This World is too Cruel to Men – Chapter 565

Who said that?

Although the beginning may be weak, there’s no guarantee that the end will be the same.

As they say, the start was nothing more than a weak wisp of smoke.

Thinking about what kind of place this is and what entities inhabit it, it shouldn’t be the case, yet it quietly rose like someone was smoking a cigarette down below.

The weak change, which might seem normal to miss given the distance, was surprisingly significant.

However, Yoonseo, who had been keeping her eyes wide open, didn’t miss that change which anyone else would have easily overlooked.

Successfully passing through the notoriously difficult gate of ‘the beginning’, the first thing she did was reflect on her past memories.

After considerable time had passed, the colors of those memories had faded.

Yet, the sensations she experienced that day remained vividly in her mind.

It felt like a bookmark had been placed, so to speak.

Naturally, it couldn’t be any other way.

The fear they shared, which had exceeded the creator’s expectations, lingered in her mind as a clear memory of them trembling in a tight hug.

Ah, by the way, that was the first time both Dogun and she held each other like that.

“Now that I think about it, that too was the first time…”

For a moment, she almost sidetracked her thoughts, but quickly shook her head to dismiss the embarrassingly blush-inducing memories as she began to focus on the sensations extracted from her past memories.

Even though there was nothing tangible to grasp at the moment, it didn’t bother her much.

After all, hadn’t Dogun said it before?

What truly mattered was not the fact itself, but rather how one perceives the situation.

As she echoed those words in her mind like a cow chewing its cud, she simultaneously imagined the soft sensation of clouds wrapping around her fingertips.

Of course, she had heard from Dogun enough to know that clouds, despite their appearance, are merely a collection of moist vapor, but as she had said earlier, what matters is the perception of the situation, the image, isn’t it?

So, when she diligently imagined that sensation in her mind, it didn’t take long before her efforts began to pay off.

Though the word ‘past’ might not suffice to describe the considerable time that had passed, it was nonetheless the feeling she had experienced once before.

The dough of bread that Dogun would make for her, chewy and fluffy like the cotton candy they had eaten at the amusement park, wrapped around her fingertips.

As these sensations began to entwine between her fingers, they started to plead for her to touch them, yet she didn’t rush.

There are things that are good to hurry for and things that are not, right?

And what she was about to do was clearly in the latter category.

If this one move could neatly resolve the current situation, she would want for nothing more, but a slight misstep could harm allies instead of enemies.

Thus, instead of hurrying, she took a light breath before starting.

And just as if responding to this shift, the pounding of her heart, which had felt slightly anxious, began to settle down gradually.

Her hands, which had been hovering in the air, slowly began to move only after the disturbances had completely calmed down.

It felt more like kneading than shaping.

The more she moved her hands, the stronger and clearer the sensations wrapping around her fingertips became, and she did her utmost to wield her talent.

There was no room for negligence here.

It wasn’t a situation where she could afford to loosen her tension, nor did she entertain thoughts of messing things up by being careless.

So instead of slacking off, she concentrated her entire being, and what initially seemed like nothing more than a wisp of smoke gradually began to take on a reasonable form, as if she had plucked a piece from the clouds drifting freely in the sky.

But that was merely the beginning.

It was only natural that what she aimed to create was not a fluffy cloud that induces comfort in the observer but something dark and menacing that rains down blue lightning.

In that sense, Dogun had said it back then.

The dark clouds, unlike the white ones we think of when we hear ‘cloud’, absorb light due to the size of the water molecules forming them being overwhelmingly larger than that of regular clouds.

She recalled those words and imagined in her mind.

The sight of what was being wrapped around her fingertips growing heavier.

Of course, it wasn’t as easy as it sounded.

Perhaps it was due to the sudden increase in size, but it became considerably trickier to control, and the added weight made her hands tremble on their own.

At least for now, she could still manage to hold on since it hadn’t been long since the weight increased, but if more time passed, she couldn’t guarantee what would happen next.

Therefore, unlike before, she now needed to hurry up a bit.

Had her imagination of adding weight been effective?

As she checked one last time, what had once borne a creamy hue reminiscent of a newborn lamb had taken on a color ominously resembling dust.

Confirming just that, she sent a signal to the person waiting beside her as previously agreed.

“Now!”

Perhaps responding to her shout, one of the RK Guard staff nearby, not wanting to break her concentration, let out a barely audible shout, and a gust of wind swept through the surroundings.

What followed was that gust pushing toward something that had been lying far away, gently nudging it forward.

The sensation through her fingertips intensified as if that thing were pleading to be released or threatening her that she couldn’t hold it any longer.

It felt like dipping her fingers into a violently churning sea.

The sensation was so overwhelming, she decided to pull her hands back before getting swept away.

‘But before that…’

Twisting her hand one last time.

Rumble—

The ominous sound that flowed into her ears came right after that.

Perhaps because it had been a while since she had concentrated this hard, she felt a surge of energy leave her body and began to sway slightly when a staff member from the RK Guard, who had been waiting nearby, quickly offered her a chair.

Thanks to that, she could avoid collapsing disgracefully.

“Oh, thank you.”

After steadying her swaying body, she turned to check the results of her efforts towards where the wind had gone.

She wondered if others were just as curious about the results as she was, as the reactions of the other people around were also quite similar.

In the place where everyone’s gaze had converged, one ominous dark cloud that stood out from the entirely red and commonplace environment of Heogye did not match at all.

The size was… just a bit smaller than that of the containers used to create a barrier.

Yet, none of the observers dismissed it.

It would be foolish to underestimate it based just on its size, especially given the menacing aura emanating from it.

From the start, the spacing had widened enough as they had kept their distance and pushed it away with the artificially created wind.

So, logically, it didn’t make sense that it should be so, yet as they stared at the slowly floating dark cloud, a ‘crackle’ echoed in their ears.

The blue currents intermittently appeared and vanished, creating an uneasy atmosphere where something could spill out at any moment.

This was precisely what one would call the calm before the storm.

Was it only Yoonseo who felt such sensations from the dark cloud?

Sounds of others nervously gulping down their saliva rang out from nearby.

Finally, at the peak of that tension… the movement of the cloud halted.

Just when one of those small entities, having spent their life in this world and never seen a cloud before, approached the dark cloud,

The sudden appearance of the dark cloud was enough to stoke feelings of curiosity and wariness in them.

Perhaps in anticipation of unforeseen circumstances, one of those peculiar entities made its way slowly toward the cloud, but to cut to the chase, it was not a good choice.

That was only natural…

What looked like it could burst at any moment began to discharge blue currents in all directions the moment it got closer.

The acrid smell that is typical when something is burning quickly filled the base surroundings.