Chapter 24
I walked leisurely along the burning forest path.
Perhaps it was due to the influence of the Asura Divine Art, but the Flames of Gehenna, which would normally have rushed at me to devour my body, slowly receded in all directions under my control.
While I was walking, I occasionally saw some Monsters.
But those things didn’t have the luxury to care about me.
Being what they were, the Chimeras, some of them moved busily, ignoring their own lives, in an attempt to put out the flames in the forest.
Go ahead and pour water on that all you want. Let’s see if that fire goes out.
The Flames of Gehenna burned all matter as fuel.
In other words, even water was no different from firewood—it was the same as pouring oil on the fire.
After walking for quite a while, the enormous Count Frankenstein’s Manor came into view.
Perhaps it was protected by some kind of magical barrier, as the Flames of Gehenna hadn’t reached the inside of the mansion.
I approached the grand iron gate and kicked it without hesitation.
Kwagagang!
With just one kick, the gate, crumpled under the impact, couldn’t withstand the force and was blown away.
“Time to receive your guest!”
It seemed the chaos outside had already spread inside, as the mansion’s courtyard was filled to the brim with Chimeras.
Their gazes all turned toward me.
“Grrrk, grraaaagh!”
“Grraaaaah…!”
Sure, I did tell them to receive their guest, but this was a bit much.
Who would’ve thought the whole household would come out to greet me?
Soon enough, all of them rushed toward me in unison.
“Grrrraaaaaagh!”
Ugh, this feels like that practice lesson where we fought Imps.
The only difference was that the ones charging at me this time were far stronger than any Imp could ever be.
But that went both ways.
I stomped down, drawing out the Demonic Power within me.
The Power of Mighty Strength.
An incomparable force surged through my body.
It was an odd sensation, as if my very muscles had come alive and were moving on their own.
I pressed my legs firmly against the ground, steadying my stance.
Then, through Qi circulation, I prepared to move both hands.
The energy of the Asura Divine Art gathered in my fists.
I lunged forward with all my might and drove my fists toward the Chimeras.
Pukwagang!
The Monsters struck by my fists were torn apart, and the mere shockwave from the swing produced a sonic boom.
The air around me was forced away by the overwhelming power of my fists that seemed to tear through space itself.
“Whew—”
I whistled as I looked over the utterly devastated landscape that followed the trajectory of my blows.
The stress I’d built up at the Academy felt like it had exploded away in an instant.
The surviving Monsters hesitated and lowered their gazes.
“Grrrgh.”
Still, it seemed those inside the mansion had a bit more reason left than the ones outside.
They could even feel fear.
At that moment, a thunderous roar shook the entire area.
“GRUOOOOOOOH!”
The air itself trembled.
The surviving beasts lowered their bodies and shivered.
Like loyal subjects bowing before their king.
It was him—the Nameless One, who had annihilated the Frankenstein Family.
Was he throwing a fit because I touched his “family”?
I snorted and began finishing off the kneeling Monsters one by one.
He wouldn’t be able to come out anyway.
He was probably busy making his bride.
That roar was nothing more than an empty display of bravado.
To clear the dungeon known as The Nameless One’s Manor, several conditions had to be met.
First, rescuing the people who had been captured for his “family-making.”
By “family,” that referred to the Chimeras that filled the forest and mansion.
And to make a “family,” what he needed, of course, were human corpses.
Unless those captured were rescued, those abominations would continue to multiply endlessly.
Second, destroying the hearts hidden throughout the mansion.
He possessed a total of four hearts.
The core that granted him his strongest power was inside his own body, while the other three were hidden throughout the mansion.
The standard strategy was to search the mansion, destroy the three hearts, and then defeat the weakened Nameless One—but I had no intention of doing that.
Because what I wanted today couldn’t be obtained through the standard route.
A motto that was never absent in Become a Hero:
High risk, high return.
This dungeon, too, contained a Hidden Piece that could elevate the quality of the reward.
That was to gather the three hearts hidden throughout the mansion and deliver them to him.
In that case, the Nameless One would unleash his full power, making the fight more difficult—but the original reward, The Nameless One’s Incomplete Heart, would be upgraded to The Nameless One’s Complete Heart.
Fundamentally, both items had similar effects.
Equipping them increased the wearer’s total Mana.
It added an extra absolute value to the Mana the user already possessed.
In short, it was no different from a Mana battery pack.
Considering that, like in all RPGs, growth slowed as levels increased, such an item was quite valuable.
However, the Complete Heart possessed a broken ability beyond that.
First, the additional Mana wasn’t a fixed value—it was a percentage increase.
A staggering 30 percent.
On top of that, the restriction that it only increased Mana was removed.
In other words, the wearer could choose any stat they wanted to apply the increase to.
Its versatility was simply overwhelming.
After clearing out the creatures in the courtyard, I stepped toward the mansion.
It was time to save the hostages—my first objective.
The underground prison of Count Frankenstein’s Manor, where not a single ray of light reached.
A young girl named Ria, who had been kidnapped by the Monsters, twisted her body in hunger.
It had been two days since she was abducted.
In her fifteen short years of life, she could confidently say these were the worst days she had ever experienced.
If only she had listened to the warnings not to go near the old mansion and its forest, would things have turned out differently?
If only she could, she wanted to turn back time and go home.
The forest had only been a place she entered to find some rare herbs, but who could have known that the adults’ warnings had actually been about a Demon.
There were many others here who had been kidnapped just like her.
In their eyes existed only deep fear and despair.
The stench of those who hadn’t been able to wash for a long time stung her nose.
But worse than that was the pile of untreated filth and the unidentified corpse in one corner of the cell.
