I Reincarnated into a Game Filled with Mods – Chapter 94

Chapter 94

As the shadows and abyss that had risen due to the explosion subsided, my vision cleared again.

“Ugh. Ptooey, ptooey.”

I stood there, wiping my face with my palm and coughing repeatedly, spitting out whatever was in my mouth. All sorts of strange tastes filled my mouth. I kept gagging.

I had taken the explosion head-on without any defense, so my mouth was full of something. Horribly, I even bit down on something like granules. I spat them all out.

“Ah, shit. That scared me. Really.”

As I managed to sort out the situation, harsh words naturally came out. I was covered in black liquid all over my body, and it even got into my mouth, so I couldn’t help but curse.

“No way, it dies in one hit?”

What just happened was a special death animation that could only be seen when the Creature Abandoned by God was finished off with a blessed weapon or divine spell.

If you kill it with ordinary weapons, magic, or dark magic, its entire body simply melts away and disappears. However, if you kill it with a blessed weapon or divine spell, it disappears with a death rattle, exploding like that.

It’s just a death animation, so it doesn’t harm the character. Naturally, the damage is also 0. It’s just that the player outside the monitor gets startled by the final scream and the explosion sound.

That’s why I was going to step back and wait until the Solar Eclipse wore off before killing it if it looked like it was about to die, but I never imagined it would die just from being stabbed deeply.

‘…Well, there’s nothing I can do. It’s my fault too.’

Its body melted away with a single slash, so I should have kept in mind that it might die in one hit if I stabbed its head. This is the result of forgetting that.

I spat out the things in my mouth and headed towards the monster’s corpse. Something was sparkling where the body had been. It was the item dropped by the Creature Abandoned by God.

‘The results aren’t bad. I took a risk, though.’

It was the final boss that I caught like lightning because the Sun Pope suddenly mentioned the DLC’s lines from our first meeting, but the results were pretty good.

No, it wasn’t just pretty good, it was excellent.

Since it’s the final boss of the DLC, it’s guaranteed to give a tremendous amount of experience, and the performance of the weapon that can be made with the item it drops is pretty good.

Of course, it’s good enough to be used as a main weapon, but it’s not to the point where it’s so overpowered that it makes you say “wow.” However, it was perfect for use as an intermediate weapon.

I walked into the middle of where the body had been and picked up the item left there.

‘I’ll have to go to the alchemy workshop when I have time later.’

It was impossible to process the item obtained after defeating the boss into a weapon at an ordinary blacksmith.

You have to find an alchemy workshop, which exists only in one place in the entire field, but I was planning to postpone it for now because it wasn’t urgent. There were too many things I had to do before that.

I stuffed the item into my empty potion pouch and then turned my gaze to the new passage that had been created when the wall collapsed.

It was the entrance to the new area that opens after clearing the Creature Abandoned by God boss fight. It’s a small area added as a bonus, but it’s best to stop by if you can.

Since it’s a place you can only go to after clearing the final boss of the DLC, the experience points from the mobs are enormous, almost as much as two late-game bosses if you catch them all, and above all, there are a few pieces of equipment and items that can only be obtained there.

It’s not very useful to me because it’s equipment and items that priests would use, but the experience points that can be gained in the field alone were a huge reward for me.

‘It’s a shame that the mobs don’t respawn.’

Unfortunately, the monsters in that area don’t respawn. It’s a one-time area that you don’t need to visit twice.

If it was a place where mobs could respawn, I could just stay in the Holy Kingdom and go back and forth here, but it’s a shame.

‘It’ll take a little longer to go all the way there and come back up…’

I glanced at the ceiling. It would probably take another hour and a half to two hours to catch all the mobs in the new area.

‘There’s no guarantee I can come back here.’

I looked around. The statue that served as a fast travel point and base in Brightest Darkness 4 was nowhere to be seen. In other words, it means that if I carelessly leave here, I might not be able to come back in.

A magic circle appeared in the middle of the boss room, but it was a one-way street that only allowed you to exit.

The Popes would have immediately noticed that the monster was dead, so they might be wondering why I’m not coming out. But I can explain that later.

I can explain it anytime as long as I get out of here, but if I go out and can’t come back in and miss out on the experience points there, I’ll regret it for the rest of my life.

With my mind made up, I stepped into the newly created passage.

‘Surely nothing will happen, right?’

