Hoooong
Hansoo pushed Sofía away as he saw the fist flying towards her and took her spot instead.
Kudududuk
Hansoo raised his spear, plunged it into the ground in front of him and then made a defensive posture as he poured the energy from the Demonic Dragon’s Reinforcement onto the Thousand Soldiers Armor.
The fist of the Garde-barong, who had turned a color of oxidized bronze and reached a height of 6m, smashed onto the top of the spear.
Boom!
The Forked Lightning bent to the point where it almost broke just from one smash.
The mana reinforcement surrounding the Thousand Soldiers Armor dissipated as Hansoo got pushed back.
A result from a single fist.
Hansoo frowned at the oppressive amount of force as he shouted from that spot.
“Priestess, Elkadion’s Crown of Thorns!”
The Garde-barong flinched while he was pulling back his fist and looked at Hansoo in a different way.
But not only did the Garde-barong stop, the Priestess who had turned around, Oteon, also flinched and looked at Hansoo with an expression of disbelief.
‘…He knows about the Crown of Thorns?’
Everybody knew about Elkadion, the priestess who had become a seed and departed.
She was a symbol of victory of the 2nd Great War who had united the tribal and priestly sides of the race as well as helping Mekido to create the Body Enhancement Surgery.
A promising candidate for the next Great Priestess, no, a person who had more influence than the Great Priestess of that time, Karbana.
Elkadion.
This wasn’t just from the amount of fame she had.
Her holy powers had long surpassed those of the Great Priestess, Karbana.
To the point where she had departed as a seed in order to prevent her and Karbana’s followers from clashing.
‘If she had stayed… It might’ve been a bit different.’
And the treasure in which she had poured all of her remaining strength and knowledge and created before she departed.
<Crown of Thorns>.
If they had this then they could reverse this tragic situation which had driven the Akaron almost into extinction.
How could she not get tempted.
But Oteon shook her head off.
Humans could not be trusted.
The reason why they had hid in this deep place and the reason why the Tube had reached black was all because of humans.
Those guys will promise them things and then aim for their backs after.
It was more dangerous the sweeter it was and that proposition was extremely sweet.
Oteon clenched her teeth and then shouted towards the Garde-barongs.
“He must’ve heard it somewhere… Just kill him!”
But the Garde-barongs didn’t move a single step at her shouts.
She was flustered at Garde-barong’s movements as she looked at the great warriors who protected the temple and then shouted.
“Why aren’t you acting? You can’t possibly believe his words right?”
At those words the first pillar, one of the Garde-barongs, shook his head as he spoke.
“It’s not that but… Our job is to protect you.”
The priestess was too important for their race.
The job of protecting the priestess had higher priority over everything.
Oteon made a dumbfounded expression at those words.
“What?”
What did that matter in this current situation?
The first pillar alone could crush all of those guys.
Why would she get in danger?
The first pillar looked at the expression on Oteon’s face as he pointed towards the one whom he had smashed earlier with his eyes.
And Oteon felt a chill run down her back as she looked at that direction.
A man who held a spear towards their direction with extremely calm eyes.
Something was clustered upon the tip of the Golden Spear that could not be identified.
And the tip of the spear was pointing right at her.
Only 1 thing came up in her head as she saw the spear.
Margos Du Tiradus.
A top tier predator which ate apart the Margoths and had a strong venom.
Surprisingly, that aura and the sensation of those sharp teeth were radiating out from the tiny spear in the human’s hands.
The first pillar shrugged his shoulder as he saw Oteon shrug her shoulders.
“You see it right? Though blocking that spear isn’t hard… The moment that thing at the tip of the spear explodes out, half of the people here who are weak will die along with you.
“…Damnit.”
Their saplings were too important in a situation where they had a very low amount of individuals in their population.
A sweet carrot along with a deadly whip.
Oteon realized that she had been caught in a trap.
“It might’ve been different if you had not been let in here in the first place but… Since you’re here let’s hear your story. Anyway you saved Ailen as well.”
“…”
It seemed like the first pillar quite liked this person.
Oteon looked at the people in front of her with a disgusting frown on her face.
………………………………………………….
“First, I thank you for saving Ailen.”
“Damn. Hearing a single thanks is damned hard.”
Tares complained quietly from the side.
This was reasonable.
How could he feel good if he had almost become a grinded up fish cake when they had brought a person which they had saved?
Oteon decided to ignore Tares, who was still mumbling, after giving him a cold look and then started to focus on the man in front of him.
“Where did you hear about the Crown of Thorns?”
Hansoo laughed as he spoke.
“Well that’s not the important thing right now. We should solve the Gragos problem first.”
