104 – A New Persona – 4

Although the Letans were said to rule the continent of Leta, the area where their footsteps had actually reached was not even thirty percent of this massive continent.

Sometimes by their own strength, and sometimes by borrowing the strength of the summoned, the Letans were pioneering new frontiers even at this very moment, and in the midst of this, the summoned were constantly striving to secure territory of their own.

The fruit of that was ‘Frontier,’ the kingdom of the summoned that had developed around the pioneered land in the west of the continent, and since it was surrounded by unexplored territories on all sides, it was said that all kinds of strong people aiming for achievements, rewards, and growth were swarming there.

If one were to ask whether new things or achievements could not be found in places that had already been pioneered, that was absolutely not the case, as Gi-jun had already proved multiple times in the less than two months since he had dropped into the continent of Leta.

The continent of Leta breathed like a living creature and changed every moment.

An irregular phenomenon could occur in a beginner dungeon that everyone thought they knew, causing a high-grade boss monster to appear; monsters could mutate in response to specific mana; or ruins that had slept for a long time could reveal themselves, drawn by something that acted as a trigger, whether it was an item, a person, or a monster.

—Kugugugugu

The blood-colored key Gi-jun had obtained through Ruthven was the very trigger to awaken those ruins.

The moment they arrived in a forest in the outskirts of Gratia after flying for two full days on the griffin, Fortis, where the only monsters appearing nearby were about the level of goblins.

The vibration of the key, which had been gradually growing, became strong enough to shake the atmosphere, and then a corner of the forest collapsed, and to his surprise, stone stairs leading underground revealed themselves.

“Fortis!”

—Piyoooo!

The griffin, letting out a loud cry, descended just like that, flapping its wings as it landed lightly.

Fortunately, the entrance leading underground was wide enough that there was no need to break the surroundings.

Having reached the entrance of the ruins, Gi-jun glanced around for no particular reason and went down the stone stairs while riding on Fortis’s back.

—Contractor, I see a door.

“Oh.”

After walking down the stone stairs for at least ten minutes, a short hallway appeared.

At the end of it was a large red door, and the red pattern engraved on the door was emitting a dense wave of magic power as if resonating with the key.

As Gi-jun got down from Fortis’s back and approached the door, the vibration of the key grew increasingly severe, and the moment he reached the door, light finally burst out from the key and enveloped Gi-jun.

—Contractor!

“No, it doesn’t seem like it wants to harm me.”

As he waited quietly, the light enveloping him gathered back into the key, and at the same time a deeper magic power gathered around the key, he felt it cling tightly to his hand.

Gi-jun realized that he had been accepted by the key.

“Could it be that there was a separate condition I didn’t know about?”

—It seems so… Perhaps even that man didn’t know.

If he had been told he lacked the qualifications after coming all the way here, things would have gone completely awry, so he was glad he had passed through safely anyway.

At that moment, a thudding sound echoed from above as the ceiling of the ruins closed, but since he had experienced this once before, he was not surprised at all.

Gi-jun found the keyhole in the door and was about to thrust the key in, but then he remembered that the ruins were for a single person and got back onto Fortis’s back, worried that the creature might not be able to enter.

“If you can’t get in, break the ceiling, go out, and return to where the party members are. Understood?”

—Piyoooo!

Fortis cried out spiritedly, as if telling him not to worry.

Gi-jun stroked the back of its neck and, this time, inserted the key into the door.

At that moment, the world turned upside down.

—[Unbreakable Internal Clock (L)] strongly resists physical and mental interference.

—[Unbreakable Internal Clock (L)] strongly resists physical and mental interference.

—[Unbreakable Internal Clock (L)] strongly resists physical and mental interference.

—[Unbreakable Internal Clock (L)] strongly resists physical and mental interference.

—[Unbreakable Internal Clock (L)] strongly resists physical and mental interference.

—[Unbreakable Internal Clock (L)] strongly resists physical and mental interference.

—[Unbreakable Internal Clock (L)] strongly resists physical and mental interference.

—[Unbreakable Internal Clock (L)] strongly resists physical and mental interference.

A terrible pressure applied to his entire body.

Gi-jun felt the power he was born with resist it, exerting a greater force than at any other moment.

If he focused his nerves inside his body, he felt as if he could hear the ticking sound of clock hands moving.

‘What is this? I just entered the ruins, what on earth are they trying to do to me…!’

However, Gi-jun’s unique skill, which had already reached the legendary rank, ultimately succeeded in repelling everything that oppressed him.

The power of the ruins, which failed to act on him properly, changed the environment instead.

