Return of the Sword God-Rank Civil Servant-Chapter 401
Su-ho only woke up again a long while later.
“Ugh!”
Coming to his senses, Su-ho lifted his body with a dazed look in his eyes.
“Wow.......”
A low, long sigh.
How long has it been since I felt like this?
‘I think when I was very young, I once stayed up three nights straight on youthful bravado and woke up like this.......’
He was, without question, humanity’s greatest physical specimen and a Player who had reached the pinnacle.
So at some point, even without eating or sleeping, his body always felt light and his head clear, but right now he felt languid and tired as if he had just come out of anesthesia.
‘Good grief.......’
Su-ho checked the information on the Giantification skill again.
[ Giantification ]
Grade: S
# Even if not of the giant race, one who bears a mighty giant’s lineage can consume their own power to become a giant for a short time.
# When Giantification is activated, the maximum size is determined by the Player’s stats, and the smaller the size is set, the longer the Giantification duration increases.
# When Giantification’s duration ends, as a rebound you will shrink in body size for the same length of time as the duration.
After reading the info, Su-ho knit his brows.
No matter how he looked, there was no line saying the rebound effect would make him drowsy.
It seemed his body had become extremely fatigued because his size suddenly grew.
‘If that’s true, the rebound risk is worse than I thought.’
He had never seen a Giantification skill exactly the same as his in his past life, but he did remember a few similar skills that enlarged the body.
So he assumed the Giantification he’d acquired this time would have that same vibe, and on the premise that it was roughly similar he ran the numbers and built the combo—if he’d slipped up, he would’ve died like a dog to Tsukuyomi.
‘I really need to be careful.’
Thinking back on it made him shiver.
If his calculations had gone awry and he hadn’t finished off Tsukuyomi right after Giantification, he would have died like a dog on the spot.
Still, he didn’t think it had been a wildly reckless try.
Boss monsters’ phases diversify the further into the latter half you go, but in the mid–Great Cataclysm period most of them still ended in the second phase.
Of course, the Corrupted Cliff Golem of the Seopjikoji Gate he cleared before could be called a third phase if you included “self-destruct,” but that was a mutual destruction brawl and hard to see as a true third phase in the genuine sense.
Su-ho narrowed his brow and closed the skill window.
Then he checked his physical condition.
After a good heavy sleep, he could use the skill again, but in the present situation that wasn’t exactly welcome news.
So he ignored it and opened the status window.
[ An Su-ho ]
Lv: 248
Class: Rage Crusader
Traits: <New Blood><Candidate for Hercules><King of a Ruined Nation><Power of the Sun><Power of the Moon><Guest of Greed>
Might (N): 41
Mana (N): 89
Perception (B): 12
Leadership (N): 67
Bonus Stats: 5
Level 248.
He had taken down the Corrupted Tsukuyomi, yet at most he’d only gone up one level as compensation for clearing the Gate.
‘Why?’
The question was quickly resolved.
The Tsukuyomi he defeated this time had been punitively powered up by the system, so it seemed no experience was awarded.
There was no other explanation.
It was a sufficiently grounded inference.
He had seen cases like this a few times before as well.
‘Petty bastard.’
Still, it wasn’t completely incomprehensible.
If Tsukuyomi had done this alone, then Tsukuyomi alone would have been punished and that would be that, but this time, from the very start, it had been a collusion with Su-ho.
So he decided to shake off his regret here.
By rights, he should have defeated Tsukuyomi without any return, yet he had learned of the Small Sea’s existence and even how to obtain it; missing out on a bit of experience hardly counted as a loss.
Su-ho nodded lightly and invested all the bonus stats he had gained into Mana.
‘Six more and it’ll be Purple.’
What comes after Purple?
He didn’t know.
It was a realm no human had ever reached.
After finishing the rest of his checks, Su-ho at last stood before the one remaining Gate.
[ Conditions have been met. ]
[ Loading Gate information. ]
[ Hidden Sun ]
Entry Conditions: Level 240 or higher; prior Gate cleared.
Variable Condition: Set max entry party to 5; for each person fewer, overall difficulty is reduced by 20%.
[ Will you enter the Gate? ]
The name of the last remaining Gate was “Hidden Sun.”
Is it called Hidden Sun for the reason I think?
He would only know the truth by going in himself.
Su-ho entered the Gate immediately.
[ Entering the Gate. ]
Fwaaah!
As he entered the Gate, the surrounding environment squeezed into a single point as if being sucked into a black hole.
Then, like water filling up, the scenery around him changed.
Soon a new environment began to reveal itself, and at that moment, the first of Su-ho’s five senses to react was none other than his sense of smell.
‘The smell of blood?’
A thick reek of blood.
At the same time, the surrounding scenery entered his eyes.
“This is.......”
Seeing the sight spread before him, Su-ho doubted his own eyes.
Corpses strewn everywhere.
The blood that flowed from them had already formed a massive river, and in the sky, crows flew, eager to peck at the bodies.
“.......”
Su-ho silently looked around.
This place, which looked like an ordinary mountain forest, no longer looked ordinary because of the corpses scattered all over.
What on earth had happened here?
In that moment, Su-ho noticed something peculiar about the dead.
“Don’t tell me these people.......”
Just then.
— Hey!
A strangely familiar voice.
