Holy Idol [EN]: Chapter 500

500. Whether Trapped or Just Passing Through

The door disappeared? Rembrary turned his head, even more surprised by those words. It wasn’t just the door; the wall itself was gone.

“What on earth……!”

Kim Murok also exclaimed in astonishment.

He had been so flustered by the ice cream floor that he hadn’t paid attention to the door or the walls.

Such a thing had happened in the meantime.

“The wall?”

Rembrary asked, looking at Hwasa, who blankly replied,

“I know, right? It’s gone. Just the door was missing before.”

“Did it vanish?”

“Looks like it.”

Judging by his words, Hwasa hadn’t seen the exact moment the wall disappeared either.

However, Hwasa didn’t seem too worried. He had teleportation, after all.

Hwasa said, “Just a moment,” and suddenly disappeared.

But when Hwasa reappeared, his face was filled with worry.

“What’s wrong?”

“I can’t get out. Why?”

Kim Murok’s face turned pale, and he shouted in a hurried voice.

“Oh, no, this can’t be happening! If I had known this, I would have just sent the camera!”

No one had told him to come along.

As Rembrary and Hwasa stared at him, Kim Murok anxiously asked,

“Wh-what should we do, Mr. Rembrary? Huh? Prayer? Should we pray? Prayer to Redrin?”

He seemed to be in a state of near panic.

“Wow. This guy will adapt well to your religion, Rembrary,” Hwasa sneered from the side.

“Calm yourself.”

Only after Rembrary pretended to pat his shoulder and sent a bit of divine power did Kim Murok barely calm down.

“It’s too slippery.”

Leaving him grumbling even after calming down, Rembrary walked forward and said,

“Let’s just keep walking for now. We don’t know what might come out. Quite a few people have gotten out, so there must be a way out.”

“Not going with teleportation?”

“Who knows what might come out.”

Following Rembrary’s suggestion, the group tried walking, but it was too inefficient.

If there were walls, they could at least distinguish between east, west, south, and north.

With the walls gone, they couldn’t even tell the directions, making it hard to know if they were walking properly.

The floor was just a stretch of vanilla ice cream, a space where they couldn’t tell where the end was or where the beginning was.

In a space that completely disoriented them, the group gradually grew tired.

“Damn it, what happens to this camera if I die?”

“It’ll be buried next to the key.”

“What?”

“The next ones who come in will find it, so don’t worry.”

“How can I not worry when I’m about to die?”

Rembrary continued to scan his surroundings for anything that could serve as a landmark, even as he occasionally responded to Kim Murok’s grumbling.

“Isn’t that a sign over there?”

As he was doing so, Hwasa pointed somewhere.

When Rembrary looked in that direction, Hwasa was already standing in front of the sign.

Rembrary also went over there and looked at the sign’s contents with Hwasa.

“!”

But what was written inside was in a foreign language, and Rembrary couldn’t understand any of it.

“What does this mean?”

Rembrary asked, flustered, but Hwasa nonchalantly replied,

“He says he’s James from a foreign country. He lost his way and set this up.”

“If he’s lost, where did he get the sign?”

“Well…….”

As Hwasa hesitated, Kim Murok, who had arrived last while struggling to keep his balance, interjected.

“There’s no mention of James, no mention of a foreign country, and not even a mention of being lost.”

Did he translate it wrong? When Rembrary looked at Hwasa, Hwasa avoided his gaze.

Kim Murok pushed them aside, went to the front, and clearly explained.

“Let’s see…… It’s like a textbook passage? It says, ‘The child burst into tears, looking at the snow piled high on the key. If all this snow were ice cream, he could eat it all to find the key underneath.'”

Rembrary didn’t immediately understand the vague words.

“What does it mean?”

“I just read it as it’s written.”

Kim Murok also replied awkwardly, as if he didn’t know what it meant either.

At that moment, Hwasa suddenly shouted.

“Ah! Could it be that?”

“That what?”

As attention focused on him, Hwasa pointed at the sign and explained.

“The child in that story. The key the child lost. If we find that key, won’t a door appear? Like the method mentioned there?”

Then, Hwasa was shocked by his own words.

“What? So, we have to eat all the snow here?!”

As soon as he finished speaking, Hwasa and Kim Murok simultaneously looked at Rembrary.

“What’s with those looks?”

Rembrary frowned.

Hwasa cautiously asked,

“Don’t you like eating, Rembrary?”

“I don’t like eating things off the ground. Who knows who might have stepped on it.”

“What if we scoop it up?”

“What’s the difference between you scooping it up and putting it in my mouth and me scooping it up and putting it in my mouth?”

As Rembrary refuted Hwasa’s words one by one, Kim Murok, thinking it was a good idea, sided with Hwasa.

“No, but we can’t just stay here, Mr. Rembrary. Don’t you like eating? Mr. Rembrary might be able to eat it all!”

“Shall we play rock-paper-scissors and the loser eats? For the record, I’m confident I can win a hundred times out of a hundred.”

Only when Rembrary suggested that the three of them eat together did Kim Murok shrink back.

Starting with him turning away dejectedly, the group began to move again.

However, since the background didn’t change at all, they couldn’t even tell if the plain was small and they were just going around in circles, or if the plain was endlessly vast and they were moving forward.

They didn’t even know where they were going, and the cell phone navigation had been out of service since they entered the maze.

Kim Murok sighed.

“If there were even one or two buildings, we could at least know if we were going the right way.”

But as they kept walking, another sign appeared.

Hwasa quickly teleported over there and examined it first.

Rembrary also went over there, and this time the sign was written in Korean.

-If you cannot find a way out, seek God. Sanguineus Acquarius is listening to prayers.

Seeing that, Kim Murok chuckled and muttered,

“How blatant.”

“Blatant?”

