Chapter 40
CLANG! CLANG!
The sound of spears and swords colliding echoed everywhere.
Urgh…!
AAAAARGH!
Only a few exchanges had taken place.
Yet cries of pain were already erupting throughout the museum.
Danforth and the Imperial Expedition members quickly lost their tension after seeing how weak the believers were compared to what they had expected.
The stuffed animals and wax figures were troublesome because they did not stay dead no matter how many times they were killed.
Other than that, however, they were barely a threat.
If the expedition had fought this group immediately after entering the Dungeon, it probably would have been dangerous.
Fighting an unknown enemy was exhausting by itself.
At that time, they had not yet adapted to such situations.
But after clearing ten floors,
they had grown considerably.
None of them had deliberately chosen to experience one terrible event after another.
Several memories remained so powerful that they still returned without warning and tormented them.
Even so, overcoming something was still overcoming it.
Growth was still growth.
They had lost many things.
That did not make what they had gained meaningless.
The expedition members did not even flinch against the weak believers who had only ever acted as watchers under their Apostle’s protection.
Even the strange displays with mysterious powers failed to overwhelm them.
Yohan had not personally entered the fight.
Even so, the opening battle was completely one sided in favor of the outsiders.
Rogers glared at the believers with an expression of disbelief.
“Why are you struggling against barely forty humans?! Kill them immediately! Risk your lives and bring me their heads!”
“Ugh…”
Yohan shook his head while watching the Apostle scream without even properly using mental control.
“He seems fairly talented at creating things… but apparently he can’t use his other abilities at all.”
Every time the battle continued, the enemy forces visibly shrank.
General Kalkelak and the two mages tilted their heads at how overwhelmingly favorable the situation had become.
“…Looks like we don’t even need to participate.”
“Hmm.”
“It’s too early to decide that, but compared to what we saw on the ninth and tenth floors… this is almost cute.”
They were not actively intervening.
But now that battle had begun, none of them intended to be careless.
The two mages shattered several displays that continued attacking without tiring.
Then they froze the pieces.
The general jumped toward the approaching tree giant.
He thrust his Aura covered sword forward.
SHNK!
“HRAAAAAH!”
CRUNCH!
The Aura in the sword took the shape of a crescent.
It cleanly severed the tree giant’s enormous left wrist.
BOOM!
Seeing that overwhelming martial power, Rogers swallowed quietly.
Among the hundreds of exhibits, the tree giant possessed one of the highest levels of combat ability.
Its regeneration was excellent.
An attack like that would not defeat it immediately.
But Rogers could not relax.
The tree giant was an artificial lifeform created by modifying and transforming a spirit.
Once the mana stored inside it was completely exhausted, it would collapse helplessly.
Rogers gritted his teeth as a suffocating sensation slowly crept toward him from behind.
I’ll use everything I can. As long as I can tear those bastards apart…!
Black blood flowed from his bright red eyes.
Soon,
they began appearing one by one.
Strange and powerful beings that had been sleeping inside the Adults Only Area.
BOOM.
BOOM.
BOOM…
Even in an area filled with clashing blades and exploding magic, those footsteps sounded strangely clear.
THUD! THUD! THUD! THUD!
After the footsteps came the repeated sound of something hard striking the walls.
The noise echoed throughout the museum like a heartbeat.
Soon, that heartbeat became cracks spreading through the walls.
With a thunderous crash, they entered the general exhibition area.
“……”
“Those are…”
Most stood on two legs.
Some crawled on four.
A rare few possessed six legs.
Their bodies were covered in dirty pale fur.
Horns grew from their faces.
The tips had been sharpened like spearheads.
They released shrill cries that resembled those of apes, but were somehow different.
They were inhabitants of the Dreamlands.
Legendary man eaters.
Gnophkeh.
“Ooh! Ooh! UAAAAH!”
They ignored every obstacle around them.
With savage screams, they charged toward the expedition members.
Seeing more than ten Gnophkeh enter the battle, Yohan smiled in satisfaction.
