#353

“Open the gate!” Jang Kyung-Hoon shouted. At that, the giant earthen wall split open miraculously. Seo Jun-Ho had already seen it when he came to the city, but the sight was still very impressive.

“Ah, so that is also the work of a Spirit user?” Even the Frost Queen’s eyes sparkled with interest.

The giant wall opened so smoothly. There was a simple reason for this.

‘They have a deep understanding of the mechanics of the wall’s movements.’

Seo Jun-Ho glanced at the hinge of the structure while passing by. From what he heard, the person who made this was an intermediate-level Spirit user accompanied by an earth Spirit.

‘I should meet with them once I come back.’

He still hadn’t met a Spirit user after taking in the Frost Queen, so it would be nice to meet another one to exchange information with.

The expedition team was quiet as they departed, but they were only able to move at a swift rate for a single day.

***

[You have entered Erebo’s domain.]

[The effectiveness of the title Exterminator has drastically decreased.]

Seo Jun-Ho silently lifted his hand and dismissed the hologram window.

‘Erebo’s domain…’

Indeed, when he had fought with Erebo’s clone, the cockroaches continued to resist the effects of Exterminator until he died. The only thing Exterminator did was slow them down a little bit. That was all.

‘It’s only the beginning, but we’re already having problems.’

Originally, he was planning to use Exterminator as his main strategy to go through the cave as safely as possible. However, his plans had already gone to the dogs.

“…”

Had he imagined it? He suddenly looked up and saw that even the sky looked gray and gloomy.

“Let’s take a break. Drink some water.”

They had to push through with their strict schedule all day, and all the members could finally sit to catch their breath and quench their thirst.

Seo Jun-Ho stared up at the man offering him a drink.

“Thank you,” he said.

It was Elder Phantom Sword. Even though Seo Jun-Ho had humiliated him just a day before, he always stuck close to him.

“Is there something you want to say about what happened yesterday?” Seo Jun-Ho asked.

“N-not at all.” The old man shook his head, looking a little nervous. “I simply… want to watch over in the closest distance possible, even if it is only for a short period of time.”

“Wow. Do you not resent me?” Seo Jun-Ho would understand if someone narrow-minded would hold a grudge against him after that.

However, the old man looked absolutely astonished as he shook his head.

“Resent you? That would be absurd.”

He looked down at his sheathed sword. “I am already sixty-one years old. I became a Player at the ripe old age of forty-two. It has already been twenty years since then, and I did not even realize how much time had passed.”

Seo Jun-Ho’s legs folded in a little. He was surprised by how long Elder Phantom Sword had been in the field.

“Even before I became a Player, I saw you all over the television and the newspapers. You are the world’s Hero.” Elder Phantom Sword’s eyes fluttered shut, lost in his memories. “Many people became Players after seeing how much joy your achievements brought because they wanted to make others happy as well. I am one of them.”

“I see…”

Seo Jun-Ho finally understood the kind of person the old man was.

‘He’s just another one of my fans.’

Decades ago, this was something he had experienced all the time. However, this was the first time he met a fan in a long time, and he felt deeply moved by their meeting, more than usual.

“Your words were very accurate, Specter. I took pride in the fact that I seemed the most youthful out of others my age, but after yesterday, I realized that my thoughts were incorrect.”

Not many Players would choose to change once they realized their flaws. It was even more true if they took pride in their skills.

Seo Jun-Ho sipped his drink and said, “Your mindset is strong. You will get stronger in the future.”

“R-really?” The old man looked emotional.

Seo Jun-Ho looked at him and nodded. After what happened yesterday, Kang Shin-Woo looked completely drained. The sight of someone as arrogant as him looking depressed was almost pitiful. “That kid will also find motivation once enough time passes. Though he is a bit of a bastard, he shouldn’t be a bad person.”

“I hope so…”

Seo Jun-Ho got up and looked around, looking for someone. From afar, someone caught his eye and swiftly made his way over.

“My name is Miller. I’m the leader of the Miller party, who discovered the cockroach cave,” said the man. From now on, he would be in charge of guiding the way.

Before they left, Seo Jun-Ho took a walk with Miller and asked a few questions, “I read the report, but I’d like to hear directly from you. What was the cave like?”

“…To be honest, it’s a place I don’t want to go back to.” Miller was slightly trembling as he said, “How should I put this? Instinctively, I felt like I shouldn’t go back in.”

The human instinct was stronger than most people thought. If Miller felt that way, it was probably the right decision to make.

“Overall, approximately how big was it?”

“Um… It wasn’t that big. It was only about the size of that hill over there.” Miller pointed. It certainly didn’t seem very big. If he were telling the truth, Seo Jun-Ho got the feeling that this expedition would quickly come to an end and be in vain.

‘But that can’t be true…’

There had to be something there…

Otherwise, an 80-person team wouldn’t have been completely annihilated.

The party was prepared. As such, Seo Jun-Ho turned to them.

“Miller, lead the way.”

It was time to depart for the cockroach cave.

***

The inside of the cave was dark and humid. In other words, it was a place cockroaches loved.

“Eek…”

“Damn. No matter how many times I see them, I just can’t get used to them.”

Their faces wrinkled when they saw the corpses of cockroaches scattered at the entrance. As humans, they felt an instinctive sense of disgust just by looking at them.

– Sasasak!

– Shoop!

