novelraw Chapter 224 : Question (2)
Chapter 224 : Question (2)
Chapter 224: Question (2)
After that.
Shin Taeri and Jo Jinho watched Sanghyun's battle while recovering the stamina that had rapidly dropped during the earlier fight.
At first, they had expected a fierce battle with Sanghyun and the crocodile exchanging intense blows.
That was because of the pressure felt just from the crocodile’s appearance.
But their expectations were wrong.
The crocodile was thoroughly toyed with by Sanghyun from beginning to end and was killed.
The reason was simple.
The resistance to abnormal statuses created by Sanghyun was significantly low.
At some point, it even seemed like Sanghyun was checking each of his status effect skills one by one.
“There’s just way too many.”
“Exactly. I have pretty good memory, but I’m still confused about which skill is linked to which status effect.”
“One thing’s certain—if either of us fought Sanghyun one-on-one, we’d definitely fall victim to at least one status effect.”
“I agree. Without a cleansing Artifact, it would be tough.”
Jo Jinho and Shin Taeri were in awe as they watched Sanghyun’s wide range of skill repertoire.
Of course, both were Players with high core stats, so they wouldn’t go down like the crocodile.
The reason the crocodile became Sanghyun’s prey was because its resistance to skills was nearly zero.
However, the two were not like that and could sufficiently resist and reduce the effects.
Of course, that didn’t mean they could completely nullify the skills.
If bombarded with a variety of skills, in the end, they’d get hit hard by at least one.
Anticipating that future, they felt both admiration and, at the same time, a bit of fear.
What if they ever had to face Sanghyun as an enemy? And what if Sanghyun had grown even stronger than now?
It was natural to think he would be anything but an easy opponent.
That fear didn’t stem from weakness, but was a cold, rational conclusion.
“Seems like Sanghyun is starting to draw attention. There’s been a noticeable increase in talk about him in the community recently.”
“I saw that too. Some media outlets that focus on sensational news are already saying it’s not a Top 5 anymore but a Top 6.”
“Yeah. Doesn’t seem like a good trend. Not like everyone’s going to welcome a new competitor with open arms, right?”
“Like Jeong Heeseon we saw earlier today. They’ll try to find some way to screw over Sanghyun.”
Shin Taeri furrowed her brows.
This was why vested interests were scary.
Of course, considering domestic guilds, she herself, as a member of the Eden Guild—a textbook example of vested interests—wasn’t really in a position to say that.
So she only thought it to herself and didn’t say it out loud.
Anyway, five Players were currently dividing fame and power under the title of “Named Swordsmen.”
Whether domestic or overseas, they were always mentioned together, so the symbolism was significant.
What if one more was added?
People would naturally be more interested in the new face than in the five who were already old news.
And if that person was Sanghyun, of course the attention would fall on him.
The interest from guilds, the Union, overseas factions, and so on went without saying. He’d receive all the spotlight.
On top of that, he’d constantly be virtually compared to the five existing members, and countless rumors would emerge.
The one benefiting from all that would be Sanghyun, the newcomer, while the ones losing out would be the Players with bad reputations.
Shin Taeri thought that one of those "bad reputation" Players would definitely try to mess with Sanghyun.
“But do you think they can actually mess with him? If it comes down to pure skill, I think he could hold his own.”
Jo Jinho pointed forward.
The crocodile, now reduced to a punching bag, had had both arms severed and was gasping for breath.
Its body froze from one of Sanghyun’s skills, trembled from electrocution, and was even randomly dragged around and beaten.
Was it because it had realized that it couldn’t compete with Sanghyun in any way?
At some point, the crocodile let its body go limp and showed no will to resist.
It wasn’t asking to be spared.
It was asking to be killed quickly.
Seeing an opponent pathetically raise the white flag, Sanghyun stopped toying with it. Honestly, it wasn’t fun anymore.
So—
Splat!
He took its head off.
Its body, already battered and shredded, became a headless corpse and died.
But at that moment.
“Hm?”
A buff was activated simultaneously for Sanghyun, Shin Taeri, and Jo Jinho.
[Learning Bashnat Language – You can now understand and speak the text and speech written in the Bashnat language.]
“…Language learning?”
As the buff was activated, information about the Bashnat language was simultaneously implanted into all three of them.
It was like being forcibly injected by an overwhelming power—there was no way to resist, and it happened instantly.
It was a language not found on Earth.
There was no way a language from Earth would suddenly be learned in an unidentified space like this.
Naturally, it led to the thought that it was the language used by the enemies they had just faced, whose words they couldn’t understand.
Sanghyun asked,
“Isn’t this kind of strange?”
While it wasn’t rare to receive buffs, a language buff was unheard of. Even in his past life, there was no such case.
Shin Taeri and Jo Jinho nodded. It was such an unexpected phenomenon that they kept tilting their heads.
Jo Jinho spoke.
“We need to investigate this space more closely. Nothing here feels familiar.”
