Chapter 816: I Don’t Like It Either
A military base in the mountains.
This base was none other than the place where our Legion had begun.
The place where I had spent nearly two years of military service.
And now.
“How long has it been since I last saw you?”
“Seriously.”
It was also the place where one of our Legion’s officers.
Sergeant Park Taejun was staying.
“We kept communicating through guild messages, but seeing your face like this feels awkward, man.”
Sergeant Park Taejun was leaning on a small crutch.
It seemed that his leg had undergone quite a lot of treatment in the meantime, and although he was still receiving help from the crutch, the way he moved looked fairly natural.
‘Well, the last time I saw him was after that first barrier opened.’
A considerable amount of time had passed since we had first seen the possibility of treatment.
And.
As for why I had been unable to visit this place for so long.......
“I was an unemployed bum with nothing to do the whole time, but our Legion Commander was so busy that we couldn’t see each other.”
“......Ahem. Is that how it is?”
“Other people stopped by from time to time. Sergeant Lee Minjae comes pretty often.”
“That guy too, if he was going to come, he should have come with me.”
“You were never around whenever he came. One time you were in Seoul, another time in China. After that, you went to fight some other guild in the south and then said you got half-kidnapped.”
“.......”
It was, purely and simply.
Because after that, I had not had the leisure to stop by this place.
‘Was I really living that busily......?’
Since it had been such a long time since I last visited.
The surrounding scenery had also changed quite a lot.
‘It somehow looks even more different than before.......’
Even when I came here before, this place had already been remodeled to suit Sergeant Park Taejun’s abilities.
It had been full of all kinds of shamanistic devices that I could not understand.
Even so, back then, quite a lot of traces of the military base we had once known still remained.
But now...... it had become so much more elaborate that its appearance back then almost felt normal.
The engineers’ skills had also improved by leaps and bounds from a certain point onward, so it was probably because of that.
“So?”
Before long.
We arrived at the highest point of the base.
The radar room.
Inside the small living space within the radar room, Sergeant Park Taejun handed me a cup of coffee and said.
“So what business does our terribly busy Legion Commander have at a mountain base like this?”
I gave a faint laugh and answered.
“What, are you sulking because I haven’t shown my face for a while?”
“Hmm?”
“Shouldn’t you already know? Why I came all the way here.”
And.
At my words.
“Hmm.......”
He seemed to sink into thought for a moment.
Then.
“No idea. I really don’t know.”
He said that with a light smile.
......However.
“......Ah. Right.”
Looking at that light smile, I could not help but frown slightly.
***
‘......Actually, the reason I stopped visiting this place often wasn’t only because I was busy.’
It was true that I had been very busy.
Even while staying at the base, there had always been something that needed to be resolved quickly, so I had no room to focus on other matters of lower importance.
But, put another way.
‘It meant Taejun’s situation was less important than the other things I had to do.’
No matter how busy I had been.
If visiting this guy had been more important than those busy matters, I would have come to this mountain.
In fact, until a certain point, I had visited him quite often.
If there was a point when my visits had sharply decreased.
‘When the barrier opened.’
When the first barrier opened.
The moment the protection the System had been imposing upon this world weakened.
‘......When the gazes from outside truly began looking into this world.’
Sergeant Park Taejun, who had been an [Astronomer], could no longer properly see the stars.
Countless stars that looked like the old stars, but whose true nature was entirely different.
The gazes of the empty universe had obscured Sergeant Park Taejun’s vision.
He, too, had made various efforts to deal with those gazes.
In fact, when I first visited after the barrier opened, he had somehow managed to distinguish those gazes from the stars he had been observing and glimpse the workings of heaven.
Perhaps up until that point, I still had many reasons to receive his help.
But.
‘I received Mirinae’s help.’
A being with power far greater than Sergeant Park Taejun’s had begun cooperating with us.
‘My own rank rose.’
At some point.
The rank I possessed had also begun growing at an explosive pace.
“You know too, right? Even if the power I possess is specialized in seeing what lies ahead.”
As a result.
“I’d probably lose to you now.”
I had reached the rank of a [Demigod].
And I had obtained a body capable of fully containing that rank.
I had also become able to see faint [Premonitions], even if I could not use them freely.
And even now, if I closed my eyes, I could see scenes from all across this world.
Sergeant Park Taejun’s ability was certainly special.
‘An authority commonly possessed by those who have reached transcendence.’
Ironically.
Because it was such a special authority, many special beings possessed that authority.
And as the rank of those we encountered grew higher, his foresight had lost its shine.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t know whether I can be much help to you now.”
“.......”
“To be honest, I think there’s a high chance I won’t be much help at all.”
And because of that.
I also found it a little strange.
“No.”
Because.
Even though Sergeant Park Taejun himself was saying that he did not know whether he could be of help.
My own foresight.
The very foresight Sergeant Park Taejun had said he could no longer keep up with.
“You’ll probably be useful.”
“......?”
Was telling me to come to him.
“I think I should first explain what happened to me recently.......”
I explained to Sergeant Park Taejun what I had experienced until recently.
He probably already knew about the battle in the north and Avaritia there.
The result of that battle.
And the things I had heard from Avaritia and the demons.
And the task I had been forced to undertake after hearing those things.
“I have to fight what even those demons gave up on defeating, and I have to win.”
“......Hmm.”
“I already boasted to them that I’m different from you, that unlike failures like you, I’m going to succeed.......”
