Doing Good Deeds Will Bring Blessings¿

A voice unique to whales, one humans could not hear, was reverberating across the entire desert. It was, quite literally, the ruler of this desert itself.

“Grrk…!” Leo hissed in irritation as the whale leapt, sand spraying all the way over to him. “Annoyed! Stuck to my paws!”

“Oh dear.”

There may be leopards in the desert, but that hardly applied to Leo. His paws sank helplessly into the sand with every step.

I picked Leo up and, while watching the desert whale led by Choi Miyeon charge toward the oasis, spoke up. “Are you awake?”

“…You could say I’m practically dead. Cough!” Lee Arin, who had been laid down on spare clothing, coughed. It was a blood-streaked cough. After scanning the surroundings for a moment, she asked me, “How…am I still alive?”

“You missed the vital point by just a little. Unfortunately.”

Some might call it luck that she got to live a little longer, but from my perspective, it was nothing but misfortune. No—by that logic, my very presence, someone capable of administering first aid, might have been the misfortune.

Lee Arin gave a bitter smile. “I didn’t have a choice. If I wanted to destroy my own soul core, that was the only way…”

That much was true. From the moment Lee Arin decided not to kill Choi Miyeon, that had been her only remaining option.

“By the way, what in the world is that…?” Lee Arin slowly raised her head and looked at the scene before her. The desert whale, the ruler of this land, was tearing apart everything in sight. Just the thrashing of a whale as massive as a mountain was enough to obliterate an oasis no bigger than a palm.

“Isn’t it refreshing?”

Crunch! Trees snapped, water splashed, and the birds that had been hiding within the oasis all took flight at once.

“Lee Manbok is in there, you know.”

I’d thought it would all end with the whale swallowing him whole, but judging by how the whale kept rampaging, it seemed Choi Miyeon had no intention of taking Lee Manbok’s life in one swift move. Given how deep her grudge must be, that was understandable.

“What? Really?” Lee Arin tried to rise in excitement, only to stiffen abruptly. “What is that?! Why is she over there?!”

Her shock was understandable. After all, riding atop the back of the desert whale that was laying waste to the oasis where Lee Manbok was trapped was Choi Miyeon herself.

“Did she tame a monster? How on earth did Choi Miyeon manage that…? No matter how good her affinity with animals is, she never had the power to tame an A-rank monster!”

“That’s right. It’s not something she could do with her own strength alone.”

That was true. No matter how much Choi Miyeon’s innate skill leaned toward animal affinity, she was still just a Hunter with high potential who had never properly learned how to control her own power. Taming an A-rank monster should have been impossible.

But I was here.

An innate skill, after all, is simply power leaking out of the vessel of the body without proper control. So all I did was lightly nudge the power overflowing from Choi Miyeon’s already-broken body and guide it toward the desert whale. I didn’t even need to expend my own mana.

Though luck played a part, too.

The desert whale, while a monster, was relatively gentle in nature. Highly intelligent and capable of empathizing with the sorrow of others, it was only natural that it would be swept up in Choi Miyeon’s emotions. That was likely why, despite an A-rank monster inhabiting it, the dungeon’s difficulty had been judged as B-rank.

More than anything else, though, what was truly remarkable was Choi Miyeon herself.

In the end, it was only possible because Choi Miyeon’s latent abilities were so high.

To the point that even Leo had rubbed himself against her feet. If she had properly pursued mental-type magic focused on monster taming, she might have become someone truly exceptional. Of course, by now, that was a completely pointless thought.

Lee Arin clenched her teeth. “Choi Miyeon’s body is already collapsing. If she does something like that…!”

“She wanted this herself.”

Choi Miyeon wanted revenge against this cult that had swallowed up her family and her entire life, and against that old man, Lee Manbok. There happened to be a convenient means at hand, so I presented it as an option. All I did was help Choi Miyeon follow through on her decision.

“Just like you did.”

In a way, Lee Arin’s words were almost ironic. She herself had already chosen to throw away her own life for the sake of revenge, yet she was now lamenting the loss of Choi Miyeon’s life. The logic didn’t add up.

Hearing my words, Lee Arin let out a hollow laugh. “Jeong Daon… you really are like a demon.”

“I hear that a lot.”

Thud, thud, thud!

Meanwhile, as I exchanged a few trivial words with Lee Arin, the desert whale under Choi Miyeon’s control continued to rampage, kicking up chaos. At this point, Lee Manbok must have been reduced to a complete rag.

Lee Arin stayed silent for a while, quietly letting out her breath, then said, “For a final view at the end of one’s life, it’s pretty brutal.” It seemed she could feel her own death approaching.

And she was right. No matter how much first aid I applied, Lee Arin had already expended far too much of her power in the attack on Lee Manbok. On top of that, she had stabbed herself, causing irreparable fractures in her body. The price of that was the Dungeon Break now unfolding. Even for me, these were injuries beyond salvaging. Lee Arin’s body would soon meet its end.

Perhaps because of that, I found myself asking her, without really meaning to, “May I ask you something?”

“What could you possibly be curious about when I’m about to die?”

“Why didn’t you kill Choi Miyeon?”

I was curious. Was it a sense of kinship, since she was in the same position as Choi Miyeon? Or guilt over having killed Choi Miyeon’s father?

Lee Arin met my inquisitive gaze head-on, without flinching. “…I thought I needed to be a better person than Lee Manbok. If I sacrificed Choi Miyeon for my own selfish desires, how would I be any different from him?”

“…Hah.”

Oh dear.

A sigh escaped me on its own. I’d wager my very soul that someone like Lee Manbok had never, not even for a single second in his life, entertained thoughts like that. If it had been kinship or guilt, that might have been one thing.

“If I do this, I’ll be no different from that devil.”

