Chapter 189

The number climbed sharply.

When I lifted my hand off the floor, only then did the number stop.

P■■■■■■ity for Destruction...... 34%

I looked up at the sky beyond the status window. In the cloudy sky, snow had started to fall little by little at some point.

“.......”

I’d once taken the time to think in detail about what this “Plausibility for Destruction” actually was.

According to the “original” anyway, this world was going to get closer to destruction no matter what. It had to get close to destruction for Kwon Taehan to be able to make a dramatic stand.

And since I was the one who had an enormous impact on that destruction, then “Plausibility for Destruction” had to mean I was acquiring the conditions to be capable of destroying the world.

I recalled the god’s words, that bullshit it had been spewing right in front of me just now.

‘You’re going to exist for a very long time, and just the fact that I took part in this dramatic development means you’ll believe in me.’

If I slotted in the line I hadn’t heard right before that, it all boiled down to this in the end.

‘It’s my good luck to be able to join in on the plausibility.’

I didn’t even have to force myself to understand it; I knew what it meant on an intuitive level.

‘What a fucking bastard.’

Up to now, it had created the space called the maze, leaned on Cheonmyeonggyo, devoured human desires, and cultivated humans who “believed” in it. And now that I was going to exist for a very long time, it was going to tamper with my stats and make it so I believed in it instead.

In short, it had been freeloading off Cheonmyeonggyo, and now it wanted to freeload off me.

‘A god parasitizing on human faith, huh.’

Its explanation had been so bizarre it stuck with me. For something that had introduced itself out of its own mouth as a god, wasn’t that pretty much the opposite of what you’d expect divine power to be?

I looked around the empty space one more time.

This wasn’t the maze. A massive horizon stretched endlessly out in every direction, with no telling where it ended. There were no snow-covered mountains or caves like in the previous dungeon. All I could see was a landscape of frozen snow.

I took the guard out of my pocket, held it in my hand for a moment, then turned over my other hand to check the pattern on my palm.

“Ha....”

And there was nothing there.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

My mutter echoed out through the empty space.

The second I’d put my hand on the floor, it had frozen over, yet there was no mark on my hand.

I tried to draw mana up into my palm. But, amazingly, I didn’t feel anything at all.

It wasn’t just that mana wouldn’t gather in my palm. There was no sensation of it anywhere in my body. Like this thing called mana was a sense that simply didn’t exist in the world.

‘Where the hell is this?’

Not the maze, not the gap where I’d been with that thing, but a completely new space.

With everything around me nothing but white, it was hard to tell directions, so I just started walking at random.

‘Feels like some kind of mental domain.’

There was no status window like the one you normally saw when you went into a dungeon. Just the number telling me how far destruction had progressed.

If this was a mental domain, could I move things however I wanted?

I frowned and tried to move the space itself—then gave up quickly.

“Nope, doesn’t work, fuck.”

Yeah, I wasn’t Im Haekyung. Even if this really was some mental domain, there was no reason I should be able to do whatever I wanted with it.

I’d more or less accepted that and was in the middle of half-understanding, half-resigning myself when I saw a shape in the distance. To describe it a bit more precisely, something like a dog, its whole body covered in white fur, was walking this way.

The ball of fur about knee-high came all the way up to me and bumped its head lightly against my leg.

“What is this supposed to be?”

I grabbed the thing with one hand and groped around where I guessed its face was. Two eyes popped out.

Some shapeless something with nothing but a pair of eyes stuck on the fur. A sense of déjà vu flashed through my head.

‘Is this the thing that was in my palm?’

Of all the creatures I knew, the only thing that looked even remotely like this was the Cave Giant’s clone. And more than anything, it felt way too familiar.

‘It’s huge now.’

The last time I’d seen it, it had been about the size of my palm, and now it had somehow grown into something like a damn little dog. Guess that’s a dungeon-born creature for you; the growth rate was on a whole different level.

I watched it squirming, trying to meet my eyes, then set it back down on the floor.

‘Ah....’

The last thing the god had said was some bullshit about merging my body with this bastard, so the next step followed naturally.

“Am I supposed to have a little chat with you?”

The first problem was whether this thing could even have a conversation.

Right then, the ice floor under my feet started making an ominous noise.

Crack, craaack.

