Chapter 74. At the Edge of Paradise (2)

“Keuh…Kukuku…”

Torres was dying, and yet, he burst out into laughter. He finally stopped breathing after laughing for a long time.

‘...The fuck? Did he go crazy?’

Seo Jun-Ho tilted his head as stared at him. As if he refused to let go of his life and regrets, Torres’ eyes were still open.

“That’s a good look for you. Keep it open even in your death.” Seo Jun-Ho wiped the blood off Black Dragon Fang on Torres’ clothes. Then, he held out his hand to Torres’ forehead.

“Confession of the Dead.”

[The Confession of the Dead has begun.]

Seo Jun-Ho got comfortable on the floor as the Memory Projection appeared before him. The Frost Queen tilted her head.

“Is this one of the ‘dramas’ you were talking about?”

“No… But now that I think about it, this is your first time seeing this, isn’t it?”

She quickly became interested when he briefly explained the skill.

“Oh my! So in other words, this mystical skill allows you to get a glimpse of the dead’s life?”

“Yeah. I can get a lot of info on the fiends with this. There’s no way that the director of Paradise is the end of the trail.” He believed that at the very least, Torres was likely just one of the middle-ranking fish.

‘I’ll comb through all your memories and find something useful.’

Seo Jun-Ho started the playback from the very beginning. Like everyone else, Torres had adolescent years.

‘So he didn’t have a good childhood.’

As an adult, Torres worked as a Player, but his skills had their limits. And every time that happened, the seeds of inferiority that were planted deep within him slowly sprouted.

“He became a fiend 10 years ago and acted as a spy.”

“To think that he sold out his own comrades...He is a heartless human.”

After that, Torres had become involved in big scandals on the 2nd floor.

“This bastard was involved in the Player disappearance case and the phantom village incident?”

They were some of the biggest scandals to have occurred. Torres used his skill to manipulate people’s minds and caused confusion in the investigations.

“And then he received his position in Paradise as a reward.” After building the Fiend Association’s trust in him for 10 years, he had finally become the director of Paradise a few months ago.

‘What’s something useful I can get from here…’

Seo Jun-Ho’s eyes shifted, taking in every little detail from the playback.

“So there’s seven of them.” That was the number of high executives in the Fiend Association.

‘But there’s nothing about the President.’

Even though Torres was the director of Paradise, he had no clue about the other members.

‘How on earth does someone like the director of Paradise not know anything about the other members? Just how big are they?’

Seo Jun-Ho started to realize just how cautious the Fiend Association was. After Specter had burned their roots, they had decided to go completely undercover. All he knew about their hierarchy was that the members received orders from the seven executives.

‘This isn’t good. There’s less info than I thought.’

On top of that, this useless man didn’t even know where the Association was located. The only thing he knew was that one of the executives was called ‘Chef.’

“Contractor, in this world, is a ‘chef’ not a person who cooks?”

“Yeah, it means the same thing here… this is just a weird nickname.” He changed the timestamp to find more clues about ‘Chef.’ It was the day that Torres had become the director.

***

Knock knock.

Torres knocked on the director’s office, his face tense.

“Come in.”

Torres entered the room. He bowed deeply. “It’s an honor to meet you, Roxan-nim!”

“Just call me Chef. Are you Torres?”

“Yes, Chef! As of today, I am the new director of Paradise!”

His energetic responses were like that of a new recruit. On the flip side, the man called Roxan was looking out the window with his hands behind his back.

“What are your skills?”

“I can manipulate the mind. It’s A-grade.”

“Really? It sounds delicious.” He turned around, but his face wasn’t visible because of the harsh back lighting.

“Mmph…!” Torres knelt as he met Chef’s eyes; he was dripping in cold sweat. Kneeling was something that fiends did when they met another that was much stronger than them.

“No need to be so nervous. I just want a taste.” He laughed, a small orb floated in front of him. He opened his mouth wide and swallowed it in one gulp. “Mm...What a peculiar taste.”

He gave a satisfied nod and took out a notebook from the drawer, writing something down. “I wonder what ingredients I need to create such a taste...It may be possible with what I have right now…”

He was deep in thought for a while, but he finally closed the notebook. “I think I’ve found a useful recipe. Thank you for giving me such a good ingredient.”

“O-of course.”

“As for your compensation...Yes. Let me tell you something interesting.” He leaned, perched on the windowsill. “Torres. When do you think Paradise was founded?”

“As far as I know, it was founded around 24 years ago.”

“Precisely. And do you know why it was made?”

“Um...Wasn’t it to cultivate powerful fiends?”

“Pffft, powerful fiends?” Chef burst out into laughter as he shook his head. “To make good food, you need fresh and good ingredients. It’s the same for fiends.” He tapped on the window with his fingernail. “Look at the children running around. They are talentless rubbish that we found on the streets. Do you think such substandard ingredients can become strong even if we feed them the best demon blood?”