Gi-jun soon realized that he was inside a dark house with a dreary atmosphere.

The figure of Fortis, who had been carrying him, was nowhere to be seen.

‘Huh?’

There was no need to even expand his sensory perception.

Scanning his surroundings quickly, his eyes captured the figures of three people existing in this space, excluding himself.

A beautiful woman was hanging bound in chains on a large grey-white wall, with a boy blocking the front as if to shield her, and—a man threatening them.

“I heard everything, I heard everything. You were trying to run away!”

“Those words do not suit a noble, honey. We are the same as always…!”

“Lies, lies, don’t lie!”

There was the metallic screech-like shout of the man, the woman trembling in her binds yet trying to respond calmly, and the boy glaring at the man with clenched fists.

What stimulated Gi-jun’s sense of incongruity even further was that although Gi-jun had suddenly popped out from their perspective, they paid no attention to him whatsoever, as if he were invisible.

It was as if a play cut off halfway was unfolding before his eyes.

—Contractor, the feeling is strange. I can definitely feel their unique magic power and presence, but it’s as if they aren’t actually here…

Fortunately, Lucy seemed to still be with him.

Just as he was about to discuss the sense of incompatibility he felt at her words, Gi-jun, seeing the shouting man pull out an antique pistol, immediately threw himself toward the guy.

Right before the shield he thrust forward could strike the man’s face, Gi-jun saw the man’s eyes turn blood-red and realized his identity was a vampire.

“…Huh?”

But at the very moment the powerful shield attack deployed at ultra-short range was about to crush him.

The scene before his eyes blurred, and the entire space twisted dizzily like water dropping onto a painting.

In the midst of that, Gi-jun saw something like a medal emitting a faint light rise in the center of the space and reflexively reached out—but before his hand could touch it, the medal disappeared as if melting into the space, and this time, a fairly wide plain appeared.

Only after experiencing that did Lucy speak in a convinced tone.

—Contractor, this is indeed not reality. I’m sure of it.

“Yeah, it seems so. Then what on earth was that power that acted on me at first… Ah.”

Gi-jun walked forward as he felt blood gradually flowing into the plain.

The sound of gunshots, screams, and the constant shaking of the earth.

He could soon discover the scene of a battle taking place not far away.

—Guaaaa…!

—Kihit, kiiiiii!

“Even if you push with sheer numbers—!”

A young man was continuously cutting down and shooting the heads of the monsters that rushed toward him, splattering rotten entrails and blood from their mouths.

It was an extremely thrilling scene, but as expected, no one paid any attention to Gi-jun this time either.

Neither the man nor the monsters.

‘That man resembles the vampire man from earlier… No, he doesn’t.’

He realized it naturally.

That young man was the grown-up version of the boy who had confronted the vampire just moments ago.

The reason he resembled the vampire man was obvious—because he was the vampire’s son.

“A dhampir, a half-breed of vampire and human… and a born vampire hunter.”

Was it said that this was a ruins for a vampire hunter? He was finally starting to get a clue.

If so, the identity of the power that acted the moment Gi-jun entered the ruins was probably…

While Gi-jun was sorting out his thoughts, the second act of the play was rushing toward its climax.

The man killed all the degraded monsters created by the vampire, the ghouls, and finally encountered the monster leading them—the vampire.

“My mother’s enemy… I will kill you.”

“An inferior bug like you…!”

Naturally, he was the very same vampire who had been holding the antique pistol and oppressing the boy and the woman in the first act.

That pistol was still held in his hand.

—Oh, looking at them like that… they look alike?

“Because they are father and son.”

—What?!

Gi-jun had realized it long ago, but Lucy, who had never experienced Korean dramas, cried out in surprise at his words.

He decided to explain the backstory of the play he had figured out to Lucy.

“In addition, the woman tied up in chains earlier was the vampire’s wife and that dhampir’s mother. The vampire probably ended up killing his wife, and the dhampir grew up to be a vampire hunter out of resentment and came to kill his father.”

—To think you figured out all that just by looking at that brief moment, Contractor!

“This is nothing. If it were a Korean drama, it wouldn’t be surprising if a twist like a hidden younger sister or the dhampir being the half-brother rather than the son of the vampire popped up. In that case, the vampire would become a perverted murderer obsessed with his stepmother, which adds more dramatic entertainment—”

—S-Stop! Just imagining it makes my head spin…!

Watching the two men clash, Gi-jun, who was explaining the situation to Lucy, pondered for a moment.

There was no room for doubt that the main character of this space was that dhampir.

First a boy, now a young man.

Though he could not be sure, it was clear that if left like this, the time of this space would continue to flow based on that dhampir, showing Gi-jun the dhampir’s life story which he had not even asked for.

