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"You\'re awake," Oh Kang-Woo said as he sat beside Si-Hun.

Si-Hun slowly opened his eyes and looked at Kang-Woo.

“Hyung… nim?”

He looked up at Kang-Woo as if he\'d seen a ghost.

Tsk. Kang-Woo clicked his tongue.

"Yeah. It\'s me, man."

"H-Hyung-nim! Kurgh!"

Si-Hun quickly stood up, but he collapsed again while grabbing his stomach. Kang-Woo grabbed Si-Hun and lowered him to the floor. Then Kang-Woo lightly hit Si-Hun\'s head with his hand.

"Stay still. Your wounds aren\'t fully healed yet."

Kang-Woo\'s Authority of Regeneration couldn\'t heal someone completely. It could heal superficial wounds, but it couldn\'t heal deep wounds and fatigue.

Si-Hun had received such severe damage that it wouldn\'t have been strange if he had died. There was no way he was going to be able to move right away.

"Why did you keep fighting like a dumbass? You should\'ve run away when you had the chance and stalled for time. Seol-Ah said she would contact me, didn\'t she?"

"...I\'m sorry."

"Haaa," Kang-Woo sighed.

\'Well, I\'m sure it would\'ve been almost impossible to escape.\'

After all, there were three enemies. There was a high chance that Si-Hun hadn\'t spotted an opportunity to run away. Despite knowing that, Kang-Woo couldn\'t help but get angry.

"M-More importantly, what about the demons?" Si-Hun asked.

"Two died, and one managed to escape."

Well, Kang-Woo had let him escape.

"Ah." Si-Hun\'s expression darkened, and he lowered his head. "Yet again, I—"

"I think I know what you\'re trying to say. It\'s cringy, so shut up."

"…"

"Don\'t put on a pity show by blaming yourself. It\'s pathetic."

"A-Ahem."

"You\'re so goddamn dramatic all by yourself. I would think you\'re the most miserable person in the world if I didn\'t know any better."

"H-Hyung-nim!"

Si-Hun\'s face flushed with embarrassment.

Kang-Woo laughed out loud.

"So, stop with the solo drama and keep lying down."

"Y-You kind of seem different from usual, hyung-nim," Si-Hun groaned at Kang-Woo\'s hard-hitting remarks.

Kang-Woo smirked. "Do I?"

It was true that he\'d been harsher with Si-Hun than usual… but this was closer to his normal manner of speech.

"Kang-Woo!"

"Kang-Woo hyung-nim! Are you okay?!"

Han Seol-Ah, Kang Tae-Soo, and Echidna ran toward him.

"Hm?" Kang-Woo murmured.

He tilted his head in confusion when he saw a middle-aged blonde woman running alongside them while holding Gaia in her arms. She was Grace McCubbin.

"How did you…" Kang-Woo uttered in surprise.

"I called her," someone answered.

Kang-Woo turned his head toward the direction of the voice.

The one who had spoken was Tian Wuchen. He was with Cha Yeon-Joo, Baek Hwa-Yeon, and Tian Suyan—the monster subjugation group.

"Are you hurt?" Wuchen asked as he walked toward Si-Hun.

Si-Hun tried to stand up, but he fell back down again while groaning in pain.

Wuchen placed his hand on top of Si-Hun\'s body and remarked, "You have severe internal damage."

He closed his eyes and infused Qi into Si-Hun\'s body. Si-Hun\'s expression, which was distorted in pain, became more relaxed.

Kang-Woo turned his head from Wuchen, who was healing Si-Hun, to Yeon-Joo.

"You guys called Gaia and Grace?" he asked.

"Yeah. To be exact, Wuchen ahjussi[1] called them."

"Hm." Kang-Woo nodded.

Guardians was an organization that kept itself hidden, but most of the World Rankers and the chief executives of each country knew about their existence. Wuchen was a chief executive in China as well as a World Ranker, so it made sense that he had a way to contact Gaia.

"K-Kang-Woo, I heard that demons attacked Si-Hun. Is he okay?" Gaia asked in a worried voice.

She was blind, so she had no way of knowing what state Si-Hun was in.

Kang-Woo nodded and replied, "Fortunately, he\'s gotten a lot better now. I defeated the demons."

"Hmm, but where are the demon corpses?" Grace questioned.

"They turned to dust and scattered away after I killed them."

"Ah. Come to think of it, that happened with Oriax before," Yeon-Joo said, recalling what had happened in the past.

Grace tilted her head. "Really? That didn\'t happen when I killed a demon."

There was no doubt it hadn\'t. A demon didn\'t turn to dust and disappear after they died. Oriax had disappeared only because Kang-Woo had used the Authority of Predation.

\'But…\'

Kang-Woo calmly said, "It probably varies from demon to demon. After all, we still don\'t know much about them."

"That\'s true."

It had only been a few years since they began fighting demons and didn\'t know much about them. So, the others did not question it even when Kang-Woo made up an excuse.

\'It\'s so easy to set things up.\'

No matter what happened, he could just say whatever he wanted about demons, and it would be taken as fact.

"More importantly, Mr. Tian Wuchen, seeing how demons have attacked this village…" Gaia said.

"Yes. It seems like the traces we found today were of the Demon Cult," Wuchen answered while nodding.

Gaia sighed.

Kang-Woo\'s eyes lit up. "You found traces?"

"We did. Before I heard the news that Sword Dragon was attacked, I found traces that seemed to belong to the Demon Cult.”

Gaia added, "I\'m actually here because I heard from Mr. Tian Wuchen that he had found traces of the Demon Cult, and while we were on our way here…"

"We heard that Sword Dragon had been attacked."

