Chapter 404: The Final Mission (2)
A lot of time had passed.
The individual battles were all over—some won, some lost.
Some survived. Others... didn’t.
Frey and Ghost ...
After tearing through the mountain range like madmen...
It had taken them several long minutes to finally arrive.
With every second that passed, Frey could feel his heart pounding harder and faster as they closed in.
Frey—the man whose emotions had been long buried, whose heart had turned cold—was now more anxious than ever.
Because they were nearing someone who still had the power to stir those long-forgotten feelings inside him.
Danzo.
He was a man who gave so much... and never asked for anything in return.
One of the very few people Frey truly cared about.
"Danzo..."
The wait didn’t last long.
Both Frey and Ghost finally reached the battlefield.
But the enemy was nowhere to be seen.
Instead, all they found was a devastated cavern .. crushed and ruined by the battle that had taken place within.
And at the very end of that cavern...
Inside a massive crater carved into the stone wall...
There lay a familiar figure.
A young man they knew all too well...
Frey’s Hawk Eyes allowed him to see clearly, even from a distance.
Danzo—his body broken, mercilessly torn apart by Gvardiol.
His chest ripped open, his face covered in blood...
His armor shattered into fragments...
And blood spilled everywhere...
That was him.
Their friend.
Both Frey and Ghost dashed toward him like madmen.
Their faces twisted in fear and panic.
They gently held onto him—unable to accept the brutal reality before them.
He was in a terrible state.
So mangled that some of the wounds had exposed bone.
Frey felt fury surge through him... but it was drowned out by something far stronger ...
Fear.
"Danzo..."
He said his name with a trembling voice.
And then, in that moment ..
Ghost, who had been checking their friend’s broken body, suddenly shouted:
"He’s breathing!"
"...What?" Frey asked, stunned.
Ghost repeated himself, louder this time:
"He’s breathing, Frey! He’s alive!!"
It took Frey a few seconds to process the words.
Danzo... was alive.
Ghost immediately began treating him as best he could, while Frey placed his hand over Danzo’s blood-soaked chest.
And then... he heard it.
A faint heartbeat.
A sound that brought him back to life.
"He’s alive!"
Disbelieving, Frey and Ghost clung to their friend like madmen.
"He’s alive!!!"
"We need to help him..."
Frey’s voice cracked with emotion, his mind too shaken to think clearly as tears welled in his eyes.
Channeling his SSS ranked Aura through his palm, he placed it over Danzo’s chest, trying to circulate aura into his friend’s broken body...
But the moment he did ..
Frey’s face darkened.
"...The aura channels. The core... it’s all shattered."
And then, he realized ..
Danzo was paralyzed.
He’d never fight again. He wouldn’t even walk.
But he was alive.
Frey’s mind burned.
What had happened?
How had his friend survived?
Did the enemy spare him? Leave him crippled instead of killing him?
If that were true... then it was a cruel mercy.
Still, Frey didn’t care.
What mattered more than anything...Was that Danzo was still breathing.
Yet, no matter how hard he tried...
Frey couldn’t shake the unease gnawing at his heart.
Something didn’t feel right.
Gvardiol...
Would he really spare their friend?
Frey wanted to believe it.
But the ominous feeling swelling in his chest kept growing... faster... louder...
Staring at his unconscious friend, Frey failed to notice the system notification that had been blinking beside him for some time now.
And then—after a few more seconds—he finally saw it.
The system kept flashing insistently, demanding his attention.
Frey knew something had happened.
He had no choice but to comply.
Slowly... he opened the system interface again.
Everything was the same.
Except one thing.
With wide eyes and a heart threatening to explode inside his chest...
Frey read the words displayed before him.
"...The final mission?"
It had appeared again.
The mission that had been marked only by question marks ever since he won the Victoriad...
was now back.
...
Main Mission:
Survive the Pursuit (10,000 Achievement Points)
Final Mission:
Save... or kill Danzo.
Reward: 15,000 Achievement Points, Skill: Screenshot (SS Rank)
Failure Penalty: Death of all main characters.
Time Limit: One month
Mission Description:
– A complete Demon Seed has been implanted in Danzo Smasher. You must act before it activates and unleashes the monster slumbering within.
...
