Chapter 298 – To Win Back the Favor of Stel Who Fell Into the Abyss (9)

One.

“…”
“…”
“…”

After one round of anger and apology, the three people in the cave closed their mouths and did not meet their eyes as if they were weaving each other.

The air currents flowing between the three of them were awkward, just like when they were told to form a group during college freshman orientation, they didn’t know what to do.

However, in this awkwardness, he couldn’t do anything for a while, and the old man, who was angry that Paster couldn’t remember him, quickly regained his reason and opened his mouth to Pastor, who was still avoiding his gaze.

“Whoa, yes. This can be happen. My appearance has changed a lot from before, and it’s been a long time since I’ve seen you like this.”
“Yes?”

He had just heard that Pastor, who had been his goal in life before, didn’t know him, and he was angry because he was excited, but if you think about it from Pastor’s point of view, it was inevitable.

It’s because Pastor met the old man after 18 years, and the old man has lived in the S-class dungeon ‘Incomprehensible’ for 18 years and has changed a lot.

The prototype adaptation drug the old man drank to survive made him able to survive in an S-class dungeon, but the old man’s body had to go through tremendous changes.

Pastor remembered the old man as a middle-aged man with a well-groomed appearance, but now the old man’s arms and legs have become mechanical, his hair and beard cover more than half of his face, and his black hair is also white.

In addition, his body was twisted like a hunchback as a side effect of the adaptive drug, so it was natural for Pastor to not recognize it.

However, Pastor, who did not know the reason for this, had no choice but to raise a question mark above his head at the sudden change in the old man’s attitude, and the old man briefly added a word to Pastor.

“Yes, since you won’t be able to recognize it from the outside, I will have no choice but to explain it myself. Transcendence······. Seekers advancing toward transcendence. Do you remember if I introduced you?”

Pastor opened his eyes wide and gritted his teeth at the words of the old man, who was so calm that he could not imagine that he was the same person as the person who had been angry at not knowing him just now.

“You can’t…”

‘Transcendence’. It is a word that Pastor will never forget, and the trauma itself is deeply engraved in his childhood.

Therefore, Pastor realized who the old man was the moment the word transcendence came out of the old man’s mouth, and all the circumstances were saying that the old man was the person he thought he was.

“That… The head of the research institute…? At that time, you got caught up in the rabbit hole and disappeared, you…!”

Now, thanks to the reaction he had hoped for, the old man regained his sinister and ominous smile.

The clone, who watched the couple’s meeting from a distance, also began to emit a unique final boss-like atmosphere when he saw the dog-like smile on the corner of the old man’s mouth, which symbolizes composure.

Now, what is left for the two of them is to shock Paster, who is still looking at him in disbelief, by telling him that ‘Even if you can’t believe it, this is reality.’

At this point when Pastor suddenly appeared, many things he had planned went to nothing, but since this moment had been planned for a long time by the two of them, the old man spoke the lines he had practiced several times just for this day.

“But you are alive like this? It is a fact that we have to accept.”

Pastor closed her mouth at the confident answer, and the old man moved her mechanical leg toward Pastor, making the smile on her lips even thicker at the expected response.

And standing in front of Paster, looking up at him with murky eyes that make you terrified just by facing him, added spur to the heavy atmosphere.

“How is it? How does it feel to know that the enemy of your life, whom you thought was dead, is living like this and trying to take everything from you?”

Truly, the final darkness has risked everything to challenge himself until now, but to the main character who has been defeated in vain, ‘So how was it? How does he feel that everything he has done has been in vain?’ A dark and heavy atmosphere.

Pastor, who had received all the pressure and shock alone, opened his mouth to the old man with difficulty.

“・・・・・Uh, um. That, was it? I didn’t know.”

It was Pastor’s sincere reply to the old man’s ambitious ambassador in the dark, who came out in a panic because he didn’t know what to say.

※※※

I just came because Mayna told me that when she put the knife into the machine that Mack Guffin gave her and turned it, the dimensional coordinates came up. There were some really unexpected people.

The head of the research institute who forcibly kidnapped me and Mayna from another dimension and treated them as test subjects, but eventually got caught up in a runaway rabbit hole and disappeared.

