Hoarding In Hell [EN]: Chapter 77

Nine-Headed Rat (6)

For a moment, Yanok Marx was utterly bewildered by Hyun-woo’s words.

‘What is that bastard talking about? Hamster?’ Of course, Yanok Marx knew what a hamster was.

But the dictionary definition and Hyun-woo’s statement simply didn’t compute. ‘Me, a hamster?’

Yanok Marx had never considered himself in such a light. He’d always believed himself to be one of the superior Fang race.

“No, no… what are you even saying? What about a hamster?”

“Hamsters aren’t rats.”

“What nonsense are you talking about? Hamsters are rats.”

“No, they’re not. Hamsters aren’t Ratmen. At least, not true Ratmen.”

Yanok Marx felt an urge to order Hyun-woo’s head smashed rather than get bogged down in this absurd argument.

But the word Hyun-woo had casually tossed out carried significant weight in this place.

Lineage and genetics were the Empire’s highest priorities.

Even countless Ratmen heroes had been exiled or imprisoned in underground detention centers due to lineage issues.

“Don’t talk nonsense!”

“Yeah, nonsense. That’s right. They’re distant relatives, but hamsters are genetically closer to dogs than rats. They belong to the Cricetidae family, not Muridae. You’re closer to a Pomeranian than a rat.”

It was a talent to spout such utter rubbish so fluently. Had the situation been different, Hyun-woo’s calm demeanor might have even made it sound convincing.

If lineage wasn’t so crucial here.

Even among the other guards, a murmur of unease began to spread. Suspicion rippled outwards, especially among those subtly influenced by Hyun-woo’s mind control.

“No wonder he always stuffs his cheeks with food…”

“His Excellency the General was always a little cute, but…”

Hyun-woo, as if pouring oil on a fire, continued to press the issue.

“Admit it! You’re a hamster!”

“Crazy talk! Why would I be a hamster!”

At that moment, the corners of Hyun-woo’s lips curled into a smirk. Yanok was completely lost.

“Look! Short, chubby body with drooping cheeks! Small, adorable ears, pink nose! Unlike all of you, that bastard is cute! Everything screams ‘hamster’! You all know what hamsters are, right?”

As Hyun-woo pointed out, Yanok *was* physically similar to a hamster. It was an undeniable observation.

But Hyun-woo was already speaking as if it were common knowledge that hamsters were related to dogs.

Ideally, Yanok should have simply admitted to resembling a hamster and then challenged Hyun-woo with, ‘Why the hell do hamsters belong to the dog family? What crazy nonsense are you spouting?’

Under normal circumstances, no Ratman would be swayed by such claims, even if they harbored secret suspicions about hamsters’ canine connections.

They would have thrown Hyun-woo out of the spire the moment he started talking gibberish. But the situation was far from normal.

They were in the final stages of their ultimate plan.

The plan to leave only the most superior Fangs, the Ratmen, and subjugate all inferior species.

If Yanok Marx wasn’t truly a rat when this plan came to fruition, the Ratmen themselves would face extinction.

He couldn’t dismiss that possibility, however slim it might be.

To fight fiercely, risking his life, only to hand over all the achievements to the wrong species in the end was utterly unacceptable.

Because if Yanok Marx wasn’t a Ratman, there would be no second chance.

“Oergel! Throw him out of the spire right now!”

Yanok barked at Propaganda Minister Oergel. But Oergel remained rooted to the spot.

Cold sweat trickled down Yanok’s back.

“Your Excellency the General.”

Oergel spoke, his voice strained.

“The ultimate plan can be postponed. All of us Ratmen are prepared to die fighting against the Wailing Star [a celestial body associated with destruction]. But if we make a mistake here, our species will have no other chance. If there’s even a slight possibility that you are a tainted Fang…”

Oergel didn’t necessarily believe Hyun-woo’s words.

He had known from the beginning that Yanok Marx wasn’t a mainstream gray rat or red-haired rat, but resembled a hamster.

But he had never explicitly asked himself the question, ‘Do hamsters belong to the rat family?’

After that, Oergel’s words faded into a background hum for Yanok.

Propaganda Minister Oergel had been tirelessly promoting Yanok as the epitome of superior Fang lineage.

But if it were confirmed that Yanok was actually a tainted Fang, he would sooner kill Yanok and bury the truth than admit his mistake.

Yanok had trusted him and kept him close because of Oergel’s fanatical belief in him.

“Are you all out of your minds, swayed by such crazy talk?”

Hyun-woo couldn’t help but chuckle. Yanok’s words echoed his own thoughts.

‘You’re the one who created the environment that makes them believe such crazy talk.’

Purity of blood and bloodline supremacy.

It was already a discredited and heavily criticized concept in the human world.

