For a moment, silence fell.
Cha Seohu, staring at the Cult Leader with a hardened face, painfully twisted one corner of his mouth upward.
“...What?”
Then, wearing a sneer full of many emotions, Cha Seohu said,
“Fuck, that’s so absurd my head’s going numb.”
Trying not to look at the coffin holding the sleeping Yoon Jeha anymore, he continued,
“How would you know whether that woman’s dreaming about her younger sibling or dreaming about cutting off some cult bastard’s head? Her face looks peaceful?”
Cha Seohu stepped closer to the Cult Leader and, swallowing down his disgust, said in a low voice,
“She’d probably look just as peaceful if she were dreaming about killing cultists. That’s something she wants just as much as finding her younger sibling.”
The cold aura unique to an Awakener flowed from his body.
If it were an ordinary person, that aura stabbing in like needles would have been painful, but the Cult Leader’s expression did not change in the slightest.
“Is that so?”
Smiling faintly, the Cult Leader answered calmly.
“If that’s more likely, then yes. That wouldn’t be bad either. The important point is this, Mr. Cha Seohu. Dreams give a peace reality cannot provide. And there is only one reason that is possible. Dreams imitate death, and are no more than a faded form of death.”
His voice was gentle, as though accepting Cha Seohu’s opinion, but the actual content was nothing but arrogant, as if he were lecturing him.
The corners of Cha Seohu’s eyes twisted as he barely maintained his mocking smile.
“If dying’s so great, why don’t you go die first?”
“Unfortunately, I still have things I need to do.”
The Cult Leader reopened the door he had closed and looked back at him.
“Mr. Cha Seohu. Please, come with me. There is still something left I want to show you.”
“......”
Cha Seohu’s gaze flicked toward Yoon Jeha for a moment.
‘Should I do it now?’
He had come all the way here to save Yoon Jeha in the first place, and the Yoon Jeha who was as good as his target was right in front of him.
If the Cult Leader really was an ordinary non-Awakener, he could subdue him easily. If he woke Yoon Jeha in the process and they fought together, there would be even less of a problem.
‘But...’
What if, like the ring Eun Woojeong had, the Cult Leader was using some special item to pretend to be an ordinary person?
The longsword still in his hand bothered him. So did the blood on it. What the hell had he been doing before Cha Seohu arrived to end up looking like that?
‘And... this could be a chance to get important information about those cult bastards.’
A man called the Cult Leader himself was personally guiding him through the inside.
Ninety-nine percent of what came out of his mouth was impossible to accept, but information was still information. He might even learn more in detail about the most important thing in any religion—what it worshiped.
Rescuing Yoon Jeha, with somewhat lower odds of success, or holding back and gathering more information while watching the situation unfold.
At that fork in the road, Cha Seohu made his decision.
“...Lead the way.”
Turning his eyes away from Yoon Jeha, Cha Seohu followed the Cult Leader out of the room. Click. The door closed again, and the pure white hallway reappeared.
“A good decision.”
As if he already knew what kind of conflict Cha Seohu had been wrestling with, the Cult Leader smiled faintly and started leading the way down the hallway again.
“This time it’s a bit far. Shall we talk on the way? It would have been nicer to sit somewhere with warm sunlight and have tea while we talked rather than doing this here. What a shame.”
Like anyone would drink tea with you. Grumbling inwardly, Cha Seohu kept walking while continuing to inspect his surroundings.
The hallway was white enough to be unsettling and stretched straight ahead. There were no doors after the room where Yoon Jeha was, and the only sounds were the footsteps of the two of them and the Cult Leader’s voice.
“It seems you dislike the phenomenon called ‘death,’ Mr. Cha Seohu. Mm, to be honest, I find that a little strange.”
As he walked, the Cult Leader lightly tapped the tip of his sword against the floor.
“It’s understandable for ordinary Awakeners to fear or hate death. Death is very close to them, after all. They must have seen it every time they entered a dungeon. Strangers, acquaintances, close companions—how often must they have seen people die without discrimination?”
Having spoken that far, the Cult Leader slightly turned his head and looked at Cha Seohu following behind him.
“But you, Mr. Cha Seohu, are a somewhat unique type. I know you lived in District C-281. There, well, yes, you surely went through your own hardships among a similarly unusual family, but still, it’s not as though you spent your life wandering dungeons and facing death, is it?”
After hearing that much, Cha Seohu tilted his head crookedly.
“So? What are you trying to say? That some brat who’s never lived through a rough world should stay out of this?”
The Cult Leader laughed as if he had heard an amusing joke.
“A brat? If you were truly a brat, I wouldn’t be this interested in you. You wouldn’t even be standing here alive.”
“That’s a pretty way to say you would’ve killed me.”
“This is what I mean.”
Turning his head forward again, the Cult Leader resumed the steps he had paused.
