The Second Coming of Gluttony - Chapter 175

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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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Chapter 175. Return (2)

Like the wick of a candle burned to the stub, its pooled wax dried and gone.
The flickering light in his pupils shrank rapidly, condensing to a pinpoint before vanishing altogether.
The eyes lost their luminescence, graying swiftly. Seol Jihoo’s chest lurched.
“Ian.”
The moment he spoke the name, Ian’s head lolled forward and began to crumble, slowly, slowly.
Seol Jihoo reached out without thinking, grasping the frail shoulder urgently to hold him up.
If he let the collapsing body fall now, it would be over. It would truly be goodbye.
But even as he forced the failing form upright, the outcome did not change.
Ian’s head hung limp.
A faint smile still lingered at the corners of his weathered mouth.
With eyes half-closed, his expression seemed unutterably at peace.
Like drifting into sleep, lost in a dream.
Though the dream had lasted only a moment—grateful for even that brief spell of dreaming—Seol Jihoo stared down at that face with eyes gone hollow.
“Ian.”
He called out in a hoarse voice. But Ian gave no answer.
Shaking the shoulder he held only made the head rattle uselessly.
[Sorry, sorry! I’m a bit late. It’s been so long since I saw Haramag’s streets—everything looks strange to me now.]
“Ian!”
[Say, do you happen to like breasts?]
“Ian?”
[Hey, Ian. So you’re not going to answer?]
“Ian.”
[Then I’ll give you this answer instead. On behalf of everyone—]
“Ian….”
[Yes. That it was truly worth doing.]
The more he spoke, the more the silence confirmed itself, and Seol Jihoo’s eyes began to blur.
Thump.
His heart hammered.
“…….”
Seized by an inexplicable sense of déjà vu, Seol Jihoo pressed a trembling hand against his heaving chest.
A sharp, tearing pain bloomed inside him.
He contorted his face in disbelief, staring for a long moment.
“…Priest.”
He murmured low.
“Priest—I’ll bring the priest. Just wait… just wait a moment.”
Clutching his hammering heart, he turned and pushed forward.
Dragging himself by his elbows, he crawled his way out.
When at last he escaped the rubble of the shattered watchtower and staggered to his feet—
“Pri—!”
His cry for the priest caught in his throat.
“Help me!”
A desperate scream pierced through him instead.
Below the City Wall, a woman who appeared to be a priest was fleeing, her spotless white vestments trailing behind her in tatters.
He knew that face.
Rahin Meylar—she had been part of the Rescue Team.
By luck he had found the priest, but Seol Jihoo could not bring himself to call out to her.
Because two Nosferatu were pursuing her relentlessly, snapping at her heels.
“Someone—anyone!”
At last, something crashed down upon her back and her body collapsed.
One pinned her down with brutal force while the other crushed her ankle, and she screamed in agony.
“Rahin!”
Erica Lorence, a Level 6 Imperial Knight, wielded her Long Sword with frenzied intensity, sparks scattering in her wake.
Several charred corpses lay at her feet, but the Nosferatu swarming from all sides seemed to number twice as many.
In the next instant, one seized the gap in her defense and drove its fangs into the nape of her neck, hidden beneath crimson hair.
Erica Lorence thrashed violently, but her elbow only cut through empty air.
Across her twisted features, a strange euphoria began to bloom.
In the end, his trembling hand released the Long Sword.
The moment his knees buckled, the Nosferatu horde descended as if they’d been waiting for precisely this.
It was a sight of unspeakable wretchedness.
From a distance, watching endlessly, Seol Jihoo’s knees gave way and his body swayed.
Groping blindly at the ground to steady himself, his foot touched something sickeningly soft.
“Ah….”
The carnage wasn’t confined to the foot of the City Wall.
Headless soldiers, Earthians whose bodies had withered and desiccated into mummies—
Corpses of every conceivable kind studded the ramparts.
Standing upon the City Wall where death had swept through, now empty and desolate,
Seol Jihoo’s face went blank with despair.
Nosferatu stalking through the Fortress interior as though it were their own home.
A grotesque figure leading armies that hammered viciously at the gates.
Succubi swarming erratically about the dawn peaks.
Medusa shrieking with venom as she commanded the Parasite forces, and Hydra hurling breath attacks in dazzling hues from nine heads toward the Fortress.
Ninety degrees, one hundred eighty, two hundred seventy, three hundred sixty.
Everywhere he looked was chaos, pure and absolute.
Ian had been right. The reinforcements had arrived, but the battle tide had not turned.
It had merely delayed the inevitable for a moment.
Witnessing what looked like the end of the world, Seol Jihoo’s mind fractured into chaos.
No longer able to endure it, he suddenly wrenched his eyes wide, clamped his hands over his ears, and began running headlong.
He couldn’t even clearly explain to himself why he was running.
‘She’s… dead….’
When the shock of witnessing a reality that he simply could not accept—something that shattered the limits of his mind—collided with the guilt he’d been suppressing,
He felt as though he were losing his sanity entirely.
So, not knowing what else to do, Seol Jihoo ran like a wild thing—like a stray bullet ricocheting with nowhere to go.
The squelching, sodden sensation struck his soles repeatedly, but Seol Jihoo kept running with eyes so bloodshot they seemed ready to burst, like a cornered beast.
Eventually, he clenched his eyes shut.
Somewhere—anywhere—where he wouldn’t have to witness this horror, where he wouldn’t hear the screams that battered his ears.
It didn’t matter where.
Then his foot slipped, and he lost his balance.
Seol Jihoo cried out.
Splash!
“Ugh!”
The nauseating stench of blood assaulted his nostrils.
His chest tightened worse than before.
As a vertiginous dizziness swept over him, his stomach lurched and threatened to empty itself.
