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The stone wall opened noisily.

Seo Jun-Ho slowly walked inside and ahead of the werewolves he took hostage.

“...”

As expected, there was pure chaos beyond the stone wall. The werewolves were showing their hostility toward Seo Jun-Ho, who had taken their family and friends hostage.

‘But the only threat here is…’

Seo Jun-Ho’s eyes turned toward the werewolf standing on the highest rock.

Arnold made eye contact with Seo Jun-Ho and spoke, “I can’t believe you just walked into our territory while holding our kind hostage. Should I say your courageous, or should I say you’re impudent?”

“I don’t know.”

Seo Jun-Ho thought that it was neither. At this point, what Seo Jun-Ho felt about his skills was beyond pride.

Orca was still being restrained by chains of darkness as he cried out. “Chief Arnold!”

“Hang in there, Orca. I’ll save you soon.”

“No, that’s not it! This human isn’t an enemy.”

“...?” Arnold frowned and shifted his gaze to Orca’s wrists.

‘All of them are being held hostage, but he’s saying that the man who took them hostage isn’t an enemy?’

Orca seemed ashamed to remain under Arnold’s gaze any longer, so he quickly explained, “He’s Rahmadat Khali’s friend.”

“...Hm?”

Arnold’s eyes softened upon hearing Orca’s explanation.

‘He must be the one.’

Arnold nodded. He recalled Rahmadat mentioning that he had a friend he had always been chasing after. Rahmadat also said that he wanted to stand next to his friend.

‘Rahmadat, that punk. He’s going to have a hard time.’

It would still take Rahmadat a long time before he could properly handle the power that emancipation would grant him if he managed to succeed in the trial.

Swoosh.

The gray fur covering Arnold vanished.

“Is your name Seo Jun-Ho by chance?”

“...How do you know my name?”

“Rahmadat often told me about his friends.”

Arnold gestured, and the werewolves’ killing intent vanished. They reverted to their human forms one by one.

In response, Seo Jun-Ho slowly put down the chain he was holding. As far as Seo Jun-Ho knew, Rahmadat wasn’t the kind of guy who would tell the enemies about his friends even if they threatened to kill him.

“...”

Swish.

When the chain of darkness disappeared, Arnold turned around and said, “Follow me. I’ll bring you to your friend.”

***

Rahmadat was lying flat on a stone bed.

“...Why is he unconscious?” asked Seo Jun-Ho in a low voice.

Arnold raised both of his hands. “First of all, let’s all calm down. I’ll explain everything to you step by step from a to z.”

Arnold really did explain everything, including Rahmadat saving Mone, Mone bringing him to the Twilight Claw Tribe, Arnold teaching Rahmadat himself, and Rahmadat taking on the Arch Warrior Trial.

Once Arnold was done speaking, Seo Jun-Ho said, “...I heard that this punk drank too much alcohol.”

“I can’t deny that,” Arnold nodded. “And that wasn’t our fault.”

‘It’s this idiot’s fault for downing it before I could say that he just needs to take a sip.’

Seo Jun-Ho massaged his aching temples. “Do you guys also call him an idiot?”

“Well, some of us even call him a dumbass.”

“He does deserve to be called a dumbass.”

The air around Seo Jun-Ho and Arnold lightened. Seo Jun-Ho noticed that and quickly apologized. “I apologize for attacking your family out of nowhere. I thought that they abducted my friend.”

“No, it’s all right. It’s only natural for you to misunderstand without hearing the full story. I understand.”

With that, the misunderstanding was resolved.

Seo Jun-Ho looked at Rahmadat and asked, “When do you think this guy will wake up?”

“I also want to know that…”

Becoming enlightened on emancipation was purely up to one’s capabilities...

“However, I’ll have to consider the test a failure and wake him up forcefully if he doesn’t wake up on his own within the next four days.”

“I heard that there is a backlash.”

“There is a backlash, but that’s not the main problem. If he wanders for more than a week in the prison of his own mind, then he will emerge from it as a ruined man. He will become nothing more than a shell of his previous self.”

“...”

The backlash was usually not that severe, but they figured that the backlash would be much greater for Rahmadat because he downed the special alcohol rather than taking a small sip.

“So I guess it’s all up to this idiot.”