Should he spread out a mat, sit down, and start watching in earnest, or…

“No, I’ve already seen the gist of it, so there is no need to play along anymore.”

Having finished his pondering, Gi-jun immediately threw his shield.

The moment the shield, flying through the space like a flash of light, was about to strike the two, the space collapsed and distorted just as it had earlier.

And the mysterious, faint medal revealed its shape once again in the center of the space—

Since he had anticipated that it would appear this time too, Gi-jun’s subsequent action was swift.

The shield he had thrown earlier curved its trajectory and returned as if he were directly controlling it, aiming precisely at the medal and activating the special ability of the King of the Well.

Namely, wind blast.

—Wow!

Although the medal resisted as if fixed to something, it could not withstand the compressed wind blowing in a straight line.

Gi-jun cleanly caught the medal flying precisely toward him, and at that moment, without even a chance to examine it in detail, the entire space began to squirm like the stomach of a giant creature.

The floor Gi-jun was stepping on disappeared, the sky collapsed, and the air vanished as well.

—Piyoooooo!

“Fortis!”

However, Fortis, flying in the midst of it, skillfully caught Gi-jun and sat him on its back.

He thought it had surely failed to enter the ruins and had been bounced out, but was it just isolated all this time?

Thinking that the creature would have been trapped for a longer time if he had just watched the situation quietly, he felt that it was really a good decision to act on impulse.

—Contractor, this…!

While he was pondering how to break through this space while riding on Fortis’s back, Lucy called Gi-jun.

Raising his head, Gi-jun let out an exclamation as he looked at the magic power swirling from the ceiling around him.

It was not simple magic power.

It projected countless illusions with physical forms, and each and every one of them took the shape of the dhampir from various time periods.

A young boy, a young man, a middle-aged man, and even an old man who seemed to be on the verge of death…

Gi-jun nodded to himself and muttered to no one in particular.

“I knew it. This dungeon wanted to make me experience this dhampir’s life story.”

—Experience?

“I felt it interfering with my body and mind. Perhaps it was trying to temporarily synchronize the person who entered the ruins with the dhampir?”

—Contractor, are you perhaps a genius?

“I’m telling you, even this is a common cliché.”

However, Gi-jun’s unique skill was specialized in protecting itself without being interfered with by anything, and the ‘power’ that failed to achieve its purpose changed instead into a form that allowed Gi-jun to indirectly experience the dhampir’s past.

As one could see, Gi-jun rejected even that and seized the medal that seemed to be the core of the ruins, causing the entire ruins to malfunction—

And all kinds of dhampir forms that were scheduled to contain Gi-jun were running wild.

—They are glaring at you, Contractor.

“Ha.”

All the physical entities taking the shape of the dhampir stared quietly at Gi-jun.

Gi-jun held up the medal in his hand.

As expected, they all turned their gazes toward the medal, which felt like watching some horror movie.

He wanted to put it in his inventory just like that, but he could not.

It meant that it was not yet recognized as his possession.

[Fragment of Unique Territory (Legendary)]

[Durability — 3,279/5,000]

[A very small fragment of authority that allows one to fully edit a part of the continent of Leta as one’s own territory. Activated by the power of the legendary vampire hunter, Krat van Helsing, it overwrites the memory and authority of real entities and spaces within a limited area. If the contents are completely removed, it can be used again.]

[Fragment of Unique Territory (Legendary)]

[Durability — 3,279/5,000]

[A very small fragment of authority that allows one to fully edit a part of the continent of Leta as one’s own territory. Activated by the power of the legendary vampire hunter, Krat van Helsing, it overwrites the memory and authority of real entities and spaces within a limited area. If the contents are completely removed, it can be used again.]

Fortunately, however, the information could be identified.

The moment Gi-jun saw it, he was intuitively convinced that this item would have a huge, a very huge impact on him in the future…

“If the contents are completely removed.”

That it could be used again.

Putting it in his bosom for now, he raised his head again.

He saw the contents—namely, the dhampir from countless time periods, Krat van Helsing—glaring at him.

Well, of course, a guy who kept cutting off what they wanted to say and ended up stealing even the core device that made up the ruins would not be looked upon favorably.

“What are you doing?”

This item was probably not something Ruthven, who had handed the key over to Gi-jun, had expected either.

And it was even less likely to be the reward the ruins had intended to give.

“Hurry up and attack, so I can remove you.”

Gi-jun had already made up his mind to secure this item.

Right after a smile hung on his lips.

The legendary vampire hunter formed a company and pounced on him!