Bel-Terza left behind a promise that he would remember, then vanished. Unlike his threatening arrival, his disappearance was over in an instant. Free at last from the crushing pressure on his body, Yuda turned around, dropped onto the stairs, and let out a long sigh. His whole body was drenched in sweat, more than he could remember in recent days.
Things had gotten seriously twisted.
He had thought Bel-Terza was someone who would never actually be summoned, so seeing him appear had left him at a loss for words. This was on a different level from the various events caused by him coming to this dungeon a few months early. In exchange for handing over a Fragment at some unknown point in the far future, he had obtained Bel-Terza’s blessing and a guaranteed descent. It was a one-sided deal he could not refuse, but with this, Yuda now carried the blessings of two of the Seven Monarchs.
‘Come to think of it, when does the First Monarch’s Blessing unseal?’
He had hit level 30 but never saw a message saying it had grown. Wondering when it would upgrade, he checked the skill and found that the rank had risen without him noticing.
Blessing of the First Monarch (Growth)] – Rank: B
You bear the blessing of Sian, First Monarch of the Demon Realm and ruler of space.
However, you lack the qualifications, so most of its power remains sealed.
-Rank C: Increases the rate at which you gain knowledge and experience.
-Rank B: Attack, movement, reaction, and recovery speed increase by 10%, Mana consumption decreases by 20%.
[Blessing of the Sixth Monarch] – Rank: S / Workmanship: Master
You bear the blessing of the Sixth Monarch of the Demon Realm, he who walks with death, Bel-Terza.
Even if death comes for you, you can rise again.
All abnormal statuses are removed, and Health and Mana are instantly restored by 50%.
However, because this power runs counter to the natural order, once it activates you must wait a full 30 days before it can trigger again.
[Descent of the Sixth Monarch, Bel-Terza] – Rank: SSS / Workmanship: Master
Summons Bel-Terza, Sixth Monarch of the Demon Realm, one time.
Once descended, he will aid you no matter the situation.
When this skill is activated, it is deleted.
Compared to the Sixth Monarch’s blessing that resurrected him from death, this might feel a bit plain, but there were still two more seals to break. Once all of it was unlocked, it would be worth looking forward to. The 20% reduction in Mana consumption did not hit that hard now, but things would change once he became a Sacred Sword wielder. Feeling some of the strength he had spent slowly return, Yuda rose to his feet.
‘Ah, Jeanne!’
He had completely forgotten about her because of Bel-Terza. Remembering how she had been flung into the wall, he hurried down the stairs. His legs nearly gave out for a moment and he almost tumbled down.
“Jeanne, are you okay?”
He rushed to her side, lifted her up and checked her condition. She must have hit the wall badly, because the back of her head was soaked in blood. Startled by the blood on his hand, Yuda hurriedly opened her status window, but the useless thing showed nothing beyond her stats, skills, and traits.
“Mmm…”
He patted her shoulder and called her name, but she only let out a groan and showed no sign of waking. Yuda quickly pulled a potion from his 〈Inventory〉. It was the fairly effective kind sold at the temple in Serenia Castle. He popped the cork and poured it straight onto the back of her head. Feeling that still might not be enough, he took out one of the two cores he had obtained on the altar and fed it to her.
The fragment was rough like glass, yet the moment it entered her mouth, a red glow flowed from it and it melted away. Maybe it was just his imagination, but her complexion looked a little better. Yuda could not leave her lying in this cavern, so he hoisted her onto his back and carried her out of the underground.
Retracing the path he had taken once already was very easy.
Once he left the underground, he searched the mansion for a bedroom. Climbing a dust-caked staircase, he soon found a well-kept room. The blanket was dusty, but when he pulled it back the sheets underneath were clean. He laid Jeanne on the bed, then took out a fresh cloth from his 〈Bag〉 and spread it over her. Walking to the window and pulling back the curtains, he saw that the rain had stopped.
The other dust in the room bothered him a little, yet it was not as if he could start cleaning right next to a resting patient at this hour, so after watching over her for a bit he stepped out.
The mansion’s magic lamps still burned bright, leaving nothing in darkness. The mansion’s owner, Count Jinmu, was dealt with, and no wraiths seemed to remain. It was time to gather whatever unclaimed loot was left.
First he went back down to the basement and searched Jinmu’s corpse. Unfortunately there was nothing worthwhile on the body with the severed head. All the clothes and accessories he wore were steeped in wraithly curses, unusable unless you were a necromancer. The experimental tools on the second basement floor were all ordinary items that anyone could commission with enough money.
Why is there nothing useful?
He combed through the first, second, and third basement floors. Aside from the books on the first basement level, there was nothing worth taking. Letting out a hollow sigh, Yuda left the underground and decided to search the rest of the mansion. Thankfully, another study on the first floor of the house offered a decent reward.
In one of the desk drawers deeper in the study he found a few gemstones and roughly twenty gold coins. On the desk itself, though covered in dust, lay a high-quality fountain pen that was clearly the work of a master craftsman.
