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The entire spacious greenhouse shook.
The violent tremor sent the black soil covering the floor flying up, and from the laboratory connected to the greenhouse came the loud crash of objects falling and shattering.
Golden light burst from the enormous black tree, the source of the vibration.
The center of the tree trunk, which looked easily over twenty meters tall, split open in a long vertical crack, and light leaked from within.
■■■■■—!
An indescribably bizarre and chilling cry swept over the greenhouse.
“Urgh!”
The S-ranks fighting the Cult Leader staggered, clutching their foreheads at the pain that felt as if their brains were being shaken and wrung out.
The Cult Leader twisted in the same way, but his gaze never left the tree.
“Uh, uh...? Uh, wait...”
The Cult Leader’s face turned deathly blue.
Completely panicking, he could no longer fight and merely stared blankly at the tree, mouth hanging open.
Even in the meantime, the tree continued to tremble, letting out a deafening sound as if it were crying out in pain.
Crack. Starting from the deep fissure carved down its center, the trunk began to split and break apart in several places. From the gaps where thick, black sap gushed out, golden light flashed vividly.
“Aaaaagh!”
At the sight, the Cult Leader screamed as if having a seizure.
“No, no!”
The intruders no longer mattered to him.
Cha Seohu, whom he had been so obsessed with, and the S-ranks he had welcomed as new fertilizer—he abandoned them all and ran toward the collapsing tree.
Rumble!
Kwon Taehyuk had been staring in bewilderment at the Cult Leader as he turned his back and moved away, but he snapped back to his senses when he saw fragments of the ceiling and shattered glass falling from above.
“We need to get out of here immediately!”
No sooner had Kwon Taehyuk shouted than the interior began collapsing in earnest.
The ceiling split apart and came crashing down whole, sending huge chunks of wall into the greenhouse. Horrified, Yoon Jeha hurriedly picked J back up onto her back from where she had laid him down earlier.
“Do you know the way out?”
“Just move for now!”
With Ryu Sunghyun carrying Cha Seohu at the front, Yoon Jeha followed behind, and Kwon Taehyuk and Eun Woojeong ran last.
In the collapsing greenhouse, only the Cult Leader remained, keeping watch beside the dying tree.
“Hngh, sob...”
The Cult Leader’s gentle face was soaked entirely with tears.
Moving the tentacles of his lower body, he pressed himself as close to the tree as possible, then collapsed to the ground and sobbed.
The tree’s body, split apart as if its entire form had been torn open by the golden light bursting from within, was a wretched sight.
The sturdy roots that had moved with such strength and seized Cha Seohu were now dried up and shriveled, lying limp across the dirt floor.
Once, this wide greenhouse had been the Cult Leader’s greatest pride. Now, there was nothing left.
The tree had withered, twisted, and died, and the flowers had completely vanished. All that remained in the greenhouse now were the chunks of wall pouring down from the ceiling and hazy clouds of dust.
With the tree withering away, the Cult Leader’s body, which had lost all its power as well, could no longer regenerate.
His lower half, crushed beneath heavy fragments of concrete, had already gone completely numb, and black blood continued to flow from his forehead, though he had no idea when it had been injured.
Looking at the dried, twisted roots, the Cult Leader shed even more tears and muttered,
“I cannot... let it end like this.”
After crying for a long while, the Cult Leader slowly lifted his bowed head. On his tear-soaked face, only his gloomily sunken eyes shone sharply.
“Cha Seohu.”
The root of all of this.
He had interfered with his plans at every turn, and now, at last, had destroyed even the noble divine tree.
This was an unforgivable mortal sin, one that he would not feel satisfied over until he chased Cha Seohu to the ends of hell and left a curse upon him.
“...It’s all right.”
The Cult Leader gently stroked the divine tree’s roots and smiled with his hideously distorted face.
“I will stay by your side.”
Yes. There was still something left to offer to the divine tree.
Himself.
Of course, he had been born and lived through the power of the divine tree, so no matter how much he offered this ruined body, the divine tree could not come back to life.
But...
“At the very least, it should create a chance to transfer the remaining power to the ‘vessel.’”
Those were the last words the Cult Leader spoke in human form.
The moment he decided to offer himself to the divine tree, the Cult Leader turned pitch-black.
His blackened body soon melted down into a sticky liquid.
The liquid that had once been the Cult Leader pooled over the withered roots. The roots absorbed it in an instant.
The black liquid climbed up the cracked, broken, tattered trunk and gathered at the top. Then, before long, it disappeared beyond the ceiling.
Rumble!
The collapse, which had briefly stopped, began again.
Inside the crumbling building, a single dead black tree, now without any power, was buried and vanished together with the greenhouse.
The representative office of Circle Guild, where Cha Seohu and the S-ranks had left, was quiet.
