‘Build a path here! A path of corpses, until the day its end reaches the altar. On that day, I shall gladly return what you have lost. Offer the blessed sacrifice. Thus shall the one who has met death return to your side.’
A deserted island in the West Sea.
The land was so barren that it deserved to be called an oversized reef rather than an island. And yet, on this desolate patch of land stood a gate.
The White Labyrinth.
Or perhaps it would be more accurate to call it the entrance to the Fairy Kingdom, for every corridor within was stained entirely white.
At the end of one such corridor stood a marble altar, the sole defining feature of the dungeon’s interior.
It was a special type of dungeon in which no monsters appeared.
“Sacrifice...”
But this place was unmistakably within Greek territorial waters.
Strangely enough, the command carved into the dungeon’s altar was written in Slavic.
“If you pave the path with corpses, those who have met death will return to your side.”
“Blessed sacrifice?”
Beast had always been fond of EX-grade dungeons.
They might not offer the same thrill as hunting giants like the Nuckelavee, but they possessed a charm of their own, almost like puzzle games.
At first, she casually picked up the carcass of a wild animal and laid it inside the dungeon.
Nothing happened.
Then she went so far as to dig up graves in a foreign country and use human corpses to construct the path.
Still, the dungeon showed no reaction.
“What on earth does ‘blessed’ mean?”
‘Should I kidnap the pope and make him pray over a corpse?’
It was around then that Beast finally stumbled upon the clue she needed to solve the mystery of this place.
– Sparkle!
Driven by desperation, she acted on a sudden thought.
She cut off her little finger and placed it in the corridor.
Tuk.
As though acknowledging that she had finally found the correct answer, the dungeon formed an elegant crimson “path” beneath the piece of flesh that had fallen to the floor.
***
Back in the present.
With her true identity exposed, Beast held her trademark bone mask in her hands and remained lost in thought for a long while.
What should I do now?
And how did that Asian figure out who I am?
At that moment, Giryeo, who had been standing quietly nearby, spoke to Beast through the translator.
In truth, he had little interest in her answer.
He simply had no choice but to stall for time.
“I’ll tell you this in advance. I have no intention of carelessly exposing your identity, Brooklyn.”
“...”
“But I’m asking this purely out of curiosity... Why did you do that to Jung Haseong? What was the reason? Did Haseong commit some serious offense in the past?”
He asked the question while doing his best to maintain an amicable attitude, as though making a desperate gamble.
Beast tilted her head.
“Dungeons are mysterious.”
The conversation began with that seemingly unrelated remark, but quickly shifted into an explanation of what had caused the entire incident.
Apparently, the catalyst had been a mysterious EX-grade gate Brooklyn discovered while traveling alone around the world.
Brooklyn readily admitted that, following the gate’s instructions, she had been collecting the corpses of Awakened individuals.
And that was what had ultimately led to the present situation.
“If you’re a Hunter, you should know. Dungeons, at the very least, never lie to us.”
There had once been a time when she wished she could return to an age without magic.
But after Brooklyn encountered that mysterious dungeon and glimpsed the possibility of bringing her husband back, she came to a realization.
What she longed for was not the world before the dungeon shocks.
What she truly missed were the simple days she had spent with her husband.
She did not want to go on living in pain.
She wanted only to return to that distant past, to those days when she had still been happy without even realizing how precious that happiness was.
“Are you saying there’s a gate that promises to bring the dead back to life?”
But Korea’s fourth S-rank Hunter reacted negatively the instant he heard Beast’s story.
“Wait. Brooklyn, listen to me carefully. You’ve been scammed.”
“Scammed?”
“I-I’ve been through exactly the same thing before, so I know. I’m serious!”
Despite his outward appearance, the alien standing before her had once been an archmage who specialized in the analysis of souls.
That was precisely why he understood how absurd the promise of resurrecting the dead truly was.
And as Brooklyn continued her explanation, Giryeo suddenly realized what must have happened.
That EX-grade gate was a trap.
A trap designed to exploit the human heart.
Thinking back on it, the words Brooklyn had described from the altar had never explicitly used the word “resurrection.”
‘Maybe the reward from that place is nothing more than some grotesque creature created from the challenger’s memories.’
What was more, this method of producing warped creatures had already been attempted on Alphasph.
After someone struggled desperately to complete the task imposed by the feeding box, the reward waiting at the end might be nothing more than something like the twisted Hell Golem mentioned earlier.
