The Emperor Has Returned

Upon arriving at the end of the hallway, the mercenaries were left speechless when they saw the body of a huge monster resting against the wall. The monster was huge enough to reach the ceiling, had black eyes, ferocious fangs and was covered with tentacles all over. While the figure of the creature looked like a gigantic humanoid, and even looked like it had nerves, tendons and other body parts; it was similar to a large slime.

The monster wasn’t moving as Juan had pulled out his heart. The round wound from the cut made the mercenaries feel nauseous.

[A shy’gus.]

Rem muttered as he looked at the monster’s dead body. The mercenaries looked back at him as if they were curious about what he said.

[The tentacle monsters we saw earlier would look like this once they grow up fully.]

“What? This?”

[It’s a type of monster. This one must have grown this big by eating the bodies of the mercenaries. This type of monster spawns tens of thousands of larvae, those tentacle monsters we saw earlier, at once whenever it feels like it’s in danger. So it’s a good thing that we took care of those larvae quickly. Even those who are used to dealing with the Crack are likely to miss the timing if they don’t hurry. I think I can guess where those skeleton soldiers came from. Anyway, I thought these monsters could only be found in the crack. I have managed to get a valuable specimen.]

Rem approached the monster and cut off a bunch of tentacles and put them in a bottle. The mercenaries frowned at his ominous act.

“Wait, so where did this monster come from? I’ve never seen one like it before,” Menneth asked Rem.

[He probably came from the lower area.]

“From the lower area? If it’s this big, it must have eaten a lot to grow up, right? So if it grew up by feeding on mercenaries, that should mean that there won’t be more of this type of monster in the dungeon, right?”

[Maybe.]

Rem laughed in a strange manner while wearing his mask.

[But don’t be relieved just yet. It probably climbed up after being chased by something. Shy’gus’ usually live secretly in hidden places, so it’s rare for them to change their habitat.]

“What do you mean, it could have been chased?”

[A monster like it is as fragile as a flea in the Crack. He must run whenever a predator appears.]

The mercenaries started to become agitated at Rem’s words, and Rem seemed to be taking pleasure in their horror.

“That’s a lie,” Juan said to Swallan, who was sitting next to him. “It is true that this kind of monster is as common as a flea in the Crack, but the only areas of the Crack that could produce monsters stronger than this guy are the ones in the north. The energy of the Crack I can feel from here is about average for this level of these tentacle monsters. It was only able to become a shy’gus because it grew after coming out of the Crack.”

“Are you sure about that?” Swallan asked.

“Yes. If what he said was true, then Durgal would have already been destroyed.”

Juan was firm. If a monster stronger than a shy’gus appeared, it wouldn’t just end with the devastation of the territory—it would be a disaster where the military would have to be mobilized. However, Mark had quietly managed the territory so far and even conquered the dungeon to some extent. This proved that there were no other monsters stronger than a shy’gus within this territory.

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“Is the reason why you went inside instead of fighting with us because of that monster?” Swallan asked as she stared at Juan.

“There’s that, too—”

Juan glanced around at the mercenaries. The mercenaries seemed rather reluctant to rest with a dead monster right in front of their eyes, but no one refused to take a break before moving on.

“—but there’s someone among them who is after me.”

“...After you? Who?”

“Some of the five that have been following me from back in the wasteland. I’m not entirely sure yet… but I recognized one of them.”

Juan glanced at one of the mercenaries.

Nora blinked and made a gesture as if she was grateful when her eyes met Juan.

Juan grinned.

“She’s a Templar,” Juan said.

“What? How did you know?” Swallan asked.

“Let me just say that I have my ways. It seems like she thought that she wouldn’t get caught as long as she didn’t use her Grace and took off her equipment, but she already messed up by showing herself in front of me. Can’t blame her though, since she doesn’t know who I am.”

Nora was using the power of the emperor as she was a Templar, and Juan could accurately detect her mana. It was only natural for Nora to get caught since she was using Juan’s own mana. There was no way that Nora could guess that Juan was the emperor himself.

“She must be one of the Templars from the Order of the Evil Snake. The other ones are hard to tell. There could be more of them or not. But I can say with confidence that the most trustworthy one out of this group is the lord,” Juan explained.

Mark was vomiting in a corner of the hallway due to the anxiety from the battle.

“How trustworthy of him,” Swallan grumbled.

Juan wiped the dust off his clothes and stood up.

“Come to think of it, didn’t you say that there was someone in Durgal who might be able to take my head?” Juan asked.

“Yes…” Swallan said as she looked around with slightly anxious eyes. “He’s still here, I’m sure.”

“I don’t care if you tell me the reason or not, but I gotta admit that I’m curious. What grudge do you have that you are willing to risk it all and come back all this way to Durgal?”

Swallan made a complicated expression.

“A grudge, you say… To be honest, I don’t even know if it’s a grudge or not, although he did cut off my ear. What happened back then was… a little exceptional. I don’t hate him too much, but I must kill him.”

The situation seemed as complicated as the look on Swallan’s face, but Juan could understand her. Juan also had such a strange relationship with someone.

“My comrades and I were wiped out during our expedition in Durgal, and I ran away with my ear cut off. I’ve been suffering from hallucinations and illusions ever since—I’ve been affected by Durgal’s madness. It took me a long time to come back to my senses. It’s not as bad as it used to be, but I still hear a crunching sound in my sleep sometimes.”

Juan didn’t ask Swallan what the sound was; Swallan was clutching her ear which was no longer there.

“Some would say that I’m still crazy. But I just know it—I can only truly leave this dungeon when I finish that expedition that I started. Either I die, or I completely destroy this dungeon.”