They heard something quickly approaching them from the wide entrance of the cave, and hundreds of cockroaches appeared shortly afterward.

The Players’ faces fell, and they started cursing.

“Shit! I’m gonna throw up everything I ate during the break!”

“Kill them all! Burn them!”

In the blink of an eye, they took battle-ready stances, and the Players eradicated the cockroaches without much difficulty.

‘They fight better than I thought.’

As Seo Jun-Ho watched them, he couldn’t help but feel a small sense of pride. All of them were playing their own part, and this was what the 5 Heroes wanted so much, decades ago.

“We’ve killed them all.”

They had been fighting these cockroaches for a pretty long time now, so they had long learned how to kill them.

‘All eighty members can either use a weapon aura, or they have skills similar to one.’

Seo Jun-Ho finally understood why Shin Sung-Hyun had chosen them as elite fighters. After winning a swift, overwhelming victory, their confidence naturally increased.

“This is easier than I thought…”

“Since we’re supposed to explore their cave, I was a little nervous, but maybe it was for nothing.”

“Maybe it’s because we only have combatants, but this is easier than when we were fighting them in the city.”

Seo Jun-Ho didn’t want to lose this momentum either, so he led them deeper.

– Sasasak!

– Shoop!

“They’re coming again.”

“Just how many of them are in here?”

Jun-Ho’s eyebrows knitted.

‘Wait, something’s different…’

These cockroaches were different from any other he had ever seen. They were slower, and the lower halves of their bodies were enlargened as if they were about to explode.

“Stop for a moment.”

He instinctively sensed that something was wrong and stopped the party from attacking.

Then, he stepped forward.

‘Freeze.’

The cockroaches froze just like that, and then he released a shower of icicles onto them without mercy. He added a layer of darkness at the icicles’ tips, so the icicles easily ripped through the cockroaches’ exoskeletons. As expected, they fell from the attack.

‘They’re too weak… Was I wrong?’

He frowned…

Baaang!

The cockroaches’ stomachs expanded, and they exploded one by one. The explosions were so powerful the cave itself trembled, and even though Seo Jun-Ho was standing far away, he was still stupefied by the scene.

“…What the fuck? You’re telling me there are exploding cockroaches?”

“I-I’ve never seen anything like that before…”

“If they had exploded right in front of us…”

The party members gulped as cold sweat started dripping down their bodies. If Seo Jun-Ho hadn’t stopped them, they would have fought these monsters the same way they fought the previous horde of cockroaches.

‘If we had been closer to the explosions and received a direct hit, could we have survived it?’

They couldn’t have survived it…

The Players ran the scenario through their heads, and they grew pale when they realized that they had nearly stumbled upon death.

“T-thank you, Specter, sir.”

“You saved us. Exploding cockroaches… I never imagined that.”

The Players barely managed to pull themselves together as they started thanking him one by one. Seo Jun-Ho nodded in response, but his face remained taut.

‘Even I have never seen cockroaches like those despite all my regressions.’

He had come across dozens of various special entities. However, most of them were cockroaches that resembled animals. They weren’t anything like those exploding cockroaches.

‘I think I finally know why the expedition forces were always annihilated every time they came here.’

There was something here.

He looked back at the party members, who seemed to have calmed down.

“Let’s go.”

***

The deeper they went, the stranger the types of cockroaches they encountered became. Once they finished off the fourth horde, the Players confirmed something.

“These bastards… They’re using weapons now.”

“Right? I’m not the only one who thought of that, right?”

After the exploding cockroaches, there were ones that shot out spikes like machine guns. The ones they had just killed were monsters that used missiles.

However, the Players seemed even more bewildered than scared.

“How in the world is this possible?”

“If you think about it, it is possible, considering that there are cockroaches that look like elephants and crocodiles.”

“I have never really thought about it until now, but how the hell are special entities created?”

No one could answer because no one knew…

Seo Jun-Ho thought for a moment.

‘The special entities… There’s no way they exist naturally. That bastard Erebo is probably creating them.’

He was a monster that had eaten the 4th Floor Administrator, the World Tree. It wouldn’t be surprising if he could make the cockroaches evolve.

‘And this cave…’

Seo Jun-Ho stared into the depths of the dark cave. They saw more and more cockroaches of different types as they went deeper into the cave.

And this could only mean one thing…

‘This place belongs to Erebo, so it means that it’s really important.’

Putting powerful forces to guard an important area was a very basic battle strategy.

When Seo Jun-Ho thought about it, he started to feel impatient.

“Let’s move.”

“…Specter, can’t we just rest a little longer?”

“I used a potion, but my wound hasn’t closed yet…”

Normally, Seo Jun-Ho would have readily allowed it.

But now, it was different.

“The fact that there are so many new types of cockroaches means that this place is extremely important to them.”

They were doing heavy damage to the cockroaches right here and now. Would Erebo be in the dark about what they were doing when he had the hivemind?

‘Of course not…’

The cockroach army could already be on its way. At this point, they only had two options: get out or go deeper.

And Seo Jun-Ho chose the latter option…

‘Even if I die, I have to gather information no matter how small.’

Of course, the best-case scenario would be his survival.

Seo Jun-Ho sighed and looked at the party members as they stood up.

“From now on, you all better be on guard.”

But not even thirty minutes after saying that, the expedition force was thrown into disarray.