Chapter 167
The summit barely deserved to be called a summit, because everything above the temple had been sliced clean off like someone took a gigantic cleaver to the mountain. After Do-Jin and Karin hauled themselves up the cliff where the temple sat, they stepped onto a broad stretch of land so flat it could have passed for a training field. Whatever disaster hit this place in the past had carved and crushed the landscape into this unnatural plain.
So the relic fragment is supposed to be somewhere around here, Do-Jin thought, a wave of dread washing over him. It felt like the game had dumped him onto a massive but empty snowfield and told him to just figure it out.
“How the fuck are we supposed to find anything out here—”
A complaint slipped out of him automatically, but as if the universe were telling him to shut up and pay attention, the same snow-fog illusions from earlier swept over the plain and smothered everything in white mist.
The illusions clutched a crescent-shaped relic fragment while shouting at each other. After pacing in panic for a moment, they bolted up a staircase with the half-relic in hand.
“Up there. Keep going up!”
“Shit, the relic’s only half here! Where’s the rest?!”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s too late to turn back! Move!”
Seeing that, Do-Jin assumed it used to be the path to the actual peak. Now that the landscape had changed, the illusory staircase floated awkwardly in midair, but it gave him the direction he needed. He started walking along the same line the illusory steps pointed toward. The stairway rose above his head like a ghostly blueprint of the old terrain.
They walked for a while, long enough for the cold to really start sinking into his bones. Eventually, far ahead of where the illusions ended, a faint blue light flickered. When he approached it, he found half of a circular disc etched with intricate ancient patterns.
So even a busted fragment still counts as a relic in this godforsaken place.
The source of the blue glow was a pillar of light rising from the relic. The fragment floated inside the beam like it was suspended in water. There was no snow, no debris, not even a pebble around it. The whole spot looked unnaturally clean.
This is too easy. There’s no way nothing jumps out...
Do-Jin raised his guard immediately. A relic this important would never just sit here waiting for him. He half expected a boss to spawn the second he touched it and try to rip his head off just to keep things spicy.
Although he hated this situation, he still had to move forward. Do-Jin readied himself for a fight and reached toward the relic, keeping Karin well back in case something exploded.
“What the fuck?” His hand smacked into a barrier instead of touching the fragment. A blue, glass-like cylinder blocked him perfectly. “In that case... it’s gotta be this.”
Situations like this almost always required a quest item. Sure enough, the moment the Starlight Soul Ingot he got from the Forge of the God touched the barrier, the blue column began to fade.
“AAAHHH!”
A cry of pure joy exploded from the Starlight Soul Ingot as the souls trapped inside must have awakened the moment they sensed the relic. If they realized they had finally come home to the Sanctuary they never reached in life, then he couldn’t blame them for screaming like that.
“And nothing else happens? Seriously?”
The half-disc relic slid into Do-Jin’s hand way too easily. Whenever a quest item practically fell into his lap like that, he’d always wonder if this sadistic game had bugged out. With the relic in hand, he turned around to see Karin pacing nervously in the distance, as if she expected the mountain to explode.
“Are you okay?!” she shouted.
“I’m fine.” Do-Jin raised his voice to reassure her, then retraced his steps.
The illusions had already vanished. The night sky flipped into a bright morning without any warning, like someone up there was messing with him just to ruin his sense of direction. Karin didn’t seem bothered, but Do-Jin hated how exposed she looked under the sunlight. He used Psychokinesis to pack snow into a makeshift canopy over her.
“There’s enough shade. I’ll be fine,” she said.
“You’re half-fried already. I’m not taking chances.”
Karin brightened immediately, clearly happy he was looking out for her.
Unwilling to leave a vampire standing under the sun longer than necessary, Do-Jin picked up the pace. He rushed back into the ruined temple and stood before the old woman nailed to the wall.
“I brought it back,” he said.
The old woman trembled with relief as she lifted her head at the sound of footsteps. “Oh... at long last...”
From her tone, it seemed as if she would’ve cried if her eyes still existed. The entire area around her sockets had decayed so badly that her tear ducts were nonexistent.
“What do I do next?” Do-Jin asked.
“You must restore the relic to its complete form. Only then will the Sanctuary stabilize,” she said, her voice rising with hope.
Do-Jin almost asked where the other half was but stopped himself. There was no way someone in her condition knew where the second piece had ended up. If she had known, she would have said it the moment he walked in. So he searched the collapsed temple himself.
In the end, the remaining fragment was buried deeper inside the ruins. Karin cleared massive pillars and boulders out of the way like she was tidying up after children, so getting inside wasn’t difficult. Do-Jin collected both halves of the relic and returned to the old woman.
“Karin, back up as far as you can. If things go bad, get out of here,” he said.
She nodded and stepped away, but her face made it clear she had absolutely zero intention of running from anything.
If I were even a little stronger, I wouldn’t have to worry so much about this... Do-Jin thought.
He exhaled and pressed the two relic fragments together. The hard stone pieces fused as smoothly as soft clay, sealing together like they had never been broken in the first place. A low vibration rolled through the air as blue light spilled out of the relic and spread through the entire temple like a shockwave.
The old woman felt it immediately, her whole body trembling so violently it looked like she was being electrocuted. “Yes... yes...! At long last, I will finally reclaim my freedom!”
