Chapter 64
#064
1.
I hauled the diving suit out of the treasure vault and brought it all the way to the settling tank.
I'd already come this far, and I'd sunk this much opportunity cost into it.
“I've gotta get my money's worth.”
They say being able to cut your losses cleanly is a skill?
That's the kind of thing only cowardly bastards who never make real money say.
“Let's see... assembly is the reverse of disassembly.”
Then dressing is the reverse of undressing.
-Creeeak, clank-clank
“Ugh, why's it so stiff? Don't they have any grease?”
By taking apart the cleaners' diving suits, I roughly learned the sequence.
Boksuni, sitting nearby and quietly watching me squat there, said,
“Master.”
“Why?”
“Don't tell me... you're planning to put that on and go inside?”
“You caught on fast.”
As expected of our Boksuni.
That little bit of airheadedness is what makes you cute.
“Master! This is insane!”
“It's fine, just watch. I won't die.”
Sion was making a huge fuss like a rice-cake shop had caught fire.
“You'll die! What in the world are you thinking! Ngh! No! Give it back! Grr... grr...!!”
Japjo was waddling off with the diver's helmet they'd picked up.
As I watched with a dad's smile, they even tried to toss it straight into the filthy water.
“Hey! Hey! Hey! Stop right there! Crazy bitch!”
“That's the only intact helmet left now!”
I barely stopped her by body-slamming her.
“If you die here, how am I supposed to get out?”
Sion thrashed beneath me.
“Come on, I told you I won't die. We already tested it earlier.”
“If I'd known you were only going to pull stunts like this, I never would have brought you back to life!”
Why'd she get so vicious?
“You sulking because I said we'd drink and then came back to work?”
“It wasn't just the booze! You said you'd buy me tteok too!”
“No, who said I wouldn't buy it?”
“If you die, you can't buy it!”
Fair enough.
From her point of view, I'd only just fished myself out of the water, only to crawl right back in.
I've got my reasons too.
I'm done wasting any more time.
“If I make it back alive, I'll buy you twice as much.”
“Really? Aah! You coward! To use such a scheme!”
I snatched the helmet away from Japjo, who'd let his guard down far too easily.
“If I find the slush fund, I'll buy you a whole tray, so keep praying.”
I peeled Japjo off and started putting on the diving suit first.
It looked complicated enough from the outside, but actually putting it on was a filthy pain.
I stuffed my arms and legs into a suit made of some sandpaper-stiff material.
I put on lead shoes that felt like they had ten sandbags in them. What was next again?
In the end, Sion, who'd given up and was squatting there, asked,
“Why go that far?”
“Huh?”
“You just came back from the threshold of death, did you not? Aren't you afraid?”
Sion grumbled, clearly unable to understand.
“Aren't you full of promise, Master?”
“Promising? Me?”
This was the first compliment I'd ever received in my life.
“Compared to this humble one, you're nothing but a speck, but I saw it. In that fleeting instant, you expanded and rebuilt the very concept of magic. Master, you have the talent of a mage.”
Apparently, cutting through a 'thing' with Sine Sentence had been pretty impressive even to Sion.
Come to think of it, even I thought that was the kind of scene you'd see in a dead guy's badass highlight reel.
“Kid, that’s why you need to show off properly from the start.”
I grinned as I connected the tube to the diving suit.
“That makes it even more incomprehensible.”
Sion shook her head.
“I do not understand why you would risk yourself to hide this humble one. If Hyeon-gwi has the favor of Hyangju and even a talent for magic... you could live decently in this city however you wished, could you not? Why cross such a dangerous bridge?”
Sion continued, tapping her neatly gathered toes together.
I was about to answer lightly,
when I understood the implication in Boksuni's words.
It was a roundabout way of asking me to be honest and tell her everything.
Maybe she'd already started thinking of me as a comrade.
“That...”
But that was outside anything I could explain.
“Kid, how the hell are you supposed to live decently and honestly in this city?”
I gave Japjo's head a light bop and put on the helmet.
I fastened the neck clamp and turned the valve.
-Hissss!
With that sound, air filled the helmet and suit.
There wasn't a separate oxygen tank; you kept breathing the oxygen pooled inside the helmet, like an air pocket.
