There was nothing left of the Cult Leader’s neat appearance.
At the horrific sight of that pitch-black mass of flesh swelling outward in a rounded bulk while tentacles jutted out from all over it and writhed, Cha Seohu furrowed his brow.
“Fuck, what the hell is that thing?”
The tentacles moved as if they had a will of their own. Crash—experimental tools shoved aside by them spilled beneath the desks and shattered with a loud, jarring clatter.
The mass of flesh continued to swell larger and larger, blocking the door leading to the greenhouse with eerie precision.
The Cult Leader’s head, which the body had discarded onto the floor as if throwing away trash, wore a blank expression devoid of any soul. It no longer blinked or chattered.
Unlike the motionless head, the flesh that had been the body kept expanding until it grew large enough to touch the laboratory ceiling. The tentacles thickened along with it, and their movements grew faster.
Cha Seohu, grasping the situation without much difficulty, steadied his breathing.
“So that means that thing is the main body now.”
The tip of his sword leveled at the gigantic, bloated black mass of flesh.
As long as he had still thought of the Cult Leader as a human being—Awakened or not—these changes had been horrifying.
But once he regarded it as no different from a monster, it became easier to accept.
When Rifts opened in the sky and poured monsters out, or when hunters entered dungeons, there were countless bizarre creatures to be seen.
Among them were monsters that wore the skin of a human form like the Cult Leader and lured hunters in. Some types remained perfectly alive and kept moving even after their bodies had been severed and split apart.
“Hm.”
The golden sphere Chronos had created rose to ceiling height and drifted close to the glass wall, but it could not advance any farther into the greenhouse.
As if estimating the reason, Chronos narrowed his eyes, then nodded as though he understood.
“Cha Seohu. Move a little.”
“What?”
“I came here only to ‘help.’ So the more danger you’re in, the more I’m able to intervene.”
Chronos said something utterly insane as if it were nothing at all, then gave a light shrug.
“So go rush that lump and make it move out of the way. I already put a barrier around you so you won’t die, so don’t worry.”
“When this is over, you’d better be ready to get hit at least once by me.”
Muttering irritably, Cha Seohu stopped hesitating and kicked off the ground again.
The desks and equipment that had once filled the middle of the laboratory had been smashed apart and shoved far away by the writhing tentacles. Thanks to that, it was much easier to move.
Cutting through the thick tentacles lunging at him, Cha Seohu closed in on the mound of flesh and swung his sword hard in a horizontal arc.
The flesh split deeply, and black, sticky liquid spilled out in place of blood. But that was all. It was nowhere near enough to remove a lump of flesh that huge and thick.
After gritting his teeth and swinging several more times, Cha Seohu shouted sharply,
“Hey! Is this actually doing anything?”
“Hm.”
Hearing Cha Seohu’s shout, Chronos thought for a moment, then snapped his fingers.
“Then how about this.”
At the same time, the golden barrier encircling Cha Seohu’s body vanished.
“Ghk!”
A massive tentacle flying in from the side slammed into Cha Seohu’s ribs at tremendous speed.
With a short cry, his body was knocked up into the air, then rolled across the floor.
Seeing that, Chronos brightened and said,
“Oh, good! The suppression this world placed on me is finally starting to weaken.”
“You insane son of a...”
Still sprawled on the floor and cursing between coughs, Cha Seohu suddenly went pale and rolled to the side.
Boom!
A tentacle slammed mercilessly into the spot where he had just been. The floor cracked, and fragments shot upward.
As Cha Seohu barely avoided it, Chronos called out in what almost sounded like encouragement.
“Let’s keep going like this! Try getting hit on purpose a little. You know, the kind that doesn’t hurt too much.”
“If all you’re gonna do is spout bullshit like that, then just shut up!”
Even while swearing at him, Cha Seohu admitted that the method Chronos had proposed was the simplest solution.
It meant using his own body as bait, but if it was Chronos, it was worth that much.
After all, wasn’t he practically a god who managed this world? If a being like that was helping him, then surely he could inflict serious damage on the Cult Leader.
There were no other options. Twisting his face, Cha Seohu deliberately charged at the Cult Leader with even less restraint.
Realizing Cha Seohu had made up his mind, Chronos added one more remark.
“Six minutes left.”
Cursing, Cha Seohu kicked off the floor and leaped upward.
He flew up nearly to the ceiling, then landed atop the giant mass of flesh with his sword aimed downward.
Crunch!
The tip of the blade drove deep into the flesh.
Apparently the attack had some effect, because even though it had no mouth, a grotesque choking sound burst from the mound of flesh, and then it began to thrash violently in every direction.
“Ugh...!”
The recoil from its twisting and convulsing threw Cha Seohu’s body around like he had been caught in a storm. He tried to hang onto the embedded sword and endure somehow, only to be struck hard across the upper body by another tentacle.