The despair of discovering that all one’s efforts had been meaningless.
And the anguish of realizing that one’s own choices had caused the memories of a loved one to be handed over to some crude imitation.
Of course, from the perspective of the energy-harvesting entity itself, there had been no deliberate deception involved.
It had merely adopted a method that generated a decent amount of energy and encouraged the evolution of the feeding box.
But that did not change the underlying truth.
This was still a trap created by an alien creature that fed on negative emotions.
But of all people, how had Beast fallen for something like that?
“I can guarantee it. Whoever comes back from that place will definitely not be the person you knew! The Gate will simply read your memories and create some shabby puppet from them. That’s all!”
However, the response he received was astonishing.
“Oh. I see.”
“Yes!”
“But that doesn’t matter to me.”
He froze.
Kim Giryeo doubted his own ears after hearing the voice from the other side.
But even after collecting himself and continuing the conversation, Brooklyn’s answer remained unchanged.
“Even if that’s all it is, I don’t mind. Even if what comes out is just some crude machine made to imitate the person who died, I’d still be happy.”
“Huh?”
“Not everything in this world has to be real. After all, all I want is to repeat the things we used to do in the past.”
I’m not entirely sure what you mean, but are you seriously saying you’re willing to hurt people just to get some kind of puppet?
“Well, then why not just take any corpse from a graveyard and offer that? Why specifically Jung Haseong...?”
Confused by Brooklyn’s attitude, Giryeo pressed her again.
But the woman standing before him, her hair completely shaved away, merely ran a hand over her bare scalp and burst into laughter.
“Hahaha. A graveyard, huh? I thought of that too, but corpses of Awakened people are harder to come by than you’d think.”
‘I hate that I agree with her.’
Giryeo squeezed his eyes shut, trying to steady his emotions.
Meanwhile, the American Hunter continued without pause.
“...And the word ‘blessed’ written inside that EX-level gate also carries the meaning of ‘fresh.’ So corpses that had been dead for too long weren’t accepted as usable material for the path.”
“Brooklyn.”
“So in the end, the easiest option was for Beast to use her identity to kill Awakened people and supply their corpses...”
“...”
“Honestly, even without that altar, I had a feeling this day would eventually come.”
She muttered the words without the slightest change in expression.
Some of what she said was difficult for an outsider to comprehend.
“I killed people. Quite a few Awakened people, to be precise.”
“That’s right.”
“But I don’t feel guilty about it. What does it matter? People with superpowers use their magic however they please anyway. So I suppose it’s fine if I do whatever I want just once.”
“Yes?”
“Did you really expect there would be no accidents after people all over the world suddenly found themselves carrying machine guns?”
“That’s...”
“That’s what mana is like. That’s why this whole mystery disgusts me. As you can see, the moment people with superpowers appeared, the world became an even bigger mess.”
Instead of whining about the handful of people I killed, you should be grateful I haven’t murdered every Awakened person I come across.
Brooklyn spat out those hateful words toward sorcerers in a harsh voice.
Giryeo looked as though he had plenty he wanted to say in response.
In the end, however, he kept his mouth shut.
Without his former peak abilities, he simply lacked the strength to recklessly challenge the opinions of someone standing above him.
“Anyway.”
And at that point, after his attempt to stall had lasted only about three minutes—
“Personally, I find this unfortunate. Honestly, I didn’t want to torment someone like Mr. Jung, who works so hard at living his life.”
“Then let him go.”
“But there isn’t much time left before we receive the gift. The path is already complete. Once we place the ‘most blessed corpse’ demanded by the altar, it’ll all be over.”
Brooklyn tossed the beast mask in her hand onto the floor.
Then, a strange gleam entering her eyes, she began studying the man before her from head to toe.
“But why did Korean S-classes have to come into this dungeon? What a shame. Especially you.”
“What’s a shame?”
“I had you marked as a candidate for Beast.”
The blond man froze at those words.
“A superpowered individual whose affiliation has never been revealed, yet who has already cultivated a powerful public image as someone absurdly strong. Oh... wouldn’t you say those are excellent qualifications?”
As Brooklyn said, she had been watching the Hunter Kim Giryeo for quite some time, evaluating his usefulness.
If circumstances aligned properly, he was someone she could frame by planting suspicions that he himself might be Beast.
179 cm.
At eye level with her own height when she wasn’t wearing heels.
Similar physical proportions.
A refined silhouette.
An air of mystery.
And according to the official registration system, he was also an Awakened individual of the same highest rank.