“That’s something that you humans should be worried about. We just need to leave.”
And their preparations were actually going well.
Hansoo shook his head.
‘No way.’
A move would only have a high success chance when they prepared from the red warning.
It wouldn’t be weird for the Gragos to roll whenever when it was in the black.
But for them to start the move in such a situation.
‘Well. They probably don’t have another way.’
They didn’t know the reason and since it was hard to scout outside the temple due to the humans, the solution not being simple was obvious.
Hansoo straightforwardly told them his situation.
“I’ll speak truthfully. I have received the memory crystal of Elkadion in the Red Zone below.”
Of course he had obtained it in the Abyss but there was no need to reveal this.
‘With this much… The invasion of the Abyss wouldn’t get affected that much.’
It was good to at least tell the origin of the intel if they wanted to have a good conversation.
Oteon made a helpless expression as she heard the few pieces of information which came out from Hansoo’s mouth and could only verify them to be true.
These things were things one couldn’t know unless they were Elkadion herself.
‘Why did the relic the first seed left behind get to him?’
Oteon looked at Hansoo with an expression of resentment but then spoke.
“If you hand over that memory crystal then I’ll think about our alliance.”
“Sorry to tell you but I memorized it all you see.”
“…”
Oteon sighed.
Though she had expected it, not even a single gesture went through.
Hansoo then looked at that Oteon as he continued to explain this plan.
The cure for the other Gragos.
And even the plan after that.
‘…O Elkadion.’
Oteon made a regrettable expression after saluting to Elkadion’s compassion which had found help for her race despite her death as she spoke towards Hansoo.
“If we do things according to what you say then there’s nothing bad for us, it’s actually rather good. But there is a problem.”
“What is it?”
“Credibility.”
She didn’t know how much was the truth and how much were lies.
The thing he had brought was sweet beyond reason.
Which means they had to be even more careful.
Since if that sweet thing was a fatal poison and they swallowed it, they will have to suffer the
consequences.
Hansoo shrugged his shoulders.
“What do you want?”
Oteon spoke as if she was waiting for this moment.
“This problem was probably caused by the humans again. Since it’s only normal for there to be some room according to calculations. So solve this problem and fix the black warning. Then we will help you. We won’t butt in on this current incident.”
The problems created by humans had to be ended by the humans.
Only then would they get the basic rights to an alliance.
The Akaron had no thoughts of joining and bleeding because of the problem the humans had created.
‘And… Watch over this guy during that time.’
Words were light and the only thing that can actually determine a human being are their actions.
An idea would be grasped as they see how he deals with this.
Hansoo nodded.
‘I should at least do this much.’
Actually it will be quite a bit troublesome for him as well if the Gragos decided to roll.
Since he needed to get to the White Tiger Gragos, <Lazar>, and meet the great patriarch.
Hansoo thought of a moment about Sangjin and then spoke.
“Let’s receive something ahead before we start.”
Oteon pondered for a moment while looking at Hansoo and then nodded.
“Okay. You and two people will receive the body enhancement surgery. The girl behind you. Mr. Tekilon. You should receive it as well. Though it would only take a bit if you were a part of our race… Since your bodies are of a different race it will take about 2 days. You cannot come out during the surgery.”
The 3 males and 3 females, including Tares, frowned at those words.
“What about us?”
Tekilon spoke instead of Ailen.
“It’s not something anyone can receive. This is only possible if you have a physical basis that can support it. If you undergo it with the current level of your physique then your bodies will blow up.”
“…”
The expressions of Tares and the others instantly got filled with dejection.
It didn’t seem like a lie from the sorry expression of Ailen.
Since there was no need to lie just to fool a few of them.
They just needed to say they didn’t want to if they didn’t.
Since they couldn’t do anything to them anyways.
Tares made a dejected expression as he dragged himself towards the place they would stay at following Ailen’s guidance.
…………………………………….
The 3 males and 3 females looked at each other in the cave and whispered quietly at each other.
“Damnit. Is it the end like this?”
Takuya, one of the 2 males other than Tares mumbled with a depressed expression.
For them to only receive a good sight after coming in here through hardships.
Of course the Temple was not something anybody could see but their expectations had become too big because of this.
‘…How did it turn like this?’
Tares sighed.
Helping Ailen in the beginning was actually very innocent.
He had no form of greed.
But the idea of a reward started to come up the harder it got to help out Ailen.
<Shouldn’t we receive something as well when we are suffering this hard?>
From then the reward became a focus.
They hadn’t stayed by Ailen to help her but more so because the amount of help they had given her was too regretful to leave behind.
