Chapter 23: The King’s Awakening and a Twisted Fate

#23

“I’m late, huff… dragging this along.”

Han Yuseong was not alone. A colossal black shadow, filling half the blue hole, lurked beneath the surface. It was eight meters, no, perhaps even ten meters long.

This was no ordinary Dagon. Realizing this, Dokyeom grabbed Han Yuseong’s hand and pulled him ashore. The chilling shadow, caught in Han Yuseong’s grip, slowly emerged from the water.

As Han Yuseong heaved the massive creature onto the land with a wet thud, Dokyeom gasped.

“Ha.”

It was a beast with half its head torn off. This was the ‘King of Dagon,’ the original master of this gate and, had things gone as planned, the ‘boss’ that should have been raided as a B-grade gate.

“That variant… huff, it seems it already devoured the boss.”

Han Yuseong grimaced, exhaling a heavy breath. Indeed, as he explained, what he had pulled out was the boss of the Dagon before this became a Red Gate, originally B-grade.

For an SS-grade variant, it must have been an irresistibly tempting meal. The dozens of thick magic stones embedded in its half-torn head were testament to that.

“Since it became a Red Gate, it was only a matter of time before that variant became the boss. The problem is… a Gate Break could happen even sooner.”

There are usually two prerequisites for a ‘Gate Break,’ where monsters pour out of a gate.

First, if monsters inside the gate ‘breed’ excessively. Second, if the ‘boss’ inside the gate wishes to leave for any reason.

In the case of the variant here, it was the latter. This would likely occur when there was no longer any ‘life’ left in the dungeon, and it ran out of magic stones to consume.

The variant, seeking prey, would then most likely turn its attention ‘outward.’ The place it would need to pass through to reach the ‘outside’ was precisely this space where Dokyeom and Han Yuseong stood.

That variant would return here, and soon.

Events had been drastically accelerated. Originally, Instructor Lee Sanghyeon, who had fled disguised as a traitor, was supposed to enter this place as planned.

He would battle the ‘variant’ with the trainees to eliminate it, causing the ‘variant’ to sustain considerable injuries and enter a state of hibernation. That period was a full two and a half months.

However, with that schedule disrupted, the ‘variant,’ not having entered hibernation, had accelerated its actions.

“Will your invisibility skill, Han Yuseong, work on the variant?”

“It’s unlikely. It might work on S-grade monsters, but there’s a high chance an SS-grade monster would see through it.”

Dokyeom had expected as much. He pressed a hand to his forehead and gazed up at the distant ceiling. The quartz embedded in the ceiling shimmered, yet the path ahead was shrouded in impenetrable darkness.

He needed to get this Dagon up and moving to do anything, but at this point, Dokyeom wondered if it hadn’t become a vegetable.

“For now… sigh, Han Yuseong, if you happen to see any other living Dagon…”

Dokyeom stopped mid-sentence, his lips pressed together. In his flickering vision, he saw the Dagon King with its head half-torn off. For a fleeting moment, he thought its thick fingertips had twitched.

“What’s wrong, Dokyeom?”

“…The corpse… it seemed to move.”

Dokyeom slowly retreated, his gaze fixed on the boss’s twitching fingertips. Han Yuseong’s expression gradually hardened. Both their eyes simultaneously fixated on the Dagon’s half-torn head.

In the strange silence that followed, a flash of light passed through the monster’s half-inverted eye. Then, its pupils rolled wildly.

“Step back!”

Han Yuseong’s voice stretched out, drawn-out and urgent. Behind his waist, a pure white blade slowly appeared. No, it was Dokyeom’s mind that perceived it slowly in that moment.

The monster’s scaly arm, which had flown towards Dokyeom the instant the boss’s wildly rolling eyes fixed on him, was met by Han Yuseong. He was already moving swiftly, attempting to shield Dokyeom.

Dokyeom’s entire body reacted sluggishly. He, too, quickly stepped back in that urgent moment. Yet, as he retreated, a chilling sensation enveloped his arm, pulling him backward.

The fierce, clashing sensation was unfamiliar.

What met his touch, shattering as it did, were hard scales. He felt a rough, rising and falling movement against his chest. It was him.

It was the Dagon he had tirelessly cared for over the past two days, the one Dokyeom had just been dousing with water, who had been no different from a corpse.

