Chapter 77
I was curious how to use Pride, but first I had to save people.
“I found a cure.”
“... Pardon? What do you mean...?”
Everyone's gaze, Frost's included, focused on me.
This is a little much.
Still... honestly, saving lives was ridiculously easy.
“It came to me while I was in the bathroom, straining a little.”
“......”
... Had I just made all those doctors working so hard to treat the disease look less useful than a bit of bathroom straining?
“Y-you aren't joking, are you?”
“Does it sound like a joke? I'm not someone who jokes about people's lives.”
After another stir of murmurs...
“H-how do you plan to...?”
“First, I need to go inside.”
“Pardon?”
Well, of course I had to go in. How else was I supposed to do it?
“Th-that...”
“Can't I just go in wearing a hazmat suit?”
“That is true, but...”
What if something went wrong, even by the slimmest chance...
Watching the British government officials hesitate under the weight of responsibility, I sighed.
No, was this how our government officials used to be, too?
President Kang Min-guk had really done a lot.
“Do you think I came here for a sightseeing trip? Hurry up and get me a hazmat suit.”
“... Are you really confident?”
“I don't do things I'm not confident about.”
I wasn't that much of a macho man. Where was I getting the nerve?
And so, wearing a hazmat suit, I entered the negative-pressure isolation room.
“Aaaaaagh!”
A man writhed in agony, trying to undo the restraints binding his whole body.
What I had to do to treat him was obvious.
“Undead Rise.”
At the same time as I muttered it so softly it was almost inaudible...
[You have gained control of approximately 100 million Pride strains.]
Click.
I gained control of all 100 million Pride individuals spread throughout his body.
They hadn't divided as much as I'd expected.
As all the strains tormenting him disappeared, peace returned to the man's body in an instant.
The man slowly opened his eyes, looked at me, and asked,
“I... I'm...”
“You're cured now.”
“Hic!”
The man burst into tears like a child.
As a Blood Mage, he must have been a promising Hunter in his own right. It was a shame he'd ended up like this.
After crying for a long time, the man struggled to speak.
“I... I was conscious the whole time. But a voice kept giving me orders inside my head... and I couldn't resist. I felt like I'd really die if I went against it. That fear... It was so terrible that death would've been better.”
Talking with Gyuseon, I'd learned that there were viruses and parasites that affected behavior.
Some of them really did cause depression or suicidal tendencies, and one of the best-known examples was the rabies virus.
It didn't affect the brain, but it made drinking water so painful that it kept the host from drinking, or so I'd heard.
“You can't hear it anymore, right?”
“Y-yes, yes!”
Of course not.
I recovered the Pride that had taken over his body and stored it in my inventory.
Interestingly, once I'd taken control, the Pride individuals shed their mutated forms and returned to their basic state.
The basic form was less than one nanometer in size, so even a hundred million of them clustered together would be too tiny to see.
How could something that small possibly be so effective?
“All right, everyone outside heard that, right? You saw his condition improve.”
The people listening to what was happening inside through the speakers didn't say a word. They just stared blankly until I came out of the negative-pressure room, finished disinfecting, and took off my hazmat suit.
“H-how did you do that?”
“You want me to reveal my trade secrets?”
“B-but...”
Frost came over and spoke in place of the stammering official.
“I know this is against protocol, but given the emergency, if you could help us...”
“I can't pass my abilities on to you, can I?”
“Ah...”
“If other people could do it, there wouldn't have been any need for me to come, right?”
“... Understood. I won't ask any more. But could you help us further...?”
“All right.”
Only then did Frost let out a sigh of relief.
Frost came closer and whispered in my ear.
“I'm sorry. The government situation right now...”
The Kang Min-guk administration, with an 89% approval rating?
The British Conservative government was the exact opposite.
An approval rating of 11%.
It was at a historic low.
This incident would probably drive it even lower, not raise it.
There were many reasons the British Empire, on which the sun never set, had fallen into such disrepair, but the main one was that it had failed to adapt properly to the dungeon economy.
“... I can't guarantee you'll receive proper compensation.”
“That doesn't mean we can just leave people to die.”
I might not be an apostle of justice, but I wasn't a psychopath who'd let lots of people die just because there was nothing in it for me, when saving them would be easy.
“Phew, thank you so much.”
After sighing in relief, Frost said to me,
“On behalf of the British government... no, the citizens of Britain, thank you. It's not much, but there's something I'd like to give you.”
“Something for me?”
“I noticed you have exactly one ring slot left.”
Sharp eye.
With the seven Prismatic Rings, the Athena Ring, and the Mad Emperor's Authority, I had nine.
Exactly one slot remained.
Still, wearing a ring on my thumb made me look like some kind of lunatic...
Fortunately, I'd gotten used to it by now, so it didn't bother me.
“I use a Prismatic Ring as well. It's practically essential for magic-type classes.”
Oh, he's rich.
It had been so hard to get one of those.
Huh?
“But your hand...”
Frost smiled and raised his hand. There was only one ring left on his right hand.
Wait, the Prismatic Ring meant seven rings.
Even if he had five on his left hand, shouldn't there be at least two on the right?
To my astonishment, when Frost removed the single ring on his right hand...
Nine rings appeared on all his fingers in an instant.
“Huh?”
“Take it.”
Frost placed the ring directly in my hand.
[King Arthur's Authority]
Grade: Relic-grade accessory
Description: A ring containing the authority of Britain's great king, said to have commanded the legendary knights of the Round Table.
Effect: Absorbs up to nine rings of legendary grade or lower that are currently equipped. Rings of relic grade or higher can be equipped in the empty slots, but this ring cannot be unequipped until as many slots as the number of absorbed rings are free. If this ring is unequipped by an external force, all rings are unequipped. The effects of absorbed rings of legendary grade or lower are doubled.