The reason why they had stuck around despite Ailen telling them that it’ll get dangerous and that she’ll go alone was because of this.
While they were lost in silence, the female in the corner, Mirian, clenched onto the teeth and shouted.
“So are we done like this? Without being able to get anything?”
“…”
“Tares. I keep saying this. You’re too soft. It’s not weird for us to die at any moment if we continue like this!”
The fact that they were soft had gotten the six of them together.
But then it won’t be weird for the six of them to die at any time if they continued to give free volunteer work.
Tares sighed at Mirian’s words as she spoke.
“What do you want to do?”
Mirian pondered for a moment, cut her pants and then showed her thighs.
And then she dug around her flesh for a bit and then pulled something wrapped in leather.
Tares flinched after seeing this.
“That… We denied that deal before.”
A secret deal that they had gotten ahold of while following around AIlen.
<You’re doing well. Get close to her like that… Find out the location of the Temple and then tell us.>
Tares cut them off on the spot.
He didn’t know their objectives but why would they keep it so secretive if it was something that could be told to the world.
He had thought that he denied them completely but it seems Mirian met them separately.
Mirian clenched her teeth and then spoke towards Tares.
“Tares. Decide. I understand you want to be kind to everyone but we can’t do that. We need to grab ahold of this deal.”
Why would such a big chance like this come to them who were ordinary 5th years?
They will really receive a big reward if they take this deal at this moment.
Enough to get ahead in this Otherworld quite a bit.
“Choose. Is it us? Or is it Ailen?”
Tares made a complicated expression at the leather pouch which had red light shining off from it.
………………………
Kiiiing
A man laughed coldy as he looked at the gem that was suddenly shining red.
“I won right? I told you they’ll contact me.”
The girl next to the man frowned at this.
“Damnit. That Tares. I thought he was a good guy but he was just this much.”
“There’s a limit to being good. You can’t ignore the opinions of others around you. Let’s go.”
The man who had won received something from the woman in glee as he looked towards the location the gem was pointing at and slashed beneath his feet happily.
“Let’s go quickly. We need to go with all our strength since they won’t be pushovers.”
Though there was worry in the details there wasn’t any uneasiness in the voice.
Kuuuuuunngg!
Chuguk
The man who had split the giant neck of the Margoth beneath his feet in two started to send carrier pigeons towards his clan in the distance.
Proofreader’s note
This is a sponsored chapter.
Why…
Translator : Ekdud
Proofreader : coyotte508
Sigh.. why can’t anything ever go smoothly for once? The fact that every single step Hansoo takes being bogged down by selfish, greedy humans is becoming extremely tiring. Can’t something just be easy for once as a change of pace?
Some things are easy… But they just get mentioned and don’t have much “airtime”. Like how Hansoo dealt with the Queen Wasp and the Tekilons after they were frozen by Sofia was mentioned in a few sentences. Or how Sangjin took control of all the Departed Souls.
The hard things are expanded upon, the easy things are just told briefly.
Seriously, you can totally understand people who go “I don’t trust humans” after all this shit.
Concuerdo.
Because this is human nature we’re talking about
“Why…”
Why what? All the talk about human selfishness.
sigh.. hansoo should have seen this coming.. he knew what they wanted.. he knew they couldnt get it.. why risk bringing dead weight.. such stupidity
Probably to maintain his appearance. It’s not like he could outright kill them. That akaron girl viewing those 6 as her friend would be another reason. She’s unlikely to bring Hansoo group if she saw knock her friend out. We could blame sofia for saving them though.
Yeah, I figured he’d at least warn the priest not to trust them.
Technically, these people didn’t help the akaron girl at all. At first, they might try to help her but the result was she got captured. Then, they try to rescue her which end up as them tagging along with Hansoo while doing nothing. After that, they got drown and was save by Sofia. Soooo… yeah, they’re pretty much useless. Oh well, Hansoo get to become super saiya so who care about whatever shit other human do.
Thank you for the chapter!
Hehe this author seriously hate the humans. I like him. <3
If i were the author; in the end of the story, i would make humans got wiped out again. Hansoo would work for nothing but the important thing is the journey, who cares about the results 😛
And so far my favorite character in the story is the "Fairy" who keep communicate with Hansoo.
Please fix consistency of sexes, it’s quite frequent characters are called he/she and switched, but this chapter has really a lot…
Is Oteon a male or a female? switched several times, similarly to other Akaron characters.
BTW female priest is Priestess.
The decision to relay the Arkons position doesn’t make any sense. They know that the Gragos will take a lava bath if Hansoo doesn’t get help from the Arkons. And if he suceedes there is still the possibility of them getting the body enhacement when they have bocome stronger.
