Chapter 278

#98. The Usurper’s Real Name

Mimir, who had been running his mouth in a feeble attempt to save his own life, shut up and looked at Kim Jin-Woo. He began, “What do…”

“It’s exactly as you heard. I’m one of the fragments left behind by the Wandering Lord,” Kim Jin-Woo cut him off.

Barely able to speak a word, Mimir’s eyes continued to roll around. It was evident from the surprised look on his face that he was finding Kim Jin-Woo’s words hard to trust. He stutered, “I… I’m pretty certain that it was the One-Eyed Lord’s name Milord inherited…”

“You’re not wrong about that either,” Kim Jin-Woo replied.

By now, Mimir had a stupefied expression as he started to mutter like a madman. “That’s impossible. It can’t be. The vessel of the Wandering Lord having the name of the One-Eyed Lord!? That could never be possible!”

The truth was that Kim Jin-Woo had inherited more than the name of just the One-Eyed Lord, but he felt no need to tell Mimir that information. Just telling Mimir about the fragment of the Wandering Lord was more than sufficient to direct the conversation where he needed it to go.

He said, “Whether you believe it or not, no matter how hard you may try to deny it, it’s not going to change the facts.”

“That… That means the reason why the mask went to seek Milord was…” Mimir trailed off.

When he heard that, Kim Jin-Woo belatedly remembered having the Hypocrite’s Mask in his possession and started to look for it.

“D-don’t take it out!”

However, he quickly stopped rummaging when Mimir screamed at him to stop, the imp’s face turning pale.

“I-if everything Milord has said is true, that’s all the more reason you shouldn’t wear that mask!” Mimir exclaimed as he fearlessly approached Kim Jin-Woo, grabbed his hand, and clung to it. He continued, “When two fragments meet, the larger one will devour the smaller one. Just like how Milord absorbed the fragments of the Ancient Lords.”

The fragment of the One-Eyed Lord, Ustus, had handed over his power to Kim Jin-Woo and was annihilated, and the same had happened to the fragment of the Lord of Brilliance.

“Don’t ever put too much faith into the power of the Highlord and put it to the test. No matter how much of the Highlord’s power Milord may possess, the result won’t change. That’s how fragments are and how they function,” Mimir warned Kim Jin-Woo repeatedly in a more serious tone than ever before.

“Was that what you were aiming for from the beginning?” Kim Jin-Woo muttered toward the mask, his expression contorting as he remembered the message that had urged him to wear it.

If he had believed the message back then and put on the mask, it would have been the Wandering Lord standing where he was today, not him. When he realized that, he felt the anger and hatred that he had barely managed to restrain rising again.

Although he had been able to avoid having his body taken over, nothing had fundamentally changed. He now had to spend his whole life carrying a bomb that could explode at any moment. An unintentional weakness had formed.

That fact made him terribly uncomfortable, and he tightened his grip on the mask in anger, growling, “Feels disgusting.”

Despite the force of his grip that could make even hard rocks turn to dust, the mask was completely unaffected. Seeing that, Kim Jin-Woo only became angrier.

“It seems like something that we’re unaware of is happening.” Mimir was gloomy as ever, but he seemed to have not forgotten what kind of circumstance he was in, as he quickly spilled everything he knew to Kim Jin-Woo. “The Usurper sowed the seeds into the Subterraneans that were born on the Deep Floors. It was because of that that they were allowed to survive in this harsh Underworld environment.”

It was due to the seeds planted by the Usurper that each of the Deep Floor dungeon babies, who otherwise wouldn’t have survived in such a harsh environment when compared to the Lesser Floors, had their own special abilities.

“But there are a few things I don’t quite understand. The Usurper is the one who bid farewell to ancient times. I really don’t understand why that same Usurper sowed the seeds of the Highlords all over the Underworld when they were practically his enemies,” Mimir mused.

“Because the Usurper and the Highlords weren’t enemies in the first place,” Kim Jin-Woo replied.

“Excuse me?” Mimir looked dumbfounded, as he had once again heard something that didn’t make sense to him.

However, regardless of Mimir’s curiosity, Kim Jin-Woo continued speaking, as if he were talking to himself. “But now, I’m not so sure about that either.”

The reason the Highlords had had to leave the Underworld was to fulfill the grand plan that had been initially promised, and with their own deaths, that promise had been fulfilled.

But the Usurper was different. If the Usurper had truly kept his end of the bargain, there was no way the Underworld would be in such a miserable state as it was in right now.

“The True Name of a Lord is an absolute that encompasses the origins of existence. Because he was called the Immoral Lord for such a long time, the Usurper must have forgotten his True Name,” Kim Jin-Woo said.

Mimir opened and closed his mouth several times in hesitation before finally asking, “What exactly did you see there?”

Kim Jin-Woo stared at Mimir without answering. Hatred and madness swirled through his deeply sunken eyes. Mimir quickly bowed his head in shock as if he had seen something he wasn’t supposed to, and hurriedly muttered, “I-I asked something I shouldn’t have. Please don’t mind me.”

“I saw Twilight,” Kim Jin-Woo suddenly said.

Mimir’s eyes widened and his jaws dropped upon hearing the unexpected answer.

“And I saw a piece of the broken dream,” Kim Jin-Woo continued.

“What do…” Mimir began.

“What the Ancient Lords wanted was a more perfect world.”

