Hoarding In Hell [EN]: Chapter 338

338. Epilogue (2)

“Hah, hah. Hah.”

Teacher was dragging his body, desperately trying to escape.

Due to the open wounds and the fresh scratches from dragging himself on the ground, a long trail of blood was left behind.

Of course, his movement speed, with his limbs mangled, was only slightly better than that of an earthworm. Adam Fault wasn’t unable to catch up to him; rather, he couldn’t bring himself to grab him, fearing he might accidentally kill him.

[Let’s talk, Kang Hyun-woo.]

“Kuh, heuk! Damn it, Adam Fault… When have you ever bothered to have a conversation with me!”

[That’s because the me back then had nothing to say to you.]

Adam Fault was humanity’s last bastion and hope, while Teacher was just a low-ranking grunt. They had no reason to meet or talk.

[I’ll ask you this: ‘The Promise’ was created after you became the Star of the Apocalypse [a being embodying the end times], but you must have known what it was. I don’t know why Lee Ji-tae passed it on to you, but it doesn’t matter. Now I know it was an impossible plan from the start.]

Adam spoke carefully, ensuring that Teacher, who was crawling on the ground, wouldn’t be swept away by his power.

[But why did you hand over the ‘Turned Star’ to insignificant commoners instead of the designated hopes of humanity? Especially, I can’t understand why you gave it to yourself, Kang Hyun-woo.]

“Heu, hahaha! You’re asking me that? You really don’t know?”

[Did you think you could do better if you were given another chance?]

Teacher burst out laughing. The more he laughed, the more his stomach tightened and the more he bled, but he couldn’t stop laughing.

“It’s okay to do that!”

[What?]

“It doesn’t matter to me even if you dump all sorts of trash into this hell! Because I thought I would never see this hellish world again! But that trash called Kang Hyun-woo keeps reminding me of my past self!”

Teacher glared at Adam Fault.

“I put trash in a trash can! I’m not going to live here! I’m going to the bright future I saw, a future where everyone is happy, the best future! I’m leaving this garbage dump!”

Adam Fault didn’t respond. He didn’t get angry or show contempt.

He simply watched Teacher crawl like a bug and muttered briefly.

[I see.]

Teacher thought he would be killed, but Adam Fault didn’t chase after him anymore.

He just continued speaking calmly.

[But you better have a positive attitude, Kang Hyun-woo. Because you’re going to live in that trash can forever.]

***

“Live here forever? Bullshit…”

Teacher muttered 힘겹게 [with difficulty] as he dragged his body forward. However, seeing Adam Fault, who was supposed to be humanity’s hope, become such a monster and wander alone, and Lee Seo-yeon, whom he thought might be on his side, become corrupted, the situation felt hopeless.

Even ‘The Promise,’ which could be considered humanity’s legacy, was taken away by Hyun-woo, who had plundered it all.

The most ironic and painful thing was that Teacher himself had handed over that ‘Promise’ to Kang Hyun-woo.

Teacher barely managed to enter a house and hide himself.

Whether it was luck or not, there were strangely no monsters in sight.

Even if a monster appeared, he, with the ‘Blood of the Beast,’ was confident that he wouldn’t be easily defeated, but this lack of monsters was strange.

‘No. It’s good. Let’s focus on healing rather than overdoing it. Gather crystal moss to make the necessary items and build a shelter. Kang Hyun-woo’s hideout must be somewhere around here. I can use that…’

“Wow, we’re finally alone, Master!”

Suddenly, a voice shook Teacher’s body.

Teacher opened his eyes and hurriedly turned around.

Right there, on the table, ‘it’ was smiling and looking down at him.

Teacher felt like he couldn’t breathe.

“Are the farewells over? Have you met all your friends? I thought you’d have a lot to talk about since it’s been a while, but I’m glad it ended quickly. The fairy has been looking forward to this moment so much.”

“N-no way.”

“What’s wrong, Master? You’ve been too indifferent to the fairy. The butler was kind and gentle, but he didn’t have enough desire to destroy the world.”

“I don’t have any desire to destroy the world anymore!”

Lenian closed her mouth at Teacher’s scream.

Lenian looked at Teacher with a hurt, disappointed gaze, then sighed deeply.

“Ah, well. I understand. There are many people who regret it after starting something.”

Teacher felt a glimmer of hope at Lenian’s words.

If she would just let it go with this one word, that would be great.

No, if she could even cooperate with him like she did with Kang Hyun-woo…

Then Lenian whispered with a chilling smile.

“But the end always comes like that.”

When no one is prepared, when everyone is filled with regret and remorse.

