Hoarding In Hell [EN]: Chapter 226

226. Trial of the Stars (2)

“Trial?”

Hyun-woo’s sudden words left Itwaro momentarily stunned.

The meaning didn’t immediately register.

A trial? Wasn’t the current situation a trial and tribulation for Hyun-woo? Yet, he was offering a trial to her?

“What kind of joke is this? A trial for me? Are you just spouting nonsense to prolong your life?”

“Not you, but the Apostles, I said.”

Wasn’t that the same thing?

However, Itwaro gradually grasped the meaning. And just how grandly insane Hyun-woo was.

“You’re crazy.”

Was he planning to fight all the Apostles?

Hyun-woo was putting up a more tenacious resistance than Itwaro had anticipated.

But in the end, he was just a mere human without the Star’s blessing. It was only a matter of which Apostle would capture him. A meaningless struggle.

Yet, instead of being an opponent, he was arrogantly offering a trial.

“A trial isn’t a game. A trial is one of the solemn blessings that a Star can bestow. Where did you learn to speak of trials so presumptuously?”

Itwaro felt a boiling rage.

She had become an Apostle after receiving a trial from a starving Star. She had felt the threat of death, but it was the moment she realized her own true greed.

And she had been acting as the Star’s proxy ever since.

A trial was the greatest blessing and most powerful courtship a Star could offer.

It was not something a mere human should speak of lightly.

“Say what you want, you don’t have a veto.”

“Do you think I’ll let you play around?”

Itwaro activated her unique skill to prevent Hyun-woo from preparing.

Skill: Surprise Gift

Itwaro rapidly contracted her body and then lunged forward like a spring.

To Hyun-woo, it looked as if Itwaro had momentarily flickered out of existence.

Hyun-woo, who was maintaining Battle Helper, barely managed to block the attack.

However, Hyun-woo belatedly realized that Itwaro’s face had no features.

No, what he thought was her face was a completely different part. Her mouth was somewhere else.

In what he thought was her right armpit.

The mouth, shaped like an arm, opened wide and quickly bit into Hyun-woo’s body.

Itwaro, who could manipulate her body like clay, had disguised a completely different body part as her face, and hidden her real face like an arm.

All of this happened the moment she launched herself.

Hyun-woo was bitten before he could even resist.

Fortunately, he barely managed to prevent the mouth from completely closing with the Predator Yahr, but the immense pressure threatened to crush his arm at any moment.

“Ever been bitten by a crocodile?”

Itwaro managed to speak with her mouth unable to close.

But what Itwaro saw was Hyun-woo’s chilling sneer. She couldn’t understand his smile.

“Shall we see if you can still smile when all the bones in your body are broken?”

Itwaro began to clench her teeth with all her might. At the same time, she adopted a defensive posture.

She was preparing for the other fake Hyun-woos to attack her.

But those guys were acting strangely.

They were ready to pounce, but they were staring intently at Hyun-woo, not her.

“Don’t move.”

Hyun-woo was speaking to Hahyeon. She looked somewhat flustered, but she crouched down as Hyun-woo instructed.

Hyun-woo opened his mouth, sweat beading on his forehead.

“Let’s be honest. The trial has already begun a long time ago. So, there’s no point in trying to stop it.”

“Still with that joke?”

“To be precise, it started when you bastards entered the shelter and bared your disgusting fangs.”

At that moment, something struck Itwaro’s neck with a sickening crack.

The impact nearly broke her neck, and Itwaro was forced to release Hyun-woo.

Itwaro was startled and tried to find the attacker.

She hadn’t sensed any presence. It was a powerful attack comparable to an Apostle.

Itwaro, wondering if another Apostle had descended, tried to find the enemy, but belatedly realized the nature of the attack.

It was her left arm.

“Huh?”

As soon as Hyun-woo was free from Itwaro’s mouth, he quickly distanced himself. He had only been bitten for a moment, but his joints ached and his whole body was bruised.

“Damn it, even though you’re an Apostle, you’re disgustingly resistant even after hearing the activation phrase. And I even coated you with venom.”

Itwaro couldn’t understand what Hyun-woo was saying. She forcibly fixed her fractured neck bone by contracting her muscles and tried to grab Hyun-woo again.

But as her body returned to normal, this time her left arm struck her right arm.

Her left arm was attacking her right arm.

Itwaro saw Hyun-woo’s grinning face and realized that he had done something.

The left arm didn’t stop there and attacked with a sharp hand, as if to sever the right arm completely.

Itwaro had no choice but to fight her own arm.

“What kind of trick, agh!”

Itwaro screamed and fell on the spot. Her left leg had kicked her right leg.

At the ridiculous sight, Itwaro screamed once more.

Something was controlling her body from the inside.

Itwaro felt that her body was not exerting its full strength.

Her skin became softer, and her bones became weaker. She was in a far weaker state than when she first entered the underground of the intersection.

The black pus flowing down from the wounds had a particularly foul odor.

‘Could it be that this poison was made by this bastard?’

Was the Undead swarm just a smokescreen? No, even so, there’s no way a mere human could create such a strong poison.

To use a poison that could harm an Apostle-level being, one would need the Star’s blessing.

It doesn’t make sense.

But Hyun-woo was smiling as he watched Itwaro thrashing about.

“I tried everything to make a poison that would work on an Apostle.”

***

Hyun-woo said, watching Itwaro struggling to control her body.

“As it happens, I had an Apostle inside me.”

Itwaro momentarily looked in the direction of the third reservoir she had been trying to enter.