“I want to live without shame before myself.”

How tiresome.

That wretched self-censorship is what always keeps the weak from ever becoming strong. Nobility and purity are utterly useless when it comes to survival. Once born as living beings, isn’t the law of this world that we devour one another anyway? The strong are always trying to prey on the weak, so why do those who have lived their entire lives as the weak insist on clinging to pointless things like morality?

A life already thrown away will be repaid by nothing. And if it weren’t for me, she might not even have lived to see her revenge completed with her own eyes.

Honestly, people like this are just…

System warning to User “Jeong Daon”.

The quest "Doing Good Deeds Will Bring Blessings¿" is in progress.

“…”

Ah, right. What meaning is there in confronting this long-familiar disillusionment now? At least I could take some consolation in the fact that I didn’t have to watch Choi Miyeon and Lee Arin cling to each other, crying as they died together. That much spared it from becoming outright melodrama.

No matter how much of a former Demon Lord I might be, the world doesn’t bend to my will in every matter. With a sigh, I stood up. There was no need to hear any more.

Seeing that, Lee Arin hesitated, then asked, “…Can I ask one thing too?”

“What is it?”

“Hunter Jeong Daon… no, Jeong Daon, what exactly are you?” Lee Arin looked up at me, her eyes filled with suspicion.

She had more than enough reason to doubt my identity. From knowledge no newly awakened Hunter could possibly possess, to overwhelming power.

“Are you really…some kind of demon?”

“Yes. I am.” There was no reason to hide it from someone who was about to die.

Lee Arin’s eyes widened in shock.

“I wish I were an angel or a hero instead.”

For a moment, I imagined Yu Hanul destroying the Truelight Cult in my place. Born a hero, he would undoubtedly be enraged by a sense of justice the moment he learned the cult’s true nature. He would smash the laboratories if he had to, rescue the people who had been turned into test subjects, expose the cult’s crimes in full, and put Lee Manbok on a strict and public trial.

At first, the media would swarm the case, and the prosecutors would proclaim a thorough investigation. Of course, whether that would succeed is another matter. The trial might have dragged on inconclusively, and once the media’s fervor cooled, everything could have quietly flowed on as if nothing had happened; just as it always had.

Still, in that story, neither Lee Arin nor Choi Miyeon would have died. Perhaps that, in its own way, would have been the more proper happy ending.

“Still, there’s one promise I will keep,” I said this while staring straight at Lee Arin. “I’ll make sure Lee Manbok meets the worst possible death.”

“…Ha, hahahaha! Hahahahahaha!”

Strangely, there was nothing funny about it at all, yet Lee Arin laughed for a long time after hearing my answer.

“A demon—a demon, really!”

“Is it that amusing?”

Was she thinking I was some kind of delusional madman right now?

“Hahaha… no, sorry.” Lee Arin wiped at her eyes, where tears had gathered from laughing too hard. “At the end of this miserable life, if someone were to help me… I thought it would be an angel or a god. I never imagined a demon would be the one to come.”

“That’s unfortunate.”

“But whatever you are… thank you.”

Lee Arin reached out, her hand groping through empty air as if searching for something. Her vision must have blurred by now. Her hand seemed to be looking for me, but instead of taking it, I simply watched her in silence.

“It was good luck that I held on to my breath for even a little while. Being able to die after seeing that I finally succeeded in my revenge; I’m happy.”

People often say that the end of revenge is emptiness. But at the end of Lee Arin’s powerless gaze, there was unmistakable joy.

“An angel wouldn’t have shown me a sight like this. I wonder if Bom is seeing this too.”

Failing to find what she sought, Lee Arin’s hand finally fell limply to the ground.

"Thank you."

With those words, Lee Arin’s breathing soon faded away.

She was completely dead.

The system reminds “Jeong Daon” of the quest “Doing Good Deeds Will Bring Blessings¿”.

Your actions have received gratitude from User “Lee Arin”.

Your actions have been judged by the majority as “humane”.

Abilities increase slightly.

Jeong Daon (Normal)

Potential Ability Rating: S-rank

Stamina: LV. 19 (No cap)

Strength: LV. 15 (No cap)

Mana: LV. 29 (No cap)

Overall Level: LV. 20 → 21

Recommended Dungeons: C–D rank

To think this counted as an action worthy of raising my stats, the judgment of a collective intelligence is truly hard to fathom. In any case, stat increases are always welcome. All the more so when I consider what I’m about to do in this dungeon.

I bent down and picked up the soul core, split in half, that Lee Arin had been clutching until the very end.

Leo stretched out his paws and squirmed. “Myaak!”

“Eat it?”

He meant absorbing the latent mana still lingering in the soul core. Given that Leo’s stats were currently nerfed, feeding him a soul core with a lingering soul would certainly help, but…

“No. If you eat that, you’ll get a stomachache.”

I lifted the soul core and held it up against the desert sun. Amid the pitch-black darkness stained by hatred, there was a single thin streak of compassion. That lone, different light corroded the color of hatred.

Lee Arin’s motivation had been revenge, but what determined her death was compassion. Then what, exactly, was the core that made up Lee Arin’s soul? There was no way to know.

You have obtained an unidentified item.

Following the knowledge of User “Jeong Daon”, the item is designated as “Soul Core”.

“Soul Core” is judged to be a threat to the survival of humanity.

“Soul Core” is designated as a key keyword for locating the “Enemy of Humanity”.

The system begins searching for the source of the “Soul Core” in order to locate the “Enemy of Humanity”.

Searching…

The system had finally begun to do what could be called work.

After watching Lee Arin’s corpse be buried by the sand and vanish, I turned away. Like the system, I too had something to do before Choi Miyeon finished tearing Lee Manbok to pieces.