Chapter 186 – 24 Hours (4)
22. 24 hours (4)
“Level update ok. It’s okay to request equipment upgrades in an emergency.”
[Remaining time: 10 hours 33 minutes 24 seconds]
“Skill upgrade okay.”
[Remaining time: 8 hours 34 minutes 51 seconds]
“Replenish supplies okay.”
[Remaining time: 7 hours 13 minutes 44 seconds]
“Artifact replenishment okay.”
[Remaining time: 5 hours 29 minutes 12 seconds]
“Equipment upgrades… Okay.”
[Remaining time: 3 hours 44 minutes 10 seconds]
After Cestia healed her body, she wandered around very frantically to prepare for entering District 4. Even if I felt fine, what should I say about this? Being able to move like this was a miracle in itself, and compared to Kayana and Shay, who would have paid a huge price, it was a sound full.
It was impossible to make all these preparations ‘best’ with the gold coins obtained as a reward for clearing zone 3, but Shay brought a considerable amount of gold coins, Kaya obtained a new artifact, and Illumina packed various consumables through my personal connections. Also came So did I. The new time was less than 3 hours left.
‘All that’s left is…’
There was no This time, I could say that it was the best and perfect. With this spec, even after preparing like this, you can’t wake up?
‘I’ll have to delete the control panel right away.’
Well, my life will be deleted anyway.
It is no longer tangible, but intangible. In other words, only mentality management remained.
[Remaining time: 3 hours 40 minutes 45 seconds]
“It must be because of my mood that it looks like a remaining lifespan rather than a remaining time.”
Mental exhaustion poured in all at once. I checked the condition. First of all, the stamina of my colleagues except me was full. I remembered Cestia’s words that I couldn’t bring out all of my current physical performance, even though my current physical strength was only about 90% of my maximum physical strength. She berated herself for not having enough of her own healing arts, but that was her nonsense. She was able to recover to this extent in a short period of time because she had the healing power of Salem’s best healing nun.
[Mentality]
Kaya: -49
Shay: -33
Eugene: -75
Illumina: -50
Not even a day has passed since I caught the heart of fear. It was strange that there were no aftereffects. I had fallen into encroachment, and Illumina had awakened, but my mentality was at its worst. It was fortunate that the only thing I was caught on was ‘guilty’. If helplessness, frustration, or delirium had surfaced, the course would have been different.
‘Kaya Lang Shey is also at a very good level compared to her physical condition at the time, but…’
Apart from mentality care, we just wanted to have our own time.
‘Come to think of it, Kaya said she wanted to eat my food.’
It’s not okay to drink alcohol, but wouldn’t it be okay to just eat snacks without alcohol?
I retrace my steps toward the inn to make a nameless self-made snack that I’ve always thought about making but never tried, which I sometimes ate with a can of beer when I was on Earth.
‘Do you have any similar ingredients? If it’s not there, I’ll do what I don’t have.’
**
“Delicious. More than anything I’ve eaten here all along.”
“Mmmm!”
“It’s not really delicious, but it’s a taste that makes you keep eating it?”
Fortunately, something without a name, even called cooking, was well received by colleagues. It may be because I am the person who made it, but I tried it and it was very good. The reproducibility was a little disappointing, but what can I do? The materials were very different.
Her hair, mood, and face have changed, but she still has a good appetite.
“It’s certain that there will be a guy who’s much worse than the guy he went through before, but thinking about who else can beat him up makes his shoulders feel heavier.”
“It’s fortunate that the presence only affects inside the dungeon. I understand that this is the result of the efforts of the Goddess and many other gods… If not, the world would be a little more hopeless.”
“Okay. Imagine him starting to make an impact out of the dungeon. Well, we are not given the responsibility to protect the world, and I am not from this world in the first place, so I have no attachments to this world except for you. Still, the reason I’m doing this…”
I want to live.
Because I want to live properly.
In my opinion, it was a very proper paradoxical expression that would appear in a Korean textbook.
“Because I want to live properly… ?”
Illumina, who was putting in a piece of her meat, tilted her head and asked. Kaya and Shay stopped chewing. It was good to focus, but it was a bit burdensome.
“No, it’s not that serious… You don’t have to focus that much. Listen lightly while eating.”
I had no intention of spending the remaining time gloomy. Of course, it’s not a light story, but I’m talking about this… I wanted to tell them everything about me.
