Absolute Dweller

[Episode 15] Ace Party (5)

It was a dark room.

‘Where is this…?’

In one corner, there were traces of something burnt, perhaps because of fire, and in another, there seemed to be food gathered.

Curiosity led me to move my feet to see what was there.

Thud.

“…Huh?”

A cold, slightly sticky sensation shook my mind as I felt it on my feet.

As soon as I realized it was blood, I saw the bodies of countless people lying on the floor.

Some had a pale complexion from having their blood drained, unable to even close their eyes in peace.

I was overwhelmed by the vivid scene of death.

Then.

“Ugh!”

The bodies all widened their eyes at once.

Startled, I took a step back.

Bump.

I felt something hit my calf from behind and turned around.

“Huk. Heuk.”

Children were crying.

Representing the five children, Yang Ha-yoon looked at me resentfully with tears streaming down her face.

“Why did you do this? Why did you let the bad people in?”

“That’s…”

I wanted to make some excuse, but my mouth was shut tight, and I couldn’t say anything.

I tried to open my mouth with all my might, but my body wouldn’t listen.

The children cried, blaming me.

“Huek. It’s all because of you.”

“Mom died because of you.”

My head began to spin, and the children suddenly stopped crying.

With blank expressions, they looked at me and said: “Please save us. You can save my mom, can’t you?”

How did those kids know?

Other than Oh Eon-ju, even Ha Dong-geon’s party didn’t know.

Then.

“Mr. Jae-hyun.”

Oh Eon-ju’s voice came from behind.

When I turned around, Oh Eon-ju was looking at me with sad eyes.

“You said last time, that it’s not the end.”

“Si-woo… I miss Si-woo.”

Oh Eon-ju approached me and grabbed my shoulders, begging.

“I’ve been working hard all this time, right?”

Oh Eon-ju continued with a cold expression to me who was unable to respond, “…Is it because it costs a lot? Is that it?”

Then, Oh Eon-ju’s body swelled up, and a bear’s mouth opened towards me.

When I tightly squeezed my eyes.

“Wahhhh.”

The pressure that was pressing on me disappeared, and faint sobbing sounds began to be heard.

When I slowly opened my eyes, there was Kim Ga-yeong, holding onto a body bloated from water, crying.

Kim Ga-yeong slowly looked up at me, her face covered in tears.

“Is it true? Can’t you save my dad? Why?”

Ha Dong-geon, Kang Deok-su, and Kim Gun around the crying Kim Ga-yeong slowly turned to look at me.

They didn’t say anything, but it felt like they were saying:

Is there nothing you can do for us even after we risked our lives to find your family?

That’s what they seemed to ask.

Then, the background gradually darkened, and people began to appear one by one.

They reached out to me and began to approach like zombies.

There was no way to escape.

Because they were already behind me.

They continued to murmur and approach me.

“Mr. Jae-hyun.”

“Mr. Jae-hyun!”

“Kim Jae-hyun!”

Here and there, my name hovered like an echo, and the hands of the people who had narrowed the distance reached me.

Thud thud thud.

“Ugh!”

Rough hands pressed down my body.

And the pain began with their touch.

My body felt like it would burst, just like when the territory expanded.

And my head felt like it would explode.

“Aaaaahhhhh!!!!”

Right after that, I woke up from the dream.

“–Ahh!”

Waking up in bed, I instinctively felt around my body.

It didn’t hurt.

I was fine.

“Whew, whewww.”

Breathing heavily, I slowly realized that this was my bedroom.

It seemed that Seo Ye-jin had moved me here.

Thanks to her, I could sleep well.

‘It was a vivid nightmare, but still!’

The blackout curtains were drawn, and it was midnight, so the room was filled with darkness.

Just like the sight I had seen in my dream.

Using Dignity Maintenance, I turned on the light.

Flash.

The room brightened, and I regained some stability.

“Phew.”

I dreamt vividly every day, but today’s nightmare was particularly real.

Maybe it was because I saw the corpses up close.