“When the S-rank gate appeared in Japan, I was busier than I’d ever been in my life. My guild demanded a great deal from me.”
“...”
“So it was purely by chance that I ended up taking a break from my activities as Beast. But when I saw you participating in that raid, an idea suddenly occurred to me. In fact, while playing the role, I would sometimes pretend not to understand English just for amusement. So presenting Beast as Korean wasn’t impossible.”
Of course, such shallow tricks would never withstand scrutiny if someone like Britain’s national treasure, Justitia, became involved.
Brooklyn had merely intended to create the right atmosphere quietly, without taking things far enough to cause serious trouble.
She deliberately carried out her activities during hours when Koreans were likely to be asleep.
She had learned the [Binding] skill for a scheme she might need in the future.
And she had been content merely to spread the rumor that Kim Giryeo might actually be Beast.
But today’s encounter had completely destroyed all of those plans.
Kim Giryeo and Beast.
Two people who should never have appeared in the same place had ended up facing each other directly today.
“Besides, your past is unclear. You really were the perfect candidate for Beast.”
“You were trying to create a fake Nuckelavee killer. That’s why you hesitated at first and didn’t attack me!”
Giryeo finally understood the chain of events.
And at that very moment, Brooklyn gathered the mana within her body and activated a spell...
“Hmm.”
Swish.
With a simple gesture, her pale skin returned to normal.
Her modern golden bob reappeared, along with those sharply arched eyebrows.
In a single motion, Brooklyn perfectly restored both the burns on her face and the hair she had removed.
The moment Giryeo saw it, he understood the secret behind her innate spellcraft.
‘The process is crude!’
The ability to crudely force the desired result into existence without possessing any proper medical knowledge.
Yes.
This was something that could genuinely be called magic.
When Brooklyn saw her husband’s corpse, her desperate desire to restore him had caused her to awaken a spell capable of restoring the body.
And after spending her entire life suppressing her violent nature, the longing buried deep within her heart had ultimately led her to acquire spatial manipulation as well.
Whether it was bodily restoration or spatial manipulation, Brooklyn’s awakened abilities unfortunately shared the same flaw: they consumed an enormous amount of power.
Worse still, she had produced miracles without possessing any knowledge of magic whatsoever, completely bypassing the principles that should normally have governed the process.
As a result, the cost of the side effects could exceed even the injuries themselves, potentially leaving severe aftereffects behind.
“Since everything’s been exposed anyway, I don’t want to keep looking like this in front of you.”
An absurd waste of fuel.
And highly individualistic spells that could not be used efficiently through sacrificial methods.
Yet ironically, this woman who hated magic was one of the rare individuals in the world to have been overwhelmingly favored by mana.
Her awakening level was even slightly higher than Jung Haseong’s.
[World Hunter Ranking] [1. Brooklyn Morgan]
That was right.
This ranking was, in essence, a chart ordering Hunters throughout the world by their ‘magic capacity.’
And it was precisely because of that capacity that Brooklyn could brute-force her way through every one of these problems.
Like thousands of tons of water held behind a dam, an enormous source of miracles existed inside her body, requiring no refinement whatsoever.
“But since you’ve indulged this boring conversation for so long, would you mind answering a few questions of mine in return, Giryeo?”
Brooklyn gripped her true weapon—the Battle Axe rather than the rapier she carried publicly—with both hands and addressed the man before her.
“What on earth did you do in the past?”
“...”
“How could you possibly know Beast’s identity when you can’t even follow the swing of my axe with your eyes?”
“...”
“Giryeo, what is your awakening attribute? Telekinesis? If it is, can you use that Binding technique you used in Japan again?”
The conversation ended there.
A moment later, Brooklyn muttered rapidly in a low, heavy voice, as though some kind of ‘switch’ inside her had suddenly been flipped.
“No. No, that isn’t it. Forget it. At this point, it isn’t even worth hearing the answer... I might as well kill that one too and put them on the altar.”
“Brooklyn?”
“Either way, once I do that, we’ll find out immediately whether you’re really S-rank or nothing but a fraud.”
What followed was the sound of an axe striking flesh, like a perfectly ripe watermelon being split open.
“You damn Asian. Do you think no one knows you’re here to support Ghang?!”
Crack!
Immediately afterward, the American S-rank Hunter transformed into a ravenous beast, raised her weapon, and charged.
And, as expected—
there was no possible way for an F-rank to dodge it.