Chapter 22
The next moment, the woman was suddenly in front of me.
Baek Yi-heon hurriedly turned his body towards me.
The woman brought her face close to mine, her eyes gleaming with interest.
“You look so alike, I recognized you right away.”
Baek Yi-heon swung his fist, imbued with blue mana, mercilessly toward the woman.
But in the next instant, the woman was back on top of the altar.
“What on earth is……”
An awakened one?
Or an avatar of an evil god?
But it’s only been two weeks since the Gate Break occurred, how could she already have such abilities…
Rumble rumble rumble—
At that moment, with a sound that seemed to shake heaven and earth, all the tree roots I had bound crumbled and disappeared.
The bound humans began to stagger towards the altar again.
Bang, bang. Once again, bright red blood shot up into the night sky.
“What are you doing, Hannah?”
Suddenly, a man appeared on the altar.
“Oh my, you’re here already? Well, I found something interesting.”
“Why didn’t you continue the ritual?”
“Don’t get angry first. Look over there.”
The man’s indifferent gaze followed the woman’s fingertip to me.
And when our eyes finally met, there was no change in the man’s expression.
Is my expression the same as his now? Equally expressionless?
With a feeling as if all my senses were numb, I couldn’t even tell what expression I was making.
The man slowly opened his mouth.
“…So you’re alive.”
Particularly black hair, white skin.
A face that resembled mine so much it made me nauseous, with intense yet flowing curves as if drawn with ink.
This man was my father, who was taken to prison 14 years ago.
“You, you of all people……”
I barely opened my mouth with a pale face.
“Seeing you alone, I suppose the woman who gave birth to you is dead.”
An indifferent gaze, as if looking at an inanimate object. A cold tone.
Was he originally like this? Before I was seven, what was he like?
Memories that I had deliberately buried deep in my unconscious and ignored began to surface.
When he came home, that person was always in his study.
He always locked it with a key so neither mom nor I could enter, and then left the house.
Overcome with curiosity, I had secretly entered that room once.
Now I remembered.
Where I had read ‘TOAA’.
It was from my father’s bookshelf.
“What a touching father-daughter reunion. What should we do? Shall we just leave this time?”
“No.”
My father stared at me and casually snapped his fingers once.
With that, all the people in the yard were sacrificed simultaneously.
My father, standing on the altar, stretched his hand towards the sky.
The ground shook violently.
And from the ground that had swallowed the sacrifices, something rose up onto the altar.
A massive body covered in black vinyl, eyes as red as rubies.
A forked, evil tongue flicked between split lips.
An unbelievably huge snake rose endlessly from the ground as if emerging from hell.
My father and the woman were somehow already riding on the snake’s head.
The snake swung its massive tail heavily.
The prison’s solid and high walls crumbled so easily, as if they were toy bricks.
My father looked down at me from above and murmured.
“This place can no longer be used as a base camp.”
“……!”
My father looked down at my shocked face with an unreadable expression.
“…So she’s alive.”
The same words as before.
But what followed was,
“It would have been better if you had died that day.”
‘…What?’
I collapsed on the spot.
There was still no change in the expression of that man looking down at me.
“Die. Right here.”
With my father’s cold words, the corpses lying on the ground began to twitch.
The snake, now fully emerged from underground, flew into the sky, disappearing into the swirling clouds with the two people on its head.
At the same time, the undead rose from the ground and began to rush towards me en masse.
“Noah!”
Baek Yi-heon shouted, quickly swatting away the undead flying at me with a wooden stick he had picked up.
But I couldn’t hear his voice or the surrounding commotion at all.
“Noah! Snap out of it!”
“He said… it would have been better if I had died…?”
I mumbled with empty eyes, clutching the dirt with both hands.
How did I survive?
I’m not talking about what happened after the apocalypse.
After I turned seven, my life was always about survival and struggle.
Until now, just because I was your daughter, the humiliation I’ve endured…
“Noah!”
“Noona!”
After mumbling for a moment while slumped down, I poured out the bag containing the magic stones onto the ground.
“Noah! It’s too early to give up! We still—”
“F*ck.”
“…Noah?”
“Who the hell decides…”
Who the hell decides to commit murder, get thrown in prison, ruin my life, and then what?
You want the daughter who struggled so hard to survive to have died?!
[(Messenger) Indra says he’ll turn a blind eye just this once and releases his power.]
Boom—!
As all the remaining magic stones shattered with a rustle, lightning rained down from the dark night sky onto the yard, emitting a yellow light as if burning.
The undead, who were staggering towards us with grotesque movements, writhed in agony as they burned.
In the midst of the flames that blazed fiercely, using everything around as fuel, I lifted my head abruptly.
There were no tears.
I could feel Baek Yi-heon staring at me blankly from beside me, but it didn’t matter.
‘It would have been better if I died? F*ck…’
I screamed at the night sky where ‘that man’ had disappeared.
“Who the hell are you to say that!”
💎
Even the longest night has an end.
The morning sun rose over the empty yard where the flames had burned everything.
Surprisingly, there were survivors inside the prison building.
They were people who hadn’t managed to escape the building before the summoning ritual began.
“Thank you so much.”
“We will definitely repay this debt someday.”
Those freed from the hypnosis kept bowing their heads in gratitude.
As I received their thanks in a daze, I suddenly noticed a group of people lying weakly behind them.
They were inmates, wearing blue prison uniforms.
“Wa…water. Water please…”
‘They survived because they couldn’t escape from the basement.’
“Um… You’re Noah, right?”
People who noticed my gaze towards them asked me, glancing at each other nervously.
“What should we do with them?”
“They’re inmates from Hwacheon Prison. They must have committed terrible crimes…”
“Of all people to survive, why them…”
Their gazes toward the emaciated inmates seeking water were filled with clear disgust and fear.
“Die. Right here.”
Suddenly, I remembered the words that father… no, that man had said to me.
“……”
As I tried to find words with a sunken expression, a heavy voice beside me answered instead.
“Life is life. We save them.”
“R-right, of course?”
“Haha, as expected of our saviors. W-we were going to do that too!”
“…Noah must be tired. Get some rest.”
Baek Yi-heon, after checking my complexion, said this and then started moving busily without further delay.
First, he gave the remaining drinking water to the inmates along with the people.
Most people were exhausted and weakened from prolonged hunger.
Baek Yi-heon began to boil stew in a large pot from the prison using food from the camper van and game he had hunted in the mountains.
Those who were still in decent shape rolled up their sleeves and helped.
The prison yard, which had been full of despair, became bustling with activity.
I sat quietly watching him, then quietly approached a group of inmates sitting apart in a corner.
“You’re Yoo Hyun-min’s daughter, aren’t you?”
At that moment, a gruff voice emerged from the group sitting weakly.
I turned my head towards the source of the voice.
An old man with gray hair and a bushy beard raised himself up with a grunt.
Although he was old, his build was so imposing that even in his emaciated state, he had considerable presence.
💎
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