The sword was ripped free, and Cha Seohu was flung backward. His back slammed hard into the glass wall overlooking the greenhouse. The impact shattered the wall into pieces.
Crash!
Along with the shards of broken glass, Cha Seohu’s body tumbled out of the laboratory and rolled across the greenhouse floor.
The damp soil, the heavy humidity, and the vile stench—things he had not been able to sense from the laboratory—hit his entire body at once.
“Cough, huff!”
Blood trickled from Cha Seohu’s mouth as he coughed on the ground. But his attention was not focused on his own condition.
When he lowered his head, he saw his pale hand cut by the glass and the soil beneath it. It was not ordinary soil. It was black earth reeking of rot.
“What is this...?”
It was only black dirt, and yet the instant it stained his hand, an instinctive revulsion surged through him, as if something filthy and abhorrent had clung to his skin.
Reflexively brushing the soil off, Cha Seohu turned around.
The color drained from his face.
A black tree so tall its top was out of sight. And all around it, hundreds of flowers bloomed in full.
Green petals, black stems. A thick, nauseating stench and aura spreading through the air.
Cha Seohu knew those flowers all too well. He had seen them again and again, starting from the Gwanghwamun incident and in the events that followed.
‘Those flowers...’
Countless people had suffered because of a single flower.
Hunters who had rushed in to seal the Rift that opened in the middle of the city had died. The same thing had happened in the Great Dungeon.
All it took to cause that disaster was one flower. And yet—
‘There are still that many of them left?’
They had even built a greenhouse this enormous just to cultivate them?
A hollow helplessness filled his chest, only to be overturned an instant later by rage burning so fiercely it was almost unbearable.
Veins stood out on the back of the hand he had clenched into a fist. Feeling as though he had swallowed fire, Cha Seohu grabbed the nearby fallen sword again.
At that moment—
“Grrgh.”
Something like the cry of a beast came from the lump of flesh, followed by a grotesque sound like bone and flesh being churned back together.
Crunch, crack.
From the center of the flesh, thick black liquid oozed out, and something bulged upward.
The protruding black flesh rapidly took shape. White skin, two arms, even a head attached atop a neck.
In the blink of an eye, the revolting black mass of flesh transformed into the Cult Leader’s body again, this time with pale white skin. Though everything below the waist was still fused to the flesh, his upper body looked astonishingly, perfectly human.
“Mr. Cha Seohu.”
When the Cult Leader opened his mouth, the same gentle voice as before came out.
“That is not a place just anyone is allowed to enter. But...”
Bracing both hands on the mass of flesh attached below his waist, the Cult Leader’s eyes flashed as he smiled. There was an unmistakable hunger in the way his upper body leaned forward, as though he wanted to reach Cha Seohu even a little more.
“You, though. Yes. I think you would be fine. I was going to introduce this place to you someday anyway.”
“.......”
“I explained it back in the temple, didn’t I? Our ultimate goal! To grant peace to as many people as possible. These flowers are the material that exists to make that possible. Aren’t they beautiful?”
Still gripping his sword, Cha Seohu slowly pushed himself to his feet.
“But raising that material requires a vast amount of life force. Life force that is thick and exceptional, just like yours, Mr. Cha Seohu.”
The Cult Leader spread both arms and cried out,
“So come back to me! I will gladly swallow you. Together with me, you will become nourishment for a new world.”
Cha Seohu stared at the Cult Leader shouting in ecstasy, his face expressionless, and spoke in a low voice.
“That’s what’s wrong with people like you.”
He raised his sword. But the point of the blade was not aimed at the Cult Leader.
“Judging someone else’s life however you want. Deciding for them that they deserve to die.”
Cha Seohu pulled one corner of his mouth up into a smile.
“Keep talking like that. Maybe someone out there will agree with you. Hell, maybe a lot of people would.”
Then he moved the arm holding the sword.
He lifted the sword as high as he could and drove it down without mercy.
Toward his own shoulder.
“But I’m not one of them.”
The terrible sensation of the sharp blade piercing his own flesh spread through his palm. Gritting his teeth and forcing back a groan, Cha Seohu staggered as blood poured from his shoulder.
“What...?”
The Cult Leader was rarely caught off guard, and it was at the sight of Cha Seohu injuring himself.
“That’s enough, Cha Seohu.”
Chronos said it softly.
The light floating near the laboratory ceiling grew even brighter. Then it flew over the shattered glass wall and into the greenhouse.
Only then did the Cult Leader realize Chronos’s true aim. He thrust out his tentacles in panic, but the light moved first.
The sphere floating at the center of the greenhouse exploded like a bomb, and a blazing light swallowed everything.

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