"You're back? It doesn't look like you've changed much."

"What about you? Ah."

Kratia stopped studying the core to greet Lee Shin-Woo and Jin. Lee Shin-Woo tilted his head in confusion, realizing that she was actually talking to Jin, but Jin was nowhere to be seen.

"He ran off all of a sudden,” Kratia said dismissively. “He should be back soon."

...Perhaps seeing his human form again within the mental space had been traumatizing for him. Lee Shin-Woo promised that he would treat Jin well when he came back, and spoke up once more to ask Kratia a question.

"Do you know what ability Jin got?"

"Magic armor."

"...Magic armor?"

"Yeah. Jin got a skill that creates a magic barrier earlier, right? That and Steel Body were combined into an ability that encloses his body in magical steel armor. On top of that is an added blessing from the goddess, so I suppose we can trust in its effectiveness. Honestly, it’s a skill that greatly supplements his strength and endurance."

Lee Shin-Woo was pleasantly surