Chapter 7

Sensing Eui-rim’s horrified skepticism, Hae-gun’s visible eye crinkled with mischievous delight. As if he found genuine thrill in flustering a powerless, low-ranking healer, he looked thoroughly amused.

He’s lived through more than enough battles. How can he be this childish?

When Eui-rim voiced his dismay through stubborn silence, Hae-gun asked with a slight pout, “What? You don’t want to come find me?”

Unable to conceal his exasperation, Eui-rim replied, “You won’t even remember a single word of this, Hunter Seo. I’m worried that even if I risk my neck to reach you, your security team will simply throw me out into the dirt.”

“I shared quite a few classified secrets with you tonight, didn’t I?” Hae-gun replied easily. “Simply reciting those will be more than enough to get my attention.”

“You don’t seriously expect me to convince an S-rank guild master with vague rumors, do you?” Eui-rim challenged.

This time as well, Hae-gun offered no definitive rebuttal. He merely tilted his face toward where Eui-rim sat, his lips curved in an enigmatic, unreadable smile.

Bzzzt

A violent burst of static tore through the subterranean chamber just as the silence thickened. Accompanied by the screech of shearing reality, Hae-gun’s silhouette wavered—and an instant later, a torrent of pitch-black blood erupted from his mouth.

“Guild Master Seo—kgh!” Eui-rim cried out in alarm.

A suffocating, vise-like agony seized Eui-rim’s throat in a fraction of a second. He had leaped to his feet in alarm at Hae-gun’s sudden hemorrhage, yet his own windpipe was violently clamped shut as though sealed by molten wax.

“Healer Kang Eui-rim,” a sandpaper-rough voice called through the roaring in his ears.

Gasping frantically for air that would not come, Eui-rim forced his blurring vision into focus. There sat Seo Hae-gun—his left arm now completely gone below the elbow—conducting the air with his remaining stump like a maestro, conjuring a colossal dome of hovering blood.

“If this succeeds,” Hae-gun said softly, “let us meet again on the other side.”

“Wait…!” Eui-rim choked out through his crushed windpipe.

“Don’t take too long to come find me,” Hae-gun whispered, the faint ghost of a smile lingering on his lips. “I’ll be truly hurt if you do.”

The voice followed Eui-rim into the encroaching void—still light, still teasing, yet fraying at the edges like ancient silk stretched beyond its breaking point.

Morphing into an expansive sphere, the crimson membrane enveloped Eui-rim in a single breath. He shoved outward with all his strength to tear through it, but his palms stung against the surface, his frantic struggles rebounding as though striking impenetrable, living rubber.

And the instant the multi-layered membrane flushed a blinding, incandescent crimson—

A pair of colossal, transcendental eyes materialized from the heart of the darkness.

Two titanic eyes, their irises swirling with kaleidoscopic, iridescent halos around pupils of endless sapphire.

Unlike the cyclopean gaze of the 〈Shadow〉, this entity possessed two eyes, radiating a breathtaking, celestial brilliance. Meeting that gaze did not tear his flesh to ribbons; rather, it cast an unknown, primordial luminescence that defied mortal description.

Eui-rim tried frantically to scream Seo Hae-gun’s name, but no sound escaped his paralyzed throat.

Only the terrifying sensation of being dragged down into an abyssal trench followed; the suffocating illusion of icy water rushing into his lungs as his oxygen vanished grew agonizingly violent.

When Eui-rim barely managed to turn his head, he saw Seo Hae-gun slumped on the floor, the man’s entire silhouette warping grotesquely. No. Was it his own failing vision distorting the image, or was reality itself bending? Though the interior of the blood membrane remained dry, phantom waters surged into his nose, ears, and throat, drowning his consciousness in sheer panic.

Splat!

The wet, heavy sound of meat slapping against stone echoed through the chamber just as his consciousness began to unravel.

Splat!

Beyond his blurred, blood-filled vision, the severed remains of Seo Hae-gun’s body were adhering to the outer wall of the crimson sphere.

Is this a nightmare? Or have I already fallen as the Seed’s next host, lost in the throes of a terminal hallucination?

Before long, a seismic pulse akin to a war drum reverberated through heaven and earth. The membrane that had absorbed Hae-gun’s flesh began to contort and pulse in rhythmic cadence.

Thump

The surface of the sphere flushed darker than arterial blood, radiating a terrifying, primordial aura.

Thump

Eui-rim watched branch-like vascular threads crawl across the translucent surface. He witnessed the perfect sphere elongate and twist into jagged ridges, with bizarre, pillar-like vessels thrusting upward from its crown.

Thump

And at last, Eui-rim witnessed the membrane that had devoured Seo Hae-gun’s flesh reborn as a colossal, beating heart.

