Chapter 147 - Black Palace – 2 (1/2)
Black Palace – 2
A few days had passed. The world was still rife with war, and the world’s population was declining at an unprecedented rate, but it still showed no signs of slowing down. The indiscriminate occurrence of dungeons had succeeded in giving some people a sense of crisis, but it wasn’t enough for just a few people to want to fix it. Rather, those people were prevented from dealing with the dungeons out of fear of a counterattack while they were busy.
Therefore, humans stood on the frontlines with weapons to kill each other and not the monsters. The great laws that they desperately held onto since the Great Fusion were broken. It was expected; humans would soon divide and quarrel unless there was some absolute strength to give them direction and force them to cooperate. However, many absolute powers had fallen into the elves’ embrace and took the power of a Chaos Soul, and thus were destroyed by Rebellion.
There were still such existences, such as myself or the warriors I met a while ago. But neither of us had any intention of mingling with those bickering humans. We had more important things to fight for. So, in the end, humanity came to walk a path, only a razor’s edge away from destruction. Would they stop? Would they feel a sense of crisis by the time their population dipped below one billion? Who could say?
Humans can’t think of turning back, even when they know they are wrong.
“Brother?”
“Yeah?” My sister’s call brought me back to reality. I was taking in the sight of the ruins before me after we were finished with the dungeon, waiting for the record to finish spinning. However, the needle’s rotation was starting to take longer to slow down, which meant only one thing.
“I think this next one will be a little far away. This area seemed to have been taken care of.”
“Brother, would you like to take a break first? You look exhausted.”
“Do you need one?”
“I’m okay.”
“I’m alright too. When we’re done, we can rest a little bit.”
“When will it end?” The dungeon absorption was going smoothly thanks to the addition of the three teams made up of two Rebellion members, and three additional teams made up of higher-level monsters. With the dungeon we just cleared, it was likely we had just finished up with Asia. It was a bit slower than I expected at first, but we were still rushing through them. It was just that the number of dungeons that appeared was beyond my imagination.
“What about that heroic uncle?”
“They’re going pretty fast, thanks to Solas.” That self-proclaimed warrior looked quite young to me, but I suppose to her, anyone older got the title of uncle.
“No, it has become difficult to judge a person by appearance since the Great Fusion. Even your body has changed so much from your level rising, then you also have class changes or evolution…”
“Right.”
“So, except for my brother, all men are uncles and all women aside from Jia are aunts.” I was afraid of the iron conviction with which my sister declared this.
“Come on, let’s go quickly, brother.”
“Okay.” There were very few survivors in the ruins. Most of them were injured or dying, a horrific group of humans that we paid little mind to. We were getting used to such sights by now. Ignoring them, we opened the gate to our next dungeon.
The moment we entered, a strange feeling came over me.
“…” We didn’t stop moving; it was just a momentary feeling like something was off. My sister grabbed onto my arm, looking up at me.
“What’s wrong, brother?”
“Hmm…” I spread out a dozen blackmines for our safety before placed my hand on one of the dungeon walls.
“I’ve seen this before.”
“Well, it’s not weird to see similar environments given how many dungeons we’ve been through.”
“Hm…I don’t think that’s it.” The corridors, walls, and ceilings looked like obsidian. The air flowing through the corridor we were in felt too familiar.
[Gyahahahaha!]
A squid-like monster popped up from the floor made of crystal as I was lost in thought. It was an advanced monster, just shy of the upper system.
“I remember this place.” A few of the blackmines rushed him as if waiting for the monster to appear.
“This is a Black Palace.”
“The Black Palace? In Seongbuk-gu?”
“No.”
“There’s two of them?”
“There are at least seven of them.” I awoke in district 7, after all. I increased the number of blackmines around us. Unlike the 7th district, this one had high-level monsters right from the get-go.
“Seven?!”
“Yes, how many times do I need to say it?” I originally intended to find other areas of the Black Palace, yet I hadn’t found a single one despite all of the dungeons we had cleared. Eventually, given all that had happened so far, I forgot all about it. But now it was showing up once more.
“The Black Palace…where you first opened your eyes…”
“Not this one, though. Maybe there are other fallen here.” I muttered bitterly as I recalled my days as a goblin. More than that, I remembered the voice of my poor partner, Fate, who died without reason.
“…No.”
“Brother?”