Chapter 129

The bride, standing at the end of the path and rolling her bridal marked eyes back and forth, froze as if she had finally spotted everyone at the intersection. Then, letting out a shriek, she began to charge.

“Hiek!”

Without exception, everyone let out a shrill scream and sucked in their breath. Thanks to that, even the little girl who had been gliding past turned around to look at them. A pale light flashed through her tangled, unkempt hair.

They tried to cover their mouths too late, but the damage was done. Everyone wavered, looking back and forth between the bride and the girl, before turning tail and bolting.

“Aaaaah!”

Since they were already being hunted, what was the point of staying quiet? They fled while screaming loud enough to bring the corridor down.

They must have run for thirty minutes as if their lives depended on it just to shake off the persistent bride and the little girl. Having narrowly lost them, everyone collapsed on the floor, panting as if their lungs were about to burst.

“Ugh, I think I’m gonna puke.”

As Father lay face down, trembling and muttering through her nausea, the others backed away from her like cockroaches. Despite her poor vision, Noquia sensed the movement and distanced herself from Father, catching her breath as she spoke.

“Wow, they really chase you like persistent freaks.”

To Noquia, who had been led blindly by the others through an endless sprint, it must have felt like an eternity. Theo nodded, wiping the sweat that had trickled down to his chin.

“If it were just the bride, we could have hidden somehow, but with that dead thing sticking to us, we can’t even find a place to hide.”

The speed of the dead thing was much faster than the bride’s. Even when they spotted a high place to climb, the dead thing would track them like a ghost, leaving them with no choice but to keep running.

Holanghee, who had been sprawled out on the floor, suddenly sat up as if the conversation had sparked a thought.

“Hey, is the bride definitely a ‘rotten’? And is the trick to avoiding her really just not stepping on the ground?”

At Holanghee’s question, Father looked up as well. Their gazes landed on Theo. Theo let out a low, weary sigh and repeated the explanation he had already given to Noquia and Blaine.

Starting with Theo’s explanation, they began to exchange the pieces of information they had gathered: what happened to Noquia when she answered something that wasn’t human; the funeral bier room where Blaine ended up alone and the details of The Rite of the Living Ghost spell; and finally, the truth about the bride and the man that Father and Holanghee had seen.

“That guy was a total son of a bitch, I tell you.”

Father and Holanghee cursed the man from the scroll with such ferocity that spit actually flew. If the scroll were in front of them, they looked ready to tear it to shreds.

“But, we found a piece of paper in those copy-paste rooms where the paintings were. We couldn’t for the life of us figure out what it meant, though.”

At Holanghee’s grumbling, Theo asked.

“What did it say?”

“Uh… ‘Prick the nameless finger to draw blood,’ and the character for ‘Ghost’ was written in Hanja.”

“Huh? That sounds like the revival method from the The Rite of the Living Ghost,” Blaine noted.

“What?”

“The text said to prick the nameless finger of the corpse’s left hand to draw blood, then write ‘Ghost’ on the forehead with that blood while chanting an incantation.”

“For real?”

“Yes….”

“But what the hell is a nameless finger?”

At Holanghee’s question, Blaine looked momentarily flustered before spreading his left hand and pointing to his ring finger with his right.

“Nameless finger is the ring finger.”

At Blaine’s kind answer, Holanghee and Father’s faces crumpled in annoyance.

“Are you kidding me? Then they should have just written ‘ring finger’ instead of all that ‘nameless finger’ crap.”

Blaine laughed awkwardly at the sharp swearing. Theo pondered for a moment before asking Father and Holanghee, who were still grumbling with pouting lips.

“But if she was betrayed like that, why is the bride trying to revive the man? It’s not like she wants to have the wedding again.”

Everyone looked at Theo. It seemed to be an unexpected question; even Father and Holanghee appeared to think it over for a moment before Father answered.

“Maybe she wants revenge?”

“Revenge?”

“She wants to bring him back just to kill him. If I were betrayed like that, I’d want to kill him with my own hands too. But since he’s already croaked, I bet she wants to revive him so she can do the deed herself this time.”

Holanghee, listening blankly to Father’s conclusion, nodded as if possessed.

“That makes sense…”

“Then do we have to stop the bride? Stop her from reviving the man?”

“Usually… no matter the backstory, stopping the bride is the typical route. But I’m not sure we really should stop her.”

Theo tilted his head at Father’s answer. If they weren’t going to stop the bride, did that mean they were throwing the game?

“I agree. Honestly, even if it means we can’t clear the dungeon, I think we should take the bride’s side. I actually want to help her kill that guy.”