The intensely strong scent of Star Fragment hung in the air.

I hadn’t realized it before, focused as I was on finding Hyun-woo and assuming no other Apostle could have arrived before me. But at this level… it’s practically Apostle-grade.

Hyun-woo had already captured an Apostle before even starting.

“But it was really hard to make something that worked properly. Even with extreme weakening, the most I could do was slow down regeneration, no matter how strong I made the poison.”

Itwaro glared at Hyun-woo, her eyes bloodshot. Hyun-woo continued,

“So I thought… do you know about the incubation period?”

Of course, she knew. The Starving Star was also deeply knowledgeable about plagues.

“I decided to use that by applying the ‘Parasitism’ trait. Once ‘Toxic Blood’ seeps in, I use the ‘Contagion’ trait to steadily take over the body. It worked quickly on monsters, but taking over an Apostle takes a long time. So, I thought it might be difficult.”

Even planting the ‘Acidity’ trait and ‘Blood of the Hungry’ didn’t work particularly well.

Hyun-woo smiled and looked at Itwaro.

“But you bravely rushed in and became a test subject.”

Itwaro gnashed her teeth and struggled.

However, as time passed, the attacks from her left side only intensified. She was in no condition to fight at all.

“It’s no use. It’s getting worse. I’ve been accumulating the toxicity inside your body as much as possible, and I made it explode all at once when I hear the trigger word. And with the parasitism trait… I programmed it to make the left side attack the right side.”

The reason he didn’t order suicide was that the toxicity still wasn’t enough to drive her to death.

He inputted the command with the thought of putting even a little restraint on her body.

Of course, the actual effect would vary depending on how strong the Apostle was.

Itwaro’s left side was almost completely taken over, but for some Apostles, it might only be enough to make their left little toe curl.

But there was no need to teach her even that much.

“Why am I rattling all this off? It’s not for you to hear. It’s for the other guys.”

Hyun-woo raised his head and looked around at the Cursed Ones watching the battle in the darkness.

“Only I know the trigger word. In other words, you need me to even try to mess with the Apostle. If you backstab me too quickly, you’ll just become slaves to the others.”

A short clicking of tongues was heard among the Cursed Ones.

They would surely try to figure out what the trigger word was. They would desperately try to recall the conversation between him and Itwaro.

But they wouldn’t be able to figure it out.

The trigger word is actually not a word but a specific action.

Meanwhile, Itwaro was gradually losing control of her body.

Eventually, even her left eye began to wander on its own. Hyun-woo felt that the end was near as he watched her.

The Cursed Ones came to the same conclusion.

Without Hyun-woo needing to move, the Cursed Ones rushed towards Itwaro in an instant.

Itwaro writhed like a giant insect being devoured by ants.

“Aaaaaaa!!”

At that moment, Itwaro’s arm moved like lightning.

Hyun-woo flinched, but Itwaro’s right arm was grabbing her own left arm.

With a cracking sound, Itwaro’s left arm was torn off.

The Cursed Ones recoiled at the unexpected action.

Itwaro didn’t stop there and quickly chopped off her own left leg as well.

In an instant, Itwaro became one-armed and one-legged. Her left shoulder, with only the root remaining, flailed, but Itwaro grinned at Hyun-woo.

“There’s nothing more to get in the way.”

Itwaro planted her right arm and right leg on the ground and rushed towards Hyun-woo like a ghost.

It was a ghostly, grotesque movement. Nevertheless, it was only a moment before she surged towards Hyun-woo.

Itwaro’s mouth gaped open, revealing thirty fangs.

“Kang Hyun-woo!!”

Hyun-woo’s expression hardened at the ominous momentum.

Itwaro felt elation.

She would kill him.

She would definitely taste his flesh and blood here.

And Itwaro activated her ultimate skill.

Ultimate: Monster Under the Bed

Itwaro’s mouth tore open vertically, revealing the inside of her flesh.

Her ribs spread open like sharp fangs.

Just as Itwaro’s massive maw seemed about to devour her own body,

Crack.

Snap.

Suddenly, Itwaro’s snout gaped open beyond its limit.

Blood splattered horribly in all directions.

Itwaro’s inside and outside were completely reversed.

The head, barely hanging on, moaned alone, unable to comprehend the situation.

“It’s hard to withstand an ultimate skill even with a normal body… you shouldn’t overdo it when you’re already dying.”

Hyun-woo muttered calmly. But Itwaro wanted to say no.

She could be sure.

She could definitely have killed Kang Hyun-woo.

It wasn’t Toxic Blood.

Something else was interfering with her.

At that moment, Itwaro realized something. The ultimate skill is the sharpest blade gifted by the Star.

‘Star, you…’

And the Starving Star did not want Hyun-woo to die.

Hyun-woo took a deep breath and swung Tham [likely a weapon] in one swift motion at the torn wound on Itwaro’s neck.

At the same time as the feeling of scraping metal, Itwaro’s head was severed.

Itwaro’s head rolled powerlessly to the floor. Even so, Itwaro, who had not yet breathed her last, stared blankly at the ceiling.

She thought as she took her short but long last breath.

‘Starving Star.’

I was not good enough to carry out your will.

I was foolish, clumsy, careless, and hasty.

But at least I think I tried.

Please, if you are watching me, give me your gaze just once.

Itwaro’s vision began to blur.

The Starving Star was silent. She suddenly felt intensely lonely. It felt like being dropped in the middle of the universe.

The cold chill and emptiness of the universe washed over her.

The stars felt distant.

And she was alone in that vast universe.