"…"

Kang-Woo narrowed his eyes.

\'Then they didn\'t come here for Si-Hun.\'

He had found it weird that they\'d arrived so quickly, but it made sense if they had already been on their way before they heard the news.

\'That aside…\'

"What traces did you find?" Kang-Woo asked Wuchen.

"I found the summoning magic circle that the Demon Cult uses."

"There were those weird monsters that we had fought back in Manchuria too," Yeon-Joo said as she approached Kang-Woo. She handed him the item in her hand. "We found this in the center of the magic circle."

"This is…"

It was a black stake in the shape of an inverted cross.

Kang-Woo\'s expression hardened.

\'A Rift Seed.\'

The stake was a Rift Seed, the item that the Demon Cult had used to weaken the Gaia System.

\'Judging from its condition, it hasn\'t been long since it had been sown.\'

It was unnaturally clean. There was no way that Yeon-Joo would have gone out of her way to clean the stake, which meant that there were Demon Cultists around the area that had sown it not long before Yeon-Joo found it.

"This must be the reason for the rise in monster attacks lately," Yeon-Joo speculated.

"The monsters around here were far more aggressive than usual," Hwa-Yeon added while nodding.

Kang-Woo remained silent.

Si-Hun propped himself up and surmised, "In that case, the Demon Cult must have been behind the village attack as well."

"I think so too, Protector Kim Si-Hun," Gaia said.

\'No.\'

Kang-Woo shook his head. He thought of the three demons he\'d just faced—Malphas, Phenex, and Halphas.

\'They have nothing to do with the Demon Cult.\'

They were Lucifer\'s pawns, who had ventured to Earth from the continent of Aernor. They had no relation whatsoever to the Demon Cult on Earth.

\'But…\'

The Rift Seeds, demonic beasts, and magic summoning circles—it was unlikely that Lucifer\'s pawns had been involved with those things.

Kang-Woo\'s eyes shone.

\'If that\'s the case…\'

On the pretext that these two incidents were completely unrelated, there was only one possible explanation.

\'The Demon Cult has taken action.\'

Lucifer\'s pawns had been nothing but uninvited guests whose arrival had coincided with the Demon Cult\'s activities. It was probably the Demon Cult that had turned monsters into demonic beasts and made them attack the indigenous people.

The tips of Kang-Woo\'s mouth curved up slightly.

\'Holy shit! They\'ve gone and done it!\'

Kang-Woo had been waiting for Lucifer to take the bait. Meanwhile, the Demon Cult had gotten onto the fishing boat on their own and put things into motion, as if to make sure he didn\'t get bored while waiting.

"Seeing that there wasn\'t only one summoning magic circle… we should consider the possibility of another mass summoning."

\'All hail the Demon Cuuuuult!\'

Kang-Woo clenched his hands into fists and grinned.

He had been wondering how he could reach 130 points in his Demonic Energy stat, but the Demon Cult had given him the perfect solution. He felt like worshiping the Demon Cult.

\'Where have you been all this time, good sirs?!\'

It had been about time they made their move anyway, as they hadn\'t taken any action after sowing the Rift Seeds.

Thanks to their immaculate timing, Kang-Woo was so happy that he was desperately resisting the urge to dance on the spot. He was just one step away from opening his Eighth Awakening Trait, so he couldn\'t be happier upon learning that the Demon Cult was preparing for another mass summoning.

\'I\'ve been waiting for you.\'

He\'d been worried that maybe the Demon Cult had gone under after failing in their Rift Seed plan, but it turned out that they hadn\'t given up.

Kang-Woo knew that they wouldn\'t give up. He believed that they would rise once again after overcoming all kinds of hardships and make sure this world was engulfed in darkness.

\'I knew you could do it, my good sirs of the Demon Cult!!\'

He didn\'t know which or how many demons they would summon. Nevertheless, aside from the princes of Hell, there was no demon who could be a match for Kang-Woo now.

\'And the chance of it being a prince is almost nonexistent.\'

The magic circle that Yeon-Joo and the others had found was similar to the one the Demon Cult had used to summon Oriax. The seven princes of Hell were no longer in the Nine Hells, so there was no way they would be able to call upon a prince through a summoning.

There was a chance that Lucifer, who had fallen into the continent of Aernor, or princes in other dimensions could be summoned. However, every demon and demonic beast that the Demon Cult had summoned so far had been from the Nine Hells, so that was highly unlikely.

That meant the only thing he had to do was freely enjoy the meal that the Demon Cult chefs had prepared for him.

\'I won\'t ever forget the taste of this delicious lunch box that the Demon Cult has prepared for me…\'

The grace of the Demon Cult had completely melted away any sense of reverence he had felt for Tirion a few moments ago.

\'Fucking cheapskate.\'

The excruciating amount of pain he had felt when he absorbed Tirion\'s power stood out even among the ten millennia\'s worth of painful experiences.

After all that bullcrap Tirion had said about devoting oneself to the light, he hadn\'t even been able to recognize a true hero that was doing his absolute best to save the world. Why couldn\'t the light give him as many things as the Demon Cult did?

Kang-Woo felt like crying. He thought that his past self was pathetic for having lamented over Tirion\'s death.

\'The one I should be worshiping isn\'t the light.\'

It was not the time to be praising trash like Reynald.

Kang-Woo tightened his fists and stretched his hands up to the sky. Darkness was slowly filling the sky as the sun set.

\'From now on, I will be worshiping the Demon Cult!\'

The light has betrayed me!

1. Ahjussi is how a young individual addresses a middle-aged man. ☜