ICWDS 16

Chapter 16

The Elf Forest (3)

Thump!

The backlash of the Torrent Core struck my heart like a sledgehammer.

All the strength drained from my body, and my knees buckled beneath me.

“Haaah… haaah!”

The Torrent Core was undeniably a powerful cursed relic, but the rebound was brutal. If I hadn’t brought Khazakiel down with that single strike, the recoil alone would have finished me off.

“Lady Khazakiel has fallen!”

“A mere human…!”

The elves gaped in sheer horror at the sight of their fallen commander. But truth be told, I was just as panicked as they were.

I was just trying to heal her…

She had collapsed so agonizingly slowly that my blade ended up slipping right out of her chest. There was no time to help her back up, though—elves were already swarming from every direction.

“Sergeant Baek! Follow me!”

Since she was a princess, her own people would take good care of her. I could only pray this misunderstanding would be cleared up the next time we met.

Tapping into my surprisingly generous pool of mana, I raised the flute to my lips and blew with everything I had.

“Ughhhhh!”

Sergeant Baek bounded after the melody. The elves surged forward in a feral mob, so I kicked the tempo up to double time to shake them off.

Leading a corrupted hero on a wilderness venture through an enchanted wood… Looking at it this way, didn’t I look kind of like a wise sage?

Arrows whizzed through the air, nearly impaling my head a few times, but dodging projectiles in a dense forest wasn’t too difficult. As long as I ducked behind a thick tree trunk, I could dodge almost anything.

How long had we been running?

At some point, I sensed the elven pursuit beginning to thin out.

“Huh…?”

In place of the elves, countless gleaming eyes were staring out from the undergrowth.

Grrrr…

Kiiiaaaah…

Oh.

When on earth did so many beasts gather?

Gulping down my nerves, I kept playing. The monsters followed as if hypnotized by the sound of the flute.

Don’t tell me… they were drawn in by my music?

“Damn it, the forest beasts are gathering!”

“R-retreat! Curse it all! If only we had the flute!”

I thought I heard muffled voices from the elves beyond the tree line, but it was hard to tell.

The moment I stopped playing to catch my breath—

“ROAAAR!”

The monsters lunged at once.

Startled out of my skin, I barely dodged the initial pounce, but creatures were closing in from every side.

“Why?! Wait, don’t tell me… because I stopped playing?!”

Were they so deeply immersed in my performance that stopping was a punishable offense?

My guess hit the bullseye. The instant I resumed playing the flute, the monsters froze in place and ceased their attacks.

So if I stopped playing, they’d tear me apart? What kind of psychotic saesaeng fans were these?!

Well, if that’s how it’s going to be…

“Think you can keep up?”

…To my music?

(Recommended BGM: The Mountain Bunny)

Pee~ li-li! Pii-pi-ri!

Pee~ li-li! Li-li-ra!

Pee~ ppo! Pee~ ppo! Ppi-ppo-ppo! Pee~ li-li ppi-ppi-ri!

I sprinted through the woods while playing with everything I had.

The Mountain Bunny. Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. Three Bears. Blue Sky, White Heart.

Grace Falls Down Upon Us. Onward, Christian Soldiers.

When Mommy Goes to the Island Shore… to Pick Barnacles!

I played every single tune stored in my head on loop, sprinting endlessly through the forest.

“Hah! Hah!”

Yet every single time the melody faltered, the beasts immediately tried to rip my throat out. Just as I thought I’d collapse from hyperventilation, a sudden explosion rocked the forest.

KABOOM!!

A tidal wave of pure fire swept through the beasts, incinerating them in seconds.

“Gasp…!”

Who would commit arson in the middle of a forest?!

“Yun Ga-on!”

It was Team Leader Park Do-gyeong, Kang Cheong-hwa, and the rest of Special Task Team 2.

“Are you all right!”

“Ah, yes. Wait, this fire…?”

“It’s the power of a cursed artifact I possess.”

Park Do-gyeong briefly flashed a ring on his finger. It produced a small flame no larger than a cigarette lighter, but the inferno currently devouring the woods was on an entirely different scale.

FROOOOSH!

The fire raged as if possessed by a mind of its own, swallowing the beasts whole.

“It’s an artifact that commands a fire elemental. The raw firepower is guaranteed.”

“Wow…”

There was a reason Park Do-gyeong had been holding back. Unleashing a fire elemental in the heart of a forest was bound to cause absolute chaos. Looking at the raging forest, this truly was a last resort.

“Target secured! It’s Sergeant Baek Jin-seong!”

The team members confirmed Sergeant Baek’s identity, but their expressions darkened the moment they took in his condition.

“He’s already corrupted!”

“Everyone, fall back!”