Propaganda Minister Oergel gestured to the guards. They hesitated, but began to approach Yanok.

Instinctively, Yanok grabbed the book whose title he had forgotten. The guards, aware of the grimoire’s power, immediately halted.

Propaganda Minister Oergel said anxiously.

“We will execute this human without delay. But separately from that, we simply need to confirm a few things, Your Excellency the General. We will mobilize sorcerer-scribes and scholars to determine whether this human’s words hold any truth, and whether Your Excellency is, in fact, a hamster, or rather, whether you belong to the rat family.”

But Yanok didn’t trust them.

In the history of the Fallen Empire, no one who had ever been ousted in a power struggle had ever managed to claw their way back to the top.

Because the victor always thoroughly crushed their opponents, ensuring they could never rise again.

“Rats are rats! Where is there a rat closely related to a dog! Have you ever seen a rat mate with a dog!”

Yanok’s scream was almost a shriek.

He never imagined he would be undone by such absurd nonsense.

Of course, Yanok failed to realize that the countless beastmen who had perished in underground detention centers for similar reasons of lineage had felt the same way.

Yanok had no intention of being pushed aside like this. In that moment, he became convinced that the only way to prove his innocence was to summon the Nine-Headed Rat.

If he could reclaim the lost name and empire and present it to them, they would have no choice but to acknowledge him as the rightful General of the Empire.

“Perhaps the Ratmen…”

Yanok muttered, his voice stiff.

“I’m starting to suspect that they weren’t quite the right race to realize my perfect ideal…”

As Yanok buried his nose in the book whose title he had forgotten and began to chant, Oergel was horrified. He seized upon it as undeniable evidence of treason.

“Seize him! Or you’ll all die!”

The guards surged towards Yanok. Just as they were about to plunge their halberds into his body, a green flash erupted.

The guards struck by the flash instantly melted away, leaving only their bones behind.

The floor around Yanok bubbled and boiled in a circle. The guards, urged on by Oergel, approached cautiously, but the moment they stepped onto the boiling floor, their legs rotted away, leaving only bones up to their knees.

The sorcerer-scribes couldn’t keep pace with Yanok’s rapidly accelerating recitation.

Soon, the sorcerer-scribes, unable to withstand the escalating mana surge, began to die one by one, their heads exploding.

Yanok’s recitation grew faster and faster, now resembling a high-pitched whine rather than a coherent spell. No one could approach him.

No one, that is, except one person.

Kang Hyun-woo plunged his sword into Yanok’s neck. His hands and feet were dissolving, but unlike the other Ratmen, his bones weren’t immediately exposed.

[The toxicity of Venomous Blood intensifies.]

But even with Kang Hyun-woo’s attack, Yanok’s recitation didn’t falter.

Hyun-woo raised his eyebrows and swung his sword again, hacking at Yanok’s body.

He also attempted to incapacitate him by flooding his system with Venomous Blood.

“■■ ■■ ■ ■■■■■ ■!”

The flash that burst out once more hurled Hyun-woo backwards.

Hyun-woo nearly lost his footing, but managed to hold on, his sword still embedded in Yanok’s body. He maintained his grip by ‘locking’ his hand with Oshet’s six-fingered grip [a technique for enhanced grip strength].

No matter how fiercely he stabbed or bit, Yanok showed no sign of collapsing. Judging by the severity of his wounds, he should have been dead already, but some powerful will seemed to be keeping him upright.

Hyun-woo sensed that the green flash had grown significantly larger. He suddenly realized that the gray army that had filled the horizon had already retreated like the tide.

‘Looks like it’s all ruined.’

“My great ideal!”

Yanok shouted, grinding his cute front teeth. It was the only coherent thought he could muster.

“May it be done through you on earth and in heaven!”

The sound of the sky splitting echoed through the air.

***

No one actually *heard* the sound of the sky splitting. It was because everyone’s eardrums had ruptured the moment Yanok finished chanting.

No one *saw* what appeared.

Because after the green flash subsided, all the light in the world seemed to vanish, turning away from that place.

For the first time since arriving in hell, Hyun-woo witnessed a truly dark sky.

Everything was dyed in shades of gray, casting long, distorted shadows. Hyun-woo felt like he was experiencing ‘dark light’ for the first time.

Nothing could be seen clearly. But he could feel something immense moving, the vibrations resonating through his trembling skin.

Hyun-woo couldn’t comprehend what it was.

He felt like Yanok’s body, which he was still clutching, was floating upwards.

‘Has gravity disappeared?’

It was possible. But another, more terrifying, assumption formed in Hyun-woo’s mind.

That something so colossal existed above him that it possessed its own gravitational pull.

The sword slipped from Yanok’s grasp, and Hyun-woo tumbled to the ground.