When you wanted to go up, you released the weights at your ankles and waist and let the air in the suit lift you.
Think of it as pretty much a one-person submarine.
“Don't worry too much. I'll be back.”
I made my final check of the diving suit and stood before the black lake.
-KRAKAKAKAKAK!
“Hmm...”
Diving makes me nervous too.
“Changed your mind after all? Let's head back.”
Sion kept peeking around me like a kitten desperate to poop.
I’d already run tests, but now that it was time to actually do it, I still wondered if this was really the right move.
But...
Sion was right.
What I was doing was crazy—the work of a lunatic.
Which means it's a route that can only succeed if you're crazy.
I trust my intuition and luck.
Positive thoughts. Happy thoughts.
What if it's a dead end and I die?
Even if I die, I can still get the rare death marker—like a water burial or a tentacle attack, right?
Then...
Dive in while shouting the name of the one you love!!!
“Arbel!!! Boksuni!!!”
“Waaah! Master!!! At least take it slow...!”
-Splash!
Sion's squealing scolding dissolved into bubbles and vanished.
The lead lump at my ankles became an anchor, dragging me down, deeper and deeper to the bottom.
-Kugugugugu....
The water drumming against the helmet turned into a dull vibration that rattled my skull.
My vision went dark in an instant.
This much, I'd expected.
I figured my vision would go dark, and I'd have to grope around like a blind man hunting for treasure on the floor.
But this...
This is way more fucked up than I thought.
I figured it was only about the width of a basketball court, so I'd just close my eyes and grind through it.
I can't even see the hand I held up in front of me.
And on top of that...
How far down does this go?
Down, down.
The sensation of sinking, sinking, sinking.
“Huff... huff...”
My ragged breathing from the tension thundered in my ears.
I could feel the water pressure increasing through the suit.
It felt like a giant snake was winding itself around me.
-Thunk!
At last, with a heavy metal clang, my toes finally touched the bottom of the settling tank.
“Shit, my balls are really gonna shrivel up.”
At worst, I was even prepared to be crushed by the water pressure.
As expected of an item from the rift.
It feels like I came down dozens of meters, but it's holding up fine.
Then.
“Huh?”
The helmet's cramped viewing port.
The dark nothingness before my eyes slowly changed, as if the fog were clearing.
It wasn't clear enough to call it first-rate water.
The pitch-black wastewater blocking my view had been reduced to murky water.
Still, this was enough to tell front from back.
“Lucky.”
This diving suit works great.
I swept my gaze around.
Do they clean this place on a schedule or something?
There's surprisingly little trash.
Just a layer of sticky sludge on the bottom.
What if they cleared out the True Ancestor's slush fund too?
“If I went through all this bullshit and it's not here, I'm really gonna be pissed.”
As I shuffled around the sludge piles,
something strange, half-buried in the sediment, caught my eye.
“Huh?”
A large boulder, about the size of an adult man's upper body, tied with a thick white rope.
But as a plain rock, it felt odd.
The surroundings were nothing but sticky sludge and floating debris.
Only the area around that rock was clean.
“...Did I find it? Did I really find it?!”
-Clank, clank
Ignoring the water pressure crushing me down, I hurried over in a panic, my feet going clomp-clomp.
You can tell it's no ordinary thing at a glance!
It looks downright sacred!
The moment I put my hand on the boulder.
“Huh?”
The water pressure bearing down on my body vanished.
The filthy water filling my vision was gone, and so was the deafening sound of falling water.
“What now?”
Instead, there was
A bright red maple blaze flickering like flames in the cool breeze.
I was standing right in the middle of the forest.
And beside me, a boulder identical to the one I'd just touched lay there all alone.
It felt like I'd been bewitched by a vixen.
“Ha... shit, the more I think about it, the more I regret paying that settlement back then.”
When I loosened the valve and took off the helmet,
-Ding!
an alert chimed.
======
:::Entering New Area(NEW!):::
Red maple leaves that never fall.
A serene shrine accompanied by the lovely sound of wind chimes.
This place is the most noble prison, 'Depth 0: Shrine of the Red Moon'.
:::Challenge Objective(New!):::
- Discover the hidden crevice. +5pt
======
“What the hell.”
New area?
Depth 0?
A crevice within a crevice?