“...I don’t think so.” Torres shook his head.

“Exactly. They aren’t Players. Even if we feed them the blood, they’ll only become half-rate fiends.”

He opened a thick book sitting on the desk. “In the last 24 years, Paradise has successfully created 2,985 fiends. 1,898 were 3rd-grade ones that couldn’t even awaken their abilities, 1,082 were 2nd-grade ones that could do so, and there were only five 1st-grade ones who became notably powerful.”

“Ah, so one of them was Nazad-nim’s disciple, the Skeleton Mage,” Torres said.

“Yes. He is the only 1st-grade that was created during the 4 years that I’ve been overseeing Paradise.” There was a sense of pride in Chef’s voice. He closed the book. “It seems that we have strayed from our original topic.”

“I’m still listening.” Torres swallowed and perked his ears. His heart pounded at the thought of learning secrets that no other fiends would know.

“24 years ago, the fiends that were in hiding went up to the Frontier and created the Association. But they were still cautious. Even though the 5 Heroes were already dead, the fiends were afraid that they could come back and kill them all. That’s how great Specter’s effect was. Their fear could not be erased in just a year.”

The fiends had to live every day in fear. At that time, the President of the Fiend Association made a decision after watching the fiends live in fear.

“The President decided that we needed power. Undefeatable power, devastating power that could fight against the 5 Heroes even if they returned!”

At that time, the only thing that all the fiends could remember was one ability.

“They had all encountered it before. They had witnessed its overwhelming power with their own eyes.”

It was the strongest elemental skill used by Specter—the Watchguard of Darkness.

“...W-wait. So Paradise was created to create the second Specter?” Torres looked shocked. It was never even in his imagination that Paradise had been created for such a reason.

“Pffft, is it that hard to believe? Think about it. What would happen if we managed to obtain even half...No, even a fourth of that power?”

“...If we combined it with demonic energy, that person would become the strongest fiend in history,” Torres concluded.

“That’s exactly it.” Chef clapped. “So the fiends worked around the clock. But in the end, the experiments failed. The chance of talentless orphans awakening such a powerful skill is close to 0%. That’s why I came down to the 1st floor. Instead of leaving it to chance, I came to create a Darkness skill myself.”

“Ah!” Torres exclaimed. He remembered Chef’s skill. “So you plan to use Perfect Taste (S).”

“Bingo.”

Chef’s skill was none other than Perfect Taste (S). He could materialize others’ skills and taste them. If they were F-rank or lower, he could even use them himself. Moreover, he could take the skills that were F-rank and combine them to ‘cook’ a new skill that was higher in rank. In theory, he could even create an S-rank skill.

“But any food has an expiration date.” He smacked his lips as if regretted it. “F-rank skills can only last two months.” Even if he copied them, they would disappear after that time. That was why in order to obtain fresh ingredients, he had to routinely kidnap children every two months.

“This place is truly a paradise for me,” he said as he stroked the desk delicately. “It’s hard to find a place with as many fresh ingredients as we have here.”

“Then...Since you’re returning to the 2nd floor, does that mean you’ve succeeded?” Torres asked carefully. Despite being an executive, Chef had already been on the 1st floor for 4 years. It was impossible to guess how many skills he had cooked up during that time.

Chef shook his head. “I failed to recreate Watchguard of Darkness. The most similar one was the shadow attribute.”

“Ah! I did hear that you granted the Shadow Brothers their abilities.”

“It was still a failure. Compared to Specter’s Skill, they’re no better than trash.”

He suddenly started to laugh. “Fufu, it’s simple. I no longer need to waste my time here.”

“Is that because Specter has returned?”

“Of course. Rather than trying to create a skill on the 1st floor, it’s much easier to wait on the 2nd floor until he comes up.” He expected it to be easy to recreate Watchguard of Darkness once he had a taste of it.

“Ahhh, I wonder how it’ll taste...I’m already excited.”

He trembled whilst licking his lips.

***

“...Stop skill use.” Seo Jun-Ho whispered. He wiped his face with his hands. His thoughts were all jumbled after hearing the truth.

‘This fucking place… it was made because of me?’

He felt like a boulder was dropped on his chest. Paradise was created to create a copycat of him?

“They made thousands of children into fiends…”

Because of him...

“Dammit all!” He punched the wall, gritting his teeth. But it didn’t relieve any of his anger.

“Contractor...It is not your fault,” the Frost Queen gently said.

“I still feel like shit.”

Reality wasn’t always so sweet. And this time, it made his entire mouth go dry.

“Once you become a fiend…” You couldn’t go back. He had discovered this fact while hunting countless fiends in the past, and Shim Deok-Gu had confirmed that it still wasn’t possible to turn a fiend back into a human.

‘Then all those children… they suffered because of me...The children…’

Even if he didn’t want to, he had to end it with his own hands.