The Second Coming of Gluttony - Chapter 22

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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 22. A Star Shines Again (2)

[Surviving the Encirclement (Remaining Attempts: 15/15)]
Survive amid the siege of skeletons!
Difficulty: Hard
Success: Survival Points +1,000
Failure: Death
*Cooperation available (maximum 6 people)

‘An encirclement? Skeletons?’
The mission reeked of danger at first glance. The fact that it allowed six cooperating members said as much. There was a chance he’d find himself surrounded the moment the paper tore.
But no matter how he looked at it, the paper gleamed yellow. Yellow meant Caution Advised. Sol, who had hesitated a moment at the word encirclement, remembered that Gang Seok’s marker had been yellow too. Someone of his caliber…
‘I have to take the risk.’
If they all succeeded, he’d earn fifteen thousand points. That was nearly half of his minimum target of thirty-four thousand Survival Points. Besides, it didn’t look like other survivors would have much opportunity to interfere—it was perfectly suited to his needs.
‘Just to be safe.’
Having made his decision, Sol emptied all the Spell Balls from his bag.
‘Will poison work on skeletons?’
Sol deliberated, then resolved to try it anyway. From his experience catching the vengeful ghost, he’d confirmed that the poison-mist Spell Ball contained a gaseous component. Used in combination with an ignition ball, it would produce a significant effect—like last time.
‘These two should be used as a combination….’
He checked each one carefully, separating those for combination use from those for single use. It was unfortunate that he had no Spell Balls related to sacred power. He wouldn’t be lying if he said he felt tension.
After placing all the Spell Balls in his pocket, he gripped the Iron Club firmly and tore the paper with his teeth.
Snap. The familiar sensation coursed through his body, and the landscape shifted.
The designated location resembled a hollow within a cavern. The ceiling, lower than expected, stuck with him.
“…….”
Before his eyes, dozens of skeletons loomed, watching the intruder with malevolent intent.
‘Looks brutal.’
The game world and reality were worlds apart.
In any case, he’d planned to throw one attack as soon as he moved. Sol, about to hurl the poison-mist and ignition combination that had worked so well against the ghost, found himself forced to stop short.
“…Wait.”
The thought came suddenly. The location was different from when he’d faced the ghost. He glanced back and saw a wall. The space was cramped, and there was no way out.
Throw poison-mist in this narrow space? And ignition too?
The realization that he’d almost gotten himself killed made him swallow hard. Things were going wrong from the start.
Graaaaaaah!
From the rear, a lone helmeted skeleton unleashed a howl that shook the cavern. At its cry, dozens of them clacked their teeth, raised their weapons, and began creeping forward.
Sol hastily threw an ignition ball. The explosion detonated, sending a couple of skeletons flying. Used alone, its force was weaker than he’d anticipated.
Sol calmly retrieved his second combination and threw it. Spider silk and hydrochloric acid.
From the spinning ball, dozens of silver threads unspooled across the air. When they bound around a dozen or so skeletons, the acid—thrown with a calculated delay—rained down. Skulls, ribs, pubic bones, femurs—countless parts dissolved away as the first row collapsed.
It was a decent result, but the problem remained: more than twenty of them still advanced. They burned in the spreading flames yet snapped their jaws open, closing the distance.
This was still within his calculated scenario. He had to thin their numbers as much as possible before his back hit the wall. Sol began stepping backward, fishing another Spell Ball from his pocket.
The fourth Spell Ball burst with light.
Crackle-snap! A dazzling discharge erupted, cascading in chain reactions across the chamber. Like puppet strings cut loose, the skeletons lurched and slumped. He’d toppled the second rank.
Gruaaaaaack!
The helmeted skeleton watching from the rear exploded in fury once more. More than half its subordinates had fallen—as the leader, its rage was inevitable.
Then it seized an enormous axe in one hand, charged forward with force, and smashed the ground.
The hand wielding the axe drew far back, then descended in a vicious arc aimed at cleaving the intruder.
He hadn’t expected it to leap. In the span of a blink, the distance collapsed. Sol, scrambling to retrieve a new ball, frantically raised his Iron Club instead.
He was startled, certainly. But if he could just block this strike and feed it a Spell Ball immediately….
Clang!
Sol’s body lurched violently sideways. His eyes widened in disbelief.
The combined force of the leap and the descent poured forth with unimaginable power. He managed to deflect the axe barely, but the recoil drove his arm back hard.
The diagonal blow, parried by the Iron Club, easily swept past the obstruction and left his ribs completely exposed.
As he watched the axe blade descend in his forced, spinning vision with relentless force, his mind went blank—pure white.
Death?
This pathetically?
It was marked Caution Advised?
I still have Spell Balls left, and I’m not even at a disadvantage…!
In that fraction of a second, countless thoughts flashed through his mind before his instinct screamed the truth: it was already too late.
In the next moment, Sol surrendered any thought of counterattack, surrendering instead to the residual recoil and rolling his body sideways. As his back turned to his enemy, he tucked himself forward as tightly as possible.
Whoosh!
The sharp axe blade swept past not the intruder’s back, but the shoulder-slung bag—the thick pack he’d stuffed full of convenience store goods in one go.
In the same instant, a hollow skull glinted in the fractured gap’s bright surface.
Flash! Light erupted suddenly, passing through the eye sockets.
Screeeeeeeee!
Seol barely caught himself against the wall as the impact nearly knocked him over, spinning to see the skull charring black and writhing in agony. He’d snatched life from the jaws of death through quick thinking, but confusion seeped through despite himself at the sudden reversal.
‘What… what is that?’
Either way, he’d survived for now, but it wasn’t over yet. Seol turned the bag—which had just served as a magnificent shield—to his front and fumbled through his pockets when he suddenly grasped what had changed.
A brilliant light was pouring from where the bag had split open.
“…Ah.”
The Mirror of Reckoning. A SPECIAL item from the gacha machine, one that responded to the malice-riddled dead rushing forward.
On a hunch, Seol drew the mirror out and held it up. The bones of the helmeted skull began to discolor at each joint, becoming blackened ash as though scorched by flame, scattering to the wind.
And that was only the beginning. The one thrashing in cobwebs, the one backing away step by step—wherever the light touched, they let out mournful shrieks and crumbled to ash.
In a single reflection, dozens of skulls vanished in less than a minute.
Once every skeleton had been unmade, the mirror had fulfilled its purpose—a long crack split across its surface.

