Chapter 141: Zone 10 Boss (3)

The world around me turned black.

I had entered the Mental World.

The instant I arrived, I froze time in the outside world.

After confirming that my severed left arm had returned to normal, I raised my head.

The Demon King was standing right beside me.

“You really do cling stubbornly to life, I’ll give you that. Watching you scrape and claw your way into yet another chance to survive.”

His Majesty the Demon King spoke with his hands clasped behind his back, sounding almost impressed despite himself.

I turned the surrounding darkness white.

“Not yet. The real search starts now.”

I had barely managed to drag the boss into the Mental World.

Nothing more.

Outside, reality remained frozen at the very brink of death.

If I couldn’t find a way out of this here, that would truly be the end.

This was my last One Coin.

But...

‘Where is she?’

The boss was nowhere to be seen.

I definitely touched her and pulled her in.

Don’t tell me it failed...

“...!”

There she was.

I spotted a figure approaching, a sword hanging loosely from one hand.

The Zone 10 boss.

The sword I had stored in Subspace only moments ago was back in her grip.

Of course it was.

This wasn’t the real world.

The Demon King chuckled and cracked his knuckles as he loosened his hands.

“How fortunate. Here, I shall teach that wretch the true difference between our stations.”

Apparently, the Demon King was irritated as well that he hadn’t been able to finish the fight simply because he ran out of time.

I kept my eyes fixed on the boss.

But...

Would killing her here even accomplish anything?

This was the Mental World.

Dying in a dream and somehow dying in reality along with it?

That made no sense.

While I was thinking it over, the Demon King and the boss began round two.

KABOOOOM!

Blue and white energies tangled together and collided.

“Agh...!”

Standing nearby, I was caught in the blast and blown to pieces.

Then my shredded body immediately returned to normal.

See?

Even if I die here, I’m perfectly fine.

For the moment, I tried stepping in to help the Demon King.

I already knew that simply being in the Mental World didn’t mean everything would bend to my will.

Naturally, telling the boss to ‘die’ didn’t make her die, and merely wishing for greater combat ability didn’t make me much stronger than I was in reality...

Was my imagination lacking?

Or was there really some difference in status here, like the Demon King had mentioned before?

Even in the Mental World, there was {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} no room for me to interfere in a fight between those two monsters.

Amid the clash of their overwhelming powers, my body was tossed around like a kite in a typhoon, torn apart and restored over and over again.

What the hell am I even doing?

Eventually, I gave up trying to follow them and simply watched.

The Demon King was clearly the one with the upper hand.

By now, he seemed to have killed the boss four or five times already...

Of course, the boss simply revived and resumed fighting every time.

Just like I did.

The concept of death didn’t exist here.

Shit.

Then what the hell am I supposed to do?

No matter how many times the boss died in this place, nothing in reality would change.

KRA-KA-KA-KRACK!

Impaled from head to toe by spears of ice, the boss suffered what must have been her tenth death.

I shouted toward the Demon King.

“This isn’t reality! Killing her here seems pointless! Let’s find another way!”

The Demon King answered without looking back.

“Unnecessary. Do you believe the absence of a physical body means I am incapable of killing?”

“What? But she keeps coming back, doesn’t she?”

“Which is why I shall continue killing her until her very soul breaks.”

For a moment, I had no idea what he meant.

Then I more or less understood.

The Demon King was capable of torturing someone by freezing their soul.

In other words, he could directly attack the soul itself.

This was the Mental World, so the boss standing before us had to be a soul.

Or a mental body.

Something along those lines, anyway.

So what he meant was that he would keep attacking until the boss’s mind finally broke.

And that was when it happened.

The boss shattered the ice spears, revived once again, and opened her mouth.

“My soul shall never break, servant of evil.”

Hearing her voice, I flinched in surprise.

...What?

She can talk?

The boss raised her sword once more and glared at the Demon King.

For some reason, she now seemed more alive than she had in reality, where she’d carried that eerie, ghostlike presence.

“I know not what vile sorcery you have wrought, but I shall gladly keep you company. In a world without flesh, we need only fight for eternity.”

“Hoo. So you finally deign to speak.”

The Demon King moved to attack again.

“Wait!”

I hurriedly stepped in front of him.

He scowled at me.

“What?”

“Let me try talking to her first...”

If the boss could actually be reasoned with, that changed everything.

Besides, there was no guarantee the Demon King’s method would actually work.

Rather than endlessly fighting, shouldn’t we at least try talking first?

As I held the Demon King back, the boss spoke again.

This time, to me.

“Why does one such as you keep company with a being like that?”

“...Me?”

I pointed at myself.

The boss’s blue eyes glowed faintly as they settled on me.

“You possess a noble soul. Surely you have saved countless lives and made the world a better place, for your soul to shine so brightly.”

“Ah, yes... thank you?”

The boss turned her gaze back toward the Demon King.

