Chapter 264 – Side Story 13 – Egger Goes to the Demon Realm (2)

“So this beast was indeed the one that destroyed the base that was here.”

Egger clicked his tongue as he examined the monster’s corpse, covered in blood and entrails.

Lying before him was the massive monster he had just defeated, its belly completely split open.

Egger had cut open the monster’s stomach and removed all its internal organs, becoming drenched in blood in the process.

He had done this to check the contents of the monster’s belly.

Though the chances were slim, there might still be evidence remaining inside the monster’s stomach.

And his intuition had been correct.

Inside the giant monster’s entrails were undigested weapons and armor.

The leather had dissolved, and human bones were nowhere to be seen, but the iron and metal items still remained.

Of course, this didn’t tell him where the missing hero had gone, but Egger was satisfied nonetheless.

“Fortunately, this didn’t happen too long ago. I should be able to find some traces.”

The hero’s mana would be difficult to detect beneath the corrupted mana, but Egger possessed more than just mana detection.

If there were any traces that differed from the demon realm, even slightly, his heightened senses could find them.

Afterward, Egger searched for traces in an expanding circle around the camp he had set up, just as he had planned.

The search progressed quickly.

Thanks to his superhuman movements and unobstructed vision, he could cover a considerable area in just a few minutes.

After moving like this for several hours, he was able to examine an area of dozens of square kilometers.

Having checked an area almost the size of Seoul city, he finally found a trace that didn’t belong in the demon realm.

A single red string tied to the branch of a withered old tree.

Even if not from the hero, it was clearly a mark left by a human.

“Was it deliberately left behind? Even so, it’s too far from where the base was…”

Was it because there weren’t many markers to leave? Or had there been more that had disappeared?

He couldn’t tell which was the case, but it didn’t matter.

He had found a trace, after all.

Egger drew a straight line connecting the remaining trace with the base location, deducing the direction the hero might have gone.

“With no sun and no compass, it would be easy to get lost.”

He thought he wouldn’t lose his way thanks to his heightened senses, but the same couldn’t be said for others.

“Is that why they left people behind…?”

The people at the base had probably shot signal flares or magic into the sky at regular intervals to inform the hero or others who had gone exploring of the base’s location.

“But with the base destroyed, they lost their way back…”

In the end, was the hero lost and wandering in this demon realm?

Though such questions arose, Egger didn’t dwell on them further.

He could simply ask the hero when he found him.

“Quite some time has passed, but night doesn’t seem to come. Is the day extremely long here, or is there no night at all?”

Before setting out again, Egger took a wristwatch from his subspace and put it on.

It was a mechanical watch worth tens of millions of won, made in Switzerland before the apocalypse.

A smartwatch would have been better for keeping precise time, but such electronic devices were unlikely to function properly in this demon realm.

Moreover, though he called it a watch worth tens of millions of won, he had dozens of such watches in his subspace.

All of them had been collected during his time on Earth.

Not because he was a watch enthusiast, but simply because he needed durable mechanical watches.

After setting the time on the watch, he moved again.

According to the watch, it was night and past bedtime, but that didn’t matter to him as a superhuman.

He could now go without sleep for over a week without feeling tired.

He dashed across the demon realm’s land once more.

This time, he ran straight in the direction indicated by the marker, faster than a horse, at a speed of dozens of kilometers per hour across the bone-covered ground.

Though he ran for a long time, the scenery remained unchanged.

Trees with only dead trunks remaining, ground covered with bones, a red sky, and air that was difficult to breathe.

‘This place could rightfully be called hell.’

Even Egger, with his strong mind, felt uneasy amid the endless strange and bizarre sights.

Moreover, with the unchanging scenery and only the terrain’s undulations constantly shifting, it was difficult to tell where he was or if he was still on the right path.

For someone else, it would have been nearly impossible to continue moving.

But Egger kept running, and occasionally he found markers hanging from dead trees.

“The direction hasn’t changed.”

That was fortunate.

If the hero had gotten lost or changed direction, it would have been difficult to find him.

Though day and night didn’t change, the time Egger had been running, including the initial search, exceeded 8 hours.

The distance covered was over 200 kilometers.

During that time, he had found only 4 markers.

“Even if they shot magic into the sky to signal their position, it would be hard to determine direction if they went any further from here…”

With such thoughts, he ran several dozen more kilometers.

After crossing a low hill, a completely different scene unfolded before him.

A red forest filling the entire horizon and a black tower rising in the middle of the forest.

And within the forest, the sensation of corrupted mana moving everywhere.

“So this is where they all gathered.”

After encountering the giant monster near the base, he had barely encountered any monsters on his way here.

Finding the hero was his priority, so he had avoided monster presences whenever he sensed them, but even those monster presences were few and far between.

