The Emperor Has Returned

The expedition party continued deeper into the dungeon. The tentacle monsters used the bones and armor of the soldiers that had died a long time ago as shells to attack the expedition group. There were even tentacle monsters that had completely fused with the corpses of mercenaries and were wriggling around on the ground.

Some tentacle monsters that had fused with humans stuck themselves to the walls and continuously whispered something, and tried to bite the foot of anyone who tried to pass through the hallways. The monsters had bizarre forms that made people’s heads dizzy by just looking at them, but fortunately, these battles weren’t as fierce as the fight that happened in the upper area. Rather, the battle was so much easier that ironically, the mercenaries grew more nervous.

The mercenaries were overly anxious due to the fear that stronger enemies might appear at any time. However, the mercenaries continued to cut and slice the monsters—that alone was keeping the mercenaries from breaking down and losing their sanity.

“Finally… we are in the deeper area,” Menneth barely managed to speak.

A huge door made of distorted tentacles shaped like an arch appeared in front of the mercenaries’ eyes. Everyone was surprised at the enormous size of the door.

“Why is the door closed? The guys that had been here with Jules said they had left it open.”

“Maybe they closed it without realizing it. Who knows what’s behind the door? What are we gonna do when they crawl out, huh?”

Menneth grumbled and rebuked Mark. Although his way of talking was rude, no one seemed to care; they all agreed with Menneth’s words—even Mark shut his mouth as if he imagined something terrible crawling out of the door.

The mercenaries who were just approaching the door to the deeper area all looked utterly exhausted. Ordinary battles wouldn’t wear them out to this extent, but a battle in a dark and enclosed structure made one particularly tired—especially if they are in a dungeon with an unusual and unfamiliar atmosphere.

“I can see why so many come out as lunatics…”

Even Nora muttered to herself.

The mercenaries agreed with Nora in silence, and slowly approached the huge door that led to the deeper area. The size of the door, which glowed with faint purple light, couldn’t be estimated; it was easily seen even inside the pitch-dark dungeon.

“How big is this door…”

“Wait. There’s someone there.”

All the people in the party stopped upon hearing Menneth. Just like he said, there was someone sitting alone in front of the door; it was a woman who was fiddling with something among mushrooms that glowed in the dark. The song she was humming in a low-pitched voice oddly caught everyone’s ears.

“Be careful,” someone said.

Of course, there wasn’t anyone who wasn’t being careful. Upon encountering a woman humming a song this deep into the dungeon, no one thought that she had lost her way or accidentally entered the wrong place.

Juan saw Swallan clutching her horn bow so tightly that her fist was shaking.

Menneth looked back at Swallan and signaled her to shoot an arrow at the woman.

Swallan bit her lips, then pulled her bow and shot an arrow.

However, the arrow that flew toward the woman twisted at a strange angle and struck a completely different place. When the mercenaries looked at the woman with a perplexed look, she slowly looked back.

The woman had no face—only a haze creeping around her head.

***

The mercenaries all fell silent.

The first one to move was Lord Mark. After blankly staring at the woman’s haze-covered face, Mark raised his sword to strike the nearest mercenary’s head.

None of the mercenaries shouted or screamed at the sight; all of them looked down at the corpse with their eyes out of focus, after which they turned their heads to look at each other. The mercenaries then began to whisper something and simultaneously swung their weapons at each other—the words coming out of their mouths were the names of their father, mother or someone else that was close to them.

When Juan realized that the woman with the hazy face had done something to the expedition party, he raised the power of flames residing in his body. The surroundings became sweltering in an instant, making it suffocating.

“Celine, I…”

At that moment, Juan noticed Swallan whispering something while holding an arrow, ready to stab her own neck. He quickly bent her arm and knocked her down, but Swallan didn’t move, and continued whispering despite the shock from falling on the ground.

‘The hallucination is stronger than I thought.’

However, the hallucination wasn’t strong enough to control Juan’s mind.

There were two different types of hallucinations; one was the type of hallucination that affected the nervous system and disrupted the neural structure of the body, while the second type was the hallucination of the mental system, one that directly penetrated the mind to cause confusion.

No matter how powerful it was, the hallucination of the mental system couldn’t affect Juan in any way.

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Juan twisted and dislocated the joints of Swallan’s arm to prevent her from hurting herself, then turned to the woman with the hazy face. She was still sitting on the same spot and quietly staring at Juan.

Smash!

Juan attacked using Blink and crossed the air in an instant. As soon as Juan’s fist touched the wall, the wall split like a spider web with a loud roar.

At the same time, the woman’s hazy face had returned to an ordinary face with eyes, nose and mouth before anyone knew it.

Juan could immediately recognize that she was an elf at just a glance.

The woman rubbed her bleeding cheek with her hand while staring at Juan with perplexed eyes.

“...Huh, this is fascinating. I didn’t think that anyone could even break the mirage of this Crack yet, but not only did you break the mirage, you even managed to come in contact with my body.”

