Chapter 202

Stepping cautiously across the grotesquely stitched-together threshold, the twins gaped up at the entirely different world spread out before them.

"Whoaaa…"

A dreamlike tailor's shop that looked lifted straight out of a cruel fairy tale.

Pastel silks and skeins of magical thread drifted through the air, and at the center of the room, a wooden spinning wheel the size of a house turned tirelessly, groaning out grotesque noise.

Below it, tableware spiders on silver-fork legs and napkin swans dripping blood-red wine scurried around, hard at work.

"Busy, busy!"

"Time's running out! Bring more fabric in the same shade as the groom's eyes!"

"The thread's tangling — careful! Aren't you checking the needle gauge properly?!"

The twins, still dazed, were gazing up blankly at the eerie, beautiful world when—

"You there! What are you two?!"

A deep voice boomed through every corner of the room.

The source of it was the massive spinning wheel at the center.

A strange, lip-shaped slit had torn open across its ancient, gnarled wooden pillar, and it was speaking to them through that.

"…!"

Their surprise lasted only a moment — trained Awakened that they were, the twins immediately dropped into a combat stance.

Hands locked tight together, they pulled mana up to the limit, ready to unleash their vector control at any moment.

But the spinning wheel split its lips into a grotesque smirk and snorted.

"Fuzzy little pipsqueaks. Unless you want to end up as skewers, you'd better not go swinging at me."

At the cocksure line, Hayun narrowed her eyes and snapped back, wary.

"We came to find the Direektuh! Have you sheen him?"

"The Director? Who's that supposed to be?"

At the spinning wheel's uninterested reply, the twins looked firmly at each other, then declared, bright and brave.

"Shomeone pwecioush!"

"Someone we have to protect!"

"We hafta save him!"

At the sassy answer, the spinning wheel shook so hard bark scattered off it, cackling grotesquely.

"Bah, I've got no interest in some person. Anyway — you the workers who came to help make the clothes?"

"Clothes?"

"Yes! The bride's wedding dress and the groom's tuxedo! You're not here to make those?"

Baffled, the twins exchanged flustered glances and mumbled.

"Um… we don't really know…?"

"If you don't know, then get to work first! We're insanely busy right now!"

At the spinning wheel's roar, the twins' small bodies drifted up into the air, then settled softly right in front of it.

"Come on, come on! Don't just stand there in a daze — pick up a needle and thread and start sewing!"

The spinning wheel barked at them like a taskmaster.

But there wasn't so much as a scrap of material around them.

"There'sh no thwead, though?"

"What do you mean, no thread? Didn't you read the condition outside? Your dawns are the thread."

"What does that mean?"

At Hajun's question, the spinning wheel deepened its grotesque smile into something greedier still.

"Just what it sounds like. I'll be taking your time. If you agree to it, I can spin it out of you."

"…If we do thish, will it help shave the Direektuh?"

"Who knows? Not my problem. My job is just to make the clothes."

Hayun and Hajun looked into each other's eyes.

After a brief exchange, both of them nodded firmly at once.

"Got it! What do we hafta do?"

The spinning wheel tossed a silver needle the size of a utility pole down in front of them.

"You have to sew with this needle — but can little runts like you even lift it?"

At the taunt, the children silently joined hands.

Soon, with a deep humming resonance, the massive needle rose into the air, light as a feather.

"Oho~ not bad. Well then, shall we draw out the thread?"

Kree-krik — creak.

The spinning wheel began to turn slowly, with a strange, skin-crawling sound.

At the same time, a clear, radiantly golden thread began to shimmer out of the children's chests, drifting up like heat haze.

"Whoaaa…!"

The twins' eyes went round at the sight of the shining thread flowing out of their own chests, crossing the air, and winding beautifully up the spinning wheel.

And the instant the golden thread began to leave them, an astonishing thing happened.

The six-year-olds' arms and legs stretched out, their round, pudgy cheeks thinned prettily down, and in a flash they were growing into the frames of seven-, then eight-year-olds.

"Noona! My body'sh getting bigger!"

"Whoaaa!!!"

They'd always secretly envied their hyungs and noonas, who could put on the pocket watch artifact and turn into adults.

Second by second, minute by minute — with every passing moment, their view of the world climbed higher, and huge grins spread across the twins' faces at the magic of it.

"Now's not the time to gawk! Get on with the clothes!"

"How do we do it?"

"Thread the needle and move it through the air like you're conducting! I'll handle the rest!"

At the spinning wheel's prod, Hayun and Hajun clasped hands again.

Hayun's vector control, and Hajun's buff.

The massive needle glided through the air, dancing.

Every time it traced its sharp arc, the finest silks and laces sliced themselves cleanly into shape, forming a tuxedo and a dress.

"Sho pwetty! Let'sh finish it fasht and give it to the Direektuh!"

Their arms and legs stretching out like grown-ups', the dazzling formal wear taking shape as if by magic — the twins were caught up in the sheer thrill of it, catching each other's eyes and bursting into bright peals of laughter, over and over.

But the children didn't see what lay behind their delighted backs — the massive spinning wheel wearing a greedy, chilling smile.

Beyond the Blue threshold, edged with razor-cold air.

A vast banquet hall, frozen solid, revealed itself.

Grotesque, human-shaped ice sculptures filled every side of the room.

Straight through the middle of it, Julia and Cha Yul walked, wrapped in a heavy silence.

How long they'd been walking, neither could have said.

Julia was the one who broke the silence.

"Cha Yul."