The last drawer was locked and would not open. Convinced that meant something was inside, Yuda pried it open by force. With a splintering sensation, the drawer jerked loose. Inside lay a notebook bound in leather and beside it a pendant of a design he had never seen before.
A red ruby had been rounded into a diamond-like shape, and around it silver twisted like a Möbius strip. After giving the pendant a quick once-over, he set it by the desk and checked the notebook first. There was no title on the cover which made it look like a simple journal.
“A diary, huh.”
[xx.06.25]
[The days are starting to get hot. The wraiths show no sign of tiring, chattering noisily at my side.]
[They are already dead, yet I still want to kill them all over again.]
[xx.07.21]
[I realized I would need a secret place if I was to revive my wife and son.]
[Is trusting the wraiths really the right thing to do.]
[xx.11.11]
[I summoned the artisans of the Mantium Kingdom who had completed this mansion once before. I commissioned them to build a passage down to a third basement floor.]
[They seemed troubled at first, but soon nodded and agreed to begin the work next week.]
[xx.11.17]
[The wraiths press me. They tell me to hurry and begin the ritual to summon Lord Bel-Terza.]
[For a brief moment, they almost took my body.]
[One of them laughs at me as I write this.]
[It tells me that as long as I “do things properly,” they will never take my body again.]
Flipping through the pages, it was clear this was Count Jinmu’s diary.
Some dates were skipped, yet he wrote often enough that the entries piled up. Losing control to the wraiths and slaughtering the mansion’s staff, leaving the Baekje Empire for the Kingdom of Calypso, finishing construction on the estate, dreaming of his dead wife and son. Most days were summarized in two or three lines of mundane detail. It was all roughly what Yuda already knew.
Scanning through, he found one entry with an unusually long gap before it.
[xx.04.21]
[I do not know how long it has been since the wraiths took my body.]
[Suddenly the wraiths fled and handed my body back to me, and when I came to my senses, a woman was standing before me.]
[She was beautiful. The rare violet color of her hair was especially striking.]
[She looked down on me with arrogant eyes, and whatever she had done, none of the wraiths nearby dared show themselves.]
[She called herself a 〈Fragment Retriever〉 and said she would help me keep the wraiths from taking my body, in exchange for me working for her.]
[But I was already too old and tired to accept her offer, with no will left to go on.]
[I refused her offer. Even so, she tossed me a pendant and said that if I ever felt like joining an organization called the 〈Fragment Retriever〉, I should seek her out, then she vanished.]
[What kind of organization is it? As the name suggests, a group that collects the famous Fragments?]
[…Yet the moment has already passed, so there is no need to dwell on it.]
Fragment Retriever?
He dug through his memory, but he had never heard the name before. His brow furrowed. He had no recollection of ever creating such a group, nor of handing off that sort of setting to someone else like with Arhil. They had never appeared in the story at all. Yuda’s eyes shifted to the pendant.
──────────────────────
[Name: Fragment Retriever]
[Grade: Unique]
[Type: Pendant]
[Durability: 30/30]
[Effect]
Unknown.
[Description]
An item that marks you as a member of some organization called the Fragment Retrievers.
-Sealed (Passive): It is certainly a special object. However, it is sealed and currently nothing more than an ordinary pendant.
──────────────────────
He had hoped the item details might give him some hint, but there was nothing beyond that brief description and its effect. All he really gained was the pendant’s shape. Deciding to remember it for later, he slipped it into his 〈Inventory〉. He had only meant to clear one dungeon, yet he had ended up with far too many things to worry about.
He searched the mansion a bit more but, sadly, found nothing else of value.
Even just scoring some codes would have been nice. Pushing that regret aside, he returned to the bedroom where Jeanne slept. She was still out cold.
Listening to her quiet breathing as she slept, Yuda brought over a chair and sat down by the bed. Outside the window, the sky had already grown dark. He folded his arms and watched, waiting to see when she would wake, and before he knew it, his head drooped and he fell asleep himself.
———= Author’s Note ———=
1) Some of you said Bel-Terza’s lines were hard to read last chapter, so I removed the “-” separators. I originally added them to give his dialogue a unique feel, but once the lines got longer it really did become hard to read. It was pointless, so I fixed it.
2) Wow.
In my dream I got some kind of power and was hunting zombies, but they just would not die. Their heads were dangling, but they still would not go down, so I ran up to the 5th floor of an apartment building. Then some GM-looking guy shows up and goes, “Ah, sorry. I set the parameters wrong. Don’t worry, you know this is a dream, right? I’ll restart it.”
Then I turned into D.Va and basically filmed Train to Busan. Dear lord.
In the first dream, the zombies crawled. In the second, they were leaping around like Winston and flying all over the place, tough as raid bosses. Thankfully D.Va’s mech must not have had any defense budget corruption, because it was broken in the best way.
3) I think the reason my stamina is so shot is not “that thing,” but Lost Ark. Playing LoA wrecked my daily rhythm. I kept taking a nap in the evening because I was tired, then waking up to write, upload, then going back to sleep, over and over.