“It’s all up to this idiot indeed.”

“Hmm.” Seo Jun-Ho sighed and got up. “Let’s get out of here. I don’t think there is much I can do for him here.”

“...You’re more cold-hearted than I thought,” Arnold said with a surprised expression.

Seo Jun-Ho seemed a little different from what Arnold had heard from Rahmadat.

“It’s not that I’m cold-hearted…” Seo Jun-Ho shook his head. “It’s actually the other way around.”

There was a reason why he didn’t show any concern about Rahmadat despite his current condition.

“It’s because I believe in him. I believe in this idiot.”

“...”

Arnold looked slightly moved by Seo Jun-Ho’s words which were full of trust.

“I knew it, your heart burns hot as well.”

“My heart burns hot? Yes, I mean, the average temperature of the heart is forty degrees, you know?”

“...” Arnold didn’t know what to say. In his eyes, he seemed to have judged Seo Jun-Ho as a bit humorless aside from his overflowing trust and loyalty in his friends.

***

Arnold sat on a huge rock and took a sip of steaming hot tea.

“Did you say you want to know about this world?” Arnold asked.

“Yes. I can’t just wait here and do nothing.”

Seo Jun-Ho wanted to know a lot about this world, and he also had many questions, such as the identity of the Floor Master and the reason behind the red fog’s appearance.

“Hmm. The history of this world… where should I begin?” Arnold stared at the distant city covered in red fog. “...We used to be humanity’s gods nine hundred years ago.”

“Gods?”

“To be exact, humans used to serve us. Have you ever heard of Totemism?”

“Yes, I have.”

Totemism was a culture of worshiping animals or plants while considering them sacred. Seo Jun-Ho recalled learning about it in Korean history class when he was still in middle school.

“So humans here used to serve the wolves.”

“Yes. Our ancestors were wolves. At that time, the king of humans married our ancestors and…” Arnold briefly explained a story about the birth of a werewolf. “Then, human society developed rapidly over the years.”

Humans who couldn’t even cross over to the next village started crossing not only continents and the sea, but they even conquered the sky. It was all thanks to the so-called Industrial Revolution.

“Humans no longer believe in us.”

This was an expected and natural outcome since the idea of werewolves in the midst of remarkable advancements in technology and science was a story that would only appear in old fairy tales.

The werewolves naturally disappeared from the minds of humans over the years.

“But we continued on protecting the humans from the shadows…”

“Protecting the humans… you mean from the vampires?”

“Yes. Those bats are from another continent. They drink human blood and could turn other people into their servants, which resulted in their massive population boom.”

This wasn’t a huge problem in the beginning because even those True Vampires couldn’t match the werewolves.

“Wait. Did you say that the True Vampires are weaker than the werewolves?”

“That was how it used to be back then,” Arnold said proudly as he strengthened his back. “You know the Twilight Claw Tribe isn’t the only werewolf tribe, right?”

“So there were reinforcements...”

“The Fierce Nail Tribe, the Blue Mane Tribe, and the Sharp Tooth Tribe. There are four tribes in total, and it was all thanks to the chiefs representing each tribe that we managed to stop the True Vampires. Yes… It was all thanks to the Four Legendary Wolves.”

“Pffft!”

The Frost Queen sitting next to Seo Jun-Ho suddenly spat the tea that she was drinking. She closed her mouth tightly with both hands as if what she had done surprised her as well, but her eyes betrayed her.

The Frost Queen’s eyes were tearing up as she desperately held her laughter back.

“Haha… hahaha…” The Frost Queen’s shoulders quivered. She tried her best to stay quiet, but her laughter still leaked out of her mouth.

“I’ve been wanting to ask you this, but who the heck is this girl?”

“She is the Frost Queen, and she’s the queen of a nation covered in snow.”

“A queen? A little girl like her is the queen of a nation?”

“Hahahaha!” The Frost Queen couldn’t hold her laughter back enough. She directly burst into a boisterous peal of laughter as she bent over and held her stomach, which was already starting to hurt.

‘I have to admit that it’s kind of funny because the name is a bit childish, but it’s rude to laugh in front of the one who just told you about them.’

Seo Jun-Ho scolded the Frost Queen. “Hey, that’s rude.”

