I Became the Tyrant of a Defense Game [EN]: Chapter 397

《Who is the real ‘you’, anyway?》

“……”

《If you can’t clearly define that, there’s no reason to leave this place and go outside. Your own purpose, definition, and wish will all scatter like a mirage.》

Salome shrugged and spun around.

《Even if you struggle to crawl back to the surface, there’s only suffering outside anyway.》

“……”

《In that case, just come into my arms. At least I’ll let you have a happy dream.》

Salome giggled and moved away.

《Since we’ve fallen to the bottom together, maybe plummeting all the way down… wouldn’t be such a bad ending, right?》

“……”

《I’ll be waiting. Forever…》

Salome disappeared, leaving behind only a faint chuckle.

I snorted, glaring in the direction she had gone. Salome’s offer was nonsense, not worth listening to.

…However.

It was true that she had read my memories. She knew exactly what I was struggling with.

I was afraid.

The long road ahead of me. The heavy burden I had to carry.

There would be many more fierce battles, and I would have to continue bearing the deaths of my comrades and subordinates. Just like I had been doing, or even more so.

“…Ugh.”

When I was on the road, carrying my burden, I could at least endure it through inertia. But now that I had been pushed off the road and fallen, I couldn’t even bring myself to get up.

Can I do it again?

Can I go all the way to the end?

– Is that really ‘your’ wish?

Was what I was trying to achieve at the end of this long road really what I wanted?

Just in case, just in case.

If, as Salome said, that wish was different from what I wanted now.

If I gave up on that wish…

Wouldn’t there be no need to fight so hard?

– Breaking a flag is very difficult at first, but after the first time, it becomes too easy. Because it’s already broken.

It was then.

Suddenly, the words of the Fairy Queen Skuld echoed softly in my mind.

– Once you start compromising, you’ll keep bending endlessly. Eventually, you’ll live on your knees. Like me.

“……”

I gritted my teeth, picked up another stone from the ground, and threw it at the sewer again.

Clack!

The stone, which missed badly, didn’t even go into the sewer and bounced out. Damn it, I clicked my tongue.

***

District 10, the Farm.

《I need it…》

Walking through his territory, the Plague Legion Commander, Raven, growled in a seething voice.

《I need stronger poison, a more deadly plague…》

Just half a day ago, this place, which had been richly cultivated by its master, had already turned into a living hell.

The fruit trees that bore fruit, the grains that drooped with ears, the young livestock that grew in the barns…

All were dying and rotting.

The poison and plague that Raven spewed devoured his farm like a swarm of locusts. But even as he watched the farm disappear without leaving even ruins, Raven didn’t stop.

《It’s not enough, this isn’t enough. This won’t do…!》

Raven stopped in front of the ‘field’ where he had planted the seeds of the plague.

The strongest of all kinds of races he had captured had been rotting alive, each becoming a different breeding ground for the plague.

Swish!

Raven reached out and absorbed all the plagues.

But.

《I need more, more, more, more…!》

It’s not enough.

It’s not even close.

This won’t do. I need a stronger curse, a stronger desecration.

Raven let out a desperate scream.

《I need more to kill him…!》

The Plague Legion is incredibly powerful when dealing with a large number of people.

The real plague that Raven’s main body emits, and the phantom pains that his clones emit.

The pain that spreads without even being able to distinguish what is real and what is fake is more effective the larger the opposing army. Death spreads, fear intensifies, and the few survivors who survive that hell spread the plague to other humans again—an endless chain of despair.

Among all the hellish forces resurrected in the Lake Kingdom, no monster is as powerful against a large number of enemies as the Plague Legion.

However, its weakness is also clear.

Whether it’s a plague or phantom pain, it can’t cut off the opponent’s breath in an instant. It can make the opponent suffer for a long time, but it doesn’t lead to immediate death.

Therefore, it is vulnerable to elites strong enough to withstand the plague.

Even in his previous life, Raven had always struggled against a small number of elite superhumans. They would get infected with the plague but endure it with potions or recovery magic and charge at him. They would eventually turn into a puddle of blood, but they often managed to put a knife to Raven’s throat.

After repeating this, Raven was eventually defeated in his previous life. By one human.

Originally a doctor from the Lake Kingdom, Raven was exiled from the kingdom after his research into corruption. He then became a plague himself and swept through the world.

And he marched triumphantly into his hometown. He intended to show those arrogant magicians who had ignored him what he was made of.

And what blocked him was a single magician.

That magician was the head of the research institute who led the research on the panacea ‘Bando(蟠桃)’ [a mythical peach of immortality] that was cultivated in the Lake Kingdom at the time. He stood alone in front of Raven after eating a prototype of Bando.

And Raven crumbled before him.

None of the poisons, plagues, or curses he possessed could penetrate the blessing that surrounded that human.

Raven, who had rotted and killed countless lives across the continent, had to disappear without being able to defeat just one human.

《How frustrating! How frustrating! How frustrating! How frustrating!》

Tears made of poison streamed down Raven’s eyes as he recalled that time.

And as time passed—Raven was resurrected in the darkness of this Lake Kingdom again.

The resurrected Raven first examined the production route of the panacea and found the farm. It was already a mess of ruins, but many rare panaceas were still dormant there.

Raven restored the farm. If he could re-cultivate the panacea that had defeated him from the beginning, he would be able to figure out a way to break through that immunity.

Thus—Raven had been cultivating the old panacea and harvesting new plagues at the same time, operating this farm.

But what was the point of those hundreds of years?