“Look closely, Mr. Rembrary. The first sign, which explains how to get out, is deliberately written in a foreign language. But the content about praying isn’t written in a foreign language. This is the main point. The first sign isn’t the main point.”

Rembrary blankly nodded, then remembered Redrin’s words that ‘the more people there are in the Demon King’s territory, the more the Demon King’s power increases’ and looked at Hwasa.

‘Are they attracting people like this?’

Hwasa seemed to be thinking the same thing, as he was looking at Rembrary.

However, Kim Murok suddenly put his hands together as if he was about to pray, so Rembrary couldn’t exchange any more silent signals with Hwasa and quickly pulled his hands away.

“What are you doing?”

When Rembrary asked, Kim Murok replied as if it were obvious.

“What else? Praying. The sign says to pray.”

“Praying to who?”

“Well, we can’t just starve to death here, Mr. Rembrary.”

“Where do you think this is?”

“A maze. A demon’s territory.”

“Who would be the god to help people in such a place?”

“A demon’s…… god.”

Kim Murok, who had been answering without much thought, belatedly understood Rembrary’s meaning and flinched.

“That’s right.”

Only then did Rembrary release Kim Murok’s hands.

“Asking for help from that guy means becoming one of his people. This plain seems to be a trap made for that purpose. Don’t pray carelessly. Your soul will be sold in an instant.”

“Well…… maybe it’s just a sign that’s written there? Without any meaning.”

“Do you know what the most basic rule is when creating a dungeon?”

“Rule?”

“It’s a long story to explain everything. But the most basic rule is that you can’t give false information about the rules.”

“Huh?”

“To put it simply, most of the signs inside these dungeons are real. But even if the signs are real, the results they bring aren’t the same as what you wanted.”

“Uh-oh?”

Of course, there are also fake signs.

But fake signs have a mark that allows the person seeing them to realize that ‘this might be fake.’

For example, there are multiple signs with conflicting rules, and one of them is written to be real.

Even in such cases, there are hints given to figure out which one is real.

However, Rembrary couldn’t explain all of this, so he just crossed his arms, and Kim Murok, who had been blankly listening to Rembrary’s words, became genuinely curious and asked.

“But how does Mr. Rembrary know all that?”

‘Because the Demon King is from our world,’ Rembrary only answered in his mind, and since he didn’t want to talk about it, he changed the subject.

“Anyway, you absolutely can’t pray. Besides, you’ve become a follower of Redrin!”

“But that doesn’t mean I can really eat all the ice cream here.”

Rembrary found Hwasa squatting on the floor, trying to scoop up ice cream with his hands and eat it, and this time he stopped him and asked.

“Stop it. The first sign also had a story about a ‘child,’ right?”

“Huh? That’s right. The kid who’s looking for the key.”

“Maybe we just need to find that child.”

“Weren’t we the child in the analogy?”

“Either find the key directly, or find the child. It’s the same.”

They decided that they would never finish if they stuck together, so the three of them spread out just enough to be able to check each other’s locations and began looking for the key or the child.

However, as time passed, the surrounding temperature gradually decreased and it became increasingly cold.

What was initially a wondrous place, ‘an ice cream world,’ was now so cold that the ice cream wasn’t even slippery when stepped on.

The sense of wonder had long disappeared.

Perhaps realizing that this wouldn’t work, Kim Murok eventually returned to Rembrary and waved his hands.

However, he was completely frozen from the cold and couldn’t even speak properly, just shivering.

Rembrary clicked his tongue.

“I told you not to follow me.”

Seeing that, Hwasa approached and asked,

“What’s wrong?”

“He’s cold.”

“I’m cold too.”

Hwasa held out his arm, covered in goosebumps, and Rembrary sent divine power to help both of them feel better.

“It’s less cold!”

Then, Hwasa repeatedly touched his body, checking if the goosebumps had gone down, and was amazed, and Kim Murok’s expression immediately improved.

Rembrary was relieved for now, but he couldn’t completely relax.

Divine power didn’t fill their stomachs or ward off the cold.

It only temporarily eliminated the unpleasant feeling and restored vitality to their bodies.

If they continued to search for the child and the key until time ran out, they might starve or freeze to death before finding a way back.

“If you’re okay, let’s find the key quickly.”

‘Why is the Demon King doing this? To stall for time?’ Rembrary urged the group on, but his mind became increasingly complicated.

It would have been easier to deal with if a demon had popped out and started attacking.

Since they weren’t openly attacking, it was difficult to know how to respond.

But then, he felt a warmth like that from a fireplace somewhere.

Rembrary stopped and looked in that direction. ‘What is it? What’s coming out this time?’

However, what caught his eye before that direction was the ice cream under his feet gradually sinking.

The ice cream was melting rapidly.

Soon, his ankles were wet, and Hwasa shouted.

“The key is here!”

The ice cream that had piled up like snow had melted away, revealing the floor and naturally exposing the key.

Rembrary listened to Hwasa’s joyful shout and looked again in the direction where the warmth had started.

Someone was standing there, but they were far away, so their face wasn’t clearly visible.

They seemed to be looking this way too.

Then, the moment that person turned around and walked away, Rembrary noticed their attire and widened his eyes.

‘That outfit?’

The outfit that person was wearing looked similar to what another Shin Joong-hyun wore in that other world.

‘Could it be… Great Anchovy?’

Rembrary tried to run in that direction, but in the meantime, the other person had disappeared from sight, and only a normal plain was spread out.

This time, a normal meadow.

Still, if that person was Great Anchovy…… Rembrary took a step to go that way again.

However, the moment he took a few steps, Rembrary’s body was already outside.

‘Did Great Anchovy help? Is he trapped inside too? No, if he has the ability to help, doesn’t he also have the ability to get out? Besides, that power is……?’