***

Nora was exhausted from the battle that had been harder than she had expected. Of course, the monsters weren’t a difficult opponent to her. However, the fact that she had to use a weapon she was unfamiliar with in order to hide her identity, move without the use of equipment blessed with His Majesty’s Grace, and had to hide most of her skills to avoid getting caught was what made her exhausted rather than hunting those monsters. It would be quite frustrating if Juan were already aware of her identity, but Nora felt that she had completely deceived Juan.

The Order of the Evil Snake was hiding in ambush around Durgal already, and they might have even followed the expedition group into the dungeon. Considering that the inside of the dungeon was filled with traces of heresy, Nora thought that it wouldn’t matter if the Order of the Evil Snake captured the mercenaries together with Juan.

‘But… I didn’t think it would be this bad. It would have been better to capture the target outside the dungeon and bury him.’

Velkre was a cautious man. In a situation where neither Juan’s intentions nor his skills had been accurately confirmed, he didn’t wish to engage in a territorial invasion. Unlike the Order of the White Crow, the Order of the Evil Snake preferred to secretly carry out their mission and neatly kill their target once it was caught. This applied all the more due to their encounter with Juan in the wasteland.

The order Velkre had given Nora was simple: Stay with Juan, and kill him if an opportunity arose. If not, keep an eye on him and deliver the information. Since Nora couldn’t maintain the power of ‘snake’ for a long time when she was far away from Velkre, there wasn’t much that she could do.

‘It won’t be easy.’

Nora had tried to take advantage of the battle to seek a chance to kill Juan, but Juan hadn’t fought alongside the rest of the group. Nora wasn’t sure if she could kill him without using the power of the ‘snake’ even if she had a chance to kill him, considering the agility he showed.

Nora decided to patiently wait and keep her eyes on him. Nora believed that she would get her chance sooner or later since the dungeon expedition was much harder than she had expected.

***

Menneth scratched his chin. For some reason, his old scar felt quite itchy today. Menneth could sense the murderous intent that the expedition members held toward each other, and all this murderous intent was targeting Juan, the young, black-haired punk.

Juan looked like the type who would be a toy for the noble ladies no matter how much Menneth looked at him. But he had to acknowledge Juan’s skills. Juan was certainly skilled enough to make others understand why his head was worth ten thousand gold pieces.

‘Ten thousand gold pieces, huh.’

Ten thousand gold pieces was enough money to buy a noble position and build a mansion on the outskirts of the capital. Rumor had already been secretly spread among the mercenaries that Juan’s head was worth enough money to change one’s fate. In fact, it was Menneth who had spread the rumor.

‘Good thing those bastards from the assassination organization died in the forest.’

Menneth was one of the assassins that had surrounded Juan in the forest earlier. Menneth would normally act like an ordinary mercenary when he had no mission, but he would find his target and turn them into dog food once he was given a mission.

In that sense, his mission this time was rather unusual. He had never been given such a mission—to hide and assassinate the target once they came to him. As a result, Menneth had to lie dormant in the rural territory for a year. But he was satisfied, since the commission fee was big enough and made him a good amount of money.

Juan, who had come to Durgal in the middle of his mission, was a target attractive enough to forget about his mission—ten thousand gold pieces already exceeded the commission fee. However, he knew that it wouldn’t be as easy as one would imagine. Menneth was well aware of the skills and ruthless methods of his fellow assassins from the assassination organization. If such powerful people were defeated and killed by Juan, Menneth had to be extra careful.

Menneth secretly spread the rumors that the black-haired young man who caught Templar Jules was the black-haired boy the Church was offering a reward for. Considering the fact that the rumors about him were already well-known, the mercenaries were easily tempted. All Menneth had to do was to bring about as much confusion as possible and use it cut off Juan’s head.

Menneth quietly waited for the opportunity.

‘Once I catch him, I can easily pay off all the debts I owe to the assassination organization.’

***

Rem couldn’t bear the situation he was in.

Juan’s appearance in the territory of Durgal was both a coincidence and a blessing. Rem had been researching the Crack for a long time without being corrupted by it and was able to satisfy his curiosity. It was very easy to be eroded by the Crack and become a slave to its creatures just by daring to look closely into it, but Rem had been avoiding the consequences by all types of means.

In the process of researching the Crack, Rem ended up losing his face and voice. Although he had been thinking that he needed to be more cautious, Juan was an interesting subject of study that made him forget his wariness.

‘That appearance as well as that incredible prowess in the Baltic Sword. I’m sure that’s him.’

Rem was certain. Many people forgot or misunderstood due to the Church distorting many facts, but Rem was a scholar and a mage who only pursued wisdom. He was confident that he could easily find out Juan’s identity. The fact that the black-haired young man was using ‘Juan’ as his name seemed to prove that he had no intention of hiding his noble birth.

Rem looked forward to the moment when this haphazardly organized expedition group collapsed to leave only him and Juan alone; he thought that he and Juan were the only people capable of surviving.

Rem was certain that he could get the best results out of the research that he had been working on for decades.

***

The lord of Durgal, Mark Moore, managed to completely empty out his stomach. Looking at the vomit that had poured out of his own mouth, Mark thought that he would never be able to eat food made with rabbit meat ever again. The battle had been much harder than he expected, and he had grown to respect his father even more.

Upon inadvertently looking around at the mercenaries, Mark felt a subtle tension in the air around the group. Feeling the odd atmosphere, he realized that it was lunchtime.

‘Everyone seems to be contemplating about the lunch menu.’

Come to think of it, Mark too was hungry after throwing up everything in his stomach. As the chief commander of the expedition, he decided to pick out a lunch menu for everyone.