Chapter 157

IRL Fight (1)

The pursuit of the runaway Kkobong began, but it ended before long.

It was not as though he had deliberately planned an escape. He had simply become overexcited and wandered all over the place.

Having always seen the world as a blur, it was understandable that he would be astonished when everything suddenly came into focus.

He had lived with congenital low vision his entire life, only to finally see the world clearly with his own two eyes.

If it had happened to me, I would have considered it more than just a whole new world. It would have been nothing short of a miracle.

"What a wonderful job you’ve done. How long has it been since I gave you those glasses, and you’ve already broken them?"

"..."

Ultimately, the absurd reason Kkobong was caught was that his glasses broke.

Even without the ability to use mana, a gorilla was still a gorilla. His physical strength far surpassed that of a human.

Glasses, meanwhile, could easily break under the slightest pressure.

Considering how excited he had been, it was only natural that they had been damaged.

Fortunately, only the frame broke.

I looked back and forth between the glasses, which had snapped cleanly in half, and the dejected Kkobong.

There was something strangely amusing about seeing such an expression on a creature who usually did nothing but scowl fiercely.

Regaining his eyesight must have made him incredibly happy, even if it had not lasted long.

"I’ll try to fix them, so just wait here."

"..."

Kkobong looked at me.

His expression was filled with desperate hope, as though asking whether I could truly repair them.

I chuckled at his expression before immediately accessing the Gallery.

[Wild Grylls: Sir, about those glasses you gave me earlier.]

[PraiseTheSun: What about them? Is the prescription wrong?]

[Wild Grylls: No, Kkobong broke them. I think he got too excited.]

[PraiseTheSun: How badly are they broken? Do I need to make an entirely new pair?]

[Wild Grylls: No, they just snapped through the middle.]

[PraiseTheSun: That’ll be a quick fix, then. Send them over.]

Not long after I returned the glasses, PraiseTheSun sent them back fully repaired.

He even joked that he would charge me for repairs next time.

If Kkobong broke them again, I would have to pay a fair price to have them repaired.

"Here. If you break them again, I’m putting a lock on them."

"Siye, siye."

That probably meant something along the lines of thank you . Kkobong immediately put on the glasses.

Perhaps it was because the lenses had such a powerful prescription, but his features looked much gentler than before.

Without the glasses, he looked like a foul-tempered gorilla. With them on, he looked like the complete opposite.

His eyes even appeared smaller, accentuating the characteristic vacant look of a primate.

It’s surprising how perfectly they fit him.

Gorillas effectively had almost no nose bridge.

I had worried that the glasses would keep sliding down, but my concerns proved unfounded.

His head was so unusually large that wearing them was almost like wearing goggles.

They barely moved at all, even during vigorous activity.

He only broke them earlier because he kept taking them off and putting them back on.

Now that Kkobong’s eyesight problem had been resolved, I checked the questionnaire one last time.

There was something else I wanted to ask after the question about Rice Craone.

It might be a highly sensitive question for him.

"Kkobong, can you take a look at this?"

"Uuu."

Perhaps it was because the glasses had corrected his vision and I had even gotten them repaired for him.

Unlike before, Kkobong read the question without squinting.

"..."

I take that back. His face crumpled the moment he read it.

His expression was filled with displeasure. To be fair, I had expected that reaction because it was a sensitive question.

I’d probably be offended too.

The question concerned the gorilla leader, whom I suspected was his brother.

Had they learned martial arts together from Wi Hochang? And why had Kkobong left the troop?

The gorilla leader seemed relatively kindhearted for a beast, but I still wanted to hear the details of what had happened.

"...#%@1%"

Kkobong considered it for a while before speaking.

Perhaps he was willing to tell me this much because I had given him the glasses.

I recorded everything he said and sent the video to the Heavenly Demon.

I would have liked to upload it to the Gallery, but I decided against it because it would probably cause another uproar.

