Holy Idol [EN]: Chapter 629

◈ 629. Why is he acting like this?

Rembrary realized that he had only cleared five of the number 1 dungeon.

He was confused because he had entered the same dungeon multiple times, but he had clearly only passed five entrances.

But the pillar had already appeared.

‘Why?’

Noir tilted his head, looking at the puzzled Rembrary.

He seemed to find it strange that Rembrary was suddenly counting numbers while talking.

‘Is he counting manually?’

He thought about telling him to clear one more, but Rembrary stopped himself.

In any case, the important thing was destroying the pillar, not clearing the dungeon. It was useless to clear a hundred dungeons if he couldn’t destroy a single pillar.

Having made his decision, Rembrary immediately prepared to suppress Noir with Divine Majesty instead of pointing out his mistake.

But unexpectedly, before being hit by Divine Majesty, Noir immediately avoided his gaze. He knew that Divine Majesty was activated when eyes met, so he avoided it.

Just as Rembrary was about to unleash Divine Majesty, something rough covered Rembrary’s mouth.

A voice came from behind, not Noir’s.

“You can’t use Divine Majesty like this.”

“!”

Whatever was covering Rembrary’s mouth prevented him from even turning his head. When he lowered his eyes slightly to check, he saw a golden net.

As he frowned at the sudden appearance and suppression, Noir, who was standing opposite him, smiled gleefully and said.

“You’re not the only one with companions, High Priest.”

It seemed that Noir wasn’t the only one waiting to protect this pillar.

Rembrary’s brow furrowed at Noir’s taunt. He was right. Although they had been appearing one by one, there were also many demons here.

It was Rembrary’s own carelessness that made him think the demons would come out so easily this time as well.

‘Who is behind me?’

Rembrary hoped it wasn’t Klotz, and tried to use his strength to remove what was blocking his mouth, but the person behind him grabbed Rembrary’s entire body.

Rembrary tried to flip the person holding him.

“Oh, my.”

However, the person holding Rembrary from behind only staggered and didn’t easily succumb to Rembrary.

“High Priest, you’re strong.”

Even while admiring him as if he was impressed, Rembrary could tell who was behind him as he continued to listen to the voice.

It was Klotz of all people. An opponent who was immune to Divine Majesty.

Recognizing this, Rembrary changed direction and this time activated the Divine Halo behind his head.

“Ugh!”

Klotz was blinded by the bright light that appeared right in front of him, and his strength weakened.

Rembrary threw Klotz again with a body slam, removed the net that was blocking his mouth, and suppressed Noir with Divine Majesty.

“How dare you.”

Perhaps Noir didn’t expect Rembrary to turn on the halo and blind Klotz, but this time Noir was caught by Divine Majesty without being able to avoid his gaze, and staggered.

Noir seemed to be more vulnerable to Divine Majesty than Klotz.

Rembrary didn’t stop there and tried to throw a shoe imbued with divine power at Klotz, but a mirror appeared between Klotz and him, taking the hit and shattering. Klotz safely dodged to the side.

He tried to aim at that side again, but as soon as Rembrary used Divine Majesty with his eyes, a mirror suddenly appeared in front of Rembrary’s face this time.

Rembrary clicked his tongue as he received the Divine Majesty he had unleashed, reflected back at him by the mirror.

He didn’t feel fear like other people, but being cut off from his vision was not a good situation during battle.

‘These two are tricky.’

It would be nice to knock one of them out first, Rembrary thought, breaking the mirror with his forehead and rushing towards Noir in front of him.

However, Klotz’s net grabbed his ankle, and Rembrary fell face down on the red stone floor, hitting his forehead.

When he got up and looked around, this place was no longer inside the dungeon.

It was the clearing in front of entrance 1-6, and reporters were gathered around like sheep, waiting for Rembrary to come out.

When Rembrary suddenly appeared in front of the door, they were surprised at first, but later they all started running towards Rembrary.

“Mr. Rembrary, did you succeed in this dungeon as well?”

“Is there only one pillar left now?”

“Mr. Rembrary, how was the fight with the demons?”

The reporters shouted out the questions they had prepared in advance and eagerly extended their microphones towards Rembrary.

Rembrary waved his hand a couple of times and walked forward without answering.

As they were swept away and followed him, the reporters noticed something strange later.

Jang Taeri, who had entered with Rembrary, didn’t come out, the pillar didn’t collapse, and the people trapped in the dungeon didn’t come out either.

It was a clearly different scene from the phenomena that had appeared every time Rembrary had destroyed a dungeon pillar before.

“Mr. Rembrary, what about Jang Taeri?”

“Did you fail to destroy the pillar this time?”

“Mr. Rembrary, did you lose to the demons this time?”

“Where is Jang Taeri?”

Rembrary was walking briskly, but when Jang Taeri’s name came up, his gentle expression hardened.

Since the demons had deliberately put figure skating forward as a competitive sport in the dungeon instead of fighting, he wouldn’t die even if he lost.

However, contrary to expectations, Rembrary had failed to destroy the pillar in one go, so Jang Taeri had to be trapped inside the dungeon longer.

The reporters, seeing Rembrary’s expression, seemed to think, ‘This is it,’ and continued to shout Jang Taeri’s name.

“Did you abandon Jang Taeri?”

“Isn’t Jang Taeri in trouble like Woo Sungwoo?”

The expression ‘abandon’ made Rembrary lose all desire to wave to them, so he ignored them and walked away, calling Shin Joowoon on his cell phone.

Fortunately, Shin Joowoon answered the phone this time.

-Hello?