“Now, in this time of the end, the sign of the end, Master, and the fairy, the beast promised to the end. Everything has appeared.”

Lenian chuckled and whispered.

“The clock of destruction has already started ticking, Master!”

Before Teacher could move, Lenian’s body disappeared.

A cracking sound echoed from his chest.

Teacher saw the item that prolonged his life, soaked in blood and glistening, through the hole in his chest and ribs.

Lenian was smiling brightly through it.

“It’s time for a walk, Master. Let’s go for a walk. Let’s destroy the world with a light heart. We used to be pretty good, right?”

Teacher screamed and tried to pull Lenian out, who had dug into his chest. But Lenian laughed and dug even deeper into Teacher’s body.

Lenian dug into Teacher’s stomach, tearing through his esophagus and intestines as she went up.

Bones broke and blood gushed out.

As the spine and nerve bundles were severed, Teacher rolled on the floor like a doll with cut strings.

Blood gushed out from every hole and flowed down. Teacher’s body shook jerkily without a scream.

Finally, Lenian burst out like a chick hatching from an egg, breaking Teacher’s skull, which had been twitching.

“Sweet, Master. I knew your brain fluid would be this sweet.”

Teacher didn’t answer.

Lenian hummed and planted the abyss within Teacher’s body.

Black abyss crawled and filled the missing parts of Teacher’s body, piecing together the broken parts.

The completed form of Teacher was somewhat grotesque, but it still had two feet and two arms.

“The promised time has come.”

Clatter, clatter.

“The beast promised to the end, to all the living beings in the world.”

Teacher’s jaw moved unnaturally like a doll, and Lenian’s voice came out.

“Like a swarm of locusts, we’ve come to devour them!”

***

“How is it? Is this enough?”

“Enough… I guess. I don’t really know how much is enough.”

Yoo-min muttered, looking at the crystal moss that filled the underground warehouse.

Now, as an ability user, she could feel the high-purity, high-density mana emanating from this crystal moss.

It was mana that made her head spin. Yoo-min picked up a piece of crystal moss and examined it, just in case.

“…They’re all top-quality crystal moss. Oh my god, if you converted all of this into money, you could buy several countries. I think you could cover the world’s crystal moss consumption for a year with this.”

“Don’t exaggerate.”

“No, I’m serious. The difficulty has increased, but the amount of mana coming out of the dungeons has decreased, so the amount of crystal moss collected has decreased dramatically. So now crystal moss is really worth whatever you ask for it. Especially if it’s this high purity.”

Hyun-woo felt like he had gone back to the old days.

To the time when he first showed Yoo-min the crystal moss and had her appraise the product.

Yoo-min was still enjoying it and marveling at it.

Hyun-woo nodded.

“Then we won’t have to worry for 100 years.”

“Yes?”

“Because I still have enough crystal moss to fill this warehouse a hundred more times.”

Yoo-min stared at Hyun-woo, speechless.

Several suspicious expressions crossed her face, as if telling him not to joke.

But Hyun-woo shrugged and took something out. It looked like a withered mummy’s arm.

“It’s Helen’s hand. The key to Yogulem’s warehouse, or you can call it Doraemon [a Japanese manga character with a magical pocket]. Anyway, I filled it up before I got kicked out. I didn’t know how much I needed, so I swept it up whenever I had time, but I don’t think we’ll ever run out.”

“Oh my god…”

Yoo-min’s eyes widened as she looked at someone’s severed hand, instead of being horrified.

“You had such an amazing item? No, why are you just using it as a warehouse? What are the internal effects? Is there no limit to the space? What are the internal gas components? What is the possibility of contamination? What is the temperature? Is there no mass limit? If there is no weight limit, could we solve the transportation or resource imbalance problem?”

Yoo-min seemed even more enthusiastic than when she saw the crystal moss.

Hyun-woo stammered at Yoo-min’s questions and answered as he knew.

“Um, well. I only used it as a warehouse, and Helen seemed to only use it for combat, so I don’t really know.”

“No, to have something that might overcome thermodynamics and allow space exploration and just use it for fighting! That’s why hunters are like this!”

Hyun-woo hurriedly handed Helen’s hands to Yoo-min.

Yoo-min took both arms and tried to run away as if she was going to investigate something quickly.

But before Yoo-min locked herself in the lab, he quickly called her back.

“Yoo-min, that’s my dowry.”

“Yes?”

“I’m entrusting you with the household, or something like that. Anyway, that’s it.”

“Uh… are you proposing right now?”

Hyun-woo shrugged.

“Can’t I?”

