Chapter 391. Flameless Land (5)

“What happened?”

“That…”

As John Stone flinched at the overbearing aura that Hansoo was emitting… Erunheim replied besides them.

“Are you talking about Clementine’s forces?”

“I don’t care who. Why are there only these guys here?”

A lot of thoughts flashed through Erunheim’s head at his words.

‘… Is this man not interested in John Stone at all?’

It seemed like this man was quite a powerful person.

Even John Stone, who was always acting so proud and cocky, was staying silent due to the aura Hansoo was emitting.

Which meant that this man was much more powerful than what they’d expected.

They had thought that he would be weaker than John Stone because he had just come up from below, but it seems their predictions had been wrong.

Which meant that they had to take advantage of this situation.

‘How can I convince him to help us…?’

They needed someone to go against John Stone, so she was worried that they might join forces.

John Stone alone was hard enough, but if someone who even John Stone was afraid of joined forces with him, then they would lose all hope.

But it seems John Stone and Hansoo weren’t at all friendly with each other.

They needed to turn the situation in their favor.

“It’s a long story. Why don’t we…”

As Erunheim organized her thoughts and started to speak… Hansoo shook his head as he looked at her expression.

“There are too many foxes here.”

Then.

-Boom!-

A terrifying aura exploded out from Hansoo and suppressed their entire surroundings.

“Ugh…”

“Huek!”

Erunheim and her guards all froze.

And John Stone made a defensive posture while groaning.

‘… So suddenly?’

And unlike what John Stone had feared… Hansoo just spoke to Kiriel behind him.

“Kiriel. I’ll leave it to you.”

“Yes.”

-Ooooooong-

Kiriel walked up to Erunheim and then placed her hands on her forehead.

And soon… all the memories contained in Erunheim’s body started flowing out and entering Kiriel’s head.

***

‘This lady has lived a hard life as well.’

Kiriel thought as she continued to read through Erunheim’s memories.

She sucked the fragmented memories of Erunheim after her escape to this place into her mind, reorganizing them to play through like a movie.

Escaping with the remaining forces of a nation destroyed by the Neropa Union and fleeing to this Flameless Land.

The monsters attacking from the insides of this place.

Joining the forces of Reyunion and meeting the aliens who lived in this place.

Kiriel knew that this was the most important part.

‘Let’s see. This was before the Abyss fell… Are those guys Clementine’s allies?’

Kiriel froze as she looked at the memory.

They didn’t seem like Clementine’s forces.

A few people shone within the memories of Erunheim.

— Hey, how long are we going to stay here? Let’s go up already. We’re ready.

— Yeah, Keldian is right. There’s not much we can do even if we stay here. And this place is too boring. We can’t even go out.

The handsome man called Keldian who was voicing his opinions.

The man who agreed with Keldian called Kangtae.

And a beautiful woman listening to their words with a serious expression.

‘Her name is… Eres? What a beauty.’

But there was someone who shone even more brightly than these people.

A man who was smiling from the back.

‘… I can’t see him clearly.’

The appearance of that man was very blurry for some reason.

It didn’t seem like Erunheim had focused much attention on him.

Since this memory was showing that Keldian and the others wanted to leave.

— If you guys go up, then who will kill those monsters?

— Please tell us if our treatment was lacking.

The expressions of Erunheim and the leaders of Reyunion were grim.

They were in a very grim situation.

The Neropa Union terrorized them outside the Flameless Land.

But staying inside, they could not defeat the monsters without these people.

The expressions of Keldian and a few others froze at the naggings of these people, while Eres and a few others couldn’t seem to ignore their pleas.

Of course.

The difficulty continued to rise as they went up.

And the issue of internal conflict existed.

Reyunion’s main forces comprised of Eres’s people. The others wanted to either kill off the people of Reyunion or turn them into slaves.

They just stayed silent because Eres was too powerful.

But if they all left, the people of Reyunion would all be reduced to become slaves.

And not only that.

If they blocked this place off, then those coming up after them would be in danger.

But to go up after leaving behind a few forces here, the situation above would be too grim.

But at that moment… someone spoke.

— Do not worry. We will stay.

— I will stay as well.

A few others spoke out to remain.

