Chapter 53

Chapter 53

“Wake up.”

Someone tapped Mandy’s cheek and whispered.

Only then did Mandy regain consciousness.

The first thing that entered her vision when she opened her eyes was the dim ceiling of a cave.

“Where is this?”

“The Cyclopes’ nest.”

“What?”

“Be quiet!”

The one who put a finger to his lips and gestured for silence was a man Mandy also knew.

Unlike Mandy, he had the features of an Asian.

Black hair, black eyes. A young man whose face still had traces of acne.

“You’re of Korean descent, Mr. Kim Sang-sik, right?”

“That’s right. Lower your voice.”

Kim Sang-sik nodded.

As Mandy had said, he was of Korean descent.

He was not an Awakened.

He was a technician dispatched to repair vehicles.

Mandy shook her head and raised herself up. Then the situation inside the cave entered her eyes clearly.

The cave was no less than ten meters high.

It was tall enough for a Cyclops to walk around with its head raised.

Inside the cave, the corpses of countless monsters lay scattered. They had clearly been left behind after the Cyclopes had eaten them.

Mandy and Kim Sang-sik were trapped in something like a birdcage hanging from the cave ceiling.

The cage, made of some unknown metal, was so tightly woven that there seemed to be no hole through which they could possibly escape.

Mandy snorted.

“Hmph! I just need to break a cage like this.”

Although she had been knocked unconscious by Anika’s unexpected ambush, she was an Awakened with outstanding ability.

If she had not been, Neo Seoul would never have gone out of its way to dispatch her as a Supervisor.

She was a Magic Type Awakened.

Her specialty was Magic that used wind.

Mandy tried to cut through the cage with blades of wind. But for some reason, the mana inside her body would not move at all.

“It’s no use. We can’t use mana inside here.”

“What are you talking about? Why mana?”

“I think the cage we’re trapped in is an item that controls mana.”

“What? No matter how intelligent a Cyclops is, there’s no way it could make an item like this.”

“The Cyclops didn’t make it. I think they happened to obtain a dungeon relic.”

“Mm!”

Only then did Mandy understand.

There was nothing strange about any kind of item appearing in a dungeon.

After all, the current Neo Seoul existed because of items obtained from dungeons.

“Hah! So right now, we’ve become the Cyclopes’ packed lunch.”

The reason she and Kim Sang-sik were still alive was because the Cyclopes were not hungry.

Then again, if they had eaten everyone from the shelter, they would have been more than full.

Mandy clenched her fist and said,

“What happened to Team 7? Did you see?”

“No. I lost consciousness too......”

“How dare they hit me from behind? Once I get out of here, I’ll never forgive them.”

Mandy swore revenge.

The position of Supervisor in Neo Seoul was not something she had won in a poker game. She possessed skill and ability worthy of the role.

As long as she returned safely to Neo Seoul, she could deal with Team 7 as much as she liked.

The problem was getting out of this place safely before that.

That was when it happened.

THUD! THUD!

Heavy footsteps echoed inside the cave.

It was clearly the sound of the Cyclopes returning.

Kim Sang-sik’s face changed completely.

“The Cyclopes are...... Sob! We’re going to die.”

His complexion turned pale.

He was not an Awakened like Mandy, but an ordinary person.

He had forced himself to stay calm until now, but before the appearance of the Cyclopes, he collapsed without fail.

Mandy comforted him.

“Stay calm. We’re not going to die.”

“How? Even the Awakened’s attacks don’t work against those monsters. How are we supposed to......”

“......”

Mandy could not answer.

She was just as overwhelmed.

The monster called a Cyclops was the natural enemy of Awakened.

Especially for a Magic Type Awakened like her, it was no different from a disaster.

Even now, no method came to mind for how she could deal with a Cyclops.

THUD! THUD!

The Cyclopes’ footsteps grew louder, and a moment later, they revealed themselves.

Grrrgh!

The Cyclopes approached with their single eyes gleaming.

Seen up close, they were even more terrifying.

“Ugh!”

Kim Sang-sik crouched completely and wrapped both hands around his head. The focus vanished from his eyes, and saliva dripped from his mouth.

Kim Sang-sik was going mad under the unique energy emitted by the Cyclopes. It was one of the reasons those who were not Awakened could not resist monsters.

The three Cyclopes must have gone hunting somewhere again, because the area around their mouths was covered in blood. Yet they still seemed hungry and looked around for prey.

The two people trapped in the cage entered the Cyclopes’ sight.

Grrrgh!

THUD! THUD!

The Cyclopes strode toward them.

There were three Cyclopes, but only two pieces of prey.

They fought over who would eat them.

The enormous cave shook as if it would collapse at any moment.

The victor was the giant Cyclops.

After quickly suppressing the other two, it walked over arrogantly.

The closer the Cyclops came, the darker Mandy’s expression became.

CREEEAK!

At last, the cage door opened, and the Cyclops’s huge hand came down over Kim Sang-sik.

Perhaps because the effect of the item had vanished when the door opened, the force suppressing her mana disappeared.

“Get away from him!”

Mandy hurriedly fired a blade of wind, Wind Cutter. But her attack vanished in vain.