Lying there, Hyun-woo conceded for the first time that the quest had failed. He had never imagined that Yanok possessed a means to accelerate the spell.

‘If he had something like that, why didn’t he use it sooner? Are there side effects?’

His eardrums were gone, but he could still feel the deep, resonant vibrations. In the oppressive darkness, a bizarre silhouette danced in the air.

It was Yanok.

Yanok was performing a grotesque, swaying dance, babbling incoherently.

He couldn’t understand the words. Hyun-woo couldn’t understand the sight itself.

Yanok was contorting his body in ways that his joints and muscles simply shouldn’t allow.

‘Is he screaming instead of babbling?’

Hyun-woo instinctively averted his gaze. He felt like he shouldn’t look too closely at whatever that was. He had a premonition that attempting to understand it, even a little, would drive him insane.

He felt a burning sensation in his eyes. A searing, unbearable pain.

Tears welled up, blurring Yanok’s distorted form. Something gently seized and enveloped Yanok.

The silhouette, presumably Yanok, disintegrated like toy clay, breaking into unrecognizable pieces. Fragments of something rained down on his face.

Splatter, splatter. A nauseating stench of blood filled the air. Similar fragments were falling from all directions. Because his eardrums were ruptured, the destruction unfolded in eerie silence.

Something warm and viscous soaked his spine. He could bet it was blood mixed with some kind of bodily fluid.

Blood vessels and chunks of flesh poured down from all directions. Something landed directly in front of Hyun-woo’s eyes.

It was the glasses that Propaganda Minister Oergel had been wearing. They were completely crushed, and covered in tiny teeth marks.

“Kuh…”

Hyun-woo clenched his teeth. He refused to die without understanding what was happening.

The pain of his teeth cracking brought him back to his senses. Hyun-woo forced his body, which was instinctively trying to curl into a fetal position, to turn over.

But he still couldn’t discern what was there. Only a vast expanse of black sky.

Or perhaps that black sky *was* the thing.

He saw Ratmen being lifted into the air here and there. Some laughed hysterically, others sobbed and struggled.

And all those who were lifted up fell back down as minced meat.

‘Is this the work of the Nine-Headed Rat or something?’

It was nothing like what he had expected. In fact, there was no reason to think of it as a rat at all.

‘Flipping the table.’

Hyun-woo suddenly had a bizarre thought.

What if this world was a game board for some unknown players, and the Ratmen were the losers of that game?

And, unable to accept their defeat, they had tried to flip the table, denying the outcome.

What if they had summoned an external being, uninvited to the game, who simply decided to end it all?

From the beginning, the Nine-Headed Rat might have been nothing more than a delusion, a desperate wish fulfillment born from the Ratmen’s collective madness.

They had diligently worshiped a god whose true nature they couldn’t even comprehend.

Hyun-woo knew that he couldn’t directly face that indescribable being without losing his sanity.

His consciousness was fading. He might die like this.

Without even being able to resist.

There was only one thing Hyun-woo could do in the face of such overwhelming power.

Hyun-woo raised his middle finger to the sky and fainted gloriously.

[Impossible Achievement Achieved!]

[You have glimpsed a fragment of a being that should not be known.]

[You have acquired the title ‘Being Behind the Veil’.]

[All types of Understanding +1.]

[Stress increases when using magic.]

[Quest Success!]

[You have succeeded in the ‘Nine-Headed Rat’ quest.]

[One ‘Gold Box’ is provided as a reward.]

[Rewards increase due to level-to-difficulty correction.]

[One ‘Gold Box’ changes to one ‘Platinum Box’.]

[Return Stone is activated until the next quest.]

[Time remaining until the next quest: 28 days, 0 hours, 0 minutes, 0 seconds.]

[The Shattering Star, Gaul, is watching you.]

[The Wailing Star, Verd, is watching you.]

[The Whispering Star, Monstrill, is watching you.]

[Fragment Acquired.]

[Star Fragment is enhanced.]

***

The scenery Hyun-woo saw when he opened his eyes was a bleak, desolate ruin.

The sky had reverted to its ominous red hue as if nothing had happened, and neither the once-ubiquitous gray army nor any other Ratmen were to be seen.

It wasn’t difficult to guess where they had gone. The surroundings were littered with fragments of Ratmen corpses.

He didn’t know why he alone had survived. He was simply grateful that he had.

Hyun-woo retrieved a caramel from his inventory and popped it into his mouth.

As Hyun-woo wandered through the wreckage, he stumbled upon something.

Hanging limply, he recognized Yanok’s hand—it was noticeably cuter than the hands of the other Ratmen. He shook it off and examined what it had been holding.

It was a book with no title inscribed on its cover.