Raven’s plague still couldn’t penetrate that one peach that the leading scholars and magicians of the Lake Kingdom had created after their research—and that peach was absurdly stolen, and another human became invincible again.

《It can’t be in vain.》

Raven muttered, still feeling thirsty even after harvesting all the life and plague from the farm.

《It can’t be in vain, it can’t be in vain, it can’t be in vain—I, this plague lord, can’t possibly fail to overcome the research of magicians who died hundreds of years ago.》

I will show them.

That the corrupted will of an individual can crush any noble collective intelligence.

The fire that burns the world always, always—starts from a single match.

《I will prove it…!》

To cover the whole world with his plague.

So Raven decided to take a gamble.

Raven raised his hand up high. And then,

Thud!

He plunged it into his chest.

He grabbed his own core in his hand, and then—

Clang…!

He shattered it into pieces with his own will.

Whoosh-!

Raven’s body scattered in all directions.

From the moment he became a plague lord, his body had completely rotted and decayed, leaving no trace. His body was just a collection of plague carriers gathered around his core and shaped by magic.

And now that the core was broken, all the crows, insects, field mice, and fog that made up his body scattered in all directions…

Immediately after, those carriers rushed back.

They clung to Raven’s shattered core and devoured it ferociously.

It was the core of one of the world’s most notorious incarnations of evil. The soul was powerful, and the creatures instinctively struggled to consume it.

《Eat.》

Raven’s thoughts murmured as he was being gnawed at by countless insects, soul and all.

《Eat, eat, eat—and scatter even more finely.》

In a voice that was getting weaker and weaker.

《…With this, I will transcend to the next stage…》

Soon, Raven’s voice disappeared.

His core disappeared without a trace into the bellies of the insects.

A wave of black, murky monstrosities filled the place that was once a farm. Crows, insects, mice, and fog swelled, burst, and began to multiply endlessly.

And…

***

It’s been a few days since I’ve been in this ‘bottom’.

No, is it really a few days? Is it a day? Or three days? Or a week?

When you’re in a place like this, your sense of time becomes dull. I did nothing but throw stones in front of the sewer, and I’ve been killing time meaninglessly like that for a few days now.

I was about to take out one of the fruits Salome had gotten before because I was hungry.

“……”

“……”

I made eye contact with one of the residents of this bottom village.

It was a grimy little kid. Like everyone else in this village, he had long, messy hair and wore worn-out clothes.

The kid was staring intently at the fruit in my hand.

“Hmm…”

I can’t just ignore him and eat it, I’m not that shameless. I held up the fruit.

“Do you want to eat it?”

Nod.

The kid nodded. I split the soft fruit in half and threw half to the kid.

“Eat it.”

Thwack!

The kid caught the fruit I threw and swallowed it in one bite. No… well, chew it a little. You’ll get indigestion.

“Do you have more?”

The kid asked boldly. I laughed in disbelief.

“I do, but… I can’t give it to you for free.”

“There’s nothing in this village worth paying for.”

“…It does seem that way.”

It’s a poor village, the kind that would be used for promotional material by some overseas famine relief foundation.

I gave up on getting anything in return and just tore the fruit into small pieces and threw them one by one. The kid caught them well. He’s so skinny, but he’s good at it.

After feeding the kid a few more fruits, I decided to just ask him some questions.

“What do you eat to live in a place like this?”

“We don’t eat.”

“What?”

“We can live without eating.”

I blinked, not understanding the kid’s answer, so he explained further.

“Because the people in our village are also cursed with ‘eternal life’.”

“Ah…”

“We don’t die even if we don’t eat, we don’t die even if we don’t sleep, we don’t die even if we don’t breathe. We just, live.”

“Then, does that mean you’ve been living here… ever since the Lake Kingdom became like this?”

“Yeah.”

The kid chuckled.

“Even though I look like this, I’m much older than you. You can call me hyung [older brother].”

Oh my god.

I was dumbfounded and stared blankly at this kid… no, this kid hyung, and then I asked.

“If you’re cursed with eternal life, does that mean you’re all citizens of the Lake Kingdom?”

“No. We’re not citizens.”

The kid hyung shrugged.

“We’re slaves.”

“……”

“The Lake Kingdom had a three-tiered class system. Royalty. Citizens. And, slaves.”

A bitter smile appeared on the kid hyung’s lips.

“Slaves aren’t people. Since we’re not people, we can’t be citizens. We were called ‘non-citizens’.”

“……”

“Non-citizens don’t have names, and since we don’t have names, we can’t leave anything behind.”

The Lake Kingdom, the greatest magical nation of its time, which was said to have been destroyed 500 years ago.

What kind of deformed structure was this place built on? I swallowed hard.

“We lived outside the citizen residential area, doing menial tasks. All the dirty work that the noble citizens couldn’t handle was our responsibility.”

“……”

“Anyway, the inside of the Lake Kingdom was a good place to live. The people in our village worked hard because they wanted to go inside. Because they wanted to become people. Because they wanted to get names.”

The kid hyung said that and shrugged.

“To get ‘citizenship’.”

“Citizenship…?”

“It was the dream of non-citizens like us. There was a rumor that if you paid a huge amount of gold, they would raise your status. So we all worked hard to save money.”

Ha ha—The kid hyung let out a dry laugh and looked up.

“But now that we’ve come this far, what’s the point…?”

“……”

“Still, the adults in the village are saving money. Even after falling to this bottom, they are still holding onto their gold coins and piling them up in the village vault. They believe that if they become people, they can escape this hell.”

The kid hyung chuckled as he munched on the last piece of fruit I gave him.

“While those ‘people’ are all having nightmares up there.”