Floundering through the endless flow of flesh and blood, a familiar silhouette suddenly caught his eye.
If he wasn’t mistaken, it looked like Cho Hong.
He stopped thrashing and strained to listen, catching the faint sound of labored breathing.
Seol Jihoo crawled through the sea of gore and flipped the sprawled woman over.
“Huh—.”
The moment he saw her face, a sharp gasp tore from his clenched teeth.
Blood poured from every opening—both eyes, both ears, her mouth—soaking her face completely, while her neck and chest were smeared crimson.
She looked as though she’d washed her face in blood.
If she hadn’t managed to crack her eyes open even slightly, it would have taken him time to recognize her.
Cho Hong parted her eyes with difficulty, and one corner of her mouth curled upward.
“You’re… alive….”
It wasn’t her usual clear, ringing voice—it was hollow, drained of all strength.
‘It can’t be.’
His racing heart began to pound like a hammer.
“I… thought I was dead… and left…. Cough, cough!”
She choked as she spoke, coughing harshly.
Seol Jihoo gripped her hand tightly. The back of her hand felt unusually cold in his grasp.
“But….”
Her coughing subsided.
“Why… did you come back…? When you’re… already crippled….”
Her breath came in gasps, as though her life force might flicker out any moment.
“…Anyway….”
Cho Hong let out a faint, bitter laugh.
“That’s so like you….”
Words I’d heard once, long ago.
Seol Jihoo’s eyes hardened. He gripped her hand tighter and lifted it to his forehead, pressing it there.
“Hey… I… please… just one thing….”
Cho Hong’s trembling eyelids fluttered open with great effort.
“Kill me….”
Seol Jihoo’s brow furrowed deeply, and he bit down on his lip hard enough to draw blood.
“It hurts too much… death would be better… or…?”
Cho Hong’s words trailed off as her heavy eyelids blinked open and closed several times.
“It… doesn’t hurt anymore….”
A chill seemed to strike her mid-sentence, and her body convulsed with tremors.
“I’m… so cold….”
Soon her breath came in long, thin whispers, and her eyes closed gently.
Cho Hong’s hand slipped free.
Seol Jihoo stared at her chest, still rising and falling with shallow breaths, and sank into a deep, suffocating self-loathing.
‘That’s right… it would be like you….’
The time when she’d taken the blow meant for him instead.
That Cho Hong and the one before him now seemed to overlap.
“Cho Hong!”
On a desperate impulse, he activated the Nine Eyes.
He didn’t expect the Nine Eyes to do anything, but still he clung to a thread of hope.
He had to.
Because there was nothing else he could do. Because this was all he had left to believe in.
But in the next instant, Seol Jihoo’s face went blank.
The entire world turned black.
Immediate Escape.
Even the Nine Eyes, his last refuge, was screaming at him to flee—that escape was the only answer.
“Ha… haha….”
He felt suffocated. Tears welled up behind his eyes.
And yet, part of him wanted to laugh. At his comrade
dying before his eyes, and all he could do was watch. At how pathetic he was.
He’d trained desperately, willing to die, swearing never to face such helplessness again.
And yet, this time too, he had done nothing.
Nothing at all as Cho Hong slipped away.
‘Punishment….’
The thought had begun to crystallize: this situation itself was punishment.
Yes. Punishment. There was no other way this could happen.
This was divine retribution, delivered by the heavens in place of his family.
Karmic Retribution. Seol Jihoo had chosen to live by this law.
But this law knew no exceptions. Not even for Seol Jihoo.
‘I too….’
I lived addicted to gambling. I turned my back on family and betrayed my girlfriend dozens of times.
I squandered my days. A life of pure trash.
If I lived like trash, then dying like trash was only what I deserved.
‘But….’
I had wanted to change.
I knew it was far too late, but I wanted to change all the same.
‘That’s why.’
I chose another reality to escape the misery of this one.
But here, it was the same.
The bait I’d risked my life to dangle, the unnecessary suffering I’d volunteered to endure, the limits I’d shattered through hellish training—all of it was worthless.
I’d thought that after enough hardship would come joy, but I buckled, utterly defeated before overwhelming power and massive forces.
I wanted to believe otherwise, but reality was speaking clearly.
What was I thinking, trying to change now?
Could garbage like me possibly be recycled?
On Earth or in Paradise, you’re nothing but a man who can do nothing.
Garbage deserves a garbage’s death.
In the end, I had failed.
No matter how I writhed and struggled, reality did not change.
Whatever I did, reality remained the same.
“…….”
Tears spilled without warning. That powerlessness he’d sworn never to feel again seized his entire body.
Seol Jihoo bowed his head in silence.
Disappointment became frustration, frustration became despair, and despair became… resignation.
‘To live like this.’
Death would be better.
Throwing an egg at a stone.
To flee as a coward and live, tormented by guilt every waking day—
Death would be better.
The moment he thought it, his chest grew light.
‘Now… I don’t care.’
With trembling hands, he grasped the pale blue spear.
He raised it slowly, reversed his grip, and aimed the point at his own throat.
A desolate smile played at the corners of his mouth.
No one had forced him. This was Seol Jihoo’s choice alone.
Just as his grip tightened on the shaft—
[Hey, man. Why rush to conclusions like that?]
Ian’s laugh echoed in his ears.
His half-closed eyes snapped open, wide as lanterns.
Clang!
The spear fell. Seol Jihoo spun frantically, searching left and right.
But Ian was nowhere to be found.
Only this: just after returning from the event—
fragments of a conversation with Ian at the tavern replayed in his mind, piece by piece.
[Seol. Humans are always choosing. In the past, in the present, in the future.]
A thought struck him then.
‘Have I.’line>
Looking back, had he ever truly chosen anything according to his own will?

