The Second Coming of Gluttony - Chapter 172

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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 172. Despair

“Well… there’s nothing strange about Sloth’s Star fielding a replacement. Considerable time has passed since then, after all.”
Ugly Humility spoke to himself, answering his own question.
“We’ve kept it hidden all this while, you know.”
Cheonji bared her teeth in a smile.
“I’m truly sorry it had to be revealed like this—thanks to someone, no less.”
Ugly Humility, the King of Death Knights who commanded the skeletal warriors, cackled loudly.
“My apologies for that. But tell me—you came alone?”
He spoke cordially despite being an enemy.
“The Leading One, perhaps, but with only a single subordinate at that.”
His gaze swept left and right before his head suddenly tilted back, his eyes fixing on a point in empty space. Then Agnes materialised gradually from the void, her hands spreading wide.
Threads of her Web Attack shot out like rays of light, enveloping the enemy.
But unlike with Medusa, Ugly Humility made no effort to be bound. With a sharp movement and flexing his body with force, the threads either pinged back with a twang or snapped too easily to matter.
As Cheonji clicked her tongue, Agnes settled beside her with an expressionless face.
“A demon-chasing spider, are you? You show promise, but what a shame. Even with you included, at minimum four subordinates would be needed to buy even a moment’s time against me.”
His tone seemed concerned on the surface, but his words reeked of the unspoken sentiment: ‘The two of you won’t hold me back.’
Cheonji’s lips twisted.
“Your manner of speech truly lives up to the name Ugly Humility.”
Ugly Humility clacked his teeth silently as if laughing, then suddenly swung a greatsword in a wide horizontal arc.
With a rustling sound, death knights clad entirely in jet-black armor stepped forward, raising their greatswords.
“Our introductions have been lengthy. I’d enjoy playing a bit longer, but regrettably, I find myself most pressed for time.”
“As if. You must be burning with the heat of Tigol Fortress on your mind,” Cheonji said with a sneer.
She spoke with bravado as she tossed off her red coat.
Her words were bold enough, yet Cheonji felt cold sweat seeping down her back—because she knew of a past battle where two of Sloth’s Leading Ones, including subordinates, had clashed with Ugly Humility, and the previous Leading One of that generation had died horribly.
Moreover, she sensed from her enemy a power that surpassed her own strength.
Valkyries holding Shining Spears rose up in succession, forming a barrier ahead.
Moments later, light and darkness collided ferociously.
Meanwhile, watching the clash of opposing forces intertwine, Seol Jihoo suddenly regained his senses.
The skeletal knight had been held at bay by Cheonji and Agnes for now, but among the Seven Demon Generals, two more remained.
Debased Purity had retreated to the rear, apparently prepared for a possible surprise assault to guard the nest.
Yet the fact that she’d withdrawn to the back was no guarantee she couldn’t participate in the siege.
Debased Purity drew in a deep breath, pressed her wide-open palm against her crimson lips, then pursed them as if blowing a kiss before exhaling slowly—a breath that emerged with a faint hiss.
The gesture looked as though hearts might scatter, but what actually poured forth was thick purple poison gas.
The fumes erupted from her mouth, rapidly billowing into clouds that obscured vision, advancing toward the fortress with intent to consume it entirely.
The human forces didn’t remain idle. Priests hastily erected protective barriers while a small contingent of mages, including Ian, unleashed Wind Magic in all directions.
Thankfully, the smoke was pushed back by the fierce gales and began to scatter gradually.
Though they managed to secure partial visibility with great difficulty, Seol Jihoo’s eyes narrowed as he stared at the empty space.
The void through which the purple smoke had passed was stained a sickly red, as if corroded.
A crimson haze wavered like rising steam, approaching rapidly.
‘Mist?’
His gaze dropped instinctively. The central forces weren’t visible.
‘Surely not…’
In terror, Seol Jihoo jerked his chin upward and saw it.
“Kyahahaha!”
“Kyaaaaaaah!”
Undying Diligence leading the charge—vampires emerging from the haze, tearing through layer upon layer of protective barriers like tissue paper, descending upon the city wall in torrents.
Nosferatu. The Parasite’s most formidable unit.
Hundreds descended simultaneously without the slightest sound of footsteps—only the whisper of cloaks brushing the ground.
The Nosferatu unit, alighting smoothly, immediately lunged at their surroundings like hawks.