“Good… Now this is a fight.”
BANG! BOOM! BOOOOM!
Yohan stood directly in front of the first beast to charge him.
He took every punch head on.
A moment later, identical impacts struck the Gnophkeh’s entire body.
But the creature did not move at all.
Yohan jumped above its head.
He lightly grabbed its skull and tried to make the blood inside its body run wild.
However, the blood refused to break through the creature’s body.
“…Oh?”
“OOH! UAAAH!”
BOOOOM!
Another Gnophkeh jumped at Yohan.
It crushed him underneath its body.
The rest continued advancing toward the expedition members protected by a defensive barrier.
[What strange skin. Blood Reversal doesn’t work. Neither does the impact curse. Its Aura doesn’t seem particularly powerful either.]
Creatures from the Dreamlands are all strange.
Of course, that did not mean they had no weaknesses.
While the creature pinned him down and repeatedly stomped over him, Yohan released part of a tentacle over its thick stomach.
The moment freezing cold poured from the tentacle,
Yohan gathered Aura and mana into his hand.
He made them rotate like a saw blade.
When the creature briefly stopped kicking,
Yohan drove his hand deep into its abdomen.
“OOOH?!”
“Temperature is their weakness.”
The blood that had refused to move earlier now poured outside along Yohan’s hand.
The Gnophkeh screamed and thrashed violently.
Its cry was powerful enough to rupture Yohan’s eardrums at such close range.
Yohan did not care.
He calmly continued his work.
The creature died soon afterward.
Covered in the filthy blood of the snow mountain creature, Yohan changed that blood into arrows.
Then he fired them throughout the surrounding believers.
“B, block them!”
“…How?”
“Barrier, idiot! What are you doing?!”
“…They’re going straight through!”
“Then dodge! Just dodge first!”
The believers who failed to block or avoid the rain of arrows died the moment an arrowhead touched them.
Their own blood ran wild inside their bodies.
The museum became increasingly chaotic.
The expedition members were fighting well against the remaining eleven Gnophkeh.
General Kalkelak continued cutting apart the endlessly regenerating tree giant.
Yohan raised his head toward a pitch black plant floating in the air.
“A Black Lotus…?”
Black Lotus.
A plant impossible to cultivate without special environmental conditions.
It was found only in Hyperborea, around the early and middle sections of the twentieth floors.
Its main characteristic was simple.
By pouring in only a small amount of mana, it could create hallucinations across a wide area.
It was even possible to make only enemies experience them.
The mana had probably come from Wilhelm Rogers.
It would not have been strange for every expedition member to fall into hallucinations.
But,
CLANG! CLAAANG!
BOOM! BOOOM!
Whether Yohan examined the flow of battle, their expressions, or their mana circulation,
not a single person seemed affected.
No… That’s not it.
More accurately,
they were affected by the hallucinations.
They were simply responding too naturally.
Almost as if they were not hallucinating at all.
[Hmm… I think this might be because of you.]
The goddess licked her lips while watching them with interest.
[You showed them too many shocking things from the beginning. Their eyes and brains are already contaminated. Unless they see something extremely strange, they probably won’t panic anymore.]
……
[If I’d known this would happen, maybe I should have shown them my naked body earlier. Watching mortals struggle after going insane from the elegance of this beautiful body would have been entertaining. Hehehehehe.]
……But doesn’t that mean this is your fault? You’re the one who contaminated them, not me.
[It’s your fault. I wouldn’t have appeared if you hadn’t ordered me to.]
…I suppose.
The more he listened, the more that strangely seemed to make sense.
Yohan tilted his head.
While Yohan and the goddess exchanged their brief conversation, the expedition members continued performing brilliantly.
They defeated or drove back a large number of enemies.
Nearly seventy percent of the more than one hundred believers had already died.
Half of the Gnophkeh, the enemy’s strongest fighters, were dead as well.
Even though the Black Lotus was still working, the expedition members advanced without hesitation.
The tree giant had finally exhausted all the mana inside its body.