And Eres and the others decided to go up after leaving the rest to these people.

Erunheim’s uneasiness was clearly palpable.

At the remaining forces who didn’t seem powerful enough to deal with the monsters.

But fighting against their choices would only lead to their deaths.

So Erunheim and the other leaders stayed silent.

But the moment Eres and the others left, the situation changed.

Towards a completely different direction.

— Phew, it was so hard to keep acting.

— Yeah… Why did Clementine tell us to do all this?

— It’s because it looks suspicious if everyone going up is in the same group.

— Hey! Gather up! They all left!

And all the forces gathered under the two people who remained to protect them.

But of course, the peace didn’t last long.

Everyone turned grim at the events that happened afterward.

— Organize your areas and gather to the central part! We have something to dig up!

And with those words, all the other aliens pretending to be in opposing forces all gathered to the center.

Of course, Reyunion’s territory had turned into a mess.

After all, rather than hunting the monsters all around them, the aliens had gathered in that place instead. There was nobody else to block the monsters.

Although they were able to hold on to some degree with their mechanical weapons, it did not solve the core issue.

After the deaths of tens of millions of people in Reyunion, Erunheim and the others suppressed their fears and went to the aliens.

— Dammit! Didn’t you promise to protect us?!

But then… their cold expressions were still very clear within Erunheim’s memories.

— What can you do for us?

— …

— Shut up and stay still. Be glad we didn’t kill you off. We’re just leaving you alone because it’s annoying.

Erunheim clenched her teeth and backed off.

Their words were right.

Erunheim decided to be thankful that it hadn’t ended in a massacre as she gathered up the other leaders of Reyunion, quickly forming a defensive line to push back the monsters.

Thankfully, the forces of monsters had diminished quite a bit after the aliens hunted them down to increase their own strength.

Because they had struggled so hard to protect their territory, they had formed a decent line of defense.

Of course, it didn’t last long.

Three months.

It only took three months for their world to be flipped upside down.

A strange elevator slammed down from the sky and onto the center of their territory.

And even more powerful monsters started to crawl out from that elevator.

If they could fight the previous monsters with mechanical weapons.

Then only the power of the Flame could deal with these new monsters.

If the aliens hadn’t been shocked at the sudden appearance of these monsters and hadn’t immediately hunted them down, then all the remaining people in Reyunion would’ve been killed off within a month.

And everything continued to be chaotic after that.

New aliens continued to rise up.

And they had survived in the small gap created between the battles of the original aliens and the new aliens.

The past two years was chaos in itself.

But there was a force that shone even brighter than the others within those years.

The man who rose up quickly while Clementine’s forces had been distracted.

The man who had become strong enough to push back Clementine’s forces.

Kiriel exclaimed out loud after she finished with the memories of what Erunheim had gone through.

“Woah…!”

‘Amazing. Was that person Sangjin?’

Kiriel thought to herself, deducing the identity of the man, the enemy of John Stone.

In Erunheim’s memories.

Clementine’s forces were running away to the elevator.

But her expression turned grim.

She heard the final words of Clementine’s forces as they left.

— Hahaha! We’ll leave for now! We already know we won’t be able to take this place! We’ll wait for you in the 7th Zone!

‘They couldn’t take it?’

Kiriel was at a loss.

Sangjin’s forces had succeeded in pushing away Clementine’s forces. Why did they hand over this place to John Stone and then just leave?

***

“Haa… Haa… I wonder what’s going on above?”

A man looked up as he used the light from his reinforcement skill to get rid of the darkness around the small crystal.

-Chiiiiik-

‘Making me feel uneasy…’

The man frowned at the strange sight of the darkness being tied down to a specific location.

If this darkness did not exist, he would have long taken away this crystal.

But this darkness was clinging onto the crystal.

Like they were holding it down so it wouldn’t escape.

And the fact that the area outside the dark half-kilometer radius around the crystal was extremely bright.

“Stop spouting nonsense and focus on digging. It seems we’ve almost finished digging it out.”

-Chiiiik-

Just as that voice had said.

The shadows that were holding the crystal down had mostly been destroyed.

They just needed to take this crystal up.

‘John Stone will deal with it well.’

-Chiiiiik-

The man focused on cutting apart the shadows again.