Chapter 211 – The Process of Evolution (2)
Tak- Tak-
Clean the mansion
Use a duster to remove any dust from the corners of the window.
Podeuk- Podeudeuk-
Take a wet towel from the bucket, wring it out, and wipe the surface of the clear glass window.
Bodeuk..-
Stop mopping for a while.
Swoop.
Baekgu turns his head and looks to the side.
You can see the windows lined up.
Originally, there should have been one maid attached to each window.
‘No one is here..’
Now that the ‘owner’ of the mansion had disappeared, even the maids who followed him had all disappeared.
“Was it originally this… Wide?”
The space inside the mansion, which seemed to have always been full, felt so wide that the maid, Baek-gu, murmured quietly.
Jerk-!
“Bae… Senior Baekgu…!”
At that time, a little trembling girl’s voice grabbed Baekgu’s head and turned it around.
“All the laundry is done!”
“Maid Seo-hee…”
Baek Seo-hee, in her azure maid uniform, holds out her hand and smiles at her, letting her know that her job is done.
‘Yes.. Because there is this child besides me as a maid.’
Baek-gu gains strength from Seo-hee’s bright smile.
“Senior Baekgu… Looks like there are a lot of windows to clean. Can I help you?”
Baek Seo-hee asked while tilting her head.
“No. Seo-hee must have suffered enough with the laundry.”
Sharak-…
Baekgu raised his tail.
Shuuk—
Duplicate mops from the bucket were blown out, placed on each window, and began wiping remotely.
“I’ll take care of this.”
In the mansion, he had his own beliefs and rules, Baek-gu, that he did housework by hand without using magic.
‘Even if the situation gets tough… Until the master comes back, we have to do it properly. I’m the maid of this mansion.’
In order to overcome the current situation where there is a shortage of workers, Baek-gu began to use magic to work in the mansion.
While working like that.
Tap-!
Knock-.
Baek-gu hears the noise of someone coming down the stairs.
-With a bang-!
Baek-goo and Seo-hee immediately turn their heads, stopping what they were doing.
Tak.. Tak-
In-young, wearing a white dress, slowly descends the stairs while holding onto the wall.
Her long, straight red hair, which had always been clean and flowing, was scattered.
“Ah..Dad..”
Vivid golden light loses its vitality and looks around anxiously in an unfocused state.
Originally, her skin color was close to white, but now it was white enough to look pale, and deep black shadows were cast from sleeplessness under her eyes.
The girl’s name is Hiro Kim.
She was the only daughter of the owner of the mansion, who hadn’t returned since a week ago.
That Beog-… That Beog-…
“Dad..! Dad..! Where are you..?”
Hiro, muttering the same words over and over again, steps out into the mansion’s living room with trembling steps.
Thump-!
“..Hiro sister!”
Even before Baek-goo comes out, Seo-hee Baek approaches Hiro first and supports him from the side.
It wasn’t because Baek-gu didn’t want to support Hiro, it was because Baek Seo-hee was the only person Hiro could talk to in his current state.
“You haven’t slept again..? Sister?”
To Baek Seo-hee’s question, looking at her with a pitying gaze and asking in a friendly voice as much as possible.
“Seo-hee.. Dad.. Where is my dad? Dad didn’t come last night.. That last night too! The night before! You didn’t say a word to me about going on a business trip or anywhere.. Maybe something happened to your dad. Could it be that? I’m so worried I’m going crazy…!”
Hiro shouted at Baek Seo-hee in a nervous and desperate voice like a frightened child.
“Sister Hiro…”
To Hiro, Baek Seo-hee instead asked if Cheols had disappeared.
“It must be because he’s busy. Dad will be back soon..”
Cheols, who has no way to return, soothes him by saying that he will return soon.
This was an obvious lie, but now Hiro had nothing to say other than that lie.
– Hiro can return to being male.
Hiro, who was forced to choose between going back to being a man or maintaining his status quo after reading a message left by Cheols from Violet a week ago.
– Why are you all making such a gloomy expression..?
When she came up from the basement with Violet, she showed a bright expression as usual.
‘Lady… You must be shocked, but you seem to be doing your best while forcing a smile.’
He was the white ball that I thought at first.
However, when I woke up thinking that I had to work at the mansion even without the owner.
– What time is Dad coming?
– Yeah..? Girl what now
– Isn’t it time for daddy to come soon? I want to eat the steak my dad cooked for dinner tonight…
Hiro acted as if the very fact of Irons’ disappearance had disappeared from his memory.