It could no longer regenerate.
Now it could only focus on defense.
“Kgh…!”
One plan after another was being destroyed.
A chill ran down Rogers’s spine.
Through the broken wall, the curtain surrounding the Adults Only Area had disappeared.
From there, he could feel His anger entering his mind.
You call yourself an Apostle, yet even after using the Authority I granted you, this is all you can accomplish?
The criticism hammered inside Rogers’s mind.
BOOM.
BOOM.
BOOM…
The Gnophkeh, his final fighting force, were killed one after another.
“IA! IAAAAAA!”
At that moment, Rogers lost control.
He pointed at both Yohan and Rhan Tegoth at the same time.
Then he screamed.
“This is because You chose that madman instead of me! Because You betrayed my absolute faith! I was prepared to free You and live forever as Your slave! I offered You countless sacrifices! Countless acts of faith! I built countless idols for You! So why would You abandon me and choose some man You have never even known?!”
“OH! OHHH!”
“OOOOOOOH!”
“My great Rhan Tegoth! Why?!”
Rogers screamed in anger and poured magic toward Yohan.
Yohan did not even flinch.
“Haa… haa…!”
Yohan walked directly toward Rogers, whose veins bulged as he panted heavily.
He brought his face close.
“You were already too late the moment you needed to prepare yourself, Wilhelm Rogers.”
“……”
“Do you really think those Great Old Ones care about a mortal’s determination or resolve? Not at all. Absolute, blind trust. That alone is enough. If you possess that, there is no need to prepare yourself for anything. Resolve becomes unnecessary and meaningless. Am I wrong?”
“……”
“An Apostle who merely decided to believe… I’ve been seeing that kind of trash quite often lately.”
“RAAAAAARGH! YOHAN BLAKE! I won’t let you steal it! This power! This position! This Authority!”
Rogers pulled a dagger from his clothes and charged at Yohan again.
He did not even manage to stab more than a few times.
Yohan knocked him away.
Then he caught Rogers by the collar.
Yohan dragged him toward the Adults Only Area.
“Well… that is something your god should decide.”
The cloth had already been removed.
Rhan Tegoth’s true body was completely exposed.
Yohan dragged Wilhelm Rogers before Him.
Then he shoved the Apostle forward.
“Let’s test it.”
At once,
the two front pincers began moving.
They caught Rogers.
The tube like organs covering Rhan Tegoth’s body like fur rose upward.
They pierced Rogers’s entire body.
Then they began drinking his blood.
It was a shocking sight.
The battlefield around them contained dead believers, exhibits that could no longer regenerate, unconscious enemies, and people still fighting.
Yet even that could not compare.
Rogers’s entire body, beginning with his face, rapidly dried out.
It was like watching a freshly dead corpse turn into a mummy in real time.
Rogers desperately denied the fact that he had become the sacrifice.
Saliva sprayed from his mouth.
“A, ah! AAAAAH! I am Your slave and Your priest! The blood meant for You belongs to them, not me! Do not abandon me! Ia! Ia! Great Rhan Tegoth! Release me! I will soon free You from Your eternal hunger! Please! Please!”
As the feeding continued,
his desperate struggles gradually weakened.
Using the last of his strength, Rogers screamed.
Just as the Deep Ones on the tenth floor had cried out to Dagon.
“Zha yei! Zha yei! Ika ha o yi!”
“Rhan Tegoth Cthulhu fhtagn ei! Ei! Ei! Rhan Tegoth! Rhan Tegoth! Rhan… Tegoth…”
Those were Wilhelm Rogers’s final words.
After finishing His meal, Rhan Tegoth stared at Yohan for a moment.
An enormous amount of mana poured from His body.
Then He returned to His original position and hardened into the form of a statue once more.
“……”
Yohan bent one arm and lowered his head.
It was his own version of showing respect.
Then he picked up the cloth lying on the floor.
The master of the museum was hidden behind the veil once again.
Until the very end,
Rhan Tegoth continued sending ominous mana toward Yohan as a warning.