[Heavenly Demon: It means casting off one’s mortal body and becoming an immortal. Yet this is strange. The Blood Demon’s martial arts were far removed from Taoism, and he must have possessed many lingering attachments to the mortal world. Did living in the forest turn him into a Taoist hermit?]

[Heavenly Demon: This is quite an interesting tale. He says that when a man named Wi Hochang appeared one day, the leader of the troop changed as well.]

[Wild Grylls: Do you mean he killed the leader and took his place?]

[Heavenly Demon: Essentially. What is even more astonishing is that the Blood Demon apparently reached the Life-and-Death Realm and underwent Feathered Ascension.]

[Wild Grylls: The Life-and-Death Realm? Feathered Ascension? What are those?]

I felt as though I had heard the terms somewhere before, but I had no idea what they meant.

Judging by the Heavenly Demon’s astonishment, it must have been an unimaginably lofty realm.

[Heavenly Demon: The Life-and-Death Realm comes after the Profound Realm, which is the realm this Lady currently inhabits. Those who reach it become qualified to undergo Feathered Ascension and can accomplish anything through will alone.]

[Wild Grylls: What is Feathered Ascension?]

The Heavenly Demon repeatedly asked whether the Blood Demon had truly undergone Feathered Ascension.

I still did not know what that meant, but I questioned Kkobong as she requested.

However, Kkobong apparently did not know the term Feathered Ascension . He merely said that Wi Hochang had gone up into the sky.

He even added the phrase "from time to time."

Apparently, whenever the Blood Demon rose into the sky, the bewildered gorillas would desperately cling to his trouser legs.

[Heavenly Demon: Hmm. From that description alone, this Lady cannot tell whether he is truly referring to Feathered Ascension. Nevertheless, there is a strong possibility that the Blood Demon did undergo it.]

[Wild Grylls: Probably. The gorilla leader was wearing his clothes, after all.]

Feathered Ascension or not, the Blood Demon, Wi Hochang, was no longer in this forest.

I did not know the precise details, but it seemed he had led quite an eventful life before departing.

"#$%%!!"

When the discussion turned to what happened after the Blood Demon’s Feathered Ascension, Kkobong flew into a rage.

According to the Heavenly Demon’s translation, he had been driven out of the troop immediately after the Blood Demon disappeared.

The troop had resisted his presence so fiercely that even his own brother, Wi Heuk—the current gorilla leader—had been left with no choice.

Naturally, Kkobong could not help but harbor resentment toward the gorilla troop.

I suppose they had no choice if they wanted to survive...

Kkobong was an albino gorilla, an individual who stood out wherever he went.

His presence could easily have endangered the others, so his banishment was understandable.

Judging by the intensity of their opposition, he should have been expelled long ago. As it turned out, the Blood Demon had been preventing it.

Apparently, the Blood Demon had even killed the previous leader because he tried to banish Kkobong despite being warned not to.

Did he have some kind of trauma concerning persecution?

There was the story about him massacring a particular ethnic group out of a desire for revenge, along with the way he had protected Kkobong.

Perhaps he himself had belonged to a persecuted ethnic minority, which made him particularly sensitive to such matters.

Of course, that was only my hypothesis, so I could not be certain.

If I wanted to learn the details, I would have no choice but to visit the gorilla leader, Wi Heuk.

He might have written a book in the meantime, or perhaps left behind some other clues.

[Heavenly Demon: It would be best to post this story on the Gallery.]

[Wild Grylls: What? Won’t those weird people start causing another uproar?]

In the middle of our conversation, the Heavenly Demon made a strange suggestion.

Feathered Ascension meant becoming an immortal. Put simply, it was "ascension."

The Blood Cult had splintered and been reduced to causing trouble in the Gallery because the Blood Demon had disappeared.

But what if it turned out that the Blood Demon had undergone Feathered Ascension?

That would grant them legitimacy where none had existed before. It would hardly be surprising if they began treating the Blood Demon as a martyr.

