Chapter 373: Haunted House (1)

Silence fell. Echidna turned away from Kang-Woo and sat down while hugging her knees with her head buried between them.

"Uhhh..."

"Cheater," Echidna said while pouting. She glared at Kang-Woo and said again, "You're a cheater, Kang-Woo."

Oh Kang-Woo smiled and tried to pat her head.

"Rawr!" Echidna stuck her head forward and bared her teeth.

She was likely trying to scare him, but...

'So cute. I wanna tease her, but... Mm. I shouldn't.'

It was not the time for that.

"Don't touch me!" Echidna shouted sharply.

Kang-Woo retracted his hand while smiling bitterly. Echidna wasn't acting like herself, but he could understand why.

'It makes perfect sense.'

Echidna had trained like crazy to learn dragon tongue magic, and even more after she had seen Kang-Woo while he was molting. Seeing Kang-Woo using dragon tongue, which she thought that he would never be able to use, in not even a day was likely a huge shock to her.

No, Kang-Woo had not stopped at dragon tongue; he had gone beyond that and evolved the technique to something known as Soul Speech. He could pretty much guess what Echidna felt when she saw that.

'She probably felt that her efforts until now were denied.'

She could have also felt ridiculed, or that her efforts would never come to anything no matter how hard she tried. She was likely being weighed down by despair after coming face to face with a wall that she could never cross.

Kang-Woo looked down at the crouching Echidna in silence. He wanted to tell her something.

'This isn't a matter of talent.'

It wasn't a matter of time either.

'Absolutely not.'

Such things were not enough to learn dragon tongue and reach the realm of Soul Speech in less than a day.

"Urghh." Echidna bit her lip and lowered her head; tears welled up in her eyes.

Silence fell once again. Kang-Woo was making all sorts of unreasonable excuses in his head. This was not a matter of talent nor time; it was a matter of the difference in the weight they were shouldering, as well as the path that they had walked until now.

Kang-Woo possessed abnormally high demonic energy control to the point that it was monstrous; it was enough to even make a being of godhood faint in shock. The reason was awfully simple.

'Because I would die if I couldn't control it.'

Kang-Woo had lived for all this time while frantically struggling to survive. He would not have come this far without that struggle. He had spent every second of every day in fear of death if he let himself go even for a single moment. Those days piled up to months, years, and had reached ten millennia.

"Tsk," Kang-Woo clicked his tongue.

Even so, he had no intention of arguing with Echidna about how she knew nothing and quibbling over how much he had suffered. Pity, compassion, and sympathy were meaningless at this point for him.

"I knew you were amazing, Kang-Woo. I did, but..."

Echidna lowered her head in sorrow. She likely had a lot on her mind.

Kang-Woo smiled and turned around. "Let's go back."

Trying to console her would be no different from making fun of her. She needed time to accept it.

"Okay." Echidna slowly nodded.

She stood up while slouching lifelessly, and then blankly stared up at the sky. Then suddenly, she slapped both of her cheeks. She walked up to Kang-Woo and slightly pulled on his clothes.

"I'm sorry for yelling at you earlier, Kang-Woo."

"Hm?"

Kang-Woo stared at her unexpectedly.

'I thought it'd take her a few days.'

Her recovery had been faster than he had expected.

'I guess she's grown.'

It seemed Echidna had not only grown physically, but mentally as well. Kang-Woo smiled and nodded. He raised his hand and ruffled Echidna's hair.

"Have you calmed down now?" he asked.

"Yeah. It's only natural you would do something like that, Kang-Woo."

'What does that mean?'

"I don't know much about your past, but... Balrog tells me about it from time to time."

Echidna put her arms around his waist in silence. The silence continued between them for a while.

Echidna then broke the silence. "Don't push yourself too hard, Kang-Woo."

"I didn't really push myself this time." Kang-Woo smiled awkwardly.

That was a lie; even if his demonic energy control was abnormally exceptional, it had been an extremely dangerous gamble to attempt to unearth the foundations of dragon tongue in just a day. It was no different than disassembling a machine that he had no idea how it was designed and reassembling it to his liking. Worst case scenario, forget Soul Speech, the dragon tongue could have gone out of control and he could have gotten greatly injured.

'Well, that's what I've always done.'

Kang-Woo grabbed Echidna's hand. "Let's go back. Iris said that she would prepare a feast for dinner to celebrate everyone's safe return."

But of course, it would be the imperial chefs who would be preparing it.

"Hm! Hm! I like Iris!"

'You said that you hated her before.'

Kang-Woo chuckled and walked back to the castle.

***

A week had passed since the Constellation of Agony had died. Kang-Woo had been so busy that he had no time to test out his newly acquired Soul Speech. Matters regarding the empire, angels, and gods were happening so fast, though he had been the one to instigate it.

"Fuuu." Kang-Woo sighed and stretched his shoulders.

He drank some of the coffee that Han Seol-Ah had brewed for him.

"Are you okay, Master Kang-Woo?" Lilith asked in worry.

Kang-Woo had not slept for a week straight.

"I'm physically fine, but I'm kind of getting fatigued mentally," Kang-Woo replied in a tired tone.

Lilith's information network had been more or less perfected, so they had been racking their brains to come up with various overblown rumors regarding Lucifer to foster fear among the people. He was even trying to monitor the movements of the Constellations of Evil as well as investigating Lucifer's wife, so even creating a clone with the Authority of Cloning was not enough to divide the work to a manageable degree.

"How is fostering fear for Lucifer going?" Kang-Woo turned to ask Lilith.

If he did not have her help, he would have given up long ago.

"It is going smoothly. Please take a look at these," Lilith replied as she showed him a few photos.

They were photos taken around the Arnan Empire. One of them was an empty bar; although there had been some people while Fidelio had still been in power, not even a single rat could be found anymore.

"No one is leaving their homes because of their fear for Lucifer," Lilith remarked.

"Very good." Kang-Woo smiled.

He felt sorry for the bar owners, but the fear of Lucifer having taken root deep within the hearts of the people was good news.

'I should provide them with money and food later.'

Since he had practically incapacitated the empire's economy, he was planning on taking responsibility for the incident after it was all over.

"That aside, this much of an effect in just a week is beyond my expectations. I guess the news of the attack on Sant'Angelo was big."

The angels wanted to hide the fact that Sant'Angelo had been attacked, but there was no way that Kang-Woo would let that ammunition go unused. He used Lilith's information network to spread the news all over the continent that the sanctuary of the angels had been desecrated and plundered.

"There's that too, but..." Lilith smiled widely. "The fact that the gods had taken action left a bigger impact."

"Oh, that?" Kang-Woo smiled.

Aernor was mostly polytheistic. Considering there were several gods that possessed Deific Essence and there were apostles that did their bidding, it was only natural. The majority of the continent worshiped Celestial Goddess Seraph and God of Heroes Tirion, but many people worshiped other gods as well.

A week ago, a revelation was simultaneously received by apostles of multiple gods.

- Evil God Lucifer will bring collapse to the continent!

The revelation's contents had been short but powerful. Not just that, the warning had been from not one, but multiple gods simultaneously. It was only natural that it would bring chaos to the entire continent. The people locked their doors and trembled in fear of the Evil God and his subordinates that might come to invade at any second.

"It's going well." Kang-Woo smiled widely.

The message that he had sent the gods through Michael had a large effect. Once public fear of the continent's collapse was fostered, it would not be long until the high elves manifested into the physical world.

'But I'd have to do more for that to happen.'

There was a limit to what simple rumors and fear could do. Only through the right incidents and Kim Si-Hun solving them would it perfect Kang-Woo's plan.

"Hohoho. Do you know what Lucifer is being referred to among the humans lately?" Lilith asked.

"Hm?" Kang-Woo tilted his head.

Lilith continued while giggling, "He's known as the Lord of the Flies. A demon of filth and disease."

'Oh. Sheesh, Lucifer. That's why you should wash yourself more often, man.'

Kang-Woo clicked his tongue in pity. Lord of the Flies was an extremely filthy title compared to his former title, Evil God.

'You brought this on yourself. I didn't do anything wrong. Trust me, bro.'

Kang-Woo turned to Lilith and asked, "Anything else?"

"Oh, right. Come to think of it, I happened to receive a bit of a suspicious report."

"A suspicious report?" Kang-Woo asked while narrowing his eyes.

Lilith nodded. "People have been continuing to go missing in a certain city... Well, it's not large enough to be a city, but it's a fairly sizable town."

"Missing?" Kang-Woo frowned. People going missing was not something that could be ignored, but it was not something that would be found suspicious by Lilith either. "Did they just go missing?"

"No. I wouldn't be reporting it to you if that was the case." Lilith shook her head.

"Then what?"

"Mmm... How should I say this?" Lilith searched for a fitting term while placing a finger on her lips. "A haunted house... I guess?"

"A haunted house?"

'What the hell's with that out of the blue?'

"A giant mansion apparently appeared near the town. People who found it suspicious entered the mansion, but..."

"They never came back out, or something like that?"

"Yes."

It was a staple horror movie trope.

"Mm." Kang-Woo's eyes shone. It was far too interesting to leave it be. "Bring Si-Hun over."