“Is this Inception?”
And the tooltip's gone weird.
Don't they usually give you some tip or other too?
“Hmm... the Shrine of the Red Moon.”
It definitely looks connected to the True Ancestor.
That stone probably works like some kind of portal.
Did he stash a slush fund away in a separate crevice?
Still, that's not the important part right now.
“Ahh, finally... finally...”
I'm trembling all over.
I feel like I'm about to cum hands-free.
He hid it this thoroughly, and there was still some bastard who got to it first?
I'll give you that.
Just go ahead and succeed.
I threw off the cumbersome diving suit and walked along the forest path settled into a quiet autumn mood.
“Wow, the autumn leaves are pretty.”
This alone is healing!
I want to come here with Sion and Arbel too.
Oh right! And Ceres mama too.
This is why people need to live alongside nature.
As I walked along the path, up ahead on the hill
moss-covered blue-stone steps stretched upward.
At the far end, a vermilion torii stood tall, as if dividing the realms of the gods and the mortal world.
“I know this!”
If a man and a woman come here, they have sex in the woods during the fireworks!
“Count me in too!!!”
Feeling great, I dashed off at full speed.
The shrine came closer.
A refined wooden shrine with black-lacquered pillars and gold-leaf ornamentation.
Neatly arranged stone lanterns and an inner courtyard.
Even Cedric, who was dried-up in the sentiment department, had to admire the shrine's scenery.
“This... is money...”
There's definitely something inside.
Given how the Necropolis works, there's no way thieves didn't strip off that gold leaf.
Let's strip off that gold leaf too, so later visitors won't get confused.
Just as I was about to enter the shrine,
…….
I stopped short.
A straw sacred rope stretched between the torii pillars like police line tape.
Something else was hanging from the sacred rope, along with the white paper streamers fluttering from it.
-Jingle
It struck the breeze, making a clear, heavy metallic sound.
“This is...”
Omnification?
I rubbed my eyes and looked again, but it wasn't an illusion.
Gold coins with square holes punched through the center
were threaded tightly together and hanging in clusters, like strings of cash coins.
“This is...”
I looked around.
The sacred rope wasn't just strung between the torii.
It covered the shrine's roof, pillars, and even the walls.
They were wrapped in sacred ropes glittering with omnification.
Even if I used all my omnification on a sack of gold coins spilled by a god, I still wouldn't complete even 5% of this spectacle.
My instincts sounded a furious alarm.
“...This looks extremely dangerous.”
If I had around two or three hundred million Bios, I wouldn't even flinch.
I'd go 'jackpot~' and swallow it whole.
Omnification is a currency that can be used to trade with the world if it goes through a certain process.
In that sense...
This doesn't look like something abandoned without an owner so much as something with a clear 'purpose.'
“Set it down in front of it.”
I nearly had a heart attack at the sudden sound of footsteps.
And because that voice was so familiar, I was twice as shocked.
I looked toward where the voice had come from.
A woman sat on the shrine's offertory box on the veranda, flipping through pages with a long-stemmed pipe in hand.
Those red, menacing eyes.
White hair with just a hint of cherry-blossom pink mixed in.
“Boksuni?”
No way.
I was so flustered I blanked for a second.
Then the one over there is...
-Thump
I thought I heard the sound of a book being shut,
“Oh?”
the voice came from right in front of me.
“How the hell? When?”
There wasn't even time to ask something like that.
There had definitely been quite a distance to the veranda.
And yet she was standing beyond the sacred rope with no sign or presence at all, as if someone had cut out the middle of a film reel.
As if she'd been standing there from the very beginning.
“So you were the one who hauled out that half-baked runt?”
A languid yet chilling voice.
The moment my eyes met those red pupils, catlike and laced with cruel amusement,
I couldn't move even a finger, let alone breathe on my own.
“How interesting. Very interesting.”
Ah, so you find this amusing.
I'm not having much fun.
At this point, there was nothing more to explain.
The woman who welcomed me in a slush fund vault I'd naturally assumed would be empty.
The owner of this shrine...
Sion Tsukimiya.
The one and only Red Moon.
was a True Ancestor.
-Ding!
[ Fate Encounter effect has activated! ]
[ You have encountered a key figure in the scenario! ]