Holy Idol [EN]: Chapter 580

◈ 580. You’re Just Like Me

Woo Yeon-woo was terrified, on the verge of tears. He was sure Nin-ling would crush his hand any second.

He looked up at her, eyes brimming with fear.

Just then.

“Damn it, is everything alright over there? How many are there?”

A voice shouted from a distance.

They couldn’t see clearly, but they knew someone was nearby.

But Woo Yeon-woo was dangling off a cliff, hidden from view.

Even if Nin-ling let him fall and pretended nothing happened, the Nakru wouldn’t know.

*If I fall, I have to scream,* he thought frantically.

Suddenly, Nin-ling leaned down. A powerful grip seized his wrist and effortlessly hauled him up.

Woo Yeon-woo, who had been clinging to the vine, was pulled over the cliff, first his upper body, then his legs.

*Did she… save me?*

He had been certain Nin-ling would kill him. He looked up at her, still trembling.

Nin-ling was smiling. When their eyes met, she said kindly,

“You need to be careful where you step.”

She acted as if nothing had happened.

Woo Yeon-woo felt like joking, *’Took you long enough to decide to save me,’*

But after nearly dying, he couldn’t bring himself to say it.

He watched Nin-ling cautiously. She was already looking around with a serious expression.

“Looks like we’re completely scattered.”

Her voice, calm and low, didn’t sound hostile.

Meanwhile, the three Nakru members who had shouted earlier safely reached them.

“There were two of you. I only saw one, so I didn’t know.”

“Did you see anyone else?”

“Damn it, what are those rocks? Why are there snowballs without eyes?”

Woo Yeon-woo listened to the grumbling members, rubbing his arms to ward off the lingering chill.

Noir watched the scene with amusement in a mirror and asked,

“What do you think? Can we use him?”

Waryon stood behind Noir, staring into his own crystal ball, and replied nonchalantly,

“The human might be possible. He seems mentally weak. But that paladin will be hard to manipulate.”

His voice was annoyed because he wanted to observe District 2, where the High Priest was, but couldn’t.

Noir rested his chin on his hand and replied with a relaxed smile.

“Why? I think even that paladin might join our side if we involve the High Priest.”

Waryon was taken aback and asked,

“He’s a paladin protecting the High Priest, so he’ll be even *less* likely to switch sides. What are you talking about?”

“You’re really dense, Wary.”

Noir smirked.

“What, you little punk?”

“The High Priest won’t be as angry at that human as that paladin is. That will hurt the paladin more.”

Waryon asked in disbelief,

“Really?”

“Maybe?”

Noir finished without much conviction, looking back and forth between Woo Yeon-woo and Nin-ling.

“Which one will be more fun?”

* * *

It was the moment when Criminal B’s gaze was about to fall on him.

“Oops, my baby.”

Someone swiftly scooped up Rembrary, turning him around and carrying him on their back, shielding his face from view over the railing.

In the blink of an eye, Rembrary was on someone’s shoulder.

“You troublemaker. Did you learn ‘don’t go out’ and ‘go out’ backwards?”

It was the Black Dragon. While the Black Dragon grumbled and walked back to the room, Rembrary kept his mouth shut and stayed quiet.

He could feel Criminal B’s gaze from somewhere, but no one followed.

* * *

“You’re a really fearless kid. Being fearless is fine if you have the power to protect yourself. But you don’t have that. Dad is worried… what’s your name again?”

“Rembrary.”

“Right, Dad is worried, Rembrary. But isn’t your name too long?”

Rembrary, back in his room, was being scolded by the Black Dragon.

The door creaked open, and Aije entered.

Aije was smiling. It was clear things had gone well.

“How did it go?”

The Black Dragon stopped playing dad and asked.

Aije came to the center of the room, sat on the chair opposite Rembrary, and waved his hand in the air.

Surprisingly, black and white threads intertwined in his hand.

“What is that?”

Rembrary asked, and Aije replied with satisfaction.

“The hope and despair of the humans I planted seeds in.”

*Hope and despair?*

Rembrary didn’t understand. The explanation was too vague, so the Black Dragon elaborated.

“You were watching, right? Aije was sprinkling something on the crown of some human’s head. That’s planting seeds. And that white thread is that human’s hope.”

“Why are you pulling it out?”

“That thread is connected to what that person wants. That kidnapper, Aije, planted a seed in his head, he’s trying to kill his colleague, right? Because he has to shut his mouth. Ironically, the person he’s trying to kill is that person’s hope. Do you understand?”