Inside the dark room, where even all the lights had broken, the clock hanging on the wall had a cracked glass face and pointed to five in the morning.
In the representative office, where only the steady ticking of the second hand could be heard, Song Jiwoon stood by the window with an anxious expression.
'It’s already been well over ten hours since Supporter Cha Seohu and the others left, but there’s still no word. Did something happen?'
Regret belatedly rose in him that he should have gone too, but following them now would be meaningless.
All he could do was wait for someone to contact him or return safely.
The sky visible beyond the broken window was extremely dark.
It was the sky just before dawn.
On one side of the representative office, Song Jiwoon’s older brother, Song Jiwon, sat on the sofa.
Song Jiwon—Chronos—had stepped out a short while ago under the excuse that he was going to wash up and had briefly gone to help Cha Seohu.
He had done everything he could do. What remained was a matter of how long Cha Seohu could endure.
With his arms crossed, Song Jiwon looked ahead.
On the sofa opposite him, Cha Sahyeon was still quietly asleep, unable to wake.
That was when something crawled across the dark floor.
It was a shadow. The shadow approached Cha Sahyeon as swiftly as a snake and seeped into his body.
“......”
Chronos immediately knew where that shadow had come from.
But he remained silent. This, too, was a flow he had expected.
'Now all that remains is...'
Chronos turned his head and looked out the window.
The dark sky was slowly beginning to brighten.
“This way!”
After leaving the laboratory, the group ran in search of the yellow door through which they had first come here.
The believers who had been rushing toward the laboratory while crying out for the Cult Leader were nowhere to be seen. Instead, the corridor was filled with collapsed people.
The people staring with empty faces and open eyes were difficult to call alive. As if their souls had left them hollow, they did not move at all inside the collapsing building, like puppets with their strings cut.
Kwon Taehyuk gritted his teeth as he leaped over those strange corpses.
They could not be saved.
Even knowing that, one corner of his chest sank coldly.
“There!”
Yoon Jeha, running beside him, brightened and pointed to the side.
A bright yellow door that did not suit the dark temple. It was the door connected to the church.
After sending Yoon Jeha, who was carrying J, through first, Kwon Taehyuk turned to look at Ryu Sunghyun, who was carrying Cha Seohu.
“Hunter Ryu Sunghyun?”
But Ryu Sunghyun, whom he had thought was following directly behind, looked strange.
“......”
He stood still, deathly pale.
His eyes, staring blankly ahead, trembled with unease. The way he stood there with a bloodless face made him look as if he had frozen in fear.
“Hunter Ryu Sunghyun! We need to move!”
Kwon Taehyuk grew uneasy at the sight of him as well, but there was no time to ask why. Beyond Eun Woojeong’s back as he ran at the rear, the temple could be seen collapsing.
“Are you insane?”
Eun Woojeong, clicking his tongue irritably, grabbed Ryu Sunghyun’s arm, which remained frozen even then, and pulled him toward the yellow door.
Only then did Ryu Sunghyun’s legs begin to move stiffly.
Once Ryu Sunghyun, carrying Cha Seohu, and Eun Woojeong safely disappeared beyond the door, Kwon Taehyuk let out a breath of relief and quickly threw himself through it.
In the spot where Kwon Taehyuk had vanished, a pillar collapsed, and soon the yellow door, the only passageway, was swallowed along with the temple into the hazy dust.
Click.
As soon as the yellow door closed, a pure white corridor appeared.
It was the basement of the church.
The group each caught their breath roughly as they put distance between themselves and the yellow door.
Kwon Taehyuk, steadying his breathing with one hand against the wall, turned his gaze toward Ryu Sunghyun.
“...Hunter Ryu Sunghyun.”
“......”
Ryu Sunghyun did not answer.
His face, drenched in cold sweat, was completely drained of color. When their eyes met, Kwon Taehyuk felt the ominous premonition he had been desperately ignoring because of the urgency of the situation swallow his entire body.
In the strange silence where no one could speak first, Cha Seohu’s limp body slowly tilted.
It was because Ryu Sunghyun’s arms, which had been holding him firmly, were trembling.
Eun Woojeong, standing beside them, hurriedly caught Cha Seohu’s tilting shoulder lightly, then unconsciously tightened his grip.
“...What is this?”
Eun Woojeong muttered in a parched voice and blinked.
Yoon Jeha, who had been checking on J, also noticed the strange atmosphere and hurriedly turned back. Her gaze went to Cha Seohu, carried there covered in blood.
Eun Woojeong stared blankly at Cha Seohu for a moment, then forced the corners of his mouth up with difficulty. But the area around his eyes twisted terribly.
“Fuck, what is this... Wait.”
“......”
“...No, right? Why isn’t he... breathing...”
Kwon Taehyuk dropped the blade he had barely been holding onto the corridor floor.

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