Chapter 10

Each footstep on the grass seemed to resound in my head. My head hurt from the amount of information swarming in, but I couldn’t block it. Seongmin followed my lead and held out his sword.

Finally, the monster revealed itself and growled at us.

Shiny black fur. Long legs, a muscular body, and at the top, three heads. The head in the middle stared intently at us. The left head was panting with its tongue out, while the right head didn’t seem to care and was chomping on a piece of meat.

I didn’t have time to hesitate.

When I closed my eyes and opened them again, I was above the cerberus’s heads. I put my weight into the karambit and swung it, but the monster was quick.

“Wait, human…”

The middle one started to talk. It was right after it had easily avoided my attack.

“It talks...?” Seongmin mumbled in shock, but that wasn’t important right now.

“Yes, cerberus can talk.”

It may be a troublesome monster, but the way to destroy it turned out to be simple. Its weakness was the fact that it had three heads. That meant it had three pressure points!

I planned to throw dirt in its faces. When even one of them got distracted, I would pierce it with the karambit.

“No. Fight. I’m, mission…”

While it seemed like the bastard wanted to tell me something, I had already scattered clumps of dirt in the air.

The left head that had its tongue out groaned at the sudden dirt baptism.

It was my chance.

Without hesitating, I swung the karambit at it.

But the right head blocked the attack. It bore its sharp teeth and growled. The left head was still struggling and sneezing.

“Human. You. Message…”

A message?

The middle head calmly continued to talk.

“I’m. On, mission.”

“You have a message for me?”

The middle head nodded.

A message for me? From who? What was it?

I had no idea. Someone that used a D-grade monster as a messenger had something to say to me? It was highly likely that a monster of that grade was associated with a boss mob.

And this Gate’s boss mob was... from what I remember...

“From who?”

“My master…”

“...Is it Beelzebub?”

“Correct.”

Damn it. Whenever that bastard got involved, nothing good came out of fit. I already started feeling anxious.

Beelzebub. Who is he?

Well, as this Gate’s boss mob, he was the final boss. He’s the one that controlled everything that happened inside the Gate, and the master of all its monsters. He’s also a crazy bastard with horrible taste and aesthetic sense.

“My master... wants.”

The middle head continued drearily.

“Meeting with you.”

No matter how hard I thought about it, nothing good would come out of this.

Yes, it was my fate to eventually go to him in order to clear this Gate. If I didn’t cut his throat, this Gate would continue on! But this was not it. To think that that creepy bastard had developed an interest in me...

I had no idea this would happen. Damn it.

Before transmigrating, the object of that pervert’s obsession was not me. It was...

My teacher. Hyewon Pyo.

I don’t have to mention what happened in the end to her. Is this a death threat?

“Will be waiting…”

“Wait. That bastard... where will he be waiting?”

I shouldn’t go near that place.

“Where the sun rises and sets…”

“What?”

If it was going to tell it to me like a riddle, how was I supposed to figure it out? But the cerberus seemed to have no intention to clarify.

“I, told you…”

“Wait, you need to tell me where it is exactly!”

“Finished... my role…”

With those final words, the cerberus started disappearing.

Starting from its tail, it slowly but surely was reduced into ashes and scattered into the air.

For a D-grade monster, it was quite a futile end.

[Calculating your contribution.]

[Contribution is zero.]

[No object with suitable contribution exists. Items will be allocated with priority given to nearby objects.]

The system window popped up for a moment and then turned into a small light. When I stretched out my hand to receive the item, it immediately revealed its form.

[Verifying item.]

<Beginner Healing Potion>

Grade: E

Description: A healing potion for beginners. It treats minor injuries.

<Beginner Mana Potion>

Grade: E

Description: A mana potion for beginners. It restores five hundred mana.

<Cerberus’s Oath>

Grade: D

Description: A cerberus lives by keeping one oath all its life. If you swear by Cerberus’s Oath, you can never break it.

As the items kept appearing in heaps...

“Seoha! Seongmin!”

“Seoha!”

“W-what happened?! We were surprised when you suddenly disappeared!”

...We also heard the shouts of our companions.

I calmed down their panic. Seongmin also seemed bewildered. While he may not know what exactly happened, the items in his hands were proof that meeting the cerberus had not been a dream.

“The cerberus won’t appear anymore.”

“What do you mean?”

“It just... came to be like that.”

I had a lot on my mind, so I wasn’t in the right state to explain things in detail.

As Seongmin sweated and explained what had happened in the barrier, I turned in early and went inside the tent. All my thoughts were jumbled up.