“I think you’re making the explanation too complicated.”

“Should I explain it again?”

“I’m smart, so I understand well.”

“What is it? Are you really my son?”

While the Black Dragon suspiciously examined Rembrary, Aije put the black thread back into the air and looked closely at the white thread, saying,

“We can follow this thread.”

Rembrary understood what the demons were trying to do.

He had wondered how they would use Criminal B to find Criminal A. This was how they were going to do it.

“We’ll be able to catch the one who kidnapped you soon, kid.”

Aije smiled brightly and stroked the thread with his finger.

“Let’s go.”

Aije got up first, as if they didn’t need to wait for the owner of hope to move.

* * *

The group moved quickly.

So quickly that by the time Rembrary fell asleep on the Black Dragon’s back and woke up, Criminal A had already been caught.

Criminal A had been hiding nearby.

Rembrary looked around Criminal A’s hideout and asked,

“Did you catch everyone?”

“Yeah. Are you awake? Do you want to get down?”

“No. The ride is comfortable.”

Rembrary only peeked out over the Black Dragon’s shoulder and looked at Criminal A.

“I really don’t know anything!”

Criminal A was protesting, his face scratched, scraped, and bruised all over.

But the injuries didn’t seem recent.

Kneeling on the floor with his hands tied behind his back, he hadn’t seen Rembrary yet because he was hidden by the Black Dragon, so he shouted.

“I really didn’t kidnap that prince! I don’t even know where that prince is! I’m just going to say what I saw and heard! That prince went to the demons on his own!”

It seemed he had already been questioned by the two demons before Rembrary woke up.

The Black Dragon glanced at Rembrary. Aije kicked Criminal A.

“Stop lying and think carefully. You guys kidnapped the child and dropped him off a cliff, right?”

“We had to take that prince alive, so why would we do that? That prince went to the demons!”

“You said you didn’t kidnap the prince a minute ago. Who were you going to take him to alive?”

“!”

“Your story is changing?”

“That’s… of course, I was going to take the prince back to where he was lost. That’s what I meant.”

Criminal A had insisted on not lying and running away among his colleagues. But now that the situation was like this, it seemed he would say anything.

He didn’t even seem to know that the people in front of him were demons.

Rembrary shook the Black Dragon’s shoulder slightly.

“Let me down.”

It was very quiet, so Criminal A stopped making excuses and flinched.

The Black Dragon put Rembrary down on the floor.

Rembrary stood on the floor with the sloth, came in front of the Black Dragon, and looked at Criminal A.

The criminal, who had been shouting, ‘That prince went to the demons on his own,’ became completely silent when he saw Rembrary.

He looked at Rembrary with disbelief, then widened his eyes and looked back and forth between the two demons.

“This… what is this…?”

Then Criminal A muttered to Rembrary, tearfully.

“Your Highness… how are you here…?”

“I know your face.”

“Yes?”

“You’re Patch 5.”

“Yes?”

Rembrary went closer to Criminal A, put his hand on the wound on his forehead, and tried to send divine power.

But Criminal A was not healed. He only made painful noises.

*He’s also an illusion.*

Rembrary, who had been planning to make Criminal A confess with his ability, clicked his tongue and stepped back when he realized the opponent was an illusion.

“What did you do?”

Rembrary only shrugged at the Black Dragon, who asked quietly.

In any case, with the prince he had kidnapped standing in front of him, Criminal A could no longer insist that he had never kidnapped the prince. He just stared with a troubled face.

After a long time, Criminal A finally confessed.

“…That’s right. We kidnapped Your Highness. So what do you want to do now? Arrest me?”

Aije commanded indifferently.

“No. Confess.”

“What?”

“Confess to the kidnapping, to deliberately slandering him when you thought the prince was dead, and so on.”

Criminal A looked back and forth between the three with trembling eyes.

The fire lion was watching, baring its teeth fiercely and growling, as if it was getting angry.

Perhaps the lion was scarier than Aije and the Black Dragon, who looked like just handsome people. Criminal A quickly lowered his eyes and muttered.

“That’s not easy. If I do that, my colleagues will try to kill me too….”

At that time.

“Tsk.”

The Black Dragon sighed and bit his thumb. A chilling sound was heard, and blood flowed down his thumb.

As Criminal A blankly watched, the Black Dragon approached, grabbed his chin, opened his mouth, and began to drip his blood.

“Ugh!”

Criminal A was horrified and struggled, but the blood continued to flow into his mouth and down his throat.

The Black Dragon released his chin, and Criminal A shouted, grinding his teeth.