I am not sure those 6 know that. Hansoo and the akaron know about it but did they ever tell those 6 what the black line meant?
They were right there when he talked about it with the priest. At least they should have understood that something is horribly wrong and Hansoo needs the body enhancement to fix it.
They have no idea just how OP Hansoo is. They know he’s strong but as to exactly how strong they have no clue. Which of course means that they probably think any problem Hansoo can solve, the people they’re reporting to will be able to solve.
Ever wonder what 死不瞑目 is used for? It’s for cases like these idiots who will blindly put their trust into something only to die without even knowing why things didn’t work out.
Constantly ‘bad’ character appear. I wish ‘good’ characters appear. As of now, things are so biased. It appears that humans are evil while other races are good. Really, the other races so far has good intentions and hearth, while most humans are just greedy or plain evil.
Not only that, it become dificult to sympathize with Hansoo for saving the humans. Really, the humans are presented as shitty scum bags. Not only does the humans become a burden, they are downright the villians in this story. I actually like to see the humans all die than see Hansoo save them.
So, while the story remains full of tension and action, I might just not have the symphaty for Hansoo’s crusade. There is just not much reason to support it anymore.
Due to the nature of the story a large number of antagonists is required, since each of them only stays active for a short time. Because of this they lack development/ backstory and are only characterised through simple motivations: jealosy, greed, pride, etc. Nice people do exist (Mihee?) but Hansoo ain’t got no time for them unless they are fundamental for his plans, while the antagonists actively work against him. This causes the impression of ‘Humanity is evil’ to form, since we mostly see a large number of plainly ‘evil’ people. And the other races werent really that great. In fact Hansoo has only interacted with one of them in this life, the Arkons. And they really didn’t give a glorious impression. Tekilon commited genocide to save his own race, the state of which he couldn’t even be certain. And the high priest attacked Hansoo, even though he had come with one of the seeds and had knowledge of another.
First, a large of antagonist is really not required. The author just put a lot of antagonist into the story and not because the story needs it.
Also, you should differentiate antagonist from villains. Villains are evil, they oppose the protagonist for villainous reasons. Antagonist could just be good people that just opposes the protagonist. In fact there stories that have protagonist that are villains and the antagonist are heroes. In this story, you could not really label the antagonist from other race as villains, while the human antagonist are bona fide villains.
And again, just as a said, the story is biased in portraying the humans. Yes, there are good humans but where are they? They might as well not exist. On the other hand, villainous humans are all around. If you only see the bad and not the good, then your impression is that they are bad. After all, if they are ‘good,’ then where is this ‘good’ that they supposed to be?
See? The other races might oppose Hansoo, but they have reasons that we can emphatize. The humans not so much. For example, here we have a human who wants to kill the Gragos so he could show off, while the Akarons want to kill Hansoo because humans can’t be trusted… which is true.
How could we symphatize with the humans?
I was using the term ‘antagonist’ because they actively antagonise Hansoo. I wasn’t really thinking about it. And the term villain just doesn’t seem to fit as well, but I might just be weird in that regard.
The story needs so many antagonists because of how fast Hansoos strength and surroundings change. Every time he enters a new area or gains a large increase in power, a new antagonist that provides some kind of opposition and challenge is needed, since the previous ones are either left behind, dead or too weak to be dangerous.
I don’t really get what your point about humans (not) being all evil. As I already said, the ‘good’ humans just aren’t important to the story and therefore not explicitly mentioned. But they do exist. The Helper Clan for example. Although not all of their members are good people, as we could see during the Calamity Fish arc, they still help the newcomers when they arrive. They probably also do other things like that, otherwise they wouldn’t be called the helper clan.
The only enemies from other races Hansoo had were Tekilon and the priest. Tekilon knew that his race couldn’t enter the world tree, but he still wanted to killed the humans after he had already exterminated killed the Elvenheims. And the priest ordered the guards to kill Hansoos group which contained humans that helped an Akaron and one of the 13 Seeds whose new body wasn’t human, because “they weren’t Akarons”. Even after Hansoo proved that he knew another one of the 13 Seeds it didn’t change anything. Their reasons were maddening desperation (that already drove one species into ruin) for Tekilon and racism/religion for the priest. How is that much better?
‘How can we sympathise with humans?’ Because there are still people like Eres and her followers that actually want to help people. Also, although this is of questionable scale, because Hansoo improved the situation in the zones, the Humans that follow won’t have to suffer so much, meaning that the negative character changes through the circumstances in the otherworld are reduced. I’m not saying that Humanity as a whole is great, but I can still empathise with Hansoo.