All kinds of terrorists commit atrocities on Earth too. If anything, this world must be even worse.

Would the Heavenly Demon have suggested it without realizing that?

I did not think so.

She must have had a plan of her own.

[Heavenly Demon: You need not worry about that. We can use this opportunity to crush all the vermin.]

[Wild Grylls: Vermin?]

[Heavenly Demon: As you have seen for yourself, those from the Blood Cult also run rampant within the Gallery.]

There were too many malicious Gallery users to count.

But apparently, the Blood Cult members were the worst of them all.

Not only did they worship the mass murderer known as the Blood Demon, but they occasionally committed copycat crimes whenever the mood struck them.

The reason no related posts appeared in searches was that the head administrator and the Heavenly Demon thoroughly deleted them and issued bans.

However, unless someone had a registered account, filtering anonymous posts was practically meaningless.

Unlike registered users, anonymous users returned shortly after being banned.

According to one person’s hypothesis, that was because the mana they absorbed was constantly changing.

Just as the water one drank each day was not literally the same water, the same principle applied to mana.

That was why banning anonymous users accomplished little.

One might then ask why registered users were different. Did they not also absorb different mana over time?

The situation was slightly different. If anonymous users were identified by their mana, registered users were identified by their dantian.

Of course, although all of this sounded plausible, it was ultimately only a hypothesis and should not be taken too seriously.

Uh... Come to think of it, I think I understand what they’re talking about.

I had seen plenty of them on the internet—users who made you wonder whether they were genuinely mentally ill.

Some were merely playing a character, but others were the real thing, employing genuinely disturbing speech patterns and logic.

At this point, one might ask whether it was truly so strange to worship someone who had lived several decades ago.

There are bastards who worship Hitler, so the Blood Demon isn’t much of a stretch.

The development of the internet had accelerated the exchange of information, but it had also spread dangerous ideologies.

Moreover, because information traveled so quickly, it could also be distorted in increasingly subtle ways.

When you looked into the truth behind the people being idolized, most of them turned out to be thoroughly unimpressive.

Perhaps that was what the Heavenly Demon was aiming for.

It would be like luring out hidden cockroaches so they could be exterminated.

Luring out the cockroaches is all well and good...

But who was going to exterminate them?

That was a problem in itself.

Since the Heavenly Demon had suggested this herself, she must have had a solution.

Frankly speaking, all I had to do was drop the post and walk away. It was what people called pleasure without responsibility.

The incident with the Immortal King had merely made me more cautious. I had always been safely positioned in the eye of the storm.

[Wild Grylls: I’ll ask the head administrator for permission first. I don’t want to get on his bad side.]

[Heavenly Demon: Do so.]

It would be a serious nuisance if I got banned over this.

I immediately informed the head administrator.

[Wild Grylls: I don’t mind posting it, but will you be able to handle the aftermath? I think it could cause serious problems in the real world too.]

[Heavenly Demon: This Lady shall deal with everything, so you need not worry.]

Was the Gallery alone insufficient to relieve her loneliness and boredom?

After hearing the Heavenly Demon’s response, I considered it for a while before making my decision.

[Don’tAbandonTheHero: This much is fine! It isn’t an inflammatory propaganda post!]

[Wild Grylls: Isn’t provoking tension and conflict between nations prohibited?]

[Don’tAbandonTheHero: I think anyone who unquestioningly believes a gorilla’s claims is an idiot!]

[Wild Grylls: Um...]

Now that I thought about it, he had a point.

In any case, now that I had permission, I uploaded the recorded videos exactly as they were.

Title: Apparently, the Blood Demon underwent Feathered Ascension?

Wild Grylls

(Video of Kkobong saying that the Blood Demon underwent Feathered Ascension)

(Video of Kkobong angrily recounting his past)

From what he says, it sounds like the Blood Demon has already undergone Feathered Ascension. He keeps mentioning that the man repeatedly went up into the sky.

