I Awakened as a Dark History - Chapter 70

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 70
Crash—!!!
Blooming?
Should I have deployed Blooming, even this late?
No—with my defense, I’d have been dead from the Breath before healing could even take hold.
Healing only works on the living, after all.
“…….”
Hiss—
That’s not the sound of my flesh melting, is it?
My mind couldn’t keep pace with what my senses were telling me.
I heard it with my ears, saw it with my eyes, yet my mind lagged far behind in accepting what was happening.
A Shield, casting a dark shadow over me, shattered under the force of the Breath.
Where the Shield had vanished, someone threw their body into the torrent of Breath.
“Ugh.”
“Yoo Ho-yeon?!”
What are you doing here?
Where the violet Breath touched his skin, it withered and died, turning a sickly gray.
Veins rose up black as pitch from that very spot—a sight that made my skin crawl.
Screech—
The Shield he’d brought, forged from iron, was pushed back a little.
Yoo Ho-yeon held his ground with his whole body, barely managing to endure.
The moment our eyes met, his face crumpled in displeasure.
Even now, his expression made me feel an unwelcome pang of injustice.
It wasn’t as though I’d wanted to be thrown back.
Through gritted teeth, Yoo Ho-yeon managed to speak.
“Skill……!”
“Oh, ah? Ah! Blooming!”
I hurriedly activated the skill I’d forgotten about.
Flowers bloomed in all directions as Yoo Ho-yeon’s wounds and poison vanished.
During that moment, the Bone Dragon’s Breath ceased.
Yoo Ho-yeon collected the broken Iron Shield, transforming it into spheres.
What had been twenty spheres from the Breath’s aftermath was now barely ten.
After the Breath faded, Daria Gorden and Priest came into view.
Daria Gorden looked at us with a reassured expression.
“Are you both unharmed?”
Yoo Ho-yeon raised his hand and made a circle with his fingers.
Daria Gorden swung the sword in his hand lightly, then kicked off the ground.
The Bone Dragon lashed its tail at Daria Gorden.
Daria Gorden stepped on the tail and instead leaped onto the Bone Dragon’s neck.
Bang!
The tail, having missed, struck Priest’s Sacred Temple instead.
But the Sacred Temple held firm where it stood.
“Hah!”
Daria Gorden brought his sword down toward the Bone Dragon’s neck.
Bone that had showed no mark no matter how many times other Hunters struck it cracked open in a single blow.
Through the narrow crevice, Daria Gorden thrust his blade deeper.
Flames erupting from the sword’s edge quickly burrowed through the bone.
Crack. Crunch—!
Thud! Thud-thud! Crash!
The Bone Dragon thrashed about, its bones shattering and splintering.
It threw itself against walls and rolled across the floor, trying to dislodge Daria Gorden from its neck.
The Sacred Temple remained steadfast through it all, but Yoo Ho-yeon and I were not so fortunate.
Yoo Ho-yeon batted away a flying chunk of rock and gestured to me.
“Follow me.”
Yoo Ho-yeon bounded across Iron Spheres toward the cavern’s ceiling.
I moved my wings quietly and followed in his wake.
With one wing rendered useless, the Bone Dragon could not reach us above.
Yoo Ho-yeon and I watched silently from our height as the battle unfolded below.
The Bone Dragon opened its jaws once more, as if making a final desperate stand.
A violet Breath poured forth toward Priest, yet Priest shone white and held firm, shielding all those within.
Inside the Sacred Temple, it seemed I took no damage whatsoever from the enemy.
This meant that the defensive barrier Daria Gorden had first deployed was meant to protect only himself.
‘……So he shelters his allies with the Sacred Temple, and then he gets to use all of their skills himself?’
What’s more, thanks to his own buff ability, even the same skill produced effects many times more powerful.
Or if the absorbed skill was the same ability, they’d combine into a single skill.
‘Either way, it’s a completely broken skill.’
Now I understood why Daria Gorden was called the number one Hunter in the world.
The Bone Dragon we’d been struggling with for so long crumbled into bone dust in mere minutes.
Daria Gorden leaped down from the creature’s neck.
Whether from the influence of Blooming or some other reason, the wounds that had covered his body moments before had vanished without a trace.
The sword in Daria Gorden’s hand disappeared, and the Sacred Temple scattered.
The Hunters released from the Sacred Temple still couldn’t move, as if their souls had left their bodies.
Watching the scene, I found myself late to voice a question.
“But why was I bounced out of the Sacred Temple?”
He didn’t want to protect me? Nah, that couldn’t be it.
Just before my mind spiraled into pointless speculation, an unexpected answer came from beside me.
“You’re bigger than that Hunter.”
“Pardon?”
Yoo Ho-yeon was staring at me with an expressionless face.
Thinking I hadn’t heard him properly, Yoo Ho-yeon spoke again, slowly and deliberately.
“It can’t contain a larger entity.”
Yoo Ho-yeon left those words behind and jumped down from the iron cage.
I watched him land gracefully on the floor from the high ceiling.
Left alone on the ceiling, I blinked rapidly.
Then immediately grabbed the back of my neck.
“That bastard…….”
He dropped a cryptic hint and vanished again! Again!!!
My non-existent low blood pressure was about to flare up.