‘Have I….’
…In truth, he was afraid.
And he knew it.
This action was not his choice.
Paralyzed by fear, swept along by circumstance, ignorant of what else to do—he’d made this decision as an escape.
His whole life had been like that, looking back.
Before thinking, he’d habitually relied on the Nine Eyes.
He always chose only after seeing the colors, and never strayed from the options presented.
But.
Could the Nine Eyes truly be relied upon?
Just because the Nine Eyes showed him colors, did he have to blindly follow that choice?
[Life isn’t some game where the ending pops up after you hit a choice or two, right?]
The Golden Law didn’t guarantee good outcomes.
Crisis Detection was the same.
Like when he resolved the Raman Village request—even without restraining himself from approach.
Like when he succeeded at an impossible mission in the Neutral Zone—even without withdrawing, without using Immediate Escape.
The result wasn’t inevitably bad.
…Yes. Even fate itself could be broken by a single trivial choice.
The Nine Eyes don’t lie. Yet they’re not the answer either.
The Nine Eyes are merely part of the choice.
Which option to take, how to act, what result to pursue—that rested solely on Seol Jihoo.
The answer had already revealed itself, if he’d only looked.
[Isn’t it remarkable? How such a trivial choice can overturn such vast destiny!]
All colors converge into one.
The moment he grasped that truth, Seol Jihoo’s expression went blank.
Suddenly his ears filled with ringing.
No shouts, no screams—no sound at all.
A sharp thrill ran through his body. From the depths of his being, an emotion unlike any before surged raw and unrefined, and the cold blood in his veins began to boil.
Seol Jihoo seized the fallen spear and rose with fierce determination.
Then, slowly, he reached out into the empty air.
He knew now there was no going back.
Yet he’d never expected changing one’s fate to be easy.
How far could he actually go?
For once in his life, he wanted to trust his own choice.
So….

