This World is too Cruel to Men – Chapter 143

I’ve never been there, but this must be what hell looks like.

It was impossible not to think that, given the ominous things surrounding me.

The walls and floor were made up of flesh-like lumps with veins sprouting everywhere, and from those icicle-like flesh protrusions dripped dark red liquid every so often.

However, what felt the most foreboding was the red atmosphere surrounding me, even at this very moment.

Things that originally shouldn’t have been visible were swirling around me, colored.

You know how rusted metal takes on a reddish hue?

It felt like someone had drawn that color from a syringe and mixed it into the air.

That made it all the more sinister.

I could breathe fine, but since the color was what it was, I felt that at any moment I could just collapse out of nowhere.

What was funny was that with the situation being like this, I could only think about needing to survive.

Before the ground suddenly started shaking, and the floor cracked open to let monsters crawl out and devour people at will, my mind was clouded with thoughts of suffocating to death…

Is this why people are called treacherous creatures?

I wanted to live.

No, I had to survive and get back.

Yoonseo, who outwardly seemed a bit prickly, was soft on the inside, and would undoubtedly blame herself for me ending up like this.

Even if everyone around her kept saying it’s not her fault, that it wasn’t because of her, she would be too foolish to believe that.

So I had to go back, even if it meant giving that idiot a light smack on the head to make her listen to those around her.

‘…Is that even possible?’

One thing I can be grateful for in this situation is that it isn’t completely hopeless.

Of course, that hope is just a threadbare glimmer… but still better than nothing.

In that sense, I really hoped I’d regain my wits quickly…

Unlike whoever was stuck here like a lump on a log, unable to get up, I glanced over at the small hill formed by the food and drinks I had scavenged when I fell into this bizarre world.

If I hadn’t found those, what would I be thinking right now?

I couldn’t help but imagine I’d be a lot more negative than I am now.

So, I couldn’t claim I was unlucky.

Likewise, losing my balance and falling into the bush behind me when the ground first shook might, in a way, be considered divine intervention.

What if I hadn’t fallen back then?

What if the bush hadn’t hidden me from those guys?

What if I’d chosen to awkwardly flee instead of waiting for the right moment?

Like others, I could have ended up as a meal for those monsters.

Of course, debating whether I was lucky or unlucky in a situation where rifts were opening, and a devouring rift was closing in on everything nearby seems a bit absurd.

‘No, actually…’

I hadn’t heard anything about rifts opening up anywhere in recent years.

To think I, an amateur with no real qualifications, could guarantee that Seolhwa would pass her exam was because of that, really.

Heroes were initially designed to subdue Another Ones and Villains, but the frequency of rifts had drastically decreased over the last ten years, meaning the qualification exam had shifted its focus towards interpersonal skills.

If just ten years ago, participants were assessed with a balance of 5 for combat abilities and 5 for monster-fighting abilities…

Now, I heard it’s heavily skewed towards 8 for combat skills and just 2 for monster-fighting skills.

Yet suddenly, rifts opened, almost mockingly in light of those changes.

Could the relative calm be a sort of incubation period?

‘…Ah.’

Speaking of incubation, I think I might have seen something similar in materials on my mom’s laptop a while back.

What did it say back then?

There must have been a good reason for the sudden lull in activity among the Others, so just because they cooled down doesn’t mean we should let our guard down; we should prepare means to artificially create rifts and strike first, right?

The specifics were fuzzy since I’d skimmed over it long ago, but I remembered it having something to do with that…

Now that I’m here, those claims suddenly seem quite plausible with what I’ve seen today.

When those monsters were devouring people in the park, they promptly changed their behavior as soon as they returned here, carelessly picking up unconscious victims and heading somewhere.

Thinking about it, there were more puzzling aspects.

‘They were all men…’

I wasn’t talking about the ones eaten by the monsters.

I meant the ones who fell here and ended up being dragged away.

It could just be a perfectly strange coincidence… but honestly, what are the odds of that?

‘Come to think of it…’

It was strange that I was the only one still conscious.

When I first dropped here, everyone else was out cold while I sat there wide awake.

That’s how I managed to hide with that person who had lost consciousness, in fact.

If it hadn’t been the case?

Instead of hiding in this cave-like place with these thoughts, I would be unconscious, dragged away by those monstrous ones.

‘Maybe…’

Could it have something to do with the light that burst from the necklace just before I was sucked into the rift?

If I had known this would happen, I would have tried to grab hold of it even if I had to cling to it as the chain broke.

Realizing the absence of something I had worn consistently since receiving it left me feeling strangely empty, so I was absentmindedly touching the space where it used to be.

“Ugh…”

With a groan, the person who had just been lying there without moving began to twitch.

Were they finally waking up?

I put down what I had been holding in my hand to classify it and immediately focused my gaze on them, just in case.

I felt just as confused about this situation, but I couldn’t be as confused as the person who had been fighting against the Another Ones before suddenly losing consciousness.

Plus, since they had a wound on their thigh, probably from brushing against something like a broken branch while being pulled here…

There was no need to say more.

And an Awakened individual like that would be a calamity from the perspective of an ordinary person.

Let alone if they were a Special-Class Hero, one of only three in Korea?

In a single seemingly careless moment, things could spiral out of control.

A stone thrown casually by a person could be a deadly threat for a frog.

So, I began to keep a moderate level of vigilance, watching the person whose eyelids fluttered as if they might regain consciousness at any moment.

It is, in a way, a situation on the brink.

At least one piece of good news is that we weren’t meeting for the first time.

Of course, whether that person remembers me is another matter entirely.

‘Moreover…’

I could even say I had saved their life in some sense.

Though I can’t judge a person based on a single encounter, considering how they behaved the last time I saw them, I was sure they wouldn’t keep silent in this situation.

‘…I really hope so.’

From my perspective, struggling against even one Another was bound to be impossible, and this person might be my only hope.

As I fervently repeated my desperate prayer in my mind—

“…!”

Those tightly shut eyes flew open, and their upper body shot up, meeting the ground.

“Ugh…!”

Surprised, I wondered if this was some kind of undead rising from a coffin; the confusion on their face twisted dramatically as they suddenly forced themselves to rise.

Had they perhaps aggravated a wound on their thigh by doing that?

Nervously, I cast a subtle glance to the side, and I could see the bright red stain slowly spreading across the torn fabric that was acting as a bandage.

‘Oh boy…’

As I sighed at that sight, the moment I let out that sound, they seemed to have finally noticed my presence.

Their head, which was slightly lowered, swung around towards me sharply, and a gaze filled with vigilance locked onto my face.