Chronos stepped back with Cha Seohu in his arms. His golden eyes faced forward.
The Cult Leader’s body, its neck severed and lolling backward, collapsed as it was.
The middle of its chest and abdomen, which had tried to swallow Cha Seohu, was still split wide open, and the tentacles protruding from it writhed.
Looking down at the sight with the expression of someone staring at an insect, Chronos spoke to Cha Seohu.
“Wake up.”
But Cha Seohu, unconscious, did not so much as twitch.
With a sigh, Chronos raised his free hand and snapped his fingers. A cluster of golden light briefly wrapped around Cha Seohu’s body.
“Ugh...”
Cha Seohu, who had been lying there as motionless as a corpse, as if his soul had left him, reacted.
His brow furrowed. He twisted his head and let out a small groan.
“Wake up. Before I drop you.”
Only then, at Chronos’s urging, did Cha Seohu’s tightly shut eyes open.
His long eyelashes trembled as he forced them up, and his gaze went straight to Chronos. It was only after blinking several times with clouded eyes that he finally asked in a hoarse voice,
“What.”
Chronos answered.
“It’s me.”
Staring at him with a dumbfounded look, Cha Seohu promptly shoved him away.
“Put me down.”
Chronos let go without resistance.
Standing properly on his own two feet, Cha Seohu calmly scanned his surroundings.
He had definitely been in the temple before passing out after being submerged in that unidentified black liquid. But now he was in an unfamiliar laboratory.
The Cult Leader’s corpse lying there with its neck cut off, the tentacles writhing from the split-open center of its body, even the vast garden visible beyond the glass window.
Too much information crashed over him like a wave. He did not know what question to ask first.
Pressing a hand to his forehead, Cha Seohu barely managed to speak.
“What the hell... happened to me? If you came here, that means my life was in danger.”
“It was.”
Chronos jerked his chin toward the Cult Leader’s body, where several tentacles still squirmed.
“You almost got eaten by that. Once it drags you in, you can’t get back out. It sucks away all the life force and sense of self in your body.”
“Fuck. Wait.”
Cha Seohu’s face, calm while he listened to the explanation, turned deathly pale in an instant.
Looking at the tentacles still writhing out of the Cult Leader’s body, he pointed at them with a trembling hand and asked,
“I... almost got eaten by that?”
“In reality, everything from your head to your waist was already inside it. If I hadn’t come, there was a very high chance that would have been it.”
“Urgh!”
At Chronos’s flat answer, Cha Seohu belatedly noticed the sticky bodily fluid smeared over him and gagged.
“Ugh, that’s disgusting...”
“Is this really the time to be throwing up?”
Clicking his tongue, Chronos snapped his fingers once more, and Cha Seohu’s body and clothes were instantly cleaned.
Not only that, but even the longsword he had failed to grab before losing consciousness in the temple dropped out of midair with a thud.
“Get ready.”
“What?”
It happened just as Cha Seohu bent to pick up the sword from the floor.
“Ahaha.”
A familiar laugh rang out. A cold shiver shot up his spine.
Horrified, Cha Seohu spun around.
The voice was coming from beyond the Cult Leader’s body, which still lay there with its neck severed.
“This I really didn’t expect. Mr. Cha Seohu, you truly are remarkable.”
It was the Cult Leader’s voice. It sounded absurdly calm and clear.
Cha Seohu hastily raised his sword and swept his eyes around, then finally noticed something beyond the body.
It was a head.
The head Chronos had cut off, the one that had dropped and rolled away.
“What the fuck is this, you—”
“Surprised? You’d already figured out I wasn’t an ordinary human.”
Speaking lightly, as though they were exchanging pleasantries, the Cult Leader let out a little grunt.
Then the body that had been lying motionless began to move.
It planted both hands on the floor and slowly rose. The severed surface of its neck was fully exposed under the light.
It was human flesh. Horribly, unmistakably human. The only reason it could look that way was because no blood was flowing.
Faced with that unreal sight, Cha Seohu could not speak.
Chronos’s sudden appearance, and the fact that he himself had only just woken up, had left his head too scrambled to take in the situation properly... so he had failed to notice.
If an ordinary person’s neck had been cut like that, enough blood to soak the floor should have poured out by now.
While Cha Seohu stood frozen in shock, the body, now fully upright, calmly walked over to where the head lay. Then it bent down and picked up its own head.
“Ah, now I can see clearly!”
