Seo Tae-ran could not hide her bewilderment.

She had failed to perceive the moment the scenery changed.

‘Insane! It fooled my perception? Is that possible?’

She had not become Jin Geum-ho’s secretary for no reason.

She had become his closest aide because she possessed power worthy of that position. Naturally, her senses were also incomparably sharper than those of ordinary Awakened.

Yet everything had changed before even she realized it.

A cave, riddled with chaotic holes like the entrails of a sea anemone.

The walls were drenched in blood, and corpses hung like works of art.

The corpses dangled from the walls, each twisted into a grotesque pose.

Levin forced down the nausea rising in his throat.

‘This bastard’s got worse taste than that son of a bitch.’

The most sadistic being Levin knew, the murderer, was nothing more than a child compared to whoever had made these walls.

What was even more horrifying was that the cave walls were truly writhing at random like the entrails of a beast.

Each time the walls writhed, the corpses melted little by little.

It looked exactly like the process of a beast’s intestines digesting food.

There was no way anyone with a sane mind could endure the sight of horribly mutilated corpses slowly melting away.

“Fuck!”

“Urgh!”

A few of the weaker-stomached Awakened vomited bile onto the floor.

It was only natural.

The ones being digested inside this cave that resembled a beast’s entrails were all their comrades.

What was even more horrifying was that some of them were still alive, eyes wide open.

“Guuuh!”

“K-kill me! Please!”

They were not begging to be saved, but begging to be killed.

That was how immense the pain they were feeling was.

Zeon said,

“End their suffering. Even if we rescue them, there’s no chance they’ll survive.”

“Damn it!”

SQUELCH! SQUELCH!

The Awakened swallowed their tears and killed their living comrades one by one.

Tears of blood flowed from their eyes.

Zeon pushed back his hair, drenched with sweat.

“It’s been a long time since something pissed me off this badly.”