The relic kept spewing blue energy, and all of it sank downward like water draining through the floor, rushing toward someplace deep below. As the power poured out, the old woman’s eyes began to regenerate.
“I can see. I can finally see!”
Tears streamed from her healed eyes as she blinked at the light that finally returned to her. She lifted her thin arm and wrapped her fingers around the sword that held her down, gripping the hilt like she planned to tear it free no matter what it did to her. The amount of strength it took was absurd. She dropped to the floor with a heavy thud and broke into frantic, trembling laughter.
“Hahaha... I was right not to give up. This is all thanks to you.”
The old woman dragged herself upright, swaying like she might topple again, then snapped her head up in a sharp, jerky motion. Her eyes locked onto Do-Jin, and something raw and deranged churned inside them. It didn’t feel like the kind of break that came from suffering or despair. It was too steady, too settled, like she’d been rotting in that state for years.
That was when Do-Jin knew he’d been right. Something was seriously off about this old woman. He’d been ready to put her down even before he finished assembling the relic, and now he wanted more than ever to burn her to ash. Still, he held back, because there was a chance, a tiny chance, that she wasn’t the real problem.
“Ah... O Star!” she cried out, raising her hands like she wanted to hug the ceiling.
The power flowing from the relic swirled around her like a storm. Then, all at once, the blue glow shifted and turned red.
Yeah. That’s enough. It’s time to kill her.
Do-Jin unlocked the circuits he had sealed earlier and unleashed the spell he had preloaded. She widened her eyes in shock, as if she couldn’t believe he would attack her after she had spent the last minute pulling every suspicious stunt in the book.
“What are you—!” Her words vanished under the roar of magic exploding across the hall. When the wave of scorching heat settled, she was still standing, completely unharmed.
Her shock had vanished, replaced by a smile stretched so wide it looked like her face was splitting open.
“You will be rewarded for your devotion soon enough. Wait patiently. Whatever you realize now makes no difference. You cannot undo the foolishness you have already committed.”
Unable to interrupt this boss awakening, Do-Jin clicked his tongue. I should’ve just killed her earlier. It totally would have saved me from this headache.
He’d been wary of this old woman from the start, but he couldn’t just attack right away. There was always a tiny chance she was a harmless NPC, and some quests forced you to play along with the nonsense before the story would move forward.
It’d be great if she awakened properly, turned into a boss, let me beat her into paste, and ended the quest right there.
He prepared to warn Karin, but she was already watching the old woman with a calm, steady look. She stared at the hag as if she had known the twist from the beginning. Since Karin had spent her life memorizing every cliché in novels, recognizing a fake-out villain was second nature to her.
“Fear not!” the old woman said, launching into another cultish spiel. She rambled on about destiny and Ruin and chosen believers and new beginnings. Meanwhile, red energy gathered around her, drawn from the relic and twisted into the power of Laves.
“When exactly is this going to end...?” Do-Jin asked. He hated cutscenes that dragged on, he hated unskippable ones even more, and he hated the boring ones most of all.
The old woman froze mid-rant and stared at him like she couldn’t believe the disrespect. “Do you not understand what is happening?”
“I understood everything at the very beginning. That is why I am asking when this charade will be over.”
The woman trembled with real anger. She had probably spent centuries fantasizing about this moment, and he responded like someone complaining about a tutorial pop-up.
“It will end soon. Everything will end soon.”
At that ominous declaration, the floor beneath her collapsed in a violent roar.
Great. This is already going further than I expected.
Do-Jin had been prepared for a giant transformation or a grotesque form, but he hadn’t expected the entire foundation to give out. Cracks ripped across the floor and rushed toward him.
“Karin,” he warned her while retreating toward the exit.
She grabbed Do-Jin before he could reach the doorway and told him, “My strength is back!”
Now that the power of the Sanctuary had shifted toward Laves, the force that had been suppressing her abilities had vanished. Her wings snapped open, and she launched herself upward with him in her arms.
She carried him out of the collapsing temple and shot into the sky. Without her, escaping before the entire structure crushed them would have been barely possible.
First it was zombie snowmen. Then an avalanche. Now they’re trying to drop an entire cliff on my head. Whoever designed this quest needs to be fired.
At this point, Do-Jin genuinely wanted to know what kind of insane reward justified all this trouble. He sighed as rubble crumbled and something massive dragged itself out of the ruins.
“Perfect. They’re definitely the Cult of Ruin.”
The boss had finally taken shape as a grotesque mound of flesh, made by peeling muscle and skin from slaughtered victims and rolling it all into one writhing mass. The old woman was half-buried at the top, her upper body jutting out like a parasite perched on a throne.
“I have finally ascended. A worthless acolyte like me has reached the summit of glory.”
Necromancy, corpse sculpting, and turning dead bodies into new playthings were trademarks of the Cult of Ruin. LOST was filled with undead monsters because of their deranged traditions.
At least we have the power of the undead on our side too.
Fighting this enormous monster alone would normally be a nightmare, but he had an Elder Vampire on his side, one of the strongest undead in existence. Since Karin’s seal had broken just like the old woman’s, there wasn’t anything holding her back anymore.