Juan ignored the woman’s words and swung his fist at her again. The woman’s face was pierced by his fist in an instant—at least it should have been. Unlike what Juan expected, she just scattered through the haze, while still having a surprised look on her face.

“All your comrades are dying right now. Are you going to waste your time trying to hurt me when you can’t even touch me?”

“I don’t care if they die.”

At that moment, Juan drew his short sword from his waist. Juan had figured out that the woman was tricking him about how far she was by pawing the air just now.

Juan struck the woman’s head with his short sword without the slightest hesitation—he didn’t miss this time. With a dull sensation in Juan’s hand, blood splashed out of the woman’s head. When Juan retracted his short sword, the woman trembled and collapsed on the ground.

At the same time the woman collapsed, the strange hallucinations which had been disturbing his sense of direction quickly subsided. Upon confirming that the woman was no longer moving, Juan approached Swallan who was blankly staring at him.

“Mr. Ten thousand gold pieces, this is…”

“A hallucination, yes. The other guys were all trying to kill each other, but you were only trying to hurt yourself for some reason.”

Juan set Swallan’s arm that he had dislocated back to the right place once again. Swallan frowned due to the pain, but was soon able to move her arm again.

The other mercenaries had also stopped stabbing at each other after the woman’s death. However, the number of mercenaries had been reduced by more than half in that single moment.

Among the many dead bodies lying on the floor was Mark, the lord of Durgal. Most of the mercenaries who had managed to survive were severely injured, and only a few were able to move their bodies properly. Swallan was also suffering from her dislocated joints.

Juan looked around to find Nora, but she was nowhere to be found. She couldn’t be found among the survivors, and neither could her corpse be found among the pile of dead mercenaries.

However, Juan couldn’t pay more attention to Nora due to the familiar voice that was heard again.

“What a violent man you are. I thought you would give me more time to have a conversation with you.”

The woman who clearly died earlier by getting her head struck by Juan’s short sword was once again standing up to speak to Juan.

It wasn’t that Juan missed—small tentacles were knotting themselves together and connected the wounds on her head. The root-like tentacles were connected and continued all the way to under her feet. Juan recalled seeing something similar to this scene before.

“Are you a priest from the Thornbush Priest Organization?” Juan asked.

“Now I can tell who you are—the young man who was chasing the traces of Gerard Gain in the wasteland, right? I’ve been waiting for you.”

Juan tightened his grip on his short sword. He didn’t know what this priest of the Thornbush Priest Organization knew about Gerard Gain, but he was going to force her to spit out everything she knew by any means necessary. What he was worried about was the woman dying before he could even ask proper questions. Fortunately, his concerns didn’t seem to be a big deal upon seeing her healing her head that had been split in half.

“Mr. Ten thousand gold pieces.”

At that moment, Swallan staggered to her feet.

“That woman… is my comrade—the one who cut off my ears.”

Juan looked at the spots where Swallan’s missing ears would be. Swallan was telling Juan that the woman was the comrade who cut off her ears, planted the seed of madness in her, and rooted hallucinations in her. Just like Swallan, the woman was also an elf. However, the woman still had both her sharp and pointy ears, unlike Swallan.

The woman stared at Swallan for a while, then tilted her head to ask a question.

“Is that Swallan standing next to you?”

“...Celine.”

Swallan limped forward. The elf woman called Celine smiled and continued speaking.

“Long time no see. I guess I didn’t scare you enough by cutting off your ears back then, huh? How ironic. It was because of the mirage of this Crack that our group was completely destroyed at that time. And here we are. You and I, the only survivors of the group, meet again at the same spot.”

“I still think about that time,” Swallan forced a smile. “When you were hallucinating and cut off my ears, I was thinking that I deserved such punishment; after all, I was the one who was blinded by money and dragged everyone to this dungeon. I thought that I could revive our forest as long as we had money. However, there was one thing I could never figure out. What you were thinking at that time. Why my ears? Why didn’t you just kill me instead of just cutting my ears?”

“Well,” Celine made a strange face. “Maybe it's because I hated those ears and I couldn’t stand them. In the empire that was ruled by the emperor, those ears were subjected to such persecution and contempt—this was true for both you and me. In the end, you eventually found a place to stay due to you losing your ears, and I found a place where I could stay even if I had my ears.”

Celine opened her arms and pointed toward the deeper area of the dungeon of Durgal.

“The Crack accepted me, who was nothing more than a lunatic. Then the Crack gave me a glorious name and granted me the crown of thorns. That shabby elf from back then has now become a priest of the Thornbush Priest Organization, Swallan. I am connected with everyone.”

Celine smiled and beckoned to the ground.

“Your comrades are still here in this dungeon, Swallan. Would you like to say hi?”

As soon as Celine finished speaking, the stones and dust on the ground furiously moved up and down.

A group of people began to slowly raise their bodies from the ground.