Chapter 79

Yoo Se-byeol split the unit into two.

One team entered the Eternal Temple, and the other stayed outside to deal with the monsters.

Because I failed the Gatekeepers’ screening—very unlike the original plan—I ended up remaining outside. Neither I nor Lruyeh worried much about it.

Spatial Shift wasn’t just for show, after all.

At our level, there were always ways around a problem. It was just a matter of choosing the path with the least fuss.

Honestly, going inside meant sweaty, miserable battles against a pile of demon corpses that refused to stay down until total destruction. I’d already decided to sneak in later when Lruyeh called for me.

And since I’d gotten Yoo Se-byeol to promise, even the bleak scenery of the ruined Demon Realm felt like some kind of picnic spot.

That carefree mood was mine alone, though. The others didn’t share it.

“We hold the line and keep this city safe until the Commander and Baek-seon return from the temple.”

“Yes, sir…”

“That voice. Who told you to slack off on training? Again!”

“Yes, sir!”

Everyone who failed to enter the Eternal Temple looked completely crushed.

Kang Ha-neul, barking orders at them, wasn’t any different.

Once the advance party went inside, he’d tried to stay composed, leading the remaining team outside with a steady face. But he was furious at himself.

If I hadn’t seen him swinging at a scarecrow in the training yard before we came here, I probably would’ve assumed he was just in a bad mood again.

Truthfully, I still thought that… but I approached him carefully.

“Senior. I have something to tell you.”

“What now, Hayan? Don’t tell me you need the bathroom even here.”

“That’s scheduled for later. More importantly…”

I told him there was a legitimate way for the people left outside to enter the temple.

Not some Spatial Shift shortcut—an honest, proper method.

They simply had to raise either their physical ability, their mental fortitude, or their supernatural skill high enough to pass the Gatekeepers’ test again.

I barely finished speaking when the spear came flying straight for my head.

“You think I don’t know that!?”

“Listen to me before you start hitting me!”

“What’s there to listen to? Do your eyes not see this ruined city?”

I slipped around his attacks like a darting fish until he finally exploded.

“There’s not even a single demon rat out here, not one damn ant! How are we supposed to ‘train’ in this wasteland?”

“…”

“If we were the type to level that fast, we wouldn’t have been rejected by those bastards in the first place! All we can do now is patrol and stand watch like good little guards—”

“That’s not true.”

“…What?”

Patrol. Guard duty.

Busywork you could do outside any gate. The kind of job you assigned when there was nothing meaningful for someone to do.

But I had never invited them here just to polish a chosen few.

The surface, free of demons, was the perfect stage for the still-weak members to grow.

“If you look carefully, you might find something. Between the rocks, under the rubble, even in the dried riverbed.”

“Find what?”

“Enemies.”

Because the only weed capable of surviving this harsh world—the Demon Realm’s invasive wildgrass—had spread its roots across every corner the Apostle had devastated.

It took a while, but I kept the promise I’d made to the tentacles back in the cult’s underground chamber.

I had told them I’d give them a place to run wild and have fun.

Originally, I thought about pouring hot water somewhere and making a little hot spring. But this way was much more enjoyable for them.

Just in case, I warned them not to kill anyone or cause serious injuries. That alone was enough to put the entire unit on edge.

“Uaaaaah! Help me!”

“Wh-what is that!?”

“Damn it, anyone nearby get over here now! Haram just got eaten!”

About an hour after we set up the temporary camp on the land Yoo Se-byeol had scouted—

A patrol team from the northern district sent a distress call.

Something had suddenly appeared inside what looked like an empty ruined building and attacked them.

The culprit was a massive tentacle large enough to swallow a whole person.

The 86th tentacle: Digestion.

“Spit Haram out, you monster!”

“Damn, another one’s coming from this side!”

“Why are these things going wild all of a sudden?”

“How would I know? Just take cover!”

Like a kaiju in a monster movie, the thing shook its head mid-air with one squad member halfway swallowed.

Then—ptoo!—it spat the man out.

Haram’s body wasn’t bisected—

“Haram! Are you okay!?”

“Huff… huff! I almost died—huh?”

—not quite, anyway. But his upper body was completely naked.

“Kiieeeek—!”

“Good grief…”

“Don’t panic, form up! These things aren’t normal monsters!”

“Y-Yes, sir!”

The creature screeched while crunching on his softened equipment like it was cereal.

Second-year special unit member Shin Haram was covered in a liquid that “only dissolved clothing.”

I’d never seen that before. They could do… that?

Why didn’t they tell me?

Before I could wonder further, the rest of the tentacles also woke up.

Mimicry, who had disguised itself as a statue of Gamigin, revealed its true form and startled several members. Blazing emitted eerie violet flashes like it was signaling the end of the world.

At the outer wall, Deluge rolled across the collapsed ramparts, enjoying a sand bath.

A harmonious city where tentacles and humans coexisted.

Necropolis—the so-called Eternal Tomb of the demon clans—had officially become Tentaclepolis.

“Where’s Hayan!?”

“He said he was going to the bathroom and disappeared!”

“That little— even here!? All magic users, gather up!”

“No matter what, we must protect the temple entrance!”

This place was perfect for those who didn’t earn the right to enter the Eternal Temple.

With this, they could quickly improve even on the surface.

I stepped back a bit and happily watched the squad grow.

My only remaining task here was choosing the land where Yoo Se-byeol would grow the grapes she planned to stomp.

Delivery by rocket to the dorm was fine, but she wanted to do everything by hand—artisan spirit and all that.