Without taking her eyes off the path ahead, she tossed it out.

"Any interest in coming over to Veritas Guild?"

Cha Yul's brow twisted sharply.

"Me this time? Last time you were after Sea-ah."

"I mean to bring you all over to Veritas eventually. Right now, I'm just asking your intent."

At Julia's utterly matter-of-fact answer, Cha Yul went speechless and clamped his mouth shut.

But her next words drove sharp into the deepest part of him.

"Your growth's been stalling lately, and it's clearly eating at you."

"…!"

Cha Yul's shoulders flinched visibly.

"As if I wouldn't recognize that feeling. I've stood in front of that vicious wall myself."

"…"

"That ceiling on your natal rank — no amount of training-to-blood ever cracks it. But I shattered that wall through a second awakening."

A perfect hit, right at the nerve.

"Come to Veritas. I'll guide you flawlessly to a second awakening of your own. Frankly — the Nest Guild you're in now doesn't have the capacity to re-awaken you. Lee Sea-ah's second awakening was nothing more than a chance miracle."

A sweet offer, hard to refuse.

Chewing his lip, Cha Yul finally spoke, heavy.

"…I'll think about it."

At the positive answer, Julia nodded quietly.

As the two of them made their way across the hall again, at last something out of place caught their eye.

A bouquet of blue flowers, radiantly frozen inside a massive pillar of ice.

"Looks like that's what we're meant to take."

Shinng—!

Julia summoned a brilliantly gleaming silver greatsword out of the air.

Cha Yul cracked his neck — pop, pop — and packed his fists with furiously boiling mana.

"Well then — shall we?"

Before the words had finished, Julia sprang from the floor like a released spring.

Her greatsword sliced through the air and slammed down onto the ice pillar with a shattering crack.

Kra-chinnnng—!!!!!

The world's Rank One's crushing assault.

But—

"Not ordinary ice after all."

Julia clicked her tongue, taking in the smooth surface — not a scratch on it.

Cha Yul joined in and drove a fist packed with compressed, explosive energy straight into it — WHAM! — but the result was the same.

As he wound up for a second strike, Julia stretched out a hand and stopped him.

"Enough. This isn't something you break with straight physical force. The condition here…"

Before she could finish—

BWEEEEEEEEE—!!!!

An eardrum-splitting, grotesque alarm rang through the hall.

At the same instant, hundreds of massive doors on every side began slamming open.

And beyond them — as if a dam had burst — an endless tidal wave of monsters lay massed and waiting.

"So it really was a monster wave."

Watching the hideous swarm of ice-plant monsters pouring out, Julia asked, unruffled.

"Do I need to protect you?"

"No. Just look after yourself."

"Right."

An instant later, a brutal battle broke out — against monsters pouring in like a pitch-black tide.

And on the other side of the mirror, watching the whole thing, I screamed in pure despair.

"NO!!!!"

Bang! Bang! Bang!

I pounded on the mirror hard enough to draw blood, shouting.

But the hall beyond the glass was already packed to bursting with grotesque monsters — not a scrap of floor left to stand on.

Living up to her reputation as the world's Rank One, Julia was cleaving through the horde in silence, her overwhelming destructive power on full display.

Every sweep her greatsword traced through the air burst dozens of them apart in all directions.

But the empty space filled back in with black in under a second.

A volume that defied all reason.

The real despair was that the numbers weren't dropping at all.

Kill them, kill them, kill them again — no end to it.

The overwhelming horde surged in like a black tide, trampling their own kin's corpses without a flicker of care — the sight alone choked the breath out of me.

And it didn't take long for the crisis to find Cha Yul.

In the middle of the endless wave, his movements were visibly slowing.

Sharp attacks lashing at him mercilessly from every direction were etching red wounds across his body without pause.

The ragged breaths dragging up to his chin and the sweat pouring down like rain made it plain — he was almost at his limit.

"There are way too many monsters!!! How are we supposed to clear this?!"

The scale of the wave was insane for just two people to handle.

But the ice sculptures in the bride's waiting room, as if mocking my desperate cry, launched into another one of their grotesque harmonies.

"To hold the bouquet in your hand~ you must endure the thorns~♪"

The sculptures closed in around me, humming on eerily.

"However strong a hunter may be~ if the monsters never end, what will become of them~?"

"The monsters we can make are infinite~ a feast that never ends~♪"

Infinite?

For a beat, my head went blank.

It might be a dungeon's bluff — but what if those numbers really did pour out without letup?

Even Julia and Yul, in the end, would run their mana dry and die.

"Though there is a way we could help~♬"

My head snapped up.

"What is it?"

Krik, krik. With a sound like bones grinding out of joint, the bride statue thrust herself right up to my nose.

A skin-crawling cold rolled off her empty eye sockets.

"You just have to help with the wedding preparations too~♬"

"Me?"

"That's right~ help us, and we help you~♪"

I could feel it in my gut.

This was an offer I absolutely couldn't accept.

But—

Beyond the mirror, Cha Yul's figure was vanishing deeper and deeper under the endless surge of monsters — and it rooted me where I stood.

I clenched my teeth and glared at the monster in front of me.

"…What do I have to do."

The instant the yes fell from my mouth, the bride statue's mouth split grotesquely wide, tearing all the way up to her ears.

A shape no human skeleton could hold.

From inside that black, cavernous maw came a hair-raising burst of laughter.

In the beat my whole body froze with terror—

A pitch-black maw that seemed ready to swallow even light lunged for me.

No room even to resist.

The bride statue swallowed me whole.