When he turned his head toward the direction of the sound, the owner of the voice was raising a hand to Su-ho.
It was Susanoo.
‘Susanoo really is here?’
He hadn’t seen wrong.
The signature neatly swept long hair, the outfit he’d seen in the previous Gate, and more than anything else.
— Sea God Susanoo-no-Mikoto Lv.???
The name card above the bastard’s head proved beyond doubt that he was Susanoo.
Susanoo raised a hand with a friendly smile.
He greeted him once more.
— We meet again, huh?
“Ha......!”
It was so absurd that Su-ho let out a snort before he knew it.
And no wonder—anyone could ➤ NоvеⅠight ➤ (Read more on our source) tell that guy seemed like the culprit behind the massacre that had taken place here.
Especially the bloodstained sword slung jauntily over his shoulder—no one could mistake that for anything but damning evidence.
‘It doesn’t look like Amanomurakumo no Tsurugi...... could it be Ame-no-Habakiri?’
Amanomurakumo no Tsurugi was one of the Three Sacred Treasures—the name of the sword Susanoo obtained after slaying Yamata-no-Orochi on earth.
And Ame-no-Habakiri was the sword Susanoo originally possessed, which he used when facing Yamata-no-Orochi. 𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞
But since the shape didn’t look like Amanomurakumo no Tsurugi, he couldn’t help but think it seemed like Ame-no-Habakiri.
Su-ho narrowed his eyes and asked,
“Judging from the corpses all over, they all look like the gods of Takamagahara. Did you do this?”
— Yeah. But I’ve felt this for a while—you’re just a human, yet you know quite a bit about us, don’t you? You’re a real interesting guy.
“Why did you kill them?”
— They kept yapping, those nobodies.
It was very well known that Susanoo was the worst punk of the heavenly realm, Takamagahara.
How bad of a punk? His elder sister Amaterasu got so fed up with Susanoo’s tyranny that she hid herself like going on strike in a cave called Amano-Iwato, the Rock Cave of Heaven.
As a result, with the sun god gone, the sun disappeared from the world and all kinds of calamities ran rampant; the other gods, in a panic, combined their efforts and struggled to draw her out of the cave—that, too, was a very famous story.
‘When I saw the Gate was named Hidden Sun, I figured this Gate would proceed along those lines as well.’
As in, the kind of mission where you had to pull Amaterasu out of the cave.
But once he actually entered the Gate, there was no better word for it than a shitshow.
No, not just a shitshow—the way things were going was completely different from the story as it was known.
No wonder: Susanoo had become not a punk but a tyrant and chopped down the gods of Takamagahara wholesale.
Perhaps because of that—
A sudden doubt arose.
‘From the vibe, that bastard seems like the root of all evil here, so why is there no system alert at all?’
For example, a boss monster appearance alert.
No matter how he looked at it, the vibe screamed that he had to take that bastard down.
Su-ho said,
“So, what are you planning to do now?”
— Do what? I’ve finished my part.
“What?”
— Just wait a bit. Then something really fun is going to pop out of there.
Susanoo laughed and pointed behind him.
Following the bastard’s finger with his gaze, he saw a cave there.
Su-ho instinctively knew that it was the Amano-Iwato, the Rock Cave of Heaven.
“Don’t tell me Amaterasu is in there?”
— That’s right. You know your stuff. She said she was sick of me and ran off into the cave, and because of that everyone rushed over to me and threw a fit. So I cut them all down. Ah, don’t get the wrong idea. I was quite polite at first. I told them to buzz off, since they were annoying. But they kept pointing their fingers at me to the end, so I simply made them pay the price for that.
“If you did wrong, of course they’d condemn you. But because you didn’t even want to hear that, you killed all these gods?”
— If anyone should be condemning me, it’s the bitch who got sick of me and ran away. Who are these punks to condemn me? You’re a funny one, aren’t you? Still, it worked out well in the end. Everyone was making a fuss trying to drag Amaterasu out of the cave anyway, but once I killed these guys, Amaterasu started crawling out on her own.
“What?”
— But when she saw what I’d done, she suddenly went berserk like a madwoman. She’s impossible to talk to, that one. I explained plenty why I killed these guys, and she kept pointing her sword at me—how am I supposed to put up with that? And of course, being the sun god and all, she didn’t die easily. So I set up a little something fun.
Just then.
Thud! Thud!
A tremendous rumble.
It was a sound coming from the Amano-Iwato.
Susanoo glanced at the rumbling Amano-Iwato, then looked back at Su-ho and smiled.
— See that? If you wait a bit, something fun’s going to pop out.
“What the hell did you do?”
— You’ll know when you see it. Anyway......
Trailing his words, Susanoo lowered the Ame-no-Habakiri he’d been resting on his shoulder and said,
— I told you before, right? Let’s meet again. I knew you’d make it this far. You’ve no idea how long I’ve been waiting for you.
Susanoo meant it.
Ordinarily, he’d planned to kill Su-ho in his own Gate, but since he ended up losing instead, he’d been eager to meet Su-ho again as soon as possible.
Susanoo was the type who couldn’t stand losing.
Susanoo raised Ame-no-Habakiri, took his stance, and laughed.
— This time will be very different. So please, make sure to entertain me again.
Boom!!
Finishing his words, Susanoo charged at Su-ho with ferocious speed.