Holanghee went a step further. She looked ready to slit the man’s throat herself on the bride’s behalf. Theo looked at the two of them with a flustered expression. Before he knew it, Noquia was standing with them too. Judging by her bewildered face, she looked like she’d been dragged into it against her will.

Theo was in a bind. Honestly, he didn’t have the confidence to break the stubbornness of these three women. Throwing one game didn’t matter much, but this was a dungeon that had just opened today, and the time they had invested so far felt like a waste.

After a moment of thought, Theo looked at Blaine.

“Would you be okay with that?”

“Pardon?”

“The dungeon. Even if we can’t clear it.”

At Theo’s considerate tone as he asked for his opinion, Blaine gave a radiant smile.

“I’m fine with it. Just being with you is enough for me, Hyung.”

“I see…”

He wondered if he’d even needed to ask. Theo decided to follow the opinions of the three. He didn’t know how things would proceed from here, but they would make choices that favored the bride.

Once the decision was made, the bride, who kept popping up out of nowhere, didn’t seem so scary anymore. After wandering through the palace hall, they discovered the fourth altar.

A blue garment was placed on the altar. As Holanghee reached out toward it, the item information appeared.

《 Gwaeja 》
「 An ancient military vest without sleeves, with a back slit reaching the waist. 」

“It’s a Gwaeja.”

Following the Seojodae, Juyeong, and Taesahye, it was another piece of Hanbok. The only people with empty hands were Noquia and Holanghee. Since Noquia couldn’t see well, Holanghee had to take it. Holanghee hesitated, looking reluctant, before addressing the group.

“But wait, if we don’t take the items, doesn’t that mean the bride wins?”

At Holanghee’s words, everyone looked intrigued, but Father shook her head as if that wasn’t the case.

“If we don’t take them, the quest won’t progress. Something will happen once we’ve gathered all of this man’s belongings.”

“……”

Holanghee bit her lower lip hard before letting go. She reached out and took the Gwaeja.

As soon as Holanghee took the garment, the surroundings shifted instantly. They found themselves standing in the middle of a straight path. On both sides of the enclosed path, water flowed with lotus flowers floating on top, and the interior was bathed in a deep orange glow from the hanging lamps mounted on the walls.

Everyone looked around with bewildered faces until they spotted a massive gate standing ahead. They knew instinctively: if they went through that gate, it would be the end.

Everyone stared at the gate in silence. Perhaps because of the stillness, the sound of the trickling water seemed unusually loud.

“Is this really the end? We just walk out?”

Holanghee muttered in a deflated voice. It felt anticlimactic to end it like this without being able to do anything for the bride.

Just as they were hesitating in the middle of the path, unable to move toward the gate, the sound of intermittent sobbing began to drift from behind them. Everyone startled as if burned and turned around simultaneously.

The bride was at the end of the path. Her face was hidden behind her long sleeves, her shoulders heaving as she wept, and she was bound by chains extending from the walls.

“Give them back… please give them back…”

She pleaded endlessly. Everyone stared blankly at her. The first one to move was Blaine. Walking back along the path toward the bride, Blaine set down the Juyeong he had been holding in front of her.

The bride, who had been crying into her sleeves, looked up. She was staring at Blaine not with the bridal marked eyes, but with the two eyes she had kept closed all this time. Following Blaine, Theo, Holanghee, and Father approached and returned the man’s belongings to her. Once all the items were returned, the chains binding the bride vanished.

The bride gathered the man’s belongings, gave everyone a deep formal bow, and disappeared.

A short while later, a man’s horrific scream echoed from somewhere far away. Only then did everyone feel relieved as they passed through the gate and exited the dungeon.

As they cleared The Unreturning Guest dungeon and emerged into the lobby, fireworks and fanfares began to explode loudly over their heads. Surprised by the sudden burst of colorful confetti fluttering everywhere, they hunched their shoulders and looked up, only for their jaws to drop.

The message was displayed in massive letters.

Everyone looked at the text above them with dazed faces before turning to one another.

“A hidden ending?”

“Then does that mean this was the True Ending?”

As Theo muttered in disbelief, a ding sound rang out and a system window automatically appeared. It wasn’t just for Theo, but for everyone. They looked down with stiff movements at the display. Inside the window, the rewards for the Hidden Ending of The Unreturning Guest had arrived.

Everyone looked stunned. What kind of stroke of luck was this?

But the luck didn’t end there. Another ding notification rang out, and this time, something called a “First Reward” arrived.

It was a special reward given to the users who had opened the Hidden Ending for the first time.