“But that being is evil incarnate. How many lives must those hands have taken to amass such karma? Hundreds of millions, at the very least.”

I turned to look at the Demon King.

...Is that true?

“What are you looking at?”

“Nothing.”

Well, he was a Demon King.

It wasn’t exactly surprising.

Anyway, that wasn’t important right now.

“What’s your name?”

“...Kim Seo-hyeon.”

“Kim Seo-hyeon. I know not what circumstances bind you, but I beg of you—do not submit yourself to evil.”

The boss looked at me with a firm, unwavering gaze.

“I am the Hero Beldihard. Upon my life and honor, if there is any way in which I may aid you, I shall.”

I could only stare at her in bewilderment.

What even is this?

Help me?

Lady, you were trying to kill me less than a minute ago...

In any case, the Zone 10 boss was now perfectly capable of holding a conversation.

And she didn’t seem particularly hostile toward me, either.

‘...Let’s think about this.’

This Zone 10 boss—

No.

This Hero.

Something about her felt similar to the Demon King.

Or perhaps the Sage.

The very fact that a Zone Boss could hold a normal conversation was strange in itself.

The Zone 10 field had been strange too.

And then there were the Fallen roaming around as ordinary monsters...

Either way, the fact that she was inside the Tower meant she had come from a world the Tower had destroyed.

“Um, Beldihard-ssi?”

“Speak.”

“Do you happen to know what the Tower is?”

The Hero tilted her head.

“What is the intent behind that question? If you mean the architectural structure, then of course I know what a tower is.”

“No, not that. The Tower you climb. The one divided into Easy, Normal, Hard, and Nightmare difficulties. Climbers. Ninety-nine percent of humanity being wiped out.”

She showed no sign of understanding.

So unlike the Demon King and the Sage, she wasn’t free from the Tower’s influence.

“I do not know what you are speaking of.”

I thought for a moment before speaking again.

“Would you hear me out for a while?”

If she couldn’t perceive the Tower, then simply talking about it would leave us speaking past each other forever.

Maybe explaining everything would trigger some of her memories.

So I told her.

What the Tower was.

Who I was.

What situation we were currently in.

That her world had most likely been destroyed and consumed by the Tower.

That she was now serving as one of its boss monsters.

Everything.

When I finally finished, the Hero stared at me with bewildered eyes.

She might well have thought I was insane.

“What on earth are you saying? I was merely on my way to strike down the Demon King when I encountered you.”

The Demon King?

I reflexively turned toward the Demon King beside me.

“A different world from mine.”

He said it flatly.

I turned back to the Hero.

“...You said you were on your way to defeat the Demon King. Then what about those horned humanoid monsters? Those were the Fallen.”

“Horned humanoid monsters? I have never seen such creatures.”

“Think carefully. Doesn’t anything feel strange to you? Even when you were fighting us earlier, you didn’t seem to be in your right mind the way you are now.”

“My mind is perfectly sound.”

This was going nowhere.

I crossed my arms and thought for a moment.

Then I spoke.

“In that case, how about retracing your memories slowly from the very beginning? I’d like you to tell me the story of your life up until now, Hero.”

“See here, Kim Seo-hyeon. I tell you again, my mind is—”

I looked straight into the Hero’s eyes.

“Hero, do I look insane to you?”

“Honestly, yes.”

“Fine. Nothing I can do about that. But do I look like I’m lying to deceive you right now? You were the one who said I had a shining soul.”

The Hero shook her head.

“You do not.”

“Then could you humor me for a little while? I’m doing this because I genuinely want to help you.”

The Hero studied me for a moment before reluctantly nodding.

“Very well. But ask as many times as you wish. My mind is sound beyond any doubt.”

The reason I wanted to hear the Hero’s life story was simple.

I still had no idea how to break out of this situation.

But if I learned more about the Hero, perhaps I could find some kind of clue.

And if she slowly retraced her own memories, maybe she would notice the inconsistencies herself.

The Demon King clicked his tongue.

“What manner of nonsense is this?”

“Just watch for now.”

Then the space around us transformed.

A scene resembling a medieval village appeared.

Hm?

“I was raised in an orphanage from a very young age.”

The Hero stood beside me and began telling her story.

Among the children laughing and running around the orphanage yard, I spotted a young girl with the same hair and eye color as the Hero.

So she’s just going to show me directly?

Despite this being her first time in the Mental World, the Hero manipulated the scenery as naturally as breathing.

It looked every bit as real as anything the Demon King could create.

“I was told that my parents died in the Southern Imperial War, but I was too young to remember their faces. The director took in orphans with nowhere else to go, children like me, and cared for us as though we were her own. She gladly became a parent to every one of us.”

“She sounds like a good person.”

“She was. Had the Priests never come that day, I too would have grown up an ordinary person, helping the director with her work and caring for the younger children at the orphanage.”

Time flowed forward in an instant.

The young girl who would one day become the Hero grew a little older.