The hand firmly wrapped around Dokyeom’s back, and the clawed hand cradling his head, seemed to protect him as if he were a child. A ragged, panting breath resonated through their touching skin.

The Dagon had awakened.

A sense of overwhelming emotion surged within Dokyeom. In the Dagon’s embrace, he finally smiled after days. At last, the faint outline of a solution began to appear.

Just then, something fell with a wet thud behind his back. It was the Dagon King’s head, cleanly severed. Its wildly rolling eyes were now completely still.

Han Yuseong, having shaken off his blade, roughly wiped the blood from his face and dragged the boss’s head over to Dokyeom. The Dagon’s low growl rumbled in Dokyeom’s ear.

“Han Dokyeom.”

Han Yuseong unceremoniously dropped the corpse’s head beside Dokyeom, indicating he should touch it. The Dagon’s arm, still wrapped around his back, showed no sign of letting go. After a few attempts to move, Dokyeom suppressed a sigh and managed to pull only his arm free from its embrace.

He then reached out his hand towards the enormous corpse’s head that Han Yuseong pushed closer. The moment death touched his fingertips, his vision was consumed by blackness. A shiver of cold crept over him. The scent of death emanated from somewhere.

Amidst it all, white lines of text flashed like lightning. As expected, the heavens were still on Han Dokyeom’s side.

[Your ‘Trait Skill’ is preparing to awaken.]

Dokyeom smiled faintly, following the light. It had been two days, no, it was just the beginning of the third day. And finally, with the scent of countless corpses on his hands, he obtained what he desired.

[Your ‘Trait Skill’ has awakened.]

The very skill that ‘Han Dokyeom’ had acquired in the original story.

****

Dokyeom was currently sprawled on the floor, clutching his head.

This was barely an hour after he had confidently declared the heavens were on his side. Behind him, the Dagon and Han Yuseong stood quietly, observing him. Both their gazes were the epitome of pity.

Nothing else mattered. Whatever they thought, at this moment of self-doubt, anything short of outright insults was fine by him.

‘Am I crazy? No, I’m the original author of this novel, what kind of development is this? Why is this appearing? Did I miss something?’

All sorts of thoughts raced through his mind, but the words floating before his eyes refused to change.

[Successfully extracted ‘Trait Skill’ from ‘Trait Skill’ .]

[Your ‘Trait Skill’ has awakened.]

Before Dokyeom lay the peacefully deceased Captain’s corpse. And the skill that had awakened for Dokyeom was ‘one’ of the three skills extracted from the Captain.

Originally, the skill he should have obtained was .

[Orias, the demon of ‘Lemegeton’, passionately explains to you how good that skill is, spitting as they speak.]

“I know, I know. Of course I know.”

[Orias, the demon of ‘Lemegeton’, thumps their chest, asking what the problem is then.]

‘The problem is that I’m E-grade.’

Skills were heavily influenced by grade, so it was usually obvious which ones were good just by looking at their rank. If the grade itself was different, how could it possibly be good?

The issue was that this particular skill was useless for an E-grade hunter, even if given for free. Why on earth was ‘Han Dokyeom’ born as an E-grade? No matter how much he racked his brain, it was an insoluble problem.

An hour ago, the first thing Dokyeom did after acquiring the Trait Skill was to seek out the Captain, whom he had placed in the ‘Gap.’

[ – A skill that allows you to randomly extract and possess one skill from a corpse. Cannot be duplicated. (Cooldown: 168 hours.)]

Only one extraction was possible at a time. The skill’s cooldown was exactly seven days. Being a unique skill without a grade, it could be used without grade restrictions.

Dokyeom had been touching corpses all this time precisely to obtain this, to extract a skill from the Captain. However, there was one thing he overlooked: the method of skill extraction was random.

Since the ‘Han Dokyeom’ in the original story obtained , he naturally assumed he would get the same one with a high probability. Unfortunately, the skill Dokyeom acquired from the Captain was .

His twenty minutes of lying prone in a state of existential dread were all thanks to this, specifically the descriptions listed in the skill menu.

[ – Allows fusion with a monster. Provides minion benefits, and the higher the rapport, the fewer side effects after skill release. (Prerequisite: Only monsters below the caster’s grade are possible.)]

That ‘monsters below the caster’s grade.’ What an absolute nightmare. It meant an E-grade could only fuse with E-grade monsters.

“Han Yuseong, haha… wanna swap bodies with me?”