...
...
While Ghost was busy tending to Danzo’s wounds, Frey kept rereading the mission description over and over.
The final mission—long shrouded in mystery—had finally revealed itself.
And Frey felt the entire world shake around him. His eyes locked onto one term:
"Complete Demon Seed."
Complete...
Frey understood what that meant.
Unlike Sansa, who he barely saved—because the seed inside her had only been a prototype—
The final, complete seed... had no cure.
He wrote the story. He knew that better than anyone.
There was no healing a complete Demon Seed. Because the cure didn’t exist.
Not even the power of the Lord of Light could save Danzo. The full seed fuses directly with the body.
There was only one way to deal with it.
And it was right there in the mission.
Save... or kill.
...or kill.
Kill Danzo.
The system had been brutally clear.
Frey nearly lost his mind.
With a trembling body, he realized the grim reality before him.
"You’re asking me to kill the person I fought so hard to save...?"
Even thinking about it left him hollow.
But he didn’t let himself spiral too far.
"No... The system didn’t tell me to kill him."
Its words were precise.
Save... or kill.
Which meant... there had to be a way to save him.
"There has to be one..."
And if there was .. then it could only come from the system.
Ignoring both Ghost and Danzo, Frey frantically tore through the system interface like a madman.
"The system must know the answer. It has to... I probably just need a massive amount of Achievement Points. Yes... it has to be that."
Clinging to hope with everything he had left,
he activated the Writer’s Authority—desperate to know the answer.
"How can I destroy the complete Demon Seed without killing the vessel?"
He asked with a clenched heart, banking everything on the system.
And it replied instantly.
Frey expected the usual answer .. that he lacked the required points.
But that wasn’t what he got.
Instead...
...
– This question cannot be answered using Achievement Points.
Such inquiries require the use of the System Inquiry ability.
"System Inquiry!?"
Frey Starlight immediately remembered the ability.
The reward he earned from completing the first final mission .. his victory at the Victoriad.
System Inquiry allowed him to ask the Engineer one question, and the blue-eyed man would be forced to answer.
But right then...
Frey remembered.
He had already used it.
He wasted it—asking how he could return to his original world.
He’d spent it.
Realizing that...
He stared at the line that appeared beneath the interface:
– You were warned –
The moment he read it...
He recalled what the Engineer had told him that day.
He warned him...
Not to use the System Inquiry hastily.
That the future held too many unpredictable variables.
He said it word for word:
"You’ll regret it... you’ll regret using it now."
But Frey didn’t listen. He used it anyway.
He thought the Engineer meant he’d regret learning that he couldn’t go home.
But the truth was far crueler.
Frey, with a dark expression and terrifying eyes ..
Clutched his face in rage, finally understanding.
"...He knew. He knew this was going to happen from the beginning."
Staring at his unconscious friend, whose fate now rested entirely in his hands ..
Frey realized that despite everything...
Despite all the choices,
all the fights,
all the battles,
all the desperate struggle for freedom ..
It was all for nothing.
In the end...
Frey was still walking the path the blue-eyed man had laid for him.
Everything... had been for nothing.
His mind was in turmoil.
Despite all he had done...
He was still dancing in the palm of the Engineer’s hand.
Everything had become meaningless.
He could no longer save Danzo.
The only way to end it now... was to kill him.
To kill his friend.
"You will regret it."
That single phrase ..spoken by the Engineer long ago .. echoed in Frey’s mind.
"You will regret it."
Hell hadn’t even begun yet.
This... was just the beginning.
"You will regret it."
Regret deeper than anything.
Frey Starlight ..
Bound by threads of fate, knotted tightly around his soul, found himself forced to keep walking this path.
Forced to kill his friend.
The same friend he had risked everything to save.
Between a dying Danzo...
and the rest of his comrades, whose fates were still unknown...
and the destiny imposed upon him, a road he was shackled to against his will—
Frey Starlight broke.
He collapsed beside his fallen friend,
no longer knowing what he was supposed to do.
Shattered, beneath Ghost’s confused gaze,
who couldn’t understand what had just happened.
But Frey’s expression said it all.
It told the story of a man who had suffered so much...
that he no longer knew how to go on.
It was painful.
Unbearably painful.