I never imagined that something like this would have been waiting for me.

I just came here thinking that the terrorists, whether they were extreme myeonggaists or not, made strange weapons and were targeting Meina and me, but this turned out like this.

With this situation in front of me, I honestly had no idea what to do.

I’m talking about the enemy of my life, but to be honest, the head of the research institute is the enemy of my life who forcibly kidnapped me and made me an orphan. Now, even if you tell me that you are an enemy or how you feel, you will not be able to react much.

“That, that’s… That’s all…? No, no, there must be something more…! I am the research director! Your enemy, who performed numerous experiments on you, never saw you as a person, and forcibly kidnapped you! But, in front of such an enemy, the reaction is only… That?”

No, the river and mountain change 1.8 times in 18 years, but what to do with me.

I was genuinely surprised when I heard that the cyborg with mechanical limbs I had never seen before was actually the research director and introduced himself as my clone, but honestly, that was all.

It was too difficult for me to ask for more, and frankly, there was no way they would react the way I wanted.

Um, should I just go home?

This situation was so embarrassing to me that I suddenly got tired of the reappearance of a bad relationship that I had completely forgotten about, to the point that I didn’t even think I wanted to meet him, and even momentarily thought about it.

But soon, the head of the research institute, who couldn’t stand my dull reaction, screamed.

“That, then. If you’re going to react like that, how the hell did you come here! This is the worst S-class dungeon in history, ‘Impossible’! No matter how much you can use transcendence, it’s not a place you’d go for a walk like that!”

I ended up hearing something I couldn’t filter out of the old man’s cry of life’s bitterness.

“·····Where is this? Impossible…? The worst dungeon that tries to capture even the souls from the liars trap this time? You are in such a place… No, why are you there?”

I was genuinely curious about why these two people were living in the incomprehensible world, to the point that even the thought of wanting to go home that had been thrown heavily in their hearts was blown away in an instant.

So, when I asked with the feeling of being really curious, the director of the research center asked me back in a dejected voice as if he was really dumbfounded and didn’t want to scream anymore.

“What, what? If you don’t even know that… How did someone who doesn’t know that come here…?”

At that question, I felt my head go blank. It was because there were lines that I knew how to listen to and practiced.

Besides, I was planning to film and show the entire situation, so I even attached a mini-mana camera I received from Emme to my collar, so all the preparations for me to say a great line were completed, but the situation was going completely different from what I expected.

So even though I practiced and prepared hard, I scratched the back of my head a little awkwardly and answered the research director’s question calmly, unlike what I had practiced.

“Uh… I came to regain the favor of Stel, who has fallen into the abyss.”

The reason I came here was not to stop it because he was actually alive and he was plotting an evil plan to take everything from me, just as the research director had hoped.

“Because you guys destroyed my office first. In addition to that, they are trying to kill our employees, so I have no choice but to come as the president.”

It’s just that I’m the boss, and the employee’s life was threatened, so I came to directly scold him.

In addition to that, this time, because I made a mistake and fell in love with Stell, I came here to somehow restore it.

“Anyway, I came for such a very personal reason, and not for the grandiose reasons you guys think. Don’t get me wrong.”

And come to think of it, not much has changed. It’s just that the opponent has changed from an extreme mastermind to the head of the research institute and my clone who are plotting something unknown. In the end, what I was trying to do didn’t change.

After realizing that fact, I was so embarrassed that I forgot about it for a while.

So, I clenched my fists at the two people who were looking so disappointed and lethargic, and conscious of the camera, I uttered a nice line again.

“Anyway, you will have to pay for the sins of my staff and my precious family member Stel.”

Let’s stop talking here for a moment.

Dismissed!

After quickly closing the distance through the rabbit hole, he threw out his fist with all his might and shouted out the words he had cut off.

“I mean like this!”

Quick!

An ambush through a rabbit hole that no one has ever reacted to, and cannot react to.

Again, using the rabbit hole, my fist hit the target of my clone’s thrush.

“…”
“Uh?”

Even though my fist was stuck, the clone’s face didn’t even turn his head.