* * *
Just a day ago, the Hunters’ attention had been fixed on the Healer; now it was trained on Daria Gorden.
The Healer’s ability was extraordinarily powerful.
From the first to the fourth floor, there wasn’t a single minor injury.
However, the Healer’s ability was specialized purely in healing—there was nothing dangerous about it.
Daria Gorden’s ability was different.
The fact that he could absorb and wield a Hunter’s ability was, in itself, a shock to every Hunter present.
“Does it only work on allies?”
“Probably. If it worked on enemies, he’d end up protecting Demon Beasts too.”
“What if the enemy is a Hunter?”
“Then who knows what would happen…….”
Daria Gorden approached Yoo Ho-yeon amid the converging gazes.
Yoo Ho-yeon felt his approach and looked up at him.
“The Healer is watching only you.”
At that observation, Yoo Ho-yeon’s eyes darted around.
Among the sea of black hair, the pure white Healer stood out, his gaze fixed on Yoo Ho-yeon.
The pale pink eyes were burning so red that Yoo Ho-yeon deliberately avoided meeting his stare.
Whether he was aware of it or not, the others were too busy sneaking glances at Daria Gorden, but that un-Healer-like intensity of gaze continued unbroken.
In the end, Yoo Ho-yeon offered an excuse, unclear even to himself whom it was meant for.
“I may have said something unnecessary.”
“Something unnecessary?”
“I can’t elaborate on that.”
Daria Gorden shrugged as if he couldn’t care less, then brought up his original purpose.
“Do you know much about that Healer?”
Yoo Ho-yeon was momentarily dazed by the sudden question.
‘Haven’t I been largely disinterested in the Healer up until now? And it wasn’t me who brought him here—it was the Haje Guild master.’
Soon enough, Yoo Ho-yeon found the answer without much difficulty.
He was now, however tentatively, affiliated with the Association, so it seemed he’d been mistaken for someone familiar with the raid team’s Hunters.
Yoo Ho-yeon scratched the back of his neck and answered vaguely.
“Just a little……?”
Daria Gorden, displeased with the answer, moved his hand.
It appeared he was summoning an information window.
“The Healer wasn’t included in my skill’s scope.”
He studied the skill description for a moment, then lifted his gaze.
“Hunters I recognize within range become targets of my skill. But the Healer—even though I recognized them—didn’t register as a target.”
Yoo Ho-yeon finally understood why Daria Gorden had sought him out.
Baek Moon-il held goodwill toward the Healer.
If he’d posed such a question, Baek Moon-il would certainly have been displeased.
Daria Gorden had come relying on the intelligence of Yoo Ho-yeon, an S-rank Hunter affiliated with the Hunter Association.
Whether from discomfort with an opponent his skill couldn’t reach, Daria Gorden’s voice sank considerably.
“Is that one a Hunter?”
The voice that came through the AI interpreter carried no emotion.
It arrived with the interpreter’s characteristic, stilted inflection—measured and calm.
But Daria Gorden’s voice, audible beneath the machine’s synthetic tones, was different.
His voice was cold and aggressive in a way that transcended mere wariness.
Yoo Ho-yeon furrowed his brow and spoke.
“That person isn’t an enemy, regardless.”
Daria Gorden’s gaze fixed on the Healer.
The Healer, occupied with eating an Energy Bar, didn’t notice the attention directed at them.
“Enemy or not makes no difference. It emerged from the Dungeon. If it’s not a Hunter, it must be eliminated.”
Daria Gorden’s hand tightened briefly into a fist as though grasping a sword, then released.
His true intent wasn’t caution—it was hostility. The signs were unmistakable.
Recognizing that this man bore ill will toward the Healer sent an irrational surge of displeasure through him.
The shortened edge of his words didn’t register through the interpreter.
“You fought alongside them, received their help, and now you want to kill them?”
This time, Daria Gorden’s eyes sharpened.
“Hunters exist to seal Dungeons. To minimize damage caused by them, we must judge rightly. The mission supersedes sentiment.”
The cheerful cadence of the AI overlapped with Daria Gorden’s sharp tone.
The dissonance made his head throb.
‘A delusion?’
Was the skill flaring up again?
He pressed his head, unsettled, but the sensation faded quickly.
Yoo Ho-yeon drew a deep breath and opened his mouth.
“That person is a Hunter.”
“You’re certain? You need evidence to refute my skill’s system.”
Yoo Ho-yeon offered Daria Gorden—who continued to respond with skepticism—a twisted smile.
“The problem isn’t with them. Your Sacred Temple just isn’t big enough.”
Daria Gorden fell silent.
Yoo Ho-yeon turned away from him. His eyes met the Healer’s, who was looking his way at precisely that moment.
Overlapping that sight was a face both familiar and strange.
Was this a delusion? Or something else?
He found it impossibly difficult to discern the reality of that face.
Because the emotions it stirred in him were far too vivid.
Tender, precious, regretful… resentful.
It might have been better never to know they would abandon us.
Could there be any way to prevent them from leaving?
Yoo Ho-yeon could only ever look at ‘that person’ in confusion.
That’s why Daria Gorden’s rigid expression grated on him.
“What. Did you think you could take anyone under your roof?”
The words spilled out bitter enough to surprise himself.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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