Combat erupted in an instant—not a blink had time to pass.
On the walls. On the ground.
One charged directly at Seol Jihoo; he hastily thrust an Ice Spear forward to counter.
The Nosferatu brushed the spear aside lightly with a hand strike, then extended his arm with force.
As razor-sharp claws drove toward his face, the startled Seol Jihoo ducked his head in panic.
The moment he lowered himself, the Nosferatu, having waited for exactly this, kicked upward with the tips of his toes while driving his claws down with all his strength.
The speed was as swift as lightning, and backed by remarkable physical prowess—an attack so exquisite and perfectly balanced that evasion seemed impossible.
Yet Seol Jihoo raised his head again in an instant, dodging the kick, and in that fraction of a moment twisted his body to slip past the claws by a hair’s breadth.
His Intuition flared to life, and his body moved of its own accord, responding to pure instinct.
He spun full circle and scrambled to reset his stance. Nosferatu cracked open its mouth slightly—surprised, apparently, that he’d managed to evade—then slowly withdrew its arms and legs.
Then it smiled.
Seol Jihoo swallowed hard. Teresa’s words suddenly cut through his mind.
[Medusa is a mid-tier final-evolution form, yes. But frankly? In that creature’s hierarchy, it’s barely a street thug.]
[And yet, Nosferatu only manifests when you need to understand the Parasite is truly serious about it.]
Just once—and only for a moment—he’d witnessed the distance between them. Now he felt with absolute certainty that Teresa’s words carried no exaggeration whatsoever.
No exaggeration. If anything, she’d understated it.
‘It’s different.’
Utterly different from the common Parasites. There was no point in drawing detailed comparisons.
The vampire before him existed on an entirely different plane of being.
He almost felt like he was facing Agnes herself, seething with fury.
The real problem was that there were hundreds more of these things prowling the same streets, each wielding identical power.
Nosferatu lunged again with lithe precision.
“Ah.”
Only then did Seol Jihoo realize he’d been backpedaling steadily the whole time.
Bang! He forced himself to stop, activated the Festina Earring, and met the attack head-on. But within a few exchanges, his spear began to tremble with the strain.
His opponent played as if testing the waters, moving with casual leisure, while Seol Jihoo fought with desperate urgency—and still found himself pushed back with every heartbeat.
“!”
In that split second of inattention, Nosferatu seized the shaft of his spear and wrenched it viciously toward itself.
Before he could secure his grip, his upper body was dragged forward into a violent gust of wind.
Seol Jihoo reflexively shielded his face with his left arm and unleashed Tertium’s Grace, but Nosferatu twisted the triangular barrier like a parent snapping a child’s wrist, shattering it.
Seol Jihoo’s eyes went wide as saucers.
Death came rushing toward him—so absurdly close now, inevitable as gravity.
Thud-thud!
“Keeeaaaahhh!”
A pitiful shriek tore through the air. But it wasn’t Seol Jihoo screaming—it was Nosferatu.
The vampire writhed in agony, tears of blood streaming from its hollow eye sockets.
As Seol Jihoo steadied himself, he caught sight of something lodged deep in Nosferatu’s pupils: Black Smoke.
Floné.
Divine intervention. Fate against all odds.
Seol Jihoo didn’t pause to offer thanks. Instead, survival instinct seized control, and he lunged forward with the spear.
The tip, shimmering with golden Aura, pierced straight through the creature’s chest.
Crack-crack-crack! Electricity erupted, and Nosferatu convulsed violently before its pupils regenerated in an instant, glaring at him with murder in its gaze.
‘It’s still alive?’
Common Parasites crumpled after a single thrust like that.
Nosferatu had merely lost its composure—now it unleashed pure savagery, letting out a feral roar as it charged with renewed ferocity.
Or it tried to.
[Go, go, hurry!]
Floné wound herself around the creature’s limbs, holding it back with everything she had.
[Faster, faster!]
Her pained gasps mingled with the flailing, and she looked ready to tear apart at any moment. Seol Jihoo panicked, drew his spear back, and began stabbing wildly.
Face, throat, heart, abdomen—he even drove the blade deep into its groin. Yet Nosferatu only shrieked and thrashed, refusing to stop its desperate struggle to shake Floné free.