Does that mean Wi Hochang should be considered alive? Or how exactly does this work?

└SwordMaster: He underwent Feathered Ascension? Just how powerful was this man?

└Wild Grylls: According to the Heavenly Demon, he reached the Life-and-Death Realm. What do people in the West call that?

└SwordMaster: We don’t have a specific term for it. Most people ascend after reaching that point, so they can no longer influence the mortal world.

└Wait. Does that mean those two gorillas are the Blood Demon’s official successors?

└Holy shit, his successors are gorillas. Lmao.

└Those Blood Cult bastards worshipped the Blood Demon so obsessively, only to find out they’re worth less than gorillas. Lmfao.

—Wasn’t the gorilla leader fucking strong, though? He even used the Heavy Hand Technique.

└Those gorillas are simply powerful, dude;;

└Aww, are the Blood Cult fanatics seething? That still doesn’t change the fact that you’re inferior to gorillas, does it?

└Your precious Hochang is gone now. Lmao.

The comment section—and probably the Gallery as a whole—would become rather chaotic from this point onward.

Evening was approaching, so I wrapped up my work.

"Kkobong, come upriver with me. The rest of you come along too."

"Kkyuu!"

"..."

I headed upriver with my animal companions to prepare dinner.

Ordinarily, I would have retrieved the fish traps alone, but now I had Kkobong.

Once I showed him how to collect them, he copied me with ease.

This is exactly why you need a worker.

Having another pair of hands made everything so much easier.

Of course, I would still have to handle all the delicate work, such as cleaning and cooking the fish.

"Keh-eng!"

"What kind of herb did you bring me today?"

The die had been cast. I quietly closed the Gallery.

As a bonus, Father Raccoon had brought me more medicinal herbs. This time, he had brought an entire bundle.

The herb had striking snow-white flowers. I would have to ask about its effects later.

After we finished eating and I completed the cleanup, I accessed the Gallery again.

By now, I expected the Blood Cult members to be throwing an enormous tantrum.

Just as expected.

As expected, the Blood Cult and the other users were fiercely battling for control of the comment sections.

Not that it meant much, since the Blood Cult was already such an irredeemable mess.

Still, they were remarkably skilled at getting under people’s skin, and the ensuing flame war was incredibly intense.

[Sure, but you’re still beneath gorillas. Lmao.]

Of course, that single remark had every one of them seething.

Since it was an attack firmly based on fact, none of them could refute it.

Will the Heavenly Demon really be able to handle this?

With that thought, I opened the Gallery’s trending-post section.

One particularly conspicuous title caught my eye, and I opened it as if entranced.

Title: I’m Going to Kill Those Fucking Gorillas

BloodDemonRebornAllBloodBows

(Photo of palms stained red)

(Photo of the symbol representing the Blood Cult)

(Photo of a secret manual passed down within the Blood Cult)

This Sovereign shall never acknowledge those witless beasts as his successors.

This Sovereign will personally seek them out and claim their heads.

Furthermore, the one who dared mock the Blood Demon shall not escape unscathed.

I could not tell whether the post was part of an act or completely genuine.

Had it come from an anonymous user, I would have dismissed it. But the fact that the poster had created a registered account made it slightly more credible.

There are more lunatics out there than anyone could imagine, after all.

I was not particularly concerned.

If he wanted to come, he was welcome to try.

I was about to leave a comment when—

└Heavenly Demon: This Lady thought you were merely skilled at empty boasting, but it seems you are also talented at coloring pictures.

└BloodDemonRebornAllBloodBows: I cannot tell which of us is merely running their mouth. If you do not fear this Sovereign, show yourself before me in person.

—Heavenly Demon: Wait. This Lady shall send you a private message.

The Heavenly Demon’s comment was sitting there in plain sight.

Isn’t this an actual challenge to an IRL fight?

It felt as though something incredibly entertaining was about to happen.