Even if it was a break spot connected to a rift, it still followed the dungeon structure.
In other words, while the monsters or environment might differ, the basic framework remained unchanged. That’s the system.
But this space felt alien from the background itself.
Even though they had experienced countless dungeons, rifts, and break spots—
They had never encountered signs of an advanced civilization, more developed than modern times, like a near-future setting.
Even after consulting shared databases used by other guilds and globally, it was the same.
“I’ll take the lead. If something happens, I’m the most specialized in escaping the scene.”
Shin Taeri stepped forward.
Sanghyun didn’t stop her.
Reconnaissance was her specialty anyway. Instead, Sanghyun planned to respond appropriately to whatever might happen.
Whether it was neutralizing status effects using Recovery, or using Perfect Shield to manifest invincibility—
When it came to immediately adapting to variables and increasing stability, he was overwhelmingly specialized.
“What the hell is this horrible space? What is it connected to? Is it really a break spot?”
Even Jo Jinho, who always remained calm, was starting to show signs of agitation.
The key was the newly learned Bashnat language in the form of a buff.
It was just too easy to realize it wasn’t a language from Earth. In other words, it was an alien language.
With the feeling of being swept into some massive whirlwind, Sanghyun also grew quiet.
When fighting the trio of crocodiles, he had to stay focused on the immediate threat, so he had kept talking.
But now that he was once again facing the reality of this place, it was clearly unusual. Everything from top to bottom was full of questions.
How far had they walked?
If the first clash took place in the outskirts of the city—
The place where the three were standing was right in the middle of a city. If it were in South Korea, it would feel like the center of Seoul.
Naturally, there were no people to talk to or monsters to test their strength against.
But if one were to ask whether this was a place where no one had ever lived, the answer would be a definite no.
Because there were countless skeletonized corpses all around them.
It seemed they had died without any chance of human contact, and each corpse had died in a different posture.
They all seemed to have died while fleeing from something.
Perhaps because of that, skeletons that seemed to belong to a mother and child, or a mother and daughter, were found embracing each other in death.
“Was there a nuclear war or something?”
“If that were the case, the city’s way too intact. It just feels like everyone suddenly vanished in an instant.”
Jo Jinho and Sanghyun exchanged thoughts. Shin Taeri had gone into one of the buildings earlier and had yet to come back out.
Jo Jinho said,
“We don’t know what we’ll discover moving forward, but we’ll have to decide whether to keep this a complete secret or to make it public.”
“I agree. We either reveal everything, or we hide it thoroughly. We’ll have to make a clear choice.”
If asked about his true thoughts, Sanghyun preferred the latter.
If someone accepted and received this information with good intentions, it could lead to exploring the unknown together.
But twisted greed and warped curiosity always existed. Sanghyun generally didn’t trust people from the Union.
He agreed with their existence as an organization, but never with the idea that they were righteous.
At that moment.
“There’s a corpse morgue inside!”
Shin Taeri, who returned quickly, pointed to a nearby building.
On closer inspection, it appeared to have been used as a hospital, or perhaps a research facility.
It wasn’t strange that there would be a space for storing bodies.
The group immediately entered the building and began opening the storage units in the morgue one by one.
Perhaps it was linked to the solar power panels on the rooftop, because the freezing condition was exceptionally well-maintained.
“This one... it’s completely an alien.”
Sanghyun tilted his head as he looked at a corpse with an appearance completely different from any humanoid.
The three monsters they had fought outside earlier had humanoid forms.
Their base may have been animalistic, but in the end, they looked human. So they hadn’t felt that strange.
But the corpse stored here perfectly fit the word “alien.”
It had four eyes, two of which were positioned at the temples.
Its body looked so fragile it seemed it might break at any moment, while its head was twice the size of a human’s.
Its neck seemed so strained it wouldn’t be surprising if it were broken.
On a hunch, they looked around the morgue and found several specially shaped helmets.
“Those helmets must’ve been worn by this alien. They’re not just worn on the head but seem to connect and fix to the body as well.”
They appeared to be devices designed to reduce the strain on the neck bones.
It made sense to think that the alien must have worn such a helmet while still alive.
Sanghyun’s gaze shifted to a laminated note placed beside the alien’s corpse.
“1st of March, Year 392 of the Hagi calendar, Sector A invader... Killed after slaughtering a total of 1,392 Bashnatans.”
Thanks to learning the Bashnat Language, the writing was perfectly translated.
But the content was the problem.
It didn’t use “CE” or any Earth-based notation, but a special term, “Hagi.” It also used the term “Sector.”
And it mentioned the Bashnatan—a unique designation, clearly not referring to Earth’s people.
There was one more note.
Unlike the laminated one, this one had been written hastily. Some of the text was even untranslatable.
“A rift suddenly appeared, and what emerged from it wasn’t [blank blank blank], but these things.”
At that moment, Sanghyun and the others looked at one another.
Could it be that Earth wasn’t the only victim of the rifts? The mystery was deepening more and more.