Almost as soon as I heard the sound of ice splitting, thin hairline fractures began to run across the floor, and then it split apart with a thunderous crash.

Thud! Craaash.

I instinctively stumbled back, then swerved to the side and started running. The ground was breaking apart so fast that if I waited even a little, I’d obviously just drop straight into the gap.

‘I’m fucked.’

Even while I was in full sprint, the tiny version of the Cave Giant kept chasing after me. I had no idea how it was even walking, but it was surprisingly fast.

‘Should I grab it and run?’

I hesitated for a moment, then looked back, and my eyes met its. I could see those black eyes looking up at me.

“Figure it out yourself.”

Yeah, if it could keep up with me this close from right behind, its stats had to be decent enough.

Besides, speaking objectively as someone who’d leeched off its skill to survive, there was no doubt its stats were probably several times better than mine.

Meanwhile, the ice floor kept widening the area that was cracking. Centered around the first section that split, entire chunks here and there broke off completely like branches spreading out.

‘Fuck.’

After running for a good while, I came to a stop and turned around.

‘No matter where I run, I’m going to fall in anyway.’

In that case, what was the most efficient way to handle this situation? I grabbed the clone that was still lying on the ground with its eyes open like it didn’t understand anything and said,

“Fix it.”

It just tilted its head and did nothing.

‘Yeah, even I think that sounds ridiculous.’

But I had no intention of running away again.

‘I mean, it’s not like I’m actually going to die, right?’

From the start, I’d never once thought this space had been made with the intention of killing me.

Craaaack—

I stared at the floor as the crack spread all the way up to right in front of me, then let myself fall straight into the gap.

The sensation of my body dropping was something you never really got used to.

‘If I actually die like this, that’d be pretty funny too.’

My body slammed against something that jutted out here and there from the ice wall, jolting me with pain every time. The pain was so intense that it made me wonder if I’d been wrong to assume this was some mental domain.

Ignoring the clone’s steady gaze on me, I reached out, trying to use a skill, but of course, I still felt nothing at all from my hand.

“Ugh!”

When I slammed hard into one of the protrusions, a fierce shock of pain went through me, and my vision swam for a moment.

Right after that, my whole body hit the floor with a heavy thud.

“Haaah....”

The pain in my back was so bad it felt like every vertebra had been shattered. The only good news was that they actually weren’t.

I clenched my teeth, rolled my body half a turn, tried to stagger upright, then gave up fast and flopped back down on my stomach.

My chest throbbed like my lungs had been torn; it was hard to breathe. I took short, shallow breaths over and over, trying to gauge exactly how bad the pain was.

Just then, the entire floor shook violently.

Thoom!

The tremor was so strong it shook my whole body.

And that wasn’t all. At first, I thought it was a single jolt, but soon the tremors took on a rhythm and started coming faster.

Thud, ◈ Nоvеlіgһт ◈ (Continue reading) thud, thud, thud.

It sounded like something was coming this way.

By the time the vibration across my whole body grew stronger, I barely managed to lift my head to check the situation.

“I’m fucked.”

There was something very familiar, staring straight at me.

Kwooom!

The Cave Giant, its whole body covered in ice, smashed its fist down at the spot where I’d been the second it saw me. I barely flung myself to the side to dodge it, then grabbed the Cave Giant’s clone that was still rolling around on the floor and hauled it over.

“What the fuck am I supposed to do with this?”

I couldn’t believe that right after a fall that painful I felt like I should’ve died from it, a fully grown Cave Giant had suddenly popped out and was charging at me like it was dead set on killing me.

I stared for a moment at the Cave Giant’s clone in my hand.

Should I just use it as bait, since I couldn’t even communicate with it?

‘Either way, it’s the same thing, isn’t it? If it were me, I wouldn’t go out of my way to kill my own clone.’

Whether that occurred to it or not, the Cave Giant struck the ground again, like it really intended to finish me off.

Thud!

I barely dodged again, but I wasn’t in any condition to run far.

Without hesitation, I hurled the ball of fur in my hand at the Cave Giant.

Thump!

After the very light impact, the Cave Giant’s ice-block eyes stared straight at me.

‘Fuck, of course this bastard doesn’t have any brains.’

Amazingly, it had absolutely no effect.

The Cave Giant just looked even more pissed off than before as it stared at me from where it stood.

‘Mm... I’m fucked.’