Holding its severed head neatly in its hands, the body looked straight at Cha Seohu and Chronos.
The Cult Leader’s face was visible. Just as expected, not a single drop of blood ran from the head either. It was completely intact.
“My. Mr. Cha Seohu, you really must be shocked. You look paler than I do, and I’m the one whose head was cut off. Ahaha!”
The Cult Leader laughed out loud as though he had just delivered a brilliant joke.
Feeling like he would lose his mind if he kept looking any longer, Cha Seohu turned to Chronos.
“What the hell is that bastard?”
Chronos, who had been watching the Cult Leader indifferently with his arms crossed, curled one corner of his mouth up.
“Unfortunately, I can’t answer that. I came here only because of the mark I planted on your body.”
“Ha...”
He understood without hearing any more.
A price. That was what it meant.
“Can the bastard be killed?”
“Not right now. And Cha Seohu. There’s one more thing you should know.”
One more thing?
Cha Seohu nodded, expectant.
“Tell me.”
“There’s a time limit on this.”
“...What?”
The abrupt statement made Cha Seohu stare blankly for a moment.
Meeting that expression, Chronos repeated it clearly, enunciating every word.
“There’s a time limit.”
“...What kind of time limit?”
“The amount of time I can help you here. Once that runs out, I have to leave.”
Cha Seohu’s mouth slowly fell open.
What kind of bullshit was that?
“What do you mean, leave? You’re seriously saying you’re going to leave me here alone with that lunatic? You just said I almost got eaten by that octopus freak.”
“I truly do find it unfortunate. But those are the rules this world established.”
Chronos did not look unfortunate in the slightest.
“For the record, you have 9 minutes and 18 seconds left.”
“You son of a—!”
Furious at that brazen attitude, Cha Seohu lunged as if to grab him by the collar.
In that instant, Chronos shot out an arm at a speed too fast to see and shoved Cha Seohu aside. As Cha Seohu staggered back, something huge and thick slammed down exactly where he had been standing.
Boom!
The floor split, and dust rained down from the ceiling.
The thick, long tentacle that had smashed the spot where Cha Seohu had stood slowly withdrew and slipped back into the split in the Cult Leader’s upper body.
“That won’t do, Mr. Cha Seohu.”
For the first time, the smile vanished from the Cult Leader’s face resting in his own hand.
“To lose yourself in that man while I’m standing right here in front of you. I find that extremely unpleasant...”
Hearing him grumble like a lover pouting in hurt disappointment, Cha Seohu twisted his face and covered his mouth. His stomach turned again. He felt filthy enough to want to scrub his ears clean.
“If cutting off his head still leaves him like that, maybe cutting out his tongue would be better.”
Barely regaining control of himself, Cha Seohu dropped into a fighting stance and shouted,
“You said 9 minutes, right? Help me as much as you can before it runs out, seriously!”
“8 minutes and 47 seconds.”
Without answering, Cha Seohu kicked off the floor and charged.
“Ahhh...!”
The Cult Leader’s face filled with ecstasy as he watched Cha Seohu rush toward him.
The tentacles lunged at Cha Seohu as if bursting outward. Just before their tips could touch him, a golden barrier spread around his body.
Ssszzzt!
“Aaagh!”
The instant the tentacles touched it, a burning sound rang out, and the Cult Leader let out a cry of pain.
Even the body holding the head staggered.
“8 minutes and 22 seconds remaining.”
After reciting the time again, Chronos brought both hands together.
Between his facing palms, held apart at a distance, a brilliant golden sphere appeared.
The sphere rose into the air, its light growing stronger and stronger. While it blocked the Cult Leader’s vision, it flew beyond the laboratory.
The vast greenhouse visible through the glass. The gigantic tree growing at its center.
“No!”
Realizing too late what Chronos was aiming for, the Cult Leader shouted harshly.
The body holding the head hurled it aside and hurriedly spun around. Cha Seohu’s longsword, exploiting that opening, pierced straight through its back.
Gush—from the back he had skewered, black liquid burst out.
Cha Seohu, who had already gone through something similar before while facing Cha Sahyeon in the unidentified Rift, hastily yanked the sword free and retreated.
The body staggered several steps toward the greenhouse, then collapsed.
Next, its upper body bent this way and that in grotesque angles like a machine breaking down, and tentacles tore through the skin all over it.
The Cult Leader’s body gradually transformed into a huge, rounded mass of tentacles.

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