It's relic-grade, for starters...
Double the Prismatic Ring's effect. That says it all.
Though it could only absorb rings of legendary grade or lower, freeing up those slots by absorbing them was itself an enormous advantage.
While other people could wear ten rings, I could wear nineteen.
“A-are you sure you can give me something like this?”
I'm going to be stuffed.
At my question, Frost gave me a bitter smile.
“As you can see, my ring slots were empty, weren't they?”
“... Yes.”
“You know that in this day and age, it's practically impossible to get items of relic grade or higher without support from a corporation or the government. But the British government...”
Frost smiled bitterly.
Had the political scene rotted so badly that they couldn't even give a boost to Britain's strongest Hunter by far?
“Well, that's why my hands are still like this.”
Frost raised both hands to show me.
Nine rings had appeared in place of King Arthur's Authority.
In other words, they were all legendary-grade rings.
Of course, even legendary-grade items were expensive and important...
But it felt a little lacking for the strongest Hunter in a developed country like Britain to be wearing them.
“I got these by clearing dungeons, too.”
So the country had given Frost virtually no support.
Well, I hadn't received any relic-grade items from my country, either.
But they did hand me a quadrillion-dollar company. Cheers.
“I think this item belongs with someone more suited to it.”
“Even so...”
Even a lousy relic-grade item was worth hundreds of billions of won.
A ring like this... You could probably name any price for it... no, you couldn't buy it even with money.
The reason relic-grade items were precious wasn't just their abilities; it was that they were ‘unique.’
“Please just accept it. In return, be sure to save Britain.”
“Of course.”
I nodded and put the ring on. To my surprise, seven rings disappeared in an instant.
The rings that vanished appeared as tiny gems on King Arthur's Authority.
[Enlightenment of Circulation (Active Item Skill)]
Effect: While equipped, grants enlightenment into circulation and continuously increases maximum mana. (Increases by 1(+1, effect of King Arthur's Authority applied)% per hour, up to 300(+300, effect of King Arthur's Authority applied)%. The increase stops after reaching the maximum. If even one ring is unequipped, the effect disappears and resets.)
The Prismatic Ring of Circulation's item effect had doubled exactly, too.
Frost looked at the three rings left on my fingers and gave a wry smile.
“You already had two of them.”
“Haha...”
I awkwardly scratched my head.
Our Hunter careers were worlds apart.
Frost had debuted in the latter half of the first generation, or the early second generation.
A Hunter like Frost had spent nearly twenty years in the field and only had one relic-grade ring, while I hadn't even been a Hunter for a year and had two to start with—and now three. Oh, right, Athena wasn't relic-grade, but some strange rank called a Legacy of the Constellation.
“I hope you fill all your slots with relic-grade rings.”
“... Thank you.”
I couldn't even begin to imagine how much money that would take...
“Well then... shall we go?”
I'd gotten a huge windfall... now it was time to work.
Properly.
**
“Wow, what a mess.”
The words slipped out before I knew it, but seeing Frost look embarrassed made me feel bad.
“I, my honest opinion...”
“I have no excuse. I think exactly the same thing.”
They'd thrown up some plastic sheeting haphazardly near the Gate and quarantined people inside it.
It reminded me a lot of the military.
They were calling that quarantine?
It was enough to make a healthy person sick.
On top of that, there weren't enough people properly guarding the area.
People were following the rules for now, but it wouldn't be surprising if someone tried to run.
In the worst-case scenario, the bacteria could control people's brains.
What if they started acting strangely?
What were they thinking?
Most of the people in quarantine were healers.
Apparently, when word first came in that someone had breached the Gate, all the Vatican-affiliated healers in London had been called in.
They were supposed to use their Companion Skill, Consecration Barrier, to quarantine the surrounding area.
It was bitterly ironic to see the healers mobilized to quarantine the intruder now quarantined themselves over the risk of infection.
“We told you we're fine!”
“What kind of lunatic locks up healers just because they got sick!”
“Hey! Do you know who I am!”
As I approached, the people who'd been quarantined for about a day shouted angrily.
Of course, it wasn't just healers...
There were police officers and plenty of other combat-class Hunters, too.
If I wanted to treat them, I needed to calm them down first, didn't I?
Just as I was thinking that and slowly walking toward them...
The looks in their eyes as they stared at me...
The moment I sensed them change...
Countless attacks flew at me all at once.
[Sacrificial Offering blocks the attacks directed at you.]
Good thing I'd activated Sacrificial Offering...
I didn't know why they were doing this... though, I guess I did.
Had they already been infected?
All those people?
And they were Hunters, whose disease resistance was vastly higher than that of non-Awakened people...
And then...
[Seal of Light attempts to bind you, but Sacrificial Offering blocks it.]
[Distant Despair attempts to curse you, but Sacrificial Offering blocks it.]
[Absolute Silence attempts to silence you, but Sacrificial Offering blocks it.]
Even the healers bombarded me with countless debuffs.
... It wasn't like I could just wipe them all out.
Fortunately, Frost came to his senses and raised a massive ice barrier in front of me.
“Why are you all doing this? Snap out of it...!”
Frost had been shouting in confusion, but suddenly seemed to realize something, and his eyes widened.
“C-could it be...!”
“Looks like it. We'll have to get close and regain control of the source of infection.”
More like regain control than remove it.
“Could you help me get close?”
“Leave it to me!”
Pride, you little bastards.
Were you scared of your big brother?
As it happened, the ring Frost gave me had doubled my maximum mana.
Which meant...
I was twice as strong.
No wonder they were scared, huh?
Still, don't worry.
I'll bring you back in no time.