It had failed to pierce the Cyclops’s overwhelming anti-magic power.

Her attack was more than enough to provoke the Cyclops.

Grrrgh!

The Cyclops changed its target and grabbed Mandy.

“Ugh!”

As the enormous strength squeezed her, Mandy let out a groan. Under the tremendous pressure, her mind blurred.

The Cyclops brought the dazed Mandy toward its mouth.

‘Eloy!’

It was when Mandy desperately called someone’s name.

SHAAAAA!

A strange sound reached Mandy’s ears.

It was the sort of sound one heard when a stream of water passed through a narrow passage.

But this was a cave deep in the desert.

There was no way a waterway would pass through here.

Mandy thought she was hearing an auditory hallucination just before death.

But the Cyclopes’ reactions were strange.

As if a powerful enemy had invaded, the Cyclopes lifted their clubs and glared in the direction the sound came from.

KWAAAAA!

Even at that moment, the strange sound was growing louder.

Sensing the unusual atmosphere, the leader Cyclops put Mandy back into the cage. Then it went to the other Cyclopes and glared ahead.

‘What is happening?’

Mandy, who had barely saved her life, looked at the Cyclops.

Because of the pressure applied when the Cyclops grabbed her, the capillaries in her eyes had burst all over, making it difficult to see.

That was when it happened.

KWAAAAA!

An enormous amount of sand poured into the cave.

The noise Mandy had thought was the sound of water was actually the sound of sand flowing along the inside of the cave.

The problem was that the speed at which the sand flowed through the cave surpassed imagination.

The sand swallowed the Cyclopes whole like a tidal wave.

Uwooooh!

Kroooar!

The Cyclopes roared and resisted the sand.

But no matter how enormous the Cyclopes were, they could not push back all the sand that came surging in, filling the cave.

RUMBLERUMBLERUMBLE!

Like a stream of water fired at high pressure, the sand rushed in with tremendous force.

The Cyclopes swung their clubs wildly at everything in reach. But the sand was not pushed back at all. Instead, it struck their bodies even more violently.

KROOOOOAR!

The Cyclopes roared.

It was not a roar meant to threaten an enemy.

Rather, it was closer to a cry filled with terror. But Mandy and Kim Sang-sik could not know that.

That was because both had fainted right before it happened.

GRRRRIND!

In the meantime, the sand that had poured into the cave rotated at tremendous speed and ground the Cyclopes apart.

Their hides, armored with anti-magic power, were ground away by the sand, and bright red muscles were quickly revealed.

The muscles that boasted overwhelming mass and power were torn away by the sand, revealing the bones hidden within. But even those were ground away by the sand in an instant.

Unfortunately for the Cyclopes, the cave was the worst possible terrain, one that maximized the power of sand.

Inside the sealed cave with nowhere to escape, the sand rotated like a blender and ground the gigantic monsters called Cyclopes away until not a trace remained.

GRRRRIND!

The terrifying noise of sand rotating at high speed swallowed even the Cyclopes’ desperate screams.

---

Mandy and Kim Sang-sik regained consciousness almost at the same time, letting out groans.

“Where are we?”

“Mm!”

After blinking for a moment, their vision soon caught sight of a white cloth covering the sky.

Then an unfamiliar voice spoke.

“You’ve regained consciousness. That’s a relief.”

“Gasp!”

Mandy instinctively took a defensive stance, and a man entered her field of vision.

He was a man with the hood of a dark red robe pulled low over his head. Because of that, she could not tell what he truly looked like.

Mandy prepared to use Wind Cutter and asked,

“Who are you?”

“I am someone who was passing through this area. I’m not your enemy, so please be at ease.”

The man answered while removing the hood pulled over his head.

Long hair falling to his shoulders and skin as white as snow.

He was tall and slender, with a rather handsome face, and his gentle smile was striking.

What stood out most of all was the depth of his eyes.

His eyes, like black jewels set into his face, were so deep and clear that his inner thoughts could not be read.

After confirming that there was no hostility in his eyes, Mandy carefully asked,

“Are you the one who saved us from the Cyclopes?”

“Of course not. I just happened to find you collapsed while passing nearby.”

“You found us?”

“Yes. You were unconscious, trapped in something like a cage. I thought something terrible would happen if I left you there, so I brought you here.”

At the man’s answer, Mandy held her head with one hand for a moment.

Her head throbbed.

She remembered the sight of an enormous amount of sand pouring into the cave.

‘Then were we swept away by shifting sands?’

She could not understand why shifting sands had poured into the Cyclopes’ cave.

Nor was she curious about what had happened to the Cyclopes.

What mattered was that even after being swept up in such tremendous shifting sands, they had survived.

And that they had luckily been swept outside, then rescued by someone who had happened to be passing nearby.

Their luck could not have been better.

Behind the man, she could see Bactrian Camels loaded heavily with baggage.

Where they were lying, wooden poles had been set up, and white cloth had been made into an awning to block the sunlight.

Thanks to that, they had remained safe.

Mandy bowed her head.

“Thank you. Thanks to you, we survived.”

“Think nothing of it.”

“I’ll definitely repay this debt. What is your name?”

The man smiled as he answered.

“Zeon! My name is Zeon.”