“What are you doing!”

The Black Dragon smiled and explained.

“I gave you poison.”

“Poison…! Lies! Human blood can’t be poison! You crazy psycho―”

“We never said we were human, did we?”

Criminal A, who had been cursing, flinched.

He blinked, then widened his eyes and looked up at the Black Dragon, as if he was finally guessing the other’s identity.

“N, no way….”

“We’re the demons you’ve been barking about so much.”

“Ah!”

“We were living quietly, but suddenly humans kept calling our names, so I wondered what was going on and came out to see.”

“!”

“After investigating, it turned out that you and your gang were the culprits.”

“That can’t be….”

“Confess. That way, we can feel comfortable and go back to our original world. The poison I gave you is a poison that kills you if you lie, so you have to confess to save your life.”

* * *

He reluctantly said he understood, but Criminal A’s face was pale throughout the return trip.

Even so, he kept looking at Rembrary.

Rembrary was holding the sloth in one arm and grabbing the lion’s mane with the other. Whenever he felt a gaze, he looked at Criminal A.

Whenever Rembrary made eye contact, Criminal A quickly closed his mouth and turned his head, as if he had looked at a corpse.

Shin Jo-un, the sloth, kept looking back and forth between Criminal A and Rembrary, but Rembrary didn’t show any particular change in expression, so it was difficult to know how he was reacting.

Finally, the group arrived at the mansion where Criminal A and his colleagues had lied to the prince.

“You wait here.”

The Black Dragon and Aije initially tried to take Rembrary back with them, but they changed their minds, booked an inn nearby, and told Rembrary to wait there.

“It would be nice if things were resolved right away. Just in case.”

“Okay.”

“Don’t sneak out this time.”

After the group left, he was going to follow them if the choice appeared, but this time it didn’t.

So Rembrary quietly stayed in the room, brushing the fur of Shin Jo-un the sloth and the fire lion, waiting for them to return.

How long had it been? He had finished brushing and was rolling around when the door burst open, and the Black Dragon and Aije came in with grim faces.

It was obvious that something hadn’t gone well.

“What happened?”

When he asked, Aije immediately picked up Rembrary and said.

“That human. He lied and died.”

The Black Dragon clicked his tongue.

“I thought he would die even if he confessed. Or he didn’t believe that blood was poison.”

Aije said, suppressing his anger.

“I’m angry… I want to cause a riot.”

“Then the situation will only get worse. Don’t cause a riot. You’ve been patient and come this far, right?”

“They’re putting what they did on us! I really hate humans! They’re two-faced, cunning, and full of empty words, and they’re more vicious than anyone else―!”

“The kid is listening.”

“…….”

Aije kept huffing and puffing, with no trace of the calm he had shown when they first met, but fortunately, he managed to get out without any trouble thanks to the Black Dragon’s persuasion.

The group immediately returned to the Demon Realm.

When they went to the front of the Demon King’s castle, the Demon King was standing with his hands behind his back, looking up at the top of the high castle.

Hearing the sound, he turned around, found Rembrary, raised his eyebrows, and asked.

“If things went well, weren’t you supposed to leave the child there? Did it not go well?”

Only then did Rembrary realize why Aije and the Black Dragon, who had clearly received the order to ‘bring Criminal A here,’ had taken him to the prince’s mansion at the scene.

When Rembrary said he would follow, they had another meeting and changed their plans.

Since Rembrary was going to follow anyway, they decided to just return him home if things went well.

The Black Dragon clicked his tongue and explained.

“I tried to find the criminal and make him confess, but in the end, he chose to lie and die because he was going to die anyway. When they saw him spitting out blood while talking, they made a fuss saying that the demons had really touched him, so I came back.”

The Demon King looked at Rembrary with an unreadable expression. It wasn’t cold or distant. He looked a little sad.

He stared at Rembrary with that expression for a long time.

The Demon King took a step towards Rembrary, stroked his head, and muttered.

“Poor child. You’re just like me.”

Soon after, the Demon King bent down slightly, made eye contact, and asked seriously.

“Baby. You’re smart, so you know the situation, right?”

“Of course.”

“I know what hardships you’ll go through if you go back like this, but I can’t bring myself to send you back any more. So I’m going to ask you, child. Will you live here with us?”

As soon as he received that question, a choice appeared before his eyes.

―Answer that you can’t

―Answer that you will

―Ask for help with revenge

Rembrary, seeing the unusually sparkling choices, realized that this choice was the mission of this dungeon.