– Babies in the tummy are like that too. I hope daddy comes soon. Lol..
At the crossroads of the choice of whether to return to being a man or to maintain the status quo, Hiro’s choice was ‘escape from reality’.
Like Cheols, who said that he could not live without Hiro, Hiro also denied the reality that his father had disappeared because he could not live in a world without a loving father.
Tadak–!
– Dad?! Where is dad yes? Dad?
Hiro’s madness began that night.
Widely-! Widely-! Widely-!
– Dad? Dad? Dad?
Hiro, unable to sleep without Cheols by his side, ran around the second and third floors of the mansion and opened the doors.
– My dad… I don’t have a dad… Hmmm… Where is your dad? Whoa…
It wasn’t until the day when he hadn’t slept for three days that he started to cry and suffer like a child, as if he felt strange that Cheols didn’t come.
– Sleep.
It was difficult to see Hiro crying sadly, and Baek-gu, who was worried that his condition would deteriorate if he did not sleep, seemed to end the incident by using sleep magic to put Hiro to sleep.
– Ah..Dad..?
The problem was that Hiro’s magic resistance was not normal.
– Dad… Where are you? Dad!!
Even after using the sleep magic, he wakes up in a few hours without his body recovering at all and repeats searching for Cheols in the mansion.
No sleep at all and the extreme stress of the loss of a loving father.
Growling-.. Growling-..
Hiro even said that he would not eat unless Chulsu came, so he did not even take proper nutrition.
“Lies..! They keep saying that my dad is coming back.. He’s not coming! Are you lying to me?!”
Hiro shouts ferociously at Seo-hee for no reason.
It took less than a week for a person to fail.
“That…That’s…!”
“You’re actually at Dad’s house, aren’t you?”
“Hiro sister… Please!”
Widely-!
After shaking off Baek Seo-hee’s hand, Hiro ran to the library that Cheols often used.
Squeak–
“Dad! Is Dad here? Yes?”
Looking around inside the library, under the desk and behind the piles of books around.
Kik-!
“..Ah.”
And when Nero disappeared, he checked the room behind the library that was completely empty…
Dump-..
Sit down like a puppet with a thread cut off.
“Huh.. Heh.. Where did Dad go..? Where did he go, leaving me alone..?”
I started to weep like a child.
Swoop-.
The hand that went up to the back of Hiro’s head.
“Slip.”
Dig-
As it emits light-
Staggering-.
“Eh..!?”
Hiro’s slender body shakes and collapses.
Ugh–.
Baek-gu, who lifted Hiro with his telekinetic powers and held him in a princess hug position.
“I’ll lay the lady down in the bedroom for a while so she can rest. Maid Seo-hee.”
“Yes..Four!”
After talking to Seohee, I climbed the stairs to the second floor.
“…”
After that, Baek Seo-hee, who was left alone, stood blankly and stared at her holding a rag.
Dig-!
[ Breaking news! ]
I turned my head in shock at the noise of the TV that automatically turned on during news time.
[Information that leaders from around the world gathered together and decided to erect a memorial statue along with a memorial ceremony for the 10 heroes who sacrificed themselves after defeating the demon king..]
On the TV screen, a glorious hero who lost his life after defeating the demon king.
There was a crowd of people commemorating the 10 girls.
“There are other people who have sacrificed…”
Mumbling Baek Seo-hee turned off her TV and moved back to work in her mansion.
============
A white space like a blank sheet of paper.
“…!”
The image of a black-haired, golden-eyed man with a frightened face is floating around, extending his hand around the black smoke like fried ink.
A black-haired man whose eyebrows did not move as if he had been stopped in time.
“…”
Then, a little away from the man, a bald, armless giant turned upside down and stopped.
‘..I’m going crazy.’
The body is stiff, but the consciousness is the same.
No. That would be incorrect.
In this world where one second accelerates to hundreds of years, thoughts and emotions also flow insanely slowly.
If that level is included in this world even for a very fleeting moment, your head will turn white.
Wriggling wriggling–..!
In this flow of ego degeneration, Cheols endured by mobilizing all the brain capacity of the creatures he absorbed.
Thanks to the awakening of the ability to absorb experience at the last moment, the range of multiple self-consciousness he had also increased, and this was possible because the part of the self that was maintained was wider than the part that was degenerated.
‘There is a limit to this too…’
In the end, since degeneration itself cannot be prevented, one day all thoughts cease to exist and become inanimate objects.
In this situation, it would be nice to use the ability again to escape, but even the magic and magic inside the body, including the body, all stop and nothing can be done.