He even tried to cleave it in half from crown to base, just as he’d done with Medusa. But the moment the blade severed the connection, tentacles burst through the frozen edges and writhed back together seamlessly.
No monster should exist like this.
Then came the moment—gasping for breath, stabbing and slashing in a blur of motion—when he accidentally drove the Ice Spear up into the creature’s solar plexus. Nosferatu’s violent resistance stopped dead.
Its entire frame convulsed as though struck by lightning.
This time, the strike felt different. To be safe, he continued pouring Mana into the spear without pause.
“Gurrrrgh!”
Bang! A wet, gurgling sound erupted from Nosferatu’s throat as its entire body exploded into smoke with a thunderous crack.
‘Is it finally finished?’
[Don’t let it escape!]
The thought had barely formed when Floné streaked after the dissipating crimson vapor, raking through it with ferocious claws.
Realizing the creature still lived, Seol Jihoo bolted after it and thrust his spear toward the smoke.
Oddly, instead of passing through empty air, his blade met something—a yielding, sticky mass that pressed back against his palm.
[Shriiiiieeeeek!]
The shriek split his eardrums. Then, just as when it had slammed into the City Wall, Nosferatu’s form materialized out of the smoke.
Finally, its entire body charred black. It crashed to the ground, limbs splayed.
Its trembling arms reached out briefly, then its rigid head went slack.
“Haa… haa… haa…”
Only after watching the ashes scatter on the wind did Seol Jihoo finally allow himself to breathe freely.
At last. At last he’d managed to bring one down.
Easier than he’d feared.
Though he didn’t fool himself into thinking skill alone had carried the day.
In truth, he’d been overwhelmed throughout the entire fight, had come within a hair of death.
Without Soma’s Crystal or Floné—even one of them—
he’d have collapsed long since, just another cold corpse on the ground.
“SCREEEEE!”
As his thoughts flickered toward his allies’ fates, a familiar cry split the air.
Seol Jihoo’s head snapped around in time to see a Nosferatu straddling Hugo’s collapsed form, fangs descending toward his throat—only for Floné to dart in and pin it down.
“Hugo!”
As Seol Jihoo pivoted toward them, Floné was already moving, her body a blur as she slammed into the creature.
The Nosferatu convulsed and writhed in smoke, but Seol Jihoo was there in the next breath, driving the Ice Spear hard between its ribs.
Was it the weakness he’d learned through blood and near-death that made the strike count?
The Nosferatu thrashed violently, yet unlike the one before it, this one’s strength ebbed quickly.
Seol Jihoo twisted the spear, pouring mana through it in a torrent, and only when he felt it dissolve did he finally sheathe the Ice Spear.
‘Already.’
Just two kills, and nearly a quarter of his reserves were spent.
For someone who’d always brimmed with mana, it was a foreign sensation—but now wasn’t the time to dwell on it.
Hugo looked unharmed at first glance, but his eyes were wide with terror, his body shaking in uncontrollable seizures.
Uriel Maria appeared from nowhere, already cursing as she knelt beside him.
Seol Jihoo left him in her care and turned to scan the field—and his face darkened.
O Ra-hee, Pi Sora, and Cho Hong each faced one creature alone. All three were High-rank, yet all three were being driven back hard.
This wasn’t mere struggle. Cho Hong’s hair had turned silver—she’d activated Divine Possession—and she was barely holding on, fighting for every inch.
O Ra-hee and Pi Sora were faring no better; he couldn’t even choose who to help first.
Seol Jihoo swallowed hard, and dread settled over his features.
Even with the buffs he carried, if their elite forces—their top-tier fighters—were losing ground like this, the battle elsewhere was already decided.
The only mercy was Floné’s presence and the fact that the Nosferatu numbers hadn’t breached four digits.
She moved with sharp instinct, helping his allies without needing to be told.
‘No more wishing for victory.
Just… we’ve learned the weak point now. If I focus on Floné, if we clear them out one by one with the others, if we can just manage that…’
“The solar plexus is the weak point! The plexus!” he shouted, loud enough for all to hear, and turned toward Cho Hong—
when his breath caught in his throat.
“Correct.”
His breath stopped dead.
Respiration seized, muscles locked against his will. The voice alone sent every hair on his body erect, and a vertigo so acute it threatened to unmake him crashed down.