Beelzebub. He was also known as “The Descendant of Red Darkness.”

As one could tell from his name and title, he was of the demon race.

All Gates had a way to clear it. This was an unchangeable rule.

While the clearing conditions of stage-type Gates appeared as quests, this place was a field-type Gate where the general clearing method was to capture the boss mob. This place’s boss mob was Beelzebub, and I’d already had the experience of slicing his neck.

However... He had been the main contributing factor as to why it had previously taken three years to clear this Gate. He was the highest-ranking demon monster and measured as S-grade. He was actually so similar to a human that I wondered if it was correct to call him a monster.

And in my memories, that man was...

“Would you like some tea?”

His fine black hair had gleamed in the sunlight. His red eyes—the symbol of high-ranking monsters—had always been filled with boredom. Since he was said to have been of noble blood by birth, this man seemed to find everything boring. The only time he had shown a different reaction was when it had involved my teacher.

“You’re different from other humans, Hyewon. You’re really special.”

The sight of his slight smile while saying those words had truly been horrifying. My teacher had also shuddered and scrunched her face in disgust several times.

Now that same man was interested in me.

I really had no idea this would happen. He’d been so obsessed with my teacher that I thought the same would happen this time...

This man, who had admitted to observing humans as a hobby, had been particularly fond of my teacher.

His eyes had sparkled as she managed to find various ways to overcome all the obstacles that he had thrown at her. Whenever she had been on the verge of death, he would stealthily approach her and treat her just enough to keep her from dying.

One couldn’t even fathom how sadistic his tastes were.

For three years, countless Hunters had entered to try and clear the Gate and ended up failing.

He had tortured my teacher as if she were a lab rat to play with. Mentally exhausted, she had prepared a final plan and succeeded in slicing his neck... but ended up dying herself.

That bastard was my teacher’s enemy.

Just imagining him made my teeth clench and my hands and feet tremble. If only I could bury my fist in that delicate face! What a sight that would be! Up until the point that I had separated his head from his neck, that disgusting bastard had been smiling leisurely. He had been relaxed since he wasn’t really dying.

When I had unexpectedly been forced to say his name today, chills had gone up my spine.

Memories of my terrible past had come flooding back.

Ah, teacher. My original sin...

But maybe this wasn’t a bad thing. If the bastard’s original interest in my teacher had now shifted to me, maybe I could prevent her death this time.

Yeah, this could be another way...

***

When we returned, I gave a brief report to Woo-do. He made a small, pondering gesture.

“Is that so...?”

“I think he’s watching me.”

Seongmin gave a small nod at that. As the one who had made the mistake of being next to me and was caught in the barrier with me, he was witness to everything that happened.

“So you’re saying that there’s a high possibility that it’s a boss monster...”

“Yes, it can only be that level for the cerberus to call someone its master.”

“It’s been a month since the Gate opened...” Woo-do’s tone was bitter.

“It’s a rare occurrence for the Gate to still not be cleared. A lot of recon-type Hunters have probably been sent in from the outside, but… they must not have had a lot of luck. I still have no idea how vast this Gate is, so it’d be even more challenging for the Hunters. It won’t be easy to find the boss monster here either...”

One month. This was about the time when the government had deployed clearing Hunters.

As it was a Gate of unprecedented scale with a boss monster that was expected to be quite formidable, Hunters of considerable skill had been recruited.

I had later read in the logs that major guilds such as Red Flame, Blue Serpents, and Night Walker had sent their main Hunters and had predicted a pretty good win rate.

“The outside may have abandoned us... There’s a limit to enduring like this...”

Woo-do showed a rare moment of weakness. It was a sign of the deep agony that the foundation and leader of this community was suffering.

There’s a limit to enduring like this.

Yes, that was true since supplies would inevitably run out.

No matter how much we tried to save, the emergency power would eventually hit rock bottom. It was obvious how the quality of life would be affected afterwards. I knew better than anyone about how people would vent out their frustrations when they could no longer live like humans.

I knew the terrible end that this community had suffered. While I didn’t know if this was the right time to say this, I had to anyway.

“I’m leaving.”

Seongmin looked at me in shock. Woo-do, however, just peered at me with sunken eyes. Behind his worn glasses, his eyes shined with elderly wisdom.

“I knew that you would eventually leave. I didn’t know it would be this fast...”

The stronger reaction came from elsewhere.

“Seoha. Are you serious? You’re leaving? You’re going out there?”

Seongmin seemed shocked at the fact I was thinking differently.

“You want to leave even though there are monsters roaming about and the boss monster is watching you?”