Jang Tae-sik and Min Do-hyun raised their weapons, taking combat stances against Sergeant Baek. But Kang Cheong-hwa stepped between them.

“It’s fine. Ga-on, can you treat him here?”

“Heok-ro is about to burst from overeating right now. Doing it immediately might be tough.”

“Heok-ro is full?”

Kang Cheong-hwa tilted her head in confusion. Just then, the fire Park Do-gyeong set began spreading toward them at an alarming rate.

“Team Leader! The fire is spreading!”

“Transport Sergeant Baek first!”

“What? But he’s already corrupted—”

“I have a plan, so just do as I say!”

As Park Do-gyeong barked orders while setting the entire forest ablaze, the two agents fell in line, looking thoroughly bewildered.

Sergeant Baek continued to follow the sound of my flute like a hypnotized puppy, and before long, we managed to break through the gate.

The moment our feet hit the outside world:

“The gate is collapsing!”

As the gate vanished, the roaring forest inferno disappeared along with it.

The flames consuming the forest were only brought under control after the elves summoned a high spirit.

A dark, torrential rain poured down from the corrupted water spirit, finally dousing the inferno raging through the woods.

“Curse those filthy humans! How dare they pull a stunt like this and walk away alive?!”

“Princess! Are you alright?”

The elves rushed over to Princess Irsha, who was receiving treatment for her shoulder and back. Their deference to her was absolute, and for good reason: as royal High Elves, they were the sole beings capable of communicating with the World Tree.

Only a High Elf had the authority to corrupt the sacred World Tree itself.

In this corrupted world, they sought to defile even the deity they once worshipped, making a High Elf an indispensable asset.

“I’m… fine.”

High Elf Irsha’s shoulders trembled subtly. Was it because she had been dragged around after being stabbed? Or was the exposed skin on her back catching a chill?

“Princess, please forgive us. It has been so long since we found prey…”

“It has been ages since we encountered an uncorrupted human. It would have been a fine opportunity to hear human screams…”

“Where is Khazakiel?”

At Irsha’s icy question, Khazakiel—who was receiving treatment nearby—approached and dropped to one knee.

Irsha looked down at her, raised her hand, and swung it with full force.

SLAP!

A sharp crack echoed as Khazakiel’s head snapped to the side.

“How dare…”

SLAP!

“…a mere human…”

SLAP!

“…humiliate me like this?!”

SLAP!

Irsha’s palm rained down repeatedly, beating Khazakiel half to death. Yet not a single elf present thought it was excessive. For a corrupted High Elf, such cruelty was entirely natural.

“Incompetent, useless wench. Strip her of her rank as Guard Captain and throw her into the dungeon!”

“Yes, Princess!”

The guards dragged Khazakiel away in accordance with the command. Watching her limp, corpse-like body being dragged across the dirt, Irsha’s eyes flickered with a brief tremor before instantly snapping back to the cold, ruthless demeanor expected of a corrupted elf.

“Find the human who stabbed me. I will make him pay for this humiliation. Capture him alive—and make sure all his limbs are intact!”

“Understood…!”

After issuing orders to her subordinates, Irsha declared she was tired and retreated into the depths of the World Tree.

“Gasp…!”

“Princess? Is something wrong?”

“It’s… nothing.”

Brushing past the guarded gazes of the elves, Irsha secretly clutched her thumping chest.

Her entire clan was corrupted, and the World Tree was rotting from the inside out.

I can’t let them find out.

She couldn’t let anyone discover that her mind had returned to normal—that her corruption had been cleansed.

And above all…

I have to find him.

The benefactor who had purified her. The man who had seen right through her corrupted trickery in an instant and healed her instead.

A huge scene broke out after we exited the gate.

It wasn’t because of Sergeant Baek—we had managed to sneak him directly into a concealed medical station the second we stepped out. Most of the search team members had already returned to base or been admitted to the military hospital, leaving only Management Bureau staff at the gate, which made hiding him relatively easy.

Stab!

Since the corruption was already advanced, I plunged the blade near his ribs to drain a massive amount of blood and dark karma.

【Ughhh… I’m so stuffed I could burst.】

“Since when do you complain about drinking blood?”

I kept nudging Heok-ro to absorb all the karma so I could hurry up and heal Sergeant Baek.

“Karma reading is at 135. You can stop now.”

Kang Cheong-hwa verified that Sergeant Baek had returned to normal. Watching from the side, Agents Jang Tae-sik and Min Do-hyun looked completely dumbfounded.

“I heard he could absorb karma, but…”

“To actually revert someone who was already fully corrupted back to normal…”

Neither of them knew I had the ability to restore corrupted individuals. Since it was classified information to begin with, it made sense that they were in the dark.