“The divinity I failed to fully absorb—the remnants, one might say. Mere specks, really, but they lodge quite nicely in the solar plexus. Made all the difference to my subordinates’ strength.”
Seol Jihoo remained frozen mid-stride, caught between earth and heaven.
A voice screamed in his mind: Don’t. Don’t look.
If he turned toward that ominous voice, his will would shatter, and he’d surrender to despair.
Reason urged him a dozen times over to resist, but instinct was cruel—his neck creaked as his head began to turn of its own accord.
And the moment he saw Undying Diligence standing alone atop the City Wall, his face fell into unmistakable despair.
The final boss had appeared from the start, quelling the last spark of hope before it could even kindle.
Undying Diligence had descended for reasons of his own. Strictly speaking, he hadn’t come to wage war.
He’d come to fulfill his queen’s command, and war was merely the instrument he’d chosen to achieve it.
Prioritizing his objective, he’d remained on the wall, observing the field rather than engaging, and it hadn’t taken long to spot the anomaly.
Not even thirty minutes had passed since the battle began, and already one of his subordinates had fallen.
The Federation might be an exception, but each of them was near-Immortal, a One Against Hundred class—this was extraordinary.
Then, watching Seol Jihoo methodically destroy his reinforcements, he understood well enough.
“Soma’s Power infused with stellar force… quite a fearsome thing to wield.”
Undying Diligence tapped lightly against the City Wall.
“Where did you find it? Not something one simply procures.”
The question came in a measured tone, but no answer came.
“…Well, no matter. Rather—”
Undying Diligence gave a slight shrug and continued.
“Human. I’ll make you a special offer. Consider it an opportunity afforded only to you.”
Seol Jihoo’s brow rose slightly. Seeing that reaction, Undying Diligence laid his proposal bare.
“Will you not enter the service of the queen?”
He gestured broadly, arms spread as if to say: Look around you.
“You can see for yourself—the City Wall is nearly ours. Sloth’s Star holds the Gate, but it will fall soon enough.”
An undeniable fact. A reality.
“Would you not prefer to save your life rather than die miserably here?”
Seol Jihoo blinked rapidly.
“That’s not all. If your worth is recognized, you could be granted new power. You would be reborn as a new species, freed from being an inferior creature.”
Undying Diligence’s voice grew honeyed, as if to say: doesn’t that sound sweet?
“What.”
“The Queen is most merciful!”
Before Seol Jihoo could even respond, he suddenly raised his voice.
“Do not be troubled. If it is Soma’s Power, the worth is more than sufficient—more than enough. I confess I’m most curious to see how the crystal embedded in your body will transform once it receives the Queen’s power.”
As Seol Jihoo’s mouth opened and closed wordlessly, Undying Diligence waved his hand dismissively.
“Ah. If you’re about to go on and on about sentiment and such nonsense, then simply raise your spear and be silent. I’ve grown weary of persuasion, and compared to the New World the Queen shall reveal to this realm, such emotions are beneath notice.”
He spoke on with the ease of one who had made such offers more than once.
And in that moment, Seol Jihoo thought something he should not have.
Though he wished to deny it, the temptation flickered across his mind—that staying in Paradise rather than returning to Earth might not be so terrible after all.
“For what it’s worth, I’ll tell you this: there have been those among your kind who defected to us. I grant that most were compelled through forceful means, but there are cases of those who came willingly into the Queen’s embrace—and yes, there was even one whom we call High-ranking Order.”
‘High-ranking Order?’
As shocking words followed in succession, Seol Jihoo bit down hard on his lip.
Imagination is merely imagination. He had been tempted by the mere thought of living on in Paradise, but even if he agreed, he wished to live alongside those he knew.
Jang Maldong, Cho Hong, Hugo, Teresa—those whom he trusted and who trusted him. He did not wish to live by becoming their enemy.
‘I would sooner die.’
Without hesitation, Seol Jihoo raised the Ice Spear.
Undying Diligence, who had been waiting patiently in vain hope for an answer, clicked his tongue in great disappointment.
“Truly a race I cannot comprehend… possessed of reason, yet acting so foolishly….”
Shaking his head, he sighed deeply, then slowly lifted his right arm.
“The odds seem small… and yet, you are a user of Soma’s Power.”
His face still held a glimmer of interest, a trace of expectation, as he beckoned with his right hand.
“Come.”

(To be continued in the next episode)

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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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