For a girl who had lived an ordinary life, every minute and second of the current situation seemed to tear at her sanity.
But the girl barely managed to hold on to her crumbling mind.
Because she had someone precious she had to protect.
“Noona…”
It was her younger brother, who had followed her here by accident.
Her little brother, Eden, whimpered.
“Noona… I’m hungry… We’ll get to go home, right…?”
Ria wanted to protect her younger brother no matter what.
“Hing…”
Perhaps because she had been lost in thought and slow to answer, large tears welled up in the eyes of the boy, who was only eight years old, and soon the sound of his sniffles filled the underground cell.
Startled, Ria quickly covered Eden’s mouth with her hand.
“I told you, didn’t I! Never make loud noises.”
Though it hadn’t been long since Ria had been dragged into the underground prison by the Monsters, she had quickly realized that the only thing to be wary of here wasn’t the Monsters themselves.
The people who had been captured before them—
They were like ticking time bombs on the verge of exploding.
And her brother’s cries were enough to be the trigger that could set off their breaking point.
Bang!
“Who the hell is whining like a damn baby?!”
“I-I’m sorry! I’ll make sure my brother stays quiet!”
Ria bowed her head deeply, begging the man for mercy.
The middle-aged man ran his eyes up and down her body.
Ria shuddered at his sticky, greed-filled gaze.
“What if those things come because of that brat’s crying? What’ll you do if I die because of you, huh? Will you take responsibility?”
“I’m sorry…”
“How are you going to take responsibility?!”
The man’s voice rose.
Everyone in the cell turned to look at them.
But none of them stepped forward to help her.
The man approached Ria.
His massive, pot-lid-sized hand touched her soft hair.
“Guess it’s because you just got here. You still smell nice. Well, if we’re all gonna die anyway, no harm in having some fun before that, huh?”
Ria trembled as goosebumps spread all over her body.
She felt she would collapse at any moment but couldn’t move.
She had no idea what would happen to her brother if she resisted.
At that moment, the underground prison door opened, and someone entered—instantly freezing the air around them.
“Grrrk, grrrrk.”
It was the Monsters who had imprisoned them here.
They all looked different, but they had one thing in common—
They looked like humans who had been disassembled and then crudely stitched back together.
The creatures moved through the prison, inspecting each cell.
Whenever their gaze swept across a cell, the captives would shrink back, hiding themselves to avoid eye contact.
They looked just like cockroaches discovered by humans.
Soon, the creatures’ gaze turned toward the cell where Ria was.
The man who had been staring at her with greedy eyes a moment ago quickly pressed himself against the wall, trying to stay out of sight.
The others, too, hid themselves in their own ways to avoid the creatures’ attention.
But Ria, her legs still weak from before, couldn’t hide properly.
The man stuck to the wall frantically gestured at her—
As if telling her to hurry and hide.
But by the time Ria realized what he meant, it was already too late.
The Monster had already spotted her.
A creature with a grotesque face, as if a snake and a cow had been fused together, stretched its head through the iron bars.
Its neck began to elongate unnaturally as it approached Ria.
Paralyzed by overwhelming fear, her body stiffened.
The creature scanned her up and down.
Its gaze was horrifying—different from that of the middle-aged man earlier.
It then withdrew its neck and nodded.
And with a metallic clank, the cell door swung open.
Everyone hiding went pale.
When the cell opened, it meant death was near.
Every few days, the creatures would take away humans from the prison cells—
And they never came back.
The Monster entered the cell and gestured, as if telling her to step outside.
Despair filled the faces of the prisoners.
Many of them glared at Ria with hatred.
Of course, that included the man who had tried to violate her earlier.
Then, with a tremendous shock, the building shook violently.
“Kyaaaaah!”
People screamed, curling up in fear at the incomprehensible situation.
And at the same time, faint hope flickered in the eyes of those in Ria’s cell.
There was no way an ordinary tremor like that could happen down here.
Could it be… someone had come to rescue them?
“Grrrkh?”
The Monster stopped what it was doing and turned toward the entrance of the underground prison.
‘Go on, leave!’
The people prayed silently, but their hope was crushed.
The tremor didn’t come again, and the creature standing by the entrance turned its gaze back to Ria and the others, beckoning again.
That gesture was like a death sentence.
When the people hesitated, the Monster’s face split apart, revealing rows of teeth spreading open like a blooming flower as it roared.
“Kkieeeeek!”
“Hiiiik!”
“I don’t want to die… I don’t want to dieee!”
People screamed in panic at the sight of the Monster.
In the chaos, Ria could only crouch down on the ground, unable to cry or move.
Because in her trembling hand was the small, fern-like hand of her little brother.
She didn’t care what happened to herself—but she prayed her brother would live.
From the creature’s hand, claws as long as its arm extended out.
Thud, thud.
The Monster began approaching the cell, and people ran around in confusion, inside and outside the bars.
At the center of it all, Ria turned her body, wrapping her arms around her brother’s back as if to shield him.
The creature’s massive body trampled several people as it entered the cell, and Ria, bracing for the pain to come, tightly shut her eyes.
And then—
Puk!
“Grrrraaaagh!”
When the expected pain never came, Ria slowly opened her eyes.
From the chest of the creature that had been about to kill her, a hand wreathed in black flames had pierced straight through.
The monster struggled, trying to grab the arm impaling it, but the black fire burned its hands away.
Soon, the hand was withdrawn, and the creature was engulfed in blazing black fire, turning to ash and scattering into the air.
In the place where the monster had vanished—
A figure stood, with eyes blazing like golden flames and armor darker than night itself.
An overwhelming presence, like a Demon from myth, stood there in silence.