Even without sunlight in the Demon Realm, if the tentacles tilled the soil and awakened ones enriched it with their sweat and blood, the grape harvest would surely be plentiful.

I was enjoying my little dream of rural life when—

Lruyeh’s voice echoed in my mind.

『You should come.』

『Already? It hasn’t even been an hour. Are the others in danger?』

『I already left them.』

『…Left them?』

『I’m in the deepest chamber of the tomb.』

Ah. Right. She did that in the Tower of Proof too.

The memory resurfaced—during the three-legged race, she’d crossed the finish line alone, leaving her partner’s ankle behind.

Expecting her to babysit the others was just my wishful thinking.

『Understood. You need help contracting those Four Knights, right?』

If I remembered correctly, the collar had a tracking device, but it only worked within the Blue Magic Tower’s range.

Inside the Gate, I could move however I wanted.

Once I received her coordinates and cast Spatial Shift, the view instantly shifted.

As she said, it was just the two of us—no other squad members nearby.

“This the place?”

“Yeah. This is the deepest tomb where the retainers of the Archduke of Necromancy rest… What’s that?”

She was staring at the collar around my neck.

After I explained what happened with Yoo Se-byeol, she sighed deeply and shook her head.

“Pathetic man.”

“Me?”

“Forget it. Look over there.”

She pointed ahead with the hand not holding the skull.

Four enormous demon corpses stood before a dark wall at the far end of the chamber, staring toward it.

“Be careful. These things wiped out the entire European continent with just four Gates.”

“They’re holding something. I can’t see well from behind, but…”

“A scythe, a bow, a sword, and a scale. Once you cross this line, they’ll attack.”

“Understood. Should I handle them?”

She had only seen me use Extreme Magic inside the Tower of Proof.

She didn’t know I could use tentacles.

Even from that alone, Lruyeh understood clearly that the opponent was stronger than her — but the Extreme Magic was a spell designed for overwhelming destructive force, not suppression.

Shaking her head, she stepped forward, as if wanting to keep the demon’s corpse as intact as possible for herself.

“I’ll handle this. If it looks like I’m struggling, help me.”

“Understood.”

This was only the second time I’d seen the power of a Transcendent-Level Awakened up close.

The first time had been a sword strike from a Sword Immortal so fast I couldn’t even follow it with my eyes — so it hardly counted as “seeing” anything.

She spoke to the skeleton.

It looked similar to how I spoke to Mala-nim, except she didn’t get a reply — she simply muttered to herself.

“We have arrived at the land without a sun. The inside was deep. Yereugalle’s dead rose and aimed for the knight’s back.”

A monologue.

Softly, gently — like reading a fairy tale to a child.

As Lruyeh chanted the spell, the dead began rising from the ground.

The black mage’s army slowly approached the knights of the Archduke.

Clank, clank!!

As the distance closed, one of the knights holding a scale broke from the wall and charged forward.

Amidst the chaos of the dead killing and being killed, Lruyeh spoke another monologue.

“In the moment of hunger and silence, the rider of the black horse saw the legs standing among the crowd. The turnip was not pulled. It was the famine he had brought.”

The moment her words ended, the knight’s legs became pinned to the ground as if rooted there.

White bones quickly started piling over him.

Many undead were counter-banished by the knight’s attacks — but even more swarmed in.

After quite some time.

The first knight disappeared completely beneath the mound of bones, his scale raised up toward the sky.

Lruyeh slowly walked toward the bone-tumulus.

She reached in and retrieved the scale buried inside.

She must have used more mana than she expected — sweat trickled down her forehead.

While preparing her next spell, she spoke to me.

“I’ll handle the rest the same way, so I’m counting on you.”

“Will you be able to keep going?”

“I have to finish this in one go even if it pushes me a bit. It’d be a problem if your teammates got here and saw me like this, right?”

“Well… yeah.”

The squad that had entered the temple was surely fighting other demon corpses right now.

It would be a problem if they made it through the trials and arrived here — and just as much of a problem if they fell and got wiped out before that.

We couldn’t control the demons here like surface tentacles, but with Lruyeh’s help, this burial ground might be usable as a training site.

As the first step to that, clearing out the creatures here quickly and checking the situation seemed best.

Next. And then next again.

Every time the undead Lruyeh summoned advanced, another knight charged in.

Each one was strong enough to rival a top-class monster, so there were several times I had to step in and help.

By the time only the one holding a sword remained—

A thought struck me, and I turned to her.

“Now that I think about it… isn’t this strange?”

“What is?”

“Why aren’t they attacking all at once?”

If the four knights had rushed us together from the start, we would’ve had a much harder time.

But instead, they waited until we approached, then turned one by one — with no attempt to use numbers or ambush tactics.

“This is a place where demons come to meet a glorious death, right? Isn’t that why?”

Even after hearing her suggestion — that they were showing courtesy to challengers — I couldn’t accept it.

Demons worship power, not honor.

I’m not exaggerating when I say the only reason many demons didn’t recognize my face was because most of the time I attacked them from behind, not the front.

Still feeling uneasy, I stepped forward to face the last knight.

A cold intuition slid down my spine.

“Wait a moment.”

“What now?”

“That… doesn’t something feel wrong?”

Only now that we were close did it become clear to me.

I pointed to the wall where the knights had been standing in a row from the beginning.

The massive wall stretched endlessly — and its surface wasn’t stone. It had grain like muscle and skin.

And there were countless wounds carved into it.

When I spotted the four large ones where the knights had been embedded just moments ago—

Ruuumble!!

The entire temple shook as something began to awaken.