[You have successfully completed the ‘Difficult’ task.]
[Survival Points: 1,000 awarded.]
[Survival Points: 28,100 SP]

When the young man appeared in the Plaza, a stir rippled through the area.
Right after Seol disappeared, Survivors who checked the task log could only gape. No one had even attempted Normal Difficulty yet, and here he was claiming a Difficult task—alone, no less.
Opinion was split. Some said it was impossible; others urged patience. Either way, he returned to the Plaza in under five minutes.
The only failure condition was death, so what this reappearance meant was unmistakable.
“It’s unbelievable.”
Hao Win muttered as if the thing were nonsense.
Unlike the other Survivors, his shock wasn’t mere surprise. Having already cleared several tasks, he’d drawn his own conclusions about the Neutral Zone: don’t even dream of Difficulty ‘Normal’ or higher until you’ve prepared adequately at the shop and teamed up with Survivors of comparable standing.
Perhaps that’s why Odelet Delphin had approached that top-ranked player—though she’d been turned down cleanly enough.
But now he’d solved a task two tiers higher in this short a timeframe?
“How did he do it? Surely he didn’t cast some kind of magic… hm?”
Hao Win, who’d been edging closer, tilted his head. Something about the way the other remained standing in place, like a monument to a waiting wife, felt oddly off.
Like watching a soldier return from a bitter war, having brushed death itself. Taking everything in, the Gold Bag he’d envied suddenly had a split running down its middle, and the young man’s expression seemed vacant.
Then Seol stirred.
Mouths clamped shut, the crowd watched in a daze as the young man climbed the swaying stairs, his form receding from view.