[9 Body Score points are being consumed.]
[Magical Power Level is rising from High-Middle to High-Superior.]

[Ah—!]
The Parasite Queen, who had been seated upon her corrupted throne, jolted upright in alarm.
She who observed the movements of the stars found herself overwhelmed by shock, her mouth falling open without thinking.
The opposite.
[Ho…!]
Gula cried out in awe.
Her eyes, which watched the stars ceaselessly, finally caught the sign she had waited and waited to see.
Deep within the ashen star that twisted and writhed, something incomprehensible began to spin terrifyingly in a vortex.
Not a few times per second.
Dozens of times, hundreds of times—no. Thousands of times…!
A latent power so immense that even gods could not fathom it began to surge forth!
Thrummmmmmm!
As an unbelievably vast torrent of energy exploded, a Star Earthquake shook the entire region.
The galaxy trembled at that magnificent awakening, and the orbits of thousands upon thousands of affected stars twisted and transformed.
It was not the end.
Soon the grey shell that had covered the star like fungus, unable to bear the echoes of the tremor, cracked and crumbled away.
At the very moment when the raging force gathered and concentrated back into a single point!
Sorrow flashed across the Parasite Queen’s face; joy blazed across Gula’s.
From the center of the star whose surface was peeling away, a light was born—brighter than any star before it.
Though still only a small flame, there was no mistaking what the star held: it was light.
A dead star whose light had once gone out.
A light that, despite all their suffering and effort, they had never been able to restore.
Seeing the undeniable brilliant radiance, the two goddesses dwelling in separate spaces cried out together.
[The dead star…!]
Shines again.

Thump!
His heart thundered more violently than ever before.
A deep, resonant tremor as if body and soul were separating.
He could feel moment by moment how the energy within him swelled in geometric progression.
Intoxicated by the unprecedented surge of overwhelming power flooding through him, Seol Jihoo gazed into the monochrome world.
Teresa had told him to run.
Cho Hong had asked why he had come back.
Nine Eyes had recommended Immediate Escape.
Ian had told him to endure.
But Seol Jihoo did not.
He did not want to.
Even if he fell and crumbled again—he would not entrust his choice to anyone else.
At least once, he wanted to act as his heart commanded.
At least once, he wanted to truly know himself.
So.

[Innate Ability ‘Future Sense’ is activating.]

This time, he did not hold back.

(To be continued in the next part)

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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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