“Wait a second. If Ga-on absorbed all of Sergeant Baek’s karma, isn’t he in serious danger right now?”

“It’s fine. Ga-on is a born immune.”

Still, regulations mandated a mandatory karma check upon exiting a gate. The moment Kang Cheong-hwa brought the measuring device close to check my index—

“Huh?”

“It’s a bit high, isn’t it? Even if it’s Ga-on, he should still be careful…”

“What on earth is this?”

Special Task Team 2 stared at me with wide, horrified eyes after reading the display.

“What is it?”

“…”

Without a word, Kang Cheong-hwa turned the device toward me.

The number displayed on the screen was…

“419,887…?”

Holy mother of god.

It was an astronomical figure, unlike anything I had ever seen. Even after healing over twenty regular soldiers, the cumulative total had barely hovered around 60,000.

How did healing one Sergeant Baek jump the counter by 420,000?!

“Ah.”

Then it hit me—there was one more person.

The elven princess, whom Heok-ro had drained of blood and dark karma for an extended period.

Just how ridiculously high was her karma capacity?!

I scratched my head, a dizzying wave of cold sweat washing over me. To think I had absorbed that much karma… Pushing my unknown limits like that had been a terrifying gamble.

Fortunately, even after absorbing over 400,000 karma, I hadn’t succumbed to corruption.

“Yun… Ga-on.”

“G-Ga-on?”

The team members’ eyes were fixed on me.

“Ah, I’m fine. The reading is a bit high, but I feel totally normal—”

“No, look at your hand…”

“My hand?”

At Kang Cheong-hwa’s words, I looked down. My hand looked completely fine. No injuries, and all six fingers were intact…

“Six?”

Yeah, okay. Maybe not completely fine.

After a brief spell of utter panic, the extra finger eventually shrank back to normal.

[Still, you need to be careful. Thanks to your abnormal recovery rate, it returned to normal, but now we know that absorbing excessive amounts of karma causes physical mutations.]

The most defining symptom of corruption was bodily mutation—abnormal growth of fangs, turning into a fur-covered beast, or massive scaling in size. Unnatural physical deformity was the hallmark of a corrupted soul.

[Of course, that’s not true for everyone. High-level hunters with immense resistance can actually suppress and control their physical mutations.]

“Does that mean it’s impossible to spot a corrupted person just by looking at them?”

[Exactly. That’s why tracking down corrupted individuals who have blended into normal society is so difficult.]

High-level corrupted individuals were notoriously difficult to identify. Apparently, they could even forge their karma readings.

[Did you recheck your levels? How is it now?]

“Ah, I was planning to check it in a bit.”

[This is the first time you’ve experienced a physical mutation, so keep a constant eye on it.]

“Got it~”

[And off the record…]

After regaining his sanity, Sergeant Baek reportedly filed a formal complaint with the Military Police. While keeping his own temporary corruption a secret, he exposed how Colonel Jo Yang-ki and the Search Battalion officers had treated the soldiers like disposable pawns.

In reality, the Capital Defense Command’s Special Search Battalion had experienced an abnormally high rate of corruption due to forced, reckless operations. The commanding officers had logged those casualties as “missing in action,” threatening the remaining troops to cover it up.

Since deaths and disappearances were common in the Dark Zone, the officers simply used the soldiers until they corrupted, then discarded them inside like trash.

No wonder they tried so hard to stop me from treating him. Blinded by promotions, Colonel Jo and his officers had abandoned basic human decency.

[It’s going to cause a massive scandal in the media, and this time they won’t be able to cover it up. They’re all stuck in hospital beds anyway, so they won’t even have the chance to scheme.]

At the very least, their precious promotions were officially flushed down the drain.

Ending the call with Kang Cheong-hwa, I pulled out the measuring device provided by the bureau.

“18,600.”

A whole week had passed, and I still had this much remaining. Even for a Level 1 hunter, this level of karma meant entry into the Dark Zone was strictly prohibited. (I heard Level 2 hunters were allowed entry up to 20,000, though…)

【Phew~ It took quite some time to digest all that.】

“Digest my foot. I still have nearly 20,000 left, you know.”

【Be grateful it was me, host. Anyone else would have exploded from that volume. Just what in the world did you stab back there?】

A ridiculously gorgeous elven princess? Though to think she was corrupted… I never would have guessed it when she was entranced by my flute.

【At any rate, host. I have good news.】

“What is it?”

【Hehehe…!】

Heok-ro let out an eerie, sinister chuckle before asking:

【You can now unlock a new power. And this time, the choice is entirely yours.】

“A choice? Are there multiple powers I can unlock?”

【Three, to be exact.】

I stared down at the blood-red cursed blade, falling deep into thought.