I awkwardly scratched my head as I spoke.
Right.
This was the problem.
“To be honest, I haven’t thought about what comes next at all!”
“......Huh.”
For all the grand boasting I had done.
I had no plan for what I was supposed to do next in order to succeed in that challenge.
Surprisingly, I truly did not have even one.
“I have absolutely no idea what I’m supposed to do from now on, or how.”
“I know the Legion is pretty busy right now. Then what are they doing?”
“For now, we’re gathering all the other awakened on this land and sending the Legion out into the world in order to recover the System’s power that has seeped into the earth. That much was already fixed. It was something we intended to do even before hearing that story from those demons. But what comes after that?”
“Hmm.”
“Even if we recover all the power that has seeped into this land, I don’t think we’ll be able to become stronger than those demons.”
If what had defeated them had been a monster, I might have somehow identified its weakness and dealt with it through cooking.
But I had not even properly seen the true nature of what had defeated them.
It might seem that I could simply ask them what it was.
But when I asked, the answer I received was the incomprehensible phrase, ‘the law itself.’
That probably meant even they did not know anything beyond that.
“For now...... I think we’ll probably need an enormous amount of power. But this also doesn’t seem like something we can accomplish just by becoming powerful.”
“That...... is probably true.”
“Considering the difficulty of that challenge, there’s a high chance we’ll fail even if we start running around actively from now on...... but I don’t even know where I’m supposed to run.”
That was why I had come here instead of actively participating in the Legion’s conquest.
If I helped with the Legion’s conquest and accelerated the conquest war, I might be able to become stronger a little faster.
‘But that would be all.’
Let us say we somehow succeeded in eliminating every problem and every invader that had descended upon this world.
We could grow quickly until that point.
But conversely, from that point onward, our growth would slow sharply.
‘Our growth fundamentally comes from the System’s power or from hunting.’
By conducting the conquest war and expanding our land, we recovered the System’s power that had existed within that land and made it support us.
And after hunting beings from other worlds, we refined their power through the System’s power and made it our own.
The former was leveling up through an awakened individual performing the activities of their class.
And the latter was leveling up through hunting.
Until now, those had been the two methods of leveling up.
In other words.
If we recovered all of the System’s power and defeated every invader remaining on this land.
‘At that point, the two sources of experience we had relied on would disappear at the same time.’
Of course, in the case of the latter, it was not as if there would be no way to obtain experience afterward.
‘There will be enemies in other worlds as well.’
If we invaded other worlds and hunted the residents of those worlds.
They would also provide us with experience.
Through that method, we might somehow be able to raise our levels a little further.
But I already knew those who had chosen a similar method.
‘This was how the demons did it.’
They had failed miserably.
Compared to the demons’ method of grinding entire worlds down and using them as fuel for the Demon Realm, our method of gaining experience was an overwhelmingly inferior substitute.
There was no way that repeating the method used by those who had already failed, in an even more inferior form, would lead to success.
More than anything, even if it could succeed, I did not want to choose such a method.
“We need some other method. And if possible, we need to find that method as quickly as we can.”
At my words.
Taejun thought for a moment, then opened his mouth.
“What about the thing those demons gave you? The one that supposedly lets you travel to a dimension as large as that Hell.”
“......Right. The demons probably knew I had no answer, so I think they gave it to me as a way of saying, at least try this.”
It was not as if we had no options at all.
This method the demons had given me.
I could choose the path leading to [Heaven].
But.
“I’m uneasy about this too.”
“Uneasy?”
“My intuition is part of it, but.......”
Heaven.
This was the second time I had heard that name.
The first had been when I succeeded in hunting the grand duke who had been just before achieving transcendence.
The vampire that had originated from a lower demon born in that red and barren land, the Demon Realm.
Heaven had felt favorably toward me for preventing another transcendent from being born among those vampires, and had increased the reward given to me.
In other words.......
‘Heaven does not particularly like the Demon Realm.’
And yet now.
I was in a state where I had agreed to receive the Demon Realm’s full support.
“Would Heaven still view someone like me favorably?”
“......Hmm.”
This was the first reason I hesitated to visit Heaven.
And the second.
“Even if they still feel favorably toward me, I don’t know whether I can trust them.”
“What does that mean?”
At present, those demons truly were evil beings.
Great evils who had burned countless worlds for the sake of their own survival.
But that was only true now.
‘Once, they were not.’
The birth of the Divine Realm Alliance had undoubtedly been something great.
The moment complete divinities first joined hands in order to survive together.
Even if they later became corrupted while sitting upon those black thrones.
At the moment they first made that resolve, both their intentions and their actions had undoubtedly been close to good.
Nevertheless.
“[Heaven] refused to help them.”
The divinities of the alliance asked Heaven for help and sought an answer.
But Heaven gave them no answer at all.
For the alliance that failed to find an answer, the only conclusion left was ultimately to create that Hell.
“This might not be something I should say about those who helped me once.”
It might be unfair from Heaven’s perspective.
But if Heaven had been capable of helping that Divine Realm Alliance.
Then by refusing to help at that time, Heaven had effectively caused the Demon Realm to be born.
The demons told me to go to Heaven.
They had been unable to obtain an answer and had been driven away, but perhaps I would be different.
Even so, the reason I did not head there immediately was simple.
“I don’t like that thing called Heaven very much either.”