Kim Jin-Woo wasn’t even looking at Mimir anymore as he spoke. His eyes dimmed as if they were looking somewhere far into the distance.

“They hoped to unite the torn, fragmented and imperfect world, and they weren’t afraid to join forces.

He revealed the memories of the past that Hlieskjálf had shown him.

“But they failed. As a result, a horrific catastrophe befell the Underworld. The sun and the moon, which dimly lit the Underworld, began to fall. By then, ‘Twilight’ had come to the Underworld.”

It was a story from the past that Mimir might have heard about.

“The Lords, though badly wounded, were ultimately able to survive the Twilight in the end. But that wasn’t the end. The tilted sun and moon eventually fell, and ‘Night’ had come to the Underworld.”

But there were also ancient secrets that Mimir certainly didn’t know of.

“Having exhausted all their strengths, the Lords couldn’t survive the Night, and were eventually killed by it. The only survivors were the One-Eyed Lord, the Wandering Lord, and the Lord of Benevolence.”

They were able to eventually drive the Night away, but in return, the One-Eyed Lord had lost his last remaining eye, and the Wandering Lord had lost both his legs. It was only the Highlord of Benevolence who had been able to preserve his full powers.

“That was when the real tragedy began.”

Rather than thanking the holy sacrifices made by the Ancient Lords, the survivors sought them for the leaking powers that flowed from their bodies. The One-Eyed Lord and the Wandering Lord, injured by irrecoverable wounds, had been too weary to defend themselves against the madness of the survivors. The Lord of Benevolence had also lacked the strength to handle so many at once all by himself.

“The Lord of Benevolence couldn’t bear to see the madmen filling their stomachs with the powers of the holy Lords. Thus, he decided to unite all their powers inside of himself and become their leader. He transformed the powers of the Lords into Nobles’ Seals and personally handed them over to those immoral beings. That was how he prevented the powers of the Lords from being completely absorbed.”

The powers of the Lords who had met their demise were fragmented and scattered all over the Underworld. However, they would be able to regain their powers by taking the seals away from the Nobles should they return; thus, they were still able to continue existing in a sense.

“That was how the Nobles were born. The Lord of Benevolence eventually became Usurper the Immoral Lord, and waited for a long time for the Lords’ return.”

All Mimir could do was to continue listening in silence, his jaw open in disbelief.

“All of this catastrophe began from the ideals of the Wandering Lord, as the only Lord who saw another world and started having a feverish dream.”

Kim Jin-Woo grabbed his chest when he felt the mask wiggling in his possession.

“And that terribly stupid and selfish wraith didn’t give up on his fantasies until the very end, when his body was ripped to pieces.”

His eyes, which had looked hazy as if he were lost in a dream, suddenly turned cold.

“That means the disaster isn’t over yet.”

After a while, Mimir was barely able to piece together a few words. “Then… The Wish Stone that went to the surface…”

“That’s right. It was all planned from the beginning.”

The mere existence of the Wish Stone, which embodied the Mysteries of the Underworld, on the surface had blurred the boundaries between the two worlds of the surface and the Underworld. And using the excuse that the surface had stolen the Wish Stone to start a war, the Lords could freely use Terrans as vessels.

“But why Terrans…” Mimir wondered.

“A mighty force can sometimes be a shackle. One of the reasons their past plan failed was because the surface didn’t tolerate the existence of the Highlords,” Kim Jin-Woo replied.

However, if such Highlords were born using the bodies of Terrans, the surface would no longer be able to deny and reject the Highlords.

“Even at this moment, disaster is approaching,” he continued. Kim Jin-Woo hated to admit it, but he couldn’t deny that he had contributed to the impending calamity.

Due to strange circumstances, he’d had to move a labyrinth to the surface, and although his surface labyrinth wasn’t as powerful as the Wish Stone, it had still been able to have a significant impact on breaking down the boundaries between the Underworld and the surface.

Kim Jin-Woo frowned bitterly as he continued, “Now, the Third and Fourth Restoration remain, and after that, whether we like it or not, the boundaries between the Underworld and the surface will completely collapse, and the world will become one.”

Because he wasn’t the Wandering Lord himself, Kim Jin-Woo couldn’t tell if that was a good thing or a bad thing. But that was exactly why he had decided to prevent the Restoration from successfully occurring.

That was the only way he could get revenge on the Lords who had treated him as a puppet.

“Mimir,” he began.

“Yes, Milord.” Mimir looked completely confused because he had been bombarded with unfathomable facts one after another, but he quickly regained his composure upon hearing the subtlety in Kim Jin-Woo’s voice.

𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

“I’ll give you one last chance,” Kim Jin-Woo said.

“Please give me your order,” Mimir replied.

Kim Jin-Woo spoke as he looked at the bowing Mimir. “Find the Wish Stone that’s on the surface. Find it and bring it to the Underworld.”

Mimir didn’t readily answer. After all, it wouldn’t have been easy to find the Wish Stone even in the Underworld, let alone the surface.

“I know you have connections to the Terrans, so use all your abilities to complete this task. That’s the only way you can live,” Kim Jin-Woo said.

“I’ll do as you will,” Mimir sullenly responded, as if he had already expected this.

“But before that.” Seeing the look on Mimir’s face, Kim Jin-Woo then revealed his real purpose for seeking the imp out. “You must fulfill your duty first.”