“No, it’s not that… Giving your girlfriend the severed arms of someone you’ve never met and saying it’s a dowry, asking her to marry you, is one thing.”

Only after hearing Yoo-min’s words did Hyun-woo realize that there was a slight problem.

Regardless of the value of the contents, it was definitely a bit much to give as a gift.

He should have wrapped it.

But then Yoo-min drove in another wedge with a suspicious expression.

“…I thought we were already married even without this?”

“Huh? Ah, um. But we haven’t submitted the paperwork yet, have we?”

“Do we have to submit the paperwork to be a couple, or what.”

Hyun-woo stammered and turned his head.

Seeing that, Yoo-min smiled and approached Hyun-woo. Then she put Helen’s arms somewhere and hugged Hyun-woo.

Hyun-woo quietly stroked Yoo-min’s back.

At that moment, Hyun-woo suddenly felt a stinging pain in his chest.

A chilly sensation, as if his heart had suddenly been pulled out, filled the inside of his chest.

But at the same time, the feeling of emptiness was quickly filled as Yoo-min leaned on his head.

Hyun-woo quietly called out to Lenian as he hugged Yoo-min’s head.

There was no answer.

Hyun-woo instinctively sensed that the crazy cannibalistic fairy had left satisfied.

And at the same time, Hyun-woo felt that the power of the apocalypse he had was gone.

Maybe Yoo-min was the same.

He was sad that this crazy fairy had disappeared without saying goodbye, but what could he do?

From the beginning, Hyun-woo was just a stranger who had briefly visited that world.

So he was simply a ‘butler’ who managed that world.

This was Hyun-woo and Lenian’s way of saying goodbye, and a way to leave no room for a bad ending.

But the sense of loss was inevitable, so Hyun-woo quietly opened his mouth.

“Yoo-min.”

“Yes?”

“Shall we adopt a dog from the animal shelter? And name it Lenian.”

“That’s a little too otaku-like [obsessive fan-like].”

***

Isaiah Ren was watching Earth from afar.

Most of Earth was dyed black, so it was hard to distinguish it from space.

But if you look closely, space has subtle and diverse colors. On the other hand, the black object covering the Earth was a darkness that was difficult to distinguish even in shades.

And on top of that black sphere, there was a very small, red land, like ink dropped on it.

Many things were happening inside.

Screams, cries, resignation, anger, pleas, acceptance, detachment, overcoming.

From Isaiah Ren’s perspective, the powers and emotions seething on a space as small as a teaspoon appeared and disappeared.

But all of that had no impact on the universe.

Before long, they were dyed black as if they had never existed.

Isaiah Ren felt that the end was near.

This time, the blackened Earth slowly began to boil.

The beasts of the apocalypse devoured, cut off, and evaporated each other, slowly decreasing in number.

The places the beasts dug into did not distinguish between the surface and the inner core.

Like an apple covered in seething maggots, the Earth quickly revealed its emaciated appearance.

The blood-soaked head was the bloodstain it shed on this land.

Destruction bloomed in every place where that head shed blood.

And finally, even the bloodstains lightly crumbled and disappeared beyond the universe.

The trace of where Earth had been was no longer left anywhere in the universe. It disappeared beyond eternal silence and stillness.

But the beasts of the apocalypse would still remain.

Hoping to sprout those buds again somewhere.

Isaiah Ren picked up his pen and began to drift again on his small boat. And he flipped through his record book.

It had been a long time since he had recorded new content.

As Isaiah Ren turned the pages, he soon found the record he wanted.

[Name: Kang Hyun-woo]

[Race: Human]

[Danger Level: F]

[Note: 0-star incompetent ordinary person. The ninth successor of the Promise. At the same time, it is Kang Hyun-woo’s 20s with the Turned Star. No potential is seen. He is really a consistent piece of trash.]

Isaiah Ren stared at the record and began to revise it again.

[Name: Kang Hyun-woo]

[Race: Human (Star of Hell─Incomplete)]

[Danger Level: SS]

[Note: Difficulty: A bizarre existence created by the special environment of hell, the world just before the end, the Star of the Apocalypse, abnormal time, absurdity, and a mad obsession.

He broke through the limitations as a race and became an existence more suitable for hell than anywhere else.

However, instead of holding the star in his hand, he chose a path that could satisfy his own simple desires. This is also judged to be a unique result that implies the infinite possibilities of life.

The combat ability itself is not very strong from a macroscopic point of view, but because he tries to annihilate the opponent by any means if hostile, the danger level is raised by two levels, and it is recommended not to encounter him if possible……]