No. The story don’t need that many antagonist. Every zone there is already an antagonist. For example, in Red Zone there is Tekilon and the Calamities, then those human antagonists just came up, they are almost redundant since the main conflict is with Tekilon and not with them. They are just third parties.
Also, again, bias. By not showing the good humans, we can only see the bad humans. Hansoo’s goal is to save the humans. Yes. But, we then need to see something worth saving about the humans. We don’t see it. All we see are humans being scums.
There lies the problem. Since, the goal is to save the humans, there is the need to symphatize with the humans; but the story doesn’t even make an effort to do that. In fact, all it did was to make me hate the humans. Fuck them! Go to Hell!
As for the other races, you are completely missing the point. There is no need to symphatize with them. Yes they are jerks to humans, but they are not exactly Hansoo’s goal, it is their capabilities. They can be as a jerk but as long as he get the body modification, all is good.
Though, they aren’t really that big of a jerk compared to humans. Really, kill the Gragos (and everything living it in) just to show off? “I’m supper strong so I’ll kill you all.”
“I can still empathise with Hansoo.” – Uh! You completely miss my point again. We need to emphatise with the humans not just Hasoo or Eres or just a handful of them. We need to sympathize with the humans as a whole. This story failed to do that. In fact it does the opposite.
As for the situation creating this jerks. NO! These jerks are jerks from the start and not from the situation. How about that rapist? He was a rapist from the start, he just become more of a jerk because someone cockblocked him. Or remember the tutorial zone? Many humans wants Hansoo dead because he is better off. Or in the Red Zone, the jerk essentially wants Hansoo dead because the changes he brought would undermine his control of the Zone. Are these the kind of humans that you would care for?
Again, I repeat for emphasis, the story just makes us not care about the humans, which in turn makes me not care much about Hansoo’s crusade to save the humans. This is my point.
Let me help… If you want to counter my argument, then say something about the story making us care and symphatize with the human. That it makes us want to save them all. That makes it appear that Hansoo is not wasting his efforts in saving them.
It was mentioned earlier om that the good people are basically selected out. Good people help people. And in doing so put themselves in harms way. So its perfectly normal to see more bad people as the story develops as all the good helpful people slowly gets weeded out. Even the good people that survives are basically antiheroes,
It does not bother me that the 6 betray them. It bothers me that they are ducking stupid. Do they really think that the people are going to come do what they want at the temple while protecting them. Cuz the first thing I would do if I was of that race is kill the humans that are there and obviously betrayed them . Let’s say the live through the invite battle do they really think that the people that come to commit a massacre will say “hey u just betrayed these people and we don’t give a duck about your noob ass but we will give you lots of benefits anyways”? Fuck no they wont they will pro kill them so less people know we’re the temple is.
That too. I find those 6 annoying. Really, I find nothing about humanity in this story that makes them worth saving. In fact, they are worth killing.
It’s ridiculous lol.
Red zone you had Kalz Morenn who was worse then Hitler then out of fucking nowhere you have a guy EVEN worse then him, Miyamoto.
Then you get an even worse guy, Tekilon.
Meanwhile MC started shit with zero of these guys and they all came to fuck him and humanity over.
It’s like everbody forgot about the fairies and the tutorial and just decided to live their lives in a low level zone and be douches,
No wonder Orange Zone people are making a sport of hunting the red zone newbies when they come in.
gahhh i wanna kill humans!!!
Wow… I can understand why the Akaron’s are so hostile towards humans… so selfish and dense.
Thanks for the chapter.
The timing is quite something.
One’s Personality and Perspective are more easily changed with the amount and credibility of Information available to him/her, along with what he/she Experience in that kind of situation, and how much Power he/she has at that moment.
The fairies and their master must be watching the situation with great interest now. At least they state their view and still keep their word.
Sorry for being lengthy.
Sigh. Hansoo never does anything to prevent things like this but cause the problems and faces it head on then solves it
Thanks for the chapter
always nice to think “oh if i trite them then other clan gimme reward…”why they didn’t think about possibility something like this “oh thanks for help to us,reward? what’s reward u still alive be happy” or so…
At this point all the betrayal and stuff feel repeated…. Heck they are even told that if they were to undertake the surgery she would just blow up….yet they betrayed them because they didn’t get rewards…
It doesn’t bother me that much that there are more bad,shelfish, greedy(actually the greed is quite annoing) people out there but the amount of stupid it’s a little too much. I want to see the stupid bled out of them not the good or bad qualities. I don’t understand how the six lived that long when they decided to betray Ailen when they are currently in the viper nest. So stupid.