[No]

Then, a screech of grinding metal tore through the cosmos like lightning. The celestial pair of kaleidoscopic eyes vanished in an instant, and from the surrounding abyss, eyelids peeled open one after another like theatre curtains.

The black Seed that had conquered this sector.

The ravenous fragments of the Shadow were opening their countless eyes.

[Cannot… give… to it]

[Must not… let… through]

[De vour it… be fore it climbs… the sca les]

[De vour it devour it de vour it devour it devour it devour it de vour it devour it devour it de vour it devour it de vour it]

[De vour it!]

Thump. Thump. Thump!

Beneath the gaze of hundreds, thousands of unblinking eyes, the grotesque heart that had swallowed Seo Hae-gun thrashed violently. As the irises of the cyclopean eyes flushed a virulent blood-red, a colossal maw tore through the ceiling, plunging straight toward Eui-rim.

[De vour it!]

Crash!

Serrated fangs clamped down onto the shuddering heart in a fraction of a second.

Crunch!

The instant its iron-hard surface ruptured, excruciating agony tore through the healer’s own flesh.

A silent scream choked in Eui-rim’s throat, strangled before it could breach his lips. Leaving the cascading stares behind, the younger man surrendered to the encroaching dark, letting himself drift into the abyss.

Scritch. Scritch. Scritch

The first sensation to return was an agonizing, needle-sharp prickling. Like swarms of insects gnawing relentlessly at his flesh, the pain jolted the young healer’s consciousness awake with the shock of a live wire.

Eui-rim snapped his eyes open, only for a smudged world to greet him. Like a camera lens shattered out of focus, his vision rippled and warped, everything swaying like reflections across turbulent water.

“Cough, hack!”

He had simply drawn a shallow breath, yet a violent fit of coughing tore from his chest. With every desperate gasp for air, searing agony flared through his core, as if his internal organs had caught fire.

How much time has passed?

Somewhere between an eternity and a heartbeat, the fog finally parted. Light surged in, and the fractured contours of his surroundings began to coalesce.

“…Ha.”

Reflexively glancing down, the healer froze in petrified disbelief.

The limbs that should have been planted on solid ground were nowhere to be found.

It was not just his legs. Every area where the pain had throbbed with particular ferocity had vanished completely, leaving his mutilated torso suspended in midair. This was no simple phantom pain. As though genuinely devoured by vermin, everything below his waist—along with his left arm and the flank of his torso—had been torn away.

He was too stunned to even feel terror. As if caustic bleach had been poured across his mind, his thoughts went stark white. Eui-rim looked himself over from head to toe. More baffling than the gruesome mutilation itself was how he could possibly still be conscious in such a state.

No. Am I even truly alive to begin with?

As his mind grew clearer, the grating pain gradually subsided. The gnawing sensation itself remained, yet it no longer burned with the unbearable intensity of his first awakening.

There is no way this is reality. Otherwise, there is no chance I could be this calm after losing both legs and an arm. Look at this. Not a single drop of blood is spilling. Right now, I’m just crumbling away like dust, perpetually scattered and endlessly devoured…

“If it succeeds, let us meet again then.”

The swirling storm of panic came to an abrupt halt at the sudden recollection of that voice. Blinking several times, Eui-rim heard the spoken words continue with unhurried ease, clearer now than before.

“Don’t take too long to come find me. I’ll be hurt if you do.”

Seo Hae-gun

The mere recollection of the name made the healer’s stomach churn. In grotesque contrast to that cheerful farewell, the visceral horror of the Guild Master’s demise brought sour bile rising in Eui-rim’s throat.

Chest heaving, Eui-rim gritted his teeth against the memory. Whenever he closed his eyes, the horrors burned into his retinas flared back to life: Seo Hae-gun’s exploding body and the pulsing heart-cocoon of blood felt as though they were screaming at him never to forget, carving the nightmare into his soul.

Did his body explode because he cast the skill? Were those colossal eyes I saw at the very end—that dazzling pair of eyes—proof of the skill’s activation?

Then did Seo Hae-gun know from the beginning that he would die like that?

Dizziness flared violently at the sudden realization. Finally understanding why Hae-gun had delayed casting the skill while speaking so lightly of needing ‘a bit of resolve’ made the healer’s chest tighten until he could scarcely breathe.

A skill cast by offering oneself as a sacrifice. Could something like that even be packaged under the simple label of a ‘skill’?

From the moment the cyclopean Shadow opened its eye until now, Seo Hae-gun must have weighed his own death against a nebulous possibility. Every time he met someone capable of self-healing, he must have agonized. And the moment his cherished comrades died, he must have regretted his long hesitation.