He couldn’t remember how he’d made it back. His head spun as if he’d been dead drunk. Coming to, his entire body was drenched in cold sweat.
Chills ran down his spine. His breathing was steady, but his heart hammered like a wild pump with no end in sight. His throat felt parched and cracked. He pulled a 2L Bottled Water from his bag and drained it like a madman.
His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. Seol drained half the bottle without once pausing, then dragged his wavering legs to the bed and collapsed.
Only then did the reality of being alive sink in. Since starting the Tutorial, had he ever felt this wrung out?
Knock, knock. A sudden rap at the door made him lift his head slightly before he let it fall again. He had no will to face anyone.
A few more knocks sounded, but getting no response, silence returned.
He simply stared at the ceiling. The latticed pattern in his field of vision seemed to spin lazily.
How much time had passed?
In the settling quiet, his eyes, still wide with shock, gradually grew heavy before narrowing to threads.
‘Was I overconfident?’
The paper had been yellow. Through Gang Seok’s precedent, he’d judged it fully manageable.
‘Was I careless?’
He hadn’t treated it as easy or simple. He’d recognized the danger. He’d simply thought it was worth the risk.
‘Was I too assured?’
He’d prepared reasonably well, checking each Spell Ball one by one, combining them…
It was at that point Seol
‘…was I hasty?’
shut his eyes.
The more he justified himself, the more the wretchedness grew.
The task succeeded. No—only the task succeeded. The boomerang of a wrong choice had come back at his throat. Returning with body intact had been little short of a miracle born from desperation.
‘Nine Eyes’ doesn’t lie. Looking back, this task could have been solved without difficulty. The answer was already there.
What if he’d drawn the Mirror of Reckoning the moment he arrived?
The dead were the dead, whether wraith or skeleton—so why hadn’t he connected the two in his thinking?
What if he’d prepared a different combination?
Based on shallow experience of using poison smoke effectively once against a vagrant spirit, he’d selected it as his preemptive strike from ten Spell Balls—without even knowing where he’d be sent.
In the end, it was all pretense. The pretense of vigilance, of humility. Pretense that had blinded him to his own hunger for Survival Points.
At least during the Tutorial, he hadn’t let himself grow this careless.
‘…Or had he…’
Had he actually accomplished anything there on his own?
The chain of thought looped back on itself, breeding a fundamental doubt.
Driving out the vengeful spirit in the Hall? Breaking through this floor alone?
Both because of Future Thought—a skill whose activation conditions he didn’t even understand, something he’d been swept along by more than wielded.
Capturing the spirit so easily?
Because of the Base—an absolute sanctuary.
Achieving a record-breaking score in the Tutorial?
Because of a certain student’s diary.
Perhaps he’d grown arrogant without realizing it. The moment he stepped into the Hall, they’d hailed him as a Gold Mark. They followed him, revered him. His every small gesture drew attention. You’re someone special, they said.
Even as he rejected it, even as he said it was pointless, he’d been quietly savoring that recognition.

[2. Trait]
① Nature
Weak Will (inability to make independent decisions or persevere), Impatience (prone to hasty judgment)
② Aptitude
Ordinary (possessing no remarkable or distinctive qualities)

[3. Physical Level]
Strength: Low-Low
Endurance: Lowest
Agility: Low-Medium
Stamina: Low-Low
Magical Power: Medium-High
Luck: Medium-Low
Remaining ability points: 0.

This was the truth beneath it all. Strip away everything, and he was nothing.
He knew what he became without his abilities, knew what kind of wretch he was. And yet this time, hadn’t he acquired something beyond mere power?
“Pathetic bastard.”
Self-contempt made him unbearable to himself.
Setting lurched to his feet and inverted the water bottle. Water cascaded down, drenching his scalp, streaming across his face and body. The gesture was self-mockery—here he stood, positioned far more advantageously than anyone else, and yet he could manage only this.
Even after the bottle ran empty, Setting kept his eyes shut for a long moment, focusing on each cool drop striking his crown. Slowly, something that had been roiling inside him began, just slightly, to cool.
Setting opened his eyes.
“Hah…”
The glint of greed faded from his gaze. His eyes recovered their original light.
‘This won’t do.’
He began to trace back through it all, methodically, from the beginning. Not just the mission—from the moment he’d entered the Neutral Zone.
‘When did I get so blinded by desire?’
Since Maria handed him the Pamphlet? No. He’d already known of the Shop’s existence before that.
[You may be able to access the VIP Shop.]
The Guide.
The memory of him surfaced suddenly—something he’d forgotten. Why had he whispered at that precise moment? Why mention the VIP Shop at all?
Setting rose, dripping, and wrenched the Gold Bag open. He rifled through it for a moment until three neatly folded Notes appeared.
He drew out one and carefully unfolded it.

(To be continued in the next installment)

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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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