Going further than the secret itself of Eugene, a different world, I know everything about the human being itself.
“I was trash.”
“Leader?”
“Captain?”
“No, there is a feeling that garbage should be thrown away and recycled. I don’t even have that presence or use… Okay. It was like dust. No, I’m not going to make that face! Because it was like that in the past before coming here, in the past!”
He fed the hardened women with meat. They reluctantly opened their mouths and mumbled. I felt desperately how much I was loved.
“There was no hope. There was nothing I wanted to do, which is often referred to as a dream. Friend? I wasn’t a bad guy, but I wasn’t the type to be friends with either. I was also reluctant to people. Love? I was afraid and bothered to even make friends, but it was impossible. It was me who put it all together. There is nothing I am good at, nothing I want to do, no passion, no money, no harmonious family, no best friends or lovers… He was an existence that no one cared about when and where he died.”
“Leader.”
“I didn’t have the courage to die again, so I lived because I couldn’t die, but I thought it wouldn’t be strange if I died at any time, so what I felt ‘fun’ was enjoying this world I faced across the dimension.”
The Long Terror game itself was devastating, although not as much as I experienced it myself. I can’t remember all the editions in thousands of hours, but I vividly remember the first edition and the very first difficulty level cleared.
Even with his mouth, he constantly cursed at him, calling him a lucky game, a trash game, a shit game, and an asshole game. Reckless annihilation, narrowly clearing after all but one person dies, or perfect clearing with both luck and skill.
I started a new game again, spitting out curses called “Fuck” With different meanings each time.
“I was immersed in the heroes with their own stories. Of course, the pain that the warriors and I went through was the difference between heaven and earth, but I guess I felt a sense of identity. It was a feeling I couldn’t even think about right now… Anyway, I came here and became a real hero, and went through the same process as them.”
It hurt.
The pain I was hit with as a child was so fucked up that I put it down a few numbers.
I experienced that there is more pain than pain, and I also experienced the fear of not being able to adapt, and vividly experienced the boundary between life and death.
All of those things.
If it was like before, I would have died because I couldn’t stand it and gave up.
But I, who was weak, endured everything.
I want to live.
To be precise, it was because there were people who ‘would like to share a future together’.
“After meeting you, I finally learned what human relationships are, what love is, and what happiness is. But the road we have to move on has become increasingly difficult, and I can’t even imagine how much pain there will be in front of us. But we persevered, we got stronger, we got stronger. I can’t imagine life without you guys. My life before becoming a hero was bleak, and after becoming a hero, I suffered endlessly. I wanted to put an end to all of this and enjoy more happiness together with you guys.”
That’s why I didn’t choose the option of planning the future. Because we thought it was hard enough.
“You can do it. We can do it. I endured because of you guys, and I can move forward because of you guys.”
Yum.
“Let’s show it to the guy who will be waiting arrogantly. Although it bends and bends for a moment, it never breaks.”
To continue to eat this delicious meat with you guys.
“… That’s right. We will overcome in the end and face the future.”
“I want the captain to cook for me every day. Everyday…”
“What could be more embarrassing and annoying than an unfinished story?”
[Remaining time: 1 hour 30 minutes 55 seconds]
**
[You can enter District 4 right away.]
Each of us made up our minds and arrived at the entrance to the dungeon. Then a message popped up right away.
[Warning]
[There is no way to return after entering.]
[There is a final resting place after entering.]
[You can stay at the final resting place for 30 minutes.]
[Stamina and mentality do not recover at the final resting place.]
The appearance of the entrance was the same as it was in District 1, but the message was completely different. I was very openly warning you that if you come in, you will be fucked.
‘It scares me.’
It was like the feeling when I saw the difficulty warning message that appeared when running the highest level of dlc.
It wasn’t even funny. They even put a restriction on resetting the dungeon if they didn’t enter, and when they tried to enter, they spat out a warning like this.
“Let’s go.”
“Yes. Leader.”
“Yes. Captain.”
“Huh. Let’s go.”
[You cannot go back once you enter.]
[Would you like to enter?]
“I’m going.”
Saying respectfully that it’s the last thing?
I raised my stop.
Soon, the sight darkened.
[The Long Terror has entered Area 4 of ‘The Longest Terror’.]
[I was waiting. Mortals struggling.]
[And 666 victors and 6003 losers.]