“I-I know! B-but… the Four Legendary Wolves are just—haha!”

“Stop laughing. If you keep laughing, I might…” Seo Jun-Ho’s lips were twitching as he chided the Frost Queen.

Arnold looked a bit uncomfortable as he said, “I don’t mind a child laughing about it, but your laughter is a bit different.”

“What’s different about it?” Seo Jun-Ho asked.

“Rahmadat said that you and he are famous as the 5 Heroes. You aren’t that different from us, so your laughter is a bit painful to hear,” said Arnold.

“Hahahaha!” The Frost Queen rolled around the rock they were sitting on while laughing.

“Hmm...” Arnold sighed. He truly looked uncomfortable as he said, “Well, it can’t be helped. I mean, I also think that the name is a bit strange.”

“Ahem. Please forgive our rudeness. Anyway, let’s go back to what we were talking about.”

Arnold and Seo Jun-Ho left the laughing Frost Queen and continued their conversation.

“Where was I? Ah, yes. One day, the bats suddenly became strong.”

“Were there no omens?”

“Well…” Arnold pondered for a moment. He seemed to have recalled something as he said, “A few days before they became strong, I felt a strange energy like the one I felt today.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know. I felt a strange energy before you climbed up the mountain. It almost felt like something was watching us and…”

“...” Seo Jun-Ho’s expression became serious.

Arnold might be talking about his Dignity of an Emperor.

In that case, Arnold may have felt the energy of a transcendent back then.

‘A demon at the Star Destruction Stage, at the very least, must have intervened. It fits perfectly, according to what Miss Reiji had said.’

There was a huge chance that the matter involved one of Underworld’s counts.

“Those bats became ridiculously strong since that day. I can understand the strength of the other True Vampires, but Tepes is just…” Arnold trailed off and shook his head. “I encountered him only once at a distance of a few kilometers, but even though we’re far away, I could still feel that I wasn’t his match.”

“I think I finally understand what’s going on here.”

Seo Jun-Ho deduced that the vampires had to have been converted into stronger beings, similar to how the demons turned humans into fiends.

“So that’s how you were driven out of the city by the vampires.”

“Well, it is true that the vampires eventually managed to drive us out, but it’s mostly because of the fog.”

“Fog? You mean that red fog over there, which is covering the entire city?”

Arnold nodded. “We can only harness our full strength beneath the moonlight, but that red fog does not allow even a single ray of moonlight to descend upon the city.”

“You mean…”

“Yes. It means that all we can do is fill up our Lunar Force reservoir outside the red fog like what we are doing right now.”

In short, not only was it questionable if the werewolves could still defeat the vampires even if they were at full strength, but the werewolves could only exert less than half of their true power, thanks to the red fog.

Even worse, the enemies would only become stronger over time, while the allies would only become weaker as the red fog expanded even more.

“Then, we’ll have to find a way to get rid of that fog before anything else.”

“You’ve got a great insight.” Arnold’s eyes sparkled as he retrieved a map from his clothes.

Woosh!

The map laid out on the rock was extremely detailed to the extent that it felt like every nook and cranny of Trium was recorded on the map.

“This is the map of Trium. Not even the Queen of Trium has a map that is as detailed as this.”

“The city is huge.”

At first glance, Trium was a circular city that looked slightly bigger than Seoul.

“What are these circles on the map?” Seo Jun-Ho asked.

“Those places are called factories,” Arnold said in a grim voice.

“They must belong to the vampires, I suppose?”

“Yes. Those circles are what the bats built to satisfy their greed, and they were made at the expense of our warriors’ lives.”

“...What are they producing from those factories?”

Arnold stared at Seo Jun-Ho without saying anything.

He stared at the latter for quite a while before muttering, “Blood.”

Arnold’s anguished eyes remained on Seo Jun-Ho. “The humans they kidnap are sent over to those factories to be treated as livestock they could draw blood from for the vampires to drink.”

“...”

“We’re also assuming that the red fog is being produced in one of those factories,” Arnold added.

The disturbing revelation almost shook Seo Jun-Ho’s imperturbable mind, and in a cold voice filled with fury, he told Arnold, “If there are any missions related to the factories, let me join them.”