“Mr. Cha Seohu. Death is not close to you. And yet you behave as though it’s closer to you than to anyone else. Not just in your actions, but in your emotions too. You stop us so desperately, interfere with us so desperately... ah, right, I mustn’t forget. That completed one you’re keeping with you. You’ve been managing it with great care too.”
For a moment, Cha Seohu’s lips parted slightly, then closed.
Completed one.
He knew at once that word referred to Cha Sahyeon.
“I acknowledge your track record. When we decided to begin our activities, we never expected that such an outstanding obstacle as you would appear. And the S-ranks who gathered around you are very interesting too, Mr. Cha Seohu. That’s why I’m even more curious. What on earth is it that drives you so desperately?”
“Do you seriously think there needs to be some grand reason for stopping a bunch of lunatic cultists screaming that dying is a good thing?”
“So there is no reason?”
“Even without one, anyone in their right mind would act like I do. Which means you’re the crazy bastard who isn’t in his right mind.”
“Hm.”
For the first time, the smile disappeared from the Cult Leader’s face.
After falling silent for a moment with a complicated expression, as though that answer had been completely unexpected, the Cult Leader spoke again.
“I never expected you to honestly bare everything. We haven’t even known each other for a full day yet, so wanting to know everything about you would be my greed.”
At the sight of the Cult Leader brushing past his answer as if he had not heard it at all, Cha Seohu frowned.
“Hey.”
“Ah, we’ve arrived.”
Cutting off Cha Seohu’s call, the Cult Leader slightly quickened his pace.
It was the moment the hallway, which had continued in a straight line, bent to the left.
Following him around the corner, Cha Seohu felt a creepy sensation sweep across his entire body for an instant.
‘An item.’
It felt similar to entering an unidentified Rift.
He hurriedly lifted his head and looked around, but there was nothing visible. Some item that could not be seen with the naked eye had activated.
“Here we are, Mr. Cha Seohu.”
The Cult Leader called to Cha Seohu, who had stopped still.
Next to the Cult Leader, standing farther ahead, was a second door.
The door to Yoon Jeha’s room had been the same pure white as the hallway. But this door, even down to the handle, was dyed a vivid yellow.
Past the item, through the unpleasantly white hallway, and at the end of it, a yellow door.
An alarm rang somewhere in the back of his head, but there was nowhere to run now. Tensing so that he could pull a weapon from his inventory at any moment, Cha Seohu spoke as if nothing was wrong.
“So what now? What’s this room? Cute forsythia-yellow door. Did you collect children’s toys in there or something?”
“Children’s toys? That’s not exactly wrong. It’ll be even more interesting than that.”
Smiling as he answered, the Cult Leader opened the door.
“......”
Beyond the wide-open door was nothing but pitch-black darkness where nothing could be seen.
Cha Seohu realized from the aura it gave off that the darkness was an effect created by an item. Judging by how weak the aura was, it seemed to be only enough to keep anyone outside the room from seeing what was inside.
‘So if I want to see what’s in the room, I have to go in myself.’
Standing beside the door, the Cult Leader was watching with interested eyes, as though he were enjoying the sight of Cha Seohu deciding what to do.
‘I really hate this, but seeing that smug face, I can’t not go in. Annoying bastard.’
Forcing his stiff lips into a smile, Cha Seohu slowly walked toward the room.
The moment he stepped inside, the darkness swallowed both his body and his vision. For a fleeting instant, he reflexively shut his eyes—and when he opened them again, a new scene spread before him.
The first things he saw were massive pillars and a ceiling so high he could not see its end.
Yellow lights installed here and there lit up the dark interior, and a red carpet stretched far, far into the distance across the floor.
Between the pillars set at regular intervals stood people with pure white cloth pulled down over even their heads.
They were different from that corpse-like thing outside the church that had guided Cha Seohu in.
These people were breathing. They moved when they bowed their waists. They were all perfectly alive.
When the Cult Leader appeared behind Cha Seohu, the people who had been standing there covered in cloth and bowing at the waist all dropped to their knees at once.
“Now then, if you’ll come this way.”
Even in front of the countless people kneeling, the Cult Leader smiled as though nothing were unusual and led Cha Seohu onward.
Barely keeping his reeling mind together, Cha Seohu managed to force his feet forward. Cold sweat ran down his temples.
“There is something I need to show you.”
After passing several pillars and reaching the far end, a massive frame draped in a bright red covering came into view.
Approaching it, the Cult Leader pulled the covering away. The cloth slid down, revealing what had been hidden.
“This is the truth of this world. Mr. Cha Seohu, we have no need to fear or reject death.”
Inside the massive frame was a single image.
A golden tree, gleaming and shimmering beneath the electric lights. To Cha Seohu, it was a pattern more familiar than anything.
The very mark Chronos himself had carved into his body.
Looking at Cha Seohu’s pale face, the Cult Leader said in a delighted voice,
“We have already died and come back to life hundreds of times.”

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