Chapter 8: How to Kill a Mad God

How to kill a mad god

“The final test will take place in the Sanctuary.”

Gugu’s voice became heavy.

The playful attitude had disappeared.

“The Sanctuary was originally a sacred place, but it is currently heavily contaminated by corrupted spirits.”

Corrupted spirits.

A contaminated Sanctuary.

Just hearing those words already made one imagine a rancid smell.

“The mission is simple. Purify the Sanctuary. Whoever achieves the greatest contribution will receive the highest score.”

Gugu added a warning.

“But be careful. It is an extremely dangerous place. The corrupted spirits are violent, and the air of the Sanctuary will devour your minds and rot your bodies.”

There was no time limit.

But the longer they remained there, the closer they would come to death.

And above all.

“Until the Sanctuary is completely purified, you cannot stop halfway through. There will be nowhere to run. If you wish to give up, this is your only chance.”

A battle with no retreat.

Die or succeed.

The conditions were brutal, but not a single seed stepped back.

If they were the type to run away here, they would never have entered the tower.

“Very well. Then, I wish you luck.”

Clap!

With Gugu’s applause, the world flipped upside down.

Whoooooosh!

Before I could even recover from the dizziness of the spatial transfer.

A nauseating stench hit my nose.

The smell of rotten eggs.

It was not the odor of decaying corpses.

“…Hmph.”

I frowned as I looked around.

The sky was sickly, stained with a bruised purple color.

The earth had died and blackened.

A forest full of dry, twisted trees like ghosts.

Terrain resembling an endless labyrinth.

And among them.

Kieeeeeek!

Grrrrrr…

Monsters shaped like dark red mist crawled everywhere.

Corrupted spirits.

At a glance, there were too many.

Thousands?

They did not seem like mere tens of thousands.

‘Am I supposed to purify all of this?’

This is insane.

With normal methods, it would take years.

It was then.

“…Just my luck.”

I heard a sigh beside me.

I turned my head.

There was a person.

Only one.

‘So it was a random transfer.’

It seems the more than five thousand seeds were scattered.

The one who landed beside me was an elf.

She openly looked at me with contempt.

Probably because I got 0 points in the calamity affinity test.

She surely thinks I’m a burden.

Instead of responding, I carefully observed her face.

A cold expression.

Skin so pale it looked sickly.

Ice-blue eyes.

And eyebrows white as snow.

She carried a gigantic bow on her back, taller than she was.

Strange engravings covered the body of the bow.

‘It feels familiar.’

I had seen it before.

Not simply because she was an elf.

But because of that unique atmosphere.

Cold and filled with sharp killing intent.

I searched through my memories.

The final expedition force of humanity.

When we climbed the tower risking our lives.

In that hell where countless enemies were cut down, pierced, and burned.

‘Ah.’

I remembered.

If you added a few more scars to that face.

And her eyes became filled with a little more cruelty.

It was her.

“Frost Tribe?”

The elf flinched and glared at me.

“…How do you know my tribe?”

A sharp reaction.

As expected.

Normal elves love forests and warm climates.

But the Frost Tribe is different.

They are born and raised in lands of eternal ice.

That is why they are far stronger, crueler, and more exclusionary than other elves.

And above all.

‘She was the mid-boss of Floor 50.’

Definitely.

On Floor 50 of the tower.

The sniper who brought us to the brink of annihilation in that frozen wasteland.

Her ability to hide herself was monstrous.

And her arrows exploded my companions’ heads like watermelons.

She was far more troublesome than the Floor Master of Floor 50.

‘Seria.’

I even remembered her name.

Because that experience had been too horrible.

“Whoa, whoa. Don’t get defensive. I’d only heard of your tribe because it’s quite rare.”

I shrugged.

The elf continued observing me suspiciously, but soon lost interest and looked away.

“…Just don’t get in my way.”

She took out her bow.

She did not even draw the string, but the air around her began to freeze.

She seemed determined to completely ignore me while advancing first.

The corrupted spirits detected her presence and began gathering.

Kieeeeeeeek!

The masses of black mist bared their fangs as they charged toward her.

Seria’s eyes gleamed coldly.

Fwoosh! Swish-swish!

I could not even see the movement of her hands.

It seemed she had completely omitted the act of drawing the bow.

Three arrows shot out simultaneously and pierced the spirits’ foreheads.

Booom!

The frost contained within the arrows exploded.

The corrupted spirits froze and shattered before they could even scream.

A clean technique.

She definitely had the potential to become the nightmare of Floor 50.

But I could not remain still either.

My promise with Heimdall.

To become the absolute first place.

Simply passing is not enough.

I cannot stay behind that elf collecting scraps and expect to satisfy Heimdall.

I stopped and looked around.

‘Purify the Sanctuary.’

Sounds nice.

But am I supposed to kill tens of thousands of spirits one by one?

That is a mediocre strategy.

A waste of time and energy.

You must understand the creator’s intention behind the test.

The true purpose of this trial is not “hunting.”

It is “solving.”

In other words, heading toward the center of the Sanctuary and eliminating the cause.

And besides.

‘Are those spirits really corrupted?’

I narrowed my eyes.

My knowledge as a mage detected a strange contradiction.

Spirits are pure masses of nature.

Unlike humans, their ego is weak.

It is extremely rare for them to fall on their own or develop malice.

Normally, a spirit’s state follows the state or intention of its contractor.

‘Then the answer is obvious.’

All of those spirits.

Their magical waves were connected like tiny threads.

There existed only a single contractor.

A great existence hidden deep within the Sanctuary.

Because something happened to that being’s mind.

Or because it did it deliberately.

The subordinate spirits ended up appearing corrupted.

‘And besides.’

I carefully observed their movements.

Until Seria fired the first arrow, the spirits only lingered around.