The indescribable horror of dying in real time with no way to resist.
‘I’m sure Hiro was very surprised… Did he go back to being a man?’
Even in the fear of death, Cheols thought of Hiro and worried.
He laughed at his unkemptness and wondered about all of it, whether he would have become a boy straight away or whether he would be grieving that he had been a father at least once.
‘By the way..’
Cheols looked at the demon king in a fixed field of view.
Whoa–..
At first glance, it seems to be stopped.
Shit-…
There is a very small crack in the space at the end of my outstretched hand.
‘That monstrous bastard…! You’re moving your body even in that state?!’
Yes. Even in this nonsensical space-time stop hell, the dimension of Hur and Gong, the Demon King maintained his ego and moved his body very minutely to open the way to escape.
‘If it’s like that, it will take a long time, but I’ll escape someday..!’
What Cheols was worried about was that the escaped demon king was heading back to the human world.
Of course, since I told Sahyeok to accept Hiro, who lost his memory and became a man again, as a disciple, there is a possibility that Hiro, who became a man before the demon king goes, will complete the Transcendence.
‘If the Demon King had gone before Hiro reached the Transcendental World…!’
At that time, there are no countermeasures such as this trick of confining people to the dimension of emptiness and emptiness.
Amid worries about the future…
Wiggle–.. Wiggle-…
Cheers began transforming into gray tentacles little by little, starting from the tips of his toes and the top of his head.
In order to use it as energy to maintain his ego even a little bit, he erases his human form and returns it to a simple tentacle form.
Wriggling wriggling–
Little by little, the body gnaws away and shrinks.
‘Ah.. Hiro..’
Dreaming-..
When he was reduced to the shape of a lump of chubby tentacles the size of a person’s arm, and his ego couldn’t think of anything other than thinking of Hiro.
Pachaaang–!!
‘…!’
One side of the space explodes like a broken window, opening a dimensional gap.
‘Devil..?!’
The tentacle, which couldn’t even recall its own name, recalled the existence of the Demon King in its degenerated memories and looked towards the Demon King.
Whoa–..
The demon king has yet to make only fine gold, but has not opened the text of the dimension.
[Whoops-! You look really good! Are you saying that our false demon king is stuffed like a butterfly… Or a moth? ]
It wasn’t the demon king who broke the dimensional gap now.
‘A white… Dragon?’
A dragon’s head full of white crystal scales and reddish reptile eyes.
Chijijik–..! Chijik-!
Around such a dragon’s head, a transparent film was overlaid as if to prevent the stop of space-time in the dimension of emptiness and emptiness.
[Uhm… That’s awful. I can’t last long. ]
The dragon muttered so.
–Jjaeok–!
With his mouth open.
Aaaaa —-!!!!
He blew a breath of white light toward the demon lord!
—Quaaaaang–!!
Although the figure of the demon king was pushed back with a huge explosion and moved away from the gap in the dimension he was digging.
Wow—..!!
The airflow of the explosion rapidly degenerated and the demon king, revealed, was still as it was without a scratch.
[ No. What kind of monster are you? Even if you get hit with a breath like that, you’re safe? Her. ]
The dragon clicked his tongue because his breath didn’t work on the demon king.
Chijik-..!
[For now, it looks like the barrier will break, so retreat. Should I find another way? ]
At the same time as he muttered, he tried to return to the dimensional gap again.
Wriggle-..!
[ Yes? ]
However, while pulling his head back, the dragon felt a slight wriggling movement within the range of his senses.
[What is this? ]
He found irons that looked like chubby tentacles.
[ Why are there gray tentacles here? ]
It is also strange that there are gray tentacles that are no different from cockroaches in the devil world in a place out of nowhere, but the white dragon tilts its head at the fact that it somehow maintains its shape and endures… Bahamut made by the demon dragon.
[ For a moment! You can’t..! ]
Recalling the scene right before the demon king, who had secretly stole it, fell into the dimension of emptiness and emptiness.
[Haha-! It was you! It was you! ]
He burst into a big smile and brought his red eyes closer to Cheols.
[There is no other than the will to reproduce the species.. A strange species among the lowly. You were there ]
Bahamut, who muttered that and narrowed his red eyes, repeatedly looked at the demon king and Cheols.
Sigh-..!
[There was no harvest. ]
Smile with a dragon’s face –
Let’s go–!
– Stick out your long red tongue and put tentacles… Irons in it.
Teouk-!
–Shuwook–!
He put his tongue in his mouth and closed it, leaving the dimension of void and void.