“Come to think of it, why did those bodies remain?”

At that time, even the vampires had obtained citizenship. They were in my territory.

But the bodies of the citizens they had killed remained.

‘Do human bodies not get processed? Or is it because they have citizenship?’

Either way, it was a sight I didn’t want to see in the future.

It’d be best to create an achievement specifically for vampires. Even if they were mistakenly accepted, it wouldn’t be a problem that way.

Ding!

[Achievement settings complete.]

If a person with citizenship becomes a vampire, their abilities will be severely limited, and a mark will appear on their faces.

This way, I wouldn’t have to worry too much.

‘I got 3 skill points!’

One of them was already decided.

‘I should level up the shop skill first…’

[The Absolute Dweller’s Shop has reached level 6.]

[The number of items that can be registered has increased to 1000.]

[All products are discounted by 30%.]

Up to this point, the functions were as expected.

In the case of the shop, a 10% discount effect was added every even level.

However.

[‘Enchant’ function has been unlocked.]

[Conditions have been met.]

[‘Enchant Workshop’ has been added to the list of constructible items.]

[Footnote: Maybe ‘Enchantment’ would make more sense in some cases. It’s ??? in the raws which is just Enchant though.]

This was an unexpected addition.

‘Enchant? Is it that kind of enchant?’

It seemed that to use enchantments, I needed to build an Enchant Workshop.

‘Construction Mode.’

Woong—

The cost of building the newly-added Enchant Workshop was 5 billion won.

The Enchant Workshop didn’t require a particularly large space for its price.

‘I can just build it right next to the store.’

That place happened to be empty.

Even though Kim Dabin had cleaned it up, there were still traces of goblins’ contamination.

I thought I could clean it up by building the Enchant Workshop over it.

‘Construct Enchant Workshop.’

Ding!

[Please select a location to install the Enchant Workshop.]

‘Room 102.’

[Time remaining until completion of Enchant Workshop.]

-71 hours 59 minutes 59 seconds

At that moment, I could see a button under the remaining time that I had never seen before.

{Complete Immediately}

‘Hm?’

Since it was a function I had never seen before, I casually touched it.

[Would you like to complete the construction of the ‘Enchant Workshop’ immediately?]

[8 crystals are required to complete the facility immediately.]

It seemed that each crystal would reduce the construction time by about 10 hours.

I currently had 100 crystals.

Considering that I could use the Amazing Draw with 300 crystals, I couldn’t waste them like this.

[Footnote: It just occurred to me that maybe a better name would’ve been “Miracle Draw”.]

‘Cancel.’

[Canceling the immediate completion.]

‘Come to think of it, there seemed to be an unidentified dungeon in the newly-expanded area. I should check it out.’

Although I couldn’t say for sure where it was, I had a rough idea of the area where the dungeon had appeared.

‘I wonder what kind of dungeon it will be this time.’

Since I had gained quite a lot from the dungeon conquests before, I was looking forward to this one as well.

‘I can draw one more time if I gather 200 more crystals.’

Both the Communication Ring and the Crown were great. If possible, it would be most efficient to use the crystals only for the Amazing Draw.

‘Now I have two skill points left.’

I needed to think a little about where to invest these.

‘It’s getting harder to level up as my level is higher.’

It meant that level 30 might be far, far away.

Since I had a frustrating experience of filling up all the shop items and not being able to level up, I had to be careful about using skill points.

‘In order to level up quickly, I have to hunt high level monsters.’

Although the experience points from small monsters were helpful, it was incomparable to hunting a high level monster like the Higher Vampire this time.

I was pleased when I thought about the great contribution Ha Dong-geon’s party made in the hunt this time.

‘They really are the Ace Party.’

As soon as they returned, they threw an extravagant party.

They made billions by wiping out the vampires, and the Higher Vampire at the end earned them a whopping 360 billion.

No other hunting team had ever achieved such a record, even after struggling outside for a month.

They could truly be called an Ace Party.

‘Looks like luck plays a role too!’

With the exception of Moon Byeong-ho who won various things from the beginning, the Ha Dong-geon party was generally lucky.

There weren’t many parties that frequently encountered high level monsters like their party.

Even if they did encounter high level monsters, there were no parties with the ability to hunt or tackle them.

‘The settlement fee and experience points increase exponentially as you go up in level.’

For example, killing hundreds of goblins below level 10 was similar to killing one orc in the late level 10s. The difference was evident.

In terms of experience points too, killing an orc provided more.

This phenomenon became more pronounced as level went up.

‘However, the problem is that very few monsters are at that level, and they’re highly dangerous.’

Although we were able to hunt the Higher Vampire this time thanks to the Ha Dong-geon party’s great performance, to be honest, it was very risky.

‘If there were two advanced vampires, even Ha Dong-geon’s party wouldn’t have been able to kill them without any harm.’

In the end, to level up quickly, you had to hunt high level monsters, but there were few of them and they came with great risks.

‘There’s no guarantee that high level monsters will come out in the future.’

I had no intention of recklessly looking for high level monsters.

In that case, the speed of leveling up would inevitably slow down.

‘So, let’s just leave the skill points for now.’

Since I might fill up all the shop slots again before reaching level 30, it seemed like a good idea.

“Absolute Dweller’s Eyes.”

As I habitually activated the Absolute Dweller’s Eyes, I first checked on the children entrusted to Choi Hyeong-jun.

Seven children, including Choi Na-yeon and Choi Seo-yeon, were sleeping on the living room floor wrapped in blankets.

The children seemed to have gotten quite close in just one day.

‘Next is…’

I checked the floor right below, where Kang Deok-su and Kim Geon lived.

As for Moon Byeong-ho, he lived with his grandmother in another unit that I had given away, and Yoo Hye-rin lived with Oh Eon-ju at Kim Da-jeong’s house.

“Drrreeong~ Kurururul.”

It was still common to see empty bottles rolling around, but Kang Deok-su and Kim Geon were not asleep from drinking.

Next, I naturally looked around Kim Da-jeong’s house, Room 2902.

I thought everyone would be asleep, but Oh Eon-ju was awake alone.

She was flipping through photos of Si-woo on her now useless smartphone.

…

I used the Communication Ring to speak to Oh Eon-ju, who was quietly flipping through pictures in the living room.

[Ms. Eon-ju.]

Surprised, Oh Eon-ju looked up.

[Could you come up for a moment?]

There was something I wanted to ask her.

After opening the front door, Oh Eon-ju cautiously entered and waited for my question.

“…This vampire should have been worthy of a quest, so why didn’t you ask for an opportunity?”

“Ah…”

Although she replied, Oh Eon-ju noticed that I was talking about ‘resurrection’.

After a while, Oh Eon-ju spoke.

“I experienced a miracle that day thanks to you, Mr. Jae-hyun.”

She made a sad expression and continued.

“But after that, I saw Ga-yeong’s father pass away and watched my colleagues who lost their families. I heard about Da-jeong’s story too.

“I felt a lot watching everyone in pain and struggling. If I stubbornly insisted on wanting to see Si-woo, it would eventually become a problem. If the tail is too long, it will be caught. I thought that it could make things difficult for you, and society that had just regained stability could become chaotic. I don’t want my son to be the seed of controversy.”

“That’s…”

“Everyone is embracing similar pain and living on, and I have concluded that I don’t need to be an exception.”

Oh Eon-ju bowed and said with a smile.

“Thank you for giving Si-woo and I a miracle. It still feels like a dream that we were given time to say goodbye… I received great comfort.”

Her expression was completely different from when we first met.

Unlike the instability back then, her gentle expression now exuded a sense of calm.

“Thank you for your care. Good night.”

I suddenly realized that she was much older than me.

Somehow, her words of comfort consoled me.

I felt like I could fall asleep peacefully now.

After that.

A month passed by in the blink of an eye.

TN: Oh Eon-juuuu (?_?) ?

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