They were not aggressive.

Rather, they seemed defensive.

As if they were trying to scare us away.

— Do not come closer.

— This place is dangerous.

That seemed to be what they wanted to say.

Only after Seria attacked first did they respond with true hostility.

‘What if I do not attack?’

I already had a hypothesis.

Now I had to verify it.

I acted immediately.

Swoosh.

I withdrew the mana covering my body.

I eliminated my killing intent.

I erased all hostility and emptied my desire to fight.

Complete demilitarization.

And like that, I walked directly toward the horde of spirits.

“Are you insane?!”

Seria shouted in horror.

From her perspective, I surely looked like a lunatic.

Voluntarily walking into that monstrous mist.

But.

Sssssss.

The moment my body touched the reddish mist.

The spirits moved aside.

They did not attack.

They did not bite or cast curses.

They simply passed by my side.

As if I were invisible.

The reason was simple.

‘Because I showed no hostility.’

They are guardians of the Sanctuary.

If an intruder has no intention of attacking, there is no reason to waste energy eliminating him.

I turned back and waved my hand.

“Good work.”

“……!!”

She could not follow me.

She had already fired arrows.

She had already spilled blood.

To the spirits, she was already clearly an enemy.

Kieeeeeeeek!

“Damn it!”

The spirits charged at Seria once again.

She had to curse while firing again.

I left that chaos behind and calmly moved forward.

The mist was beginning to dissipate.

***

I walked for quite a long time.

The Sanctuary seemed like an endless labyrinth.

But finding the path was surprisingly simple.

‘The gaze.’

If the spirits’ contractor is only one person, the spirits will inevitably point toward where their master is located.

Just as sunflowers face the sun, their consciousness always remains directed toward that place.

If I had acted hostile from the beginning, I would never have noticed it.

Blinded by killing intent, I would have overlooked their subtle movements.

But I treated them as if they were air.

Thanks to that, I was able to realize it.

The exact point toward which the spirits inside the mist were secretly looking.

‘It’s this way.’

I advanced without hesitation.

The mist began to dissipate.

The rotten trees disappeared.

And finally.

Tap.

The sensation beneath my feet changed.

It was no longer sticky mud.

It was polished marble.

I had arrived.

As expected, I was the first.

I raised my head and looked around.

And frowned.

‘It’s clean?’

Gugu clearly said it was a contaminated Sanctuary.

But the scenery before me was exactly the opposite.

A spotless white temple.

Filled with sacred energy.

Corruption? Contamination?

Not even an ant could be seen.

It was a completely pure area.

I advanced deeper into the temple.

And shortly afterward, I found a presence.

“…….”

Enormous wings.

Feathers so white they hurt the eyes.

Floating in the air was a genuine angel straight out of a myth.

She remained suspended with her eyes closed.

When I approached, she slowly opened her eyes.

Her golden pupils pierced through my body.

[What a peculiar visitor.]

The angel’s voice resonated directly in my mind.

[You have not harmed even one of my children.]

Her children.

She was surely referring to the mist spirits outside.

I sighed internally in relief.

If I had killed even one on the way here, the fight probably would have begun the moment I entered this place.

The problem was something else.

‘She’s strong.’

Ridiculously strong.

Even Angragon on my shoulder had raised his scales.

If I fought something like this alone, I would lose.

Without relaxing my guard, I asked.

“Why were you blocking the path?”

The reason she used the spirits to prevent access.

The angel’s expression darkened.

She slowly turned her head backward.

[This is a place you should not come to.]

Behind her.

In the deepest part of the temple floated a black sphere around three meters in diameter.

A mass emitting a horrible energy, completely opposite to the sacred aura of the place.

[This place is a prison.]

The angel looked at the sphere with sorrowful eyes.

[A long time ago, a god who lost his sanity and went mad was sealed here.]

A mad god.

At last, all the pieces fit together.

The seeds break through the spirits.

They kill spirits, and the angel becomes enraged and attacks them.

And after a brutal battle, if they kill the angel, the guardian maintaining the seal disappears.

‘So the intention of the test was to eliminate the angel.’

If that were not the case, from the very beginning they would have told us to help the angel kill the mad god.

But they did not.

They frightened us so we would attack the spirits.

So that the angel would see the seeds as enemies.

But why?

‘Because only by killing the angel can they devour the sealed mad god.’

Gugu’s true objective is the sealed mad god.

He probably wants to reclaim it.

But.

‘There’s no need to follow their intentions exactly.’

I won’t get a high score by merely obeying.

And besides, I had no intention of killing the angel.

Get rid of such a useful force?

The answer was simple.

I took a step toward the angel.

“Then all we need to do is eliminate the one inside there.”

[…What do you mean?]

I lowered my voice and spoke seriously.

“Oh noble being.”

I looked directly into the angel’s eyes.

“Let’s kill together the mad god sealed inside there.”

[……!]

The angel’s eyes widened.

Not protecting the seal, but killing what was sealed.

A proposal that completely shattered common sense.

“Maybe it would have been difficult alone. But together, it will be possible.”

I pointed at the black sphere and smiled.

“Leaving something like that locked away will only bring trouble. Better to finish it off once and for all.”

Though honestly, I was also curious about what was inside.

But the main reason was something else.

‘My right hand won’t stop itching.’

The golden rune engraved on my hand.

No one else could see it.

But I could.

A line of golden light extended from the rune and pointed frantically toward the black sphere.

Inside there…

there is a calamity.

And not just any calamity.

A calamity of a considerable level.

The angel’s eyes wavered.

But soon, a faint smile appeared on her lips.

[…How shameless.]

She spread her wings wide.

Sacred light filled the entire temple.

It was not a refusal.

[Very well. I shall respect the will of someone who showed consideration for my children.]

The party was formed.