“Anchovy [a common Korean nickname, often used playfully], it’s me. Come to dungeon 1-6, no, 1-5.”

Rembrary, assuming that he would come, hung up the phone and continued walking towards the location of dungeon 1-5.

He couldn’t leave Jang Taeri for long, so he was thinking of going back into the dungeon and fighting Noir again.

However, it was difficult to re-enter because the reporters were camped out in front of dungeon 1-6, and he wanted to sort out his thoughts while walking a bit, so he decided to re-enter dungeon 1-5.

As he trudged along, Rembrary pondered.

‘Noir and Klotz will attack together again this time? How do I deal with it if they come out like that again?’

They were preventing Rembrary from using Divine Majesty, and also avoiding directly touching Rembrary to avoid receiving the divine power strongly.

He could defeat weak enemies without touching the divine power, but Klotz and Noir were the Demon King’s closest aides.

In particular, Klotz could even withstand Divine Majesty, so he couldn’t win by sending a little divine power.

‘I thought the demons wanted me to destroy the pillar. Was I wrong?’

No, they had clearly shown such intentions blatantly during the previous two pillars.

But this time, two demons attacked at the same time to prevent him from destroying the pillar.

‘Did the plan change?’

It seemed like a tightly woven plan to change completely in just a few days.

Wasn’t it because Rembrary decided to destroy the pillar because that was the only way to minimize the damage, not because there was a way to overturn the plan? But why suddenly?

* * *

The reporters who were chasing Rembrary eventually gave up on their coverage and put down their cameras and microphones as Rembrary continued to walk without saying anything.

Some followed Rembrary in cars, but they couldn’t figure out where the destination was, and they eventually stopped chasing Rembrary because of the rampaging monsters.

But this time, everyone had plenty to write about. Rembrary had entered the dungeon with Aegis’s CEO Jang Taeri and came out alone.

It was Rembrary’s first failure after easily breaking the pillars, and what’s more, his companion had disappeared in the process.

No one knew whether he had abandoned his companion or sacrificed him, as Rembrary remained silent.

Many reporters wrote only the facts, suppressing their personal feelings, but some reporters took this opportunity to speculate that this failure was the price for Rembrary’s arrogance, and that Jang Taeri was a pitiful companion whom Rembrary had abandoned to save himself, and released sensational breaking news.

[Breaking News] Rembrary, abandoning Jang Taeri and alone…??!

[Breaking News] Rembrary, failed this time

[Breaking News] Rembrary, failed even after sacrificing his companion

Some of the reporters, who were already angry that Rembrary had avoided coverage every time he destroyed a pillar, were excited and wrote all sorts of speculative articles.

There were many articles that only stated the facts, but such articles were buried under sensational titles such as ‘Rembrary abandoned Jang Taeri and escaped from the dungeon alone. But he still failed to destroy the pillar this time.’

All of this happened while Rembrary was walking from the entrance of dungeon 1-6 to the entrance of 1-5.

However, Rembrary did not know about these events because he did not check the internet.

Rembrary just wanted to go inside dungeon 1-5 and destroy the pillar properly this time.

He knew that the same thing would happen again, but he couldn’t go back without trying one more time.

After walking such a long distance, Shin Joowoon was already waiting in front of dungeon 1-5 with his car parked.

Rembrary signaled Shin Joowoon to ‘wait there for a moment’ and walked towards the dungeon door.

He was worried that Shin Joowoon wouldn’t be able to stand it and would follow him in, but fortunately, Shin Joowoon waited quietly in the driver’s seat.

He was just watching the actions on this side and didn’t come out of the car.

He was relieved that he wanted to get the job done quickly, but Rembrary was puzzled by Shin Joowoon’s more passive behavior than usual.

‘Is Anchovy really not feeling well?’

While thinking, the door appeared right in front of him, and Rembrary turned the doorknob.

“……”

But the door wouldn’t open. He tried pushing and pulling, but the firmly closed door didn’t budge.

This was the first time this had happened. Hadn’t the door opened with just a slight pull of the doorknob before?

‘There’s definitely something fishy going on.’

The other doors would probably be in the same condition. Rembrary had no choice but to lower his hand. He would have to try again tomorrow or something.

Perhaps it was a system where he couldn’t retry for a few days once he failed to destroy the pillar.

‘The worst thing would be if I couldn’t enter dungeon 1 at all… I don’t know about this yet.’

Rembrary sighed, approached Shin Joowoon’s car, opened the passenger seat door, got in, and asked.

“Why didn’t you answer the phone yesterday?”

But Shin Joowoon didn’t answer right away.

The human who would normally ask all sorts of questions first was just staring at Rembrary with a frown on his face today.

“Anchovy?”

When he called him, wondering why he was acting like that, he asked back.

“Anchovy?”

Thinking that he didn’t like being called Anchovy for the first time, Rembrary shook his head.

“This is not the time to argue about that. There’s a problem.”

“Is that problem perhaps Taeri?”

“Yes. I went into the dungeon with Taeri instead of you. The demons played tricks and we both ended up in different dungeons. It would have been okay if I had destroyed the pillar right away. But I couldn’t destroy the pillar… Taeri is still inside the dungeon. So I tried to go back in, but I can’t enter the dungeon. What should I do?”

Rembrary sighed and looked at Shin Joowoon, and was puzzled to see him gripping the steering wheel tightly.

“Anchovy? Are you sick somewhere?”

Thinking that he was sick again, Rembrary grabbed Shin Joowoon’s arm to send him divine power.

But as soon as his hand touched his clothes, he recoiled in disgust and slapped his arm away.

“?”