They’ll wait for me for about two hours without saying anything.

Especially the Popes, they’ll be too busy rejoicing to have time to care about me.

ㅡBoom!

“What was that?!”

“Your Holiness, we must evacuateㅡ”

“No. There’s no need for that.”

With a bang, the barrier blocking the Holy Kingdom’s underground shook violently. Stella and Selene hurriedly tried to evacuate the Pope, but Floreta politely stopped them.

The explosion that just occurred was not a threat to the Holy Kingdom. Rather, it was a sound that told them how the long battle that had been going on inside had ended.

Floreta could instinctively realize it. The fragments of the abyss and shadows that had been weighing down her body so heavily had disappeared without a trace.

‘Ah… He… truly…’

Floreta desperately held back the tears that were about to burst out.

It wasn’t time for that yet. The moment to truly rejoice was after the person who had given Floreta and Luna a future appeared safe and sound.

Only after thanking him, praising him, and extolling his actions could she truly shed tears of relief. She couldn’t do that yet.

If he had made a great sacrifice in exchange for giving Floreta and Luna their freedom, she could never simply rejoice.

“Inquisitor, Inquisitor. Please check the barrier. There’s no need for us to panic at all.”

Floreta pointed to the barrier that surrounded the path to the Holy Kingdom’s underground. The divine power felt from the barrier, the white light containing God’s power, was shining more brilliantly than ever before.

Stella and Selene, who had been flustered, immediately calmed down when they saw it. What did it mean that the barrier was shining brighter than ever? It was something they could understand with a little thought.

“Did our honored guest… succeed…?”

“…”

The two were on the verge of losing their minds. They had never imagined that the monster that had been eating away at the Popes’ minds for so long would be eradicated so easily.

It might not be the right expression to say that it was eradicated easily because they didn’t know how fierce a battle the person who entered had fought. But at least on the surface, it was.

Even the Popes had no choice but to grit their teeth and accept that one of them would have to make a sacrifice, but is this really the end?

“I will prepare to welcome him.”

Floreta clasped her hands in front of her chest. The voluptuously protruding hills were gently pressed against her wrists, changing their shape. Her fingers intertwined, and her eyelids closed.

The shape of the building began to disappear slowly. The barrier, which had been in place for hundreds of years, finished its duty and turned into a brilliant light, ascending to the sky.

Where the barrier had disappeared, there was nothing but the empty sky and the vast land, which felt desolate as if there had never been anything there. Nothing remained.

Literally, nothing.

“Uh… where did the pit go?”

“I don’t know, Inquisitor.”

Stella and Selene’s voices hardened. The bright smile that had bloomed on Floreta’s face gradually faded. She had realized that something was wrong.

The inside of the building in the three’s memories was not so flat. There was a bottomless pit, and it was filled with abyss and shadows.

But now, none of that existed. As if it had always been that way, as if mocking their memories.

It was impossible.

“…For now, let’s wait and see.”

Floreta tried to suppress her rising anxiety and said that they should wait. Even if they waited here, the pit wouldn’t reappear, but they had to do that for now.

Stella and Selene were also anxious. They hurriedly approached the spot where the barrier had been. And standing on it, they extended their senses to the limit towards the bottom.

They felt nothing.

All they could sense was soil and stone. There were no fragments of the abyss or shadows, not even a trace of the pit that had originally been there. It was as if everything they had experienced so far was a lie.

“There was definitely a path leading down here, right? My memory isn’t wrong, is it?”

“The Inquisitor’s memory is not mistaken. And since mine is the same, you can put your worries aside. There was definitely a path to the abyss here.”

“But… why can’t we feel anything now?”

“…I don’t know.”

Selene gritted her teeth. For now, she really didn’t know anything. It was a great shame. Her clenched fists trembled.

“Let’s wait for now. As Her Holiness said, let’s wait. Who knows, maybe he’s lost and wandering around.”

“I understand, Inquisitor. I will wait.”

The two trudged back to the Pope’s side. Floreta was staring at the spot where the barrier had been with an unstable look, her hands clasped tightly in front of her chest.

Time passed. Five minutes turned into ten, ten into twenty, twenty into thirty, and thirty into an hour. Even after that, there was no sign of the path reappearing or of him reappearing.

“…”

As the situation turned out like this, a possibility began to creep into Floreta’s mind.

Self-sacrifice.

That horrifying possibility.