He had been puzzled by this situation, which seemed unlike the demon realm, but now Egger thought he understood why.

The area he had passed through was clearly like a desert in the demon realm.

That’s why there were no monsters visible, nor trees or plants.

And here, the desert ended, and the greenery began.

“Though I’m not sure if that bizarre forest should be called greenery…”

The red forest was moving.

Even without wind, the red trees that made up the forest kept writhing.

‘So these are indeed trees of the demon realm.’

The trees in the forest weren’t ordinary trees either.

They were demon realm monsters that ensnared approaching monsters with thorns and suckers on their branches, devouring them.

“I wonder how the food chain works here…”

Seeing trees eating monsters and monsters chewing and swallowing the branches that had ensnared them, he couldn’t tell what was safe or what to be wary of.

‘I guess I’ll just have to be careful of everything.’

In any case, he could immediately tell where the hero had gone.

The black tower visible in the middle of the distant forest.

The hero had surely gone there.

Egger took a deep breath and gripped his sword again.

Then he drew forth his mana.

It had been 20 years since he had given up the power of a hero.

Now, the divine power he had felt back then no longer remained in his memory.

But he didn’t think his current power was inferior to when he was a hero… His body, enhanced by becoming a hero, had not yet weakened, and instead of divine power, his mana had strengthened over 20 years.

And the swordsmanship he had continuously built up over those 20 years.

Believing in that power, Egger launched himself toward the red forest.

Papapak.

As he descended the hill, Egger’s body moved faster and faster.

The red forest approached in an instant.

The trees at the edge of the forest reacted to Egger’s mana.

Perhaps because Egger’s mana differed from the corrupted mana of the demon realm, the trees’ response was different.

The trees trembled with their branches, or rather, their entire bodies.

The ripple spread from the trees closest to Egger, gradually expanding outward.

And branches stretched out toward the approaching Egger.

Shushushuk.

Dozens, hundreds of branches extended to an impossible length, blocking Egger’s path.

It looked as if his entire body would be pierced the moment he charged in, but Egger didn’t stop.

Instead of stopping, he increased his speed even more and extended his sword forward.

Woooong.

And light erupted from the sword.

Like a beam, sword energy shot out nearly a hundred meters in an instant.

The sword energy shattered all the branches it encountered.

Kwakwakwakwak.

Shattered branches and stems, severed tree bodies soared into the sky.

And the monsters that rushed along with them were likewise ground up by the sword energy.

The sword energy’s charge, which began at the edge of the forest where it met the desert, continued without stopping into the forest.

The absurd sight of bright light cutting through the forest, with the debris of shattered trees and monsters rising like dust, continued until he reached the black tower.

Just as at the base, no monster in the red forest could stop him.

Of course, neither trees nor the forest could impede him.

Absurdly, it didn’t look like monsters causing a disaster, but rather as if he, a human, was bringing catastrophe to this forest of monsters.

Having carved a path through the forest, he arrived at the black tower.

There, Egger was able to meet the hero.

The hero was leaning against the tower’s wall, waiting for him.

Leaning beside what appeared to be the entrance to the tower, looking up at him.

The hero smiled faintly upon seeing him.

“Cough. So you’ve finally come. But you’re too late. A little later, and I wouldn’t have been able to greet you.”

Unlike when they first met long ago, the hero was now in his mid-30s, exuding experience.

The hero waved his hand at Egger.

“You may not understand, but this was the best I could do. Is it because this is a land forsaken by the gods? Divine power doesn’t gather well in this world.”

Egger looked down at the hero, holding a potion he had taken from his subspace.

The hero leaning against the wall had nothing left below his chest.

No legs, no abdomen, with only some internal organs spilling out from below his chest.

Yet even in this state, the hero was alive and able to speak.

Of course, as Egger had done in the past, a hero could heal completely with divine power until the brink of death, but that seemed impossible here.

Barely maintaining life with such injuries.

It was an extraordinary ability that an ordinary priest couldn’t achieve, but he was a hero.

“There’s no need to look so disappointed. After all, I found this.”

The hero tapped the wall behind him with his left hand.

“The Tower of Death. This tower is where the King of Death, the Demon King, was created.”

The hero, tapping the wall, looked bright despite dying.

He appeared as if he had achieved his life’s goal.

“I found it. Without Sir Egger’s help, I found it on my own. What do you think? Even you must admit I look like a hero now, right?”

Egger couldn’t say anything in response to the hero’s words.

Who would have thought that not defeating the Demon King himself would become such a lifelong trauma?

Facing the hero who was satisfied with his accomplishment as he approached death, Egger couldn’t offer any consolation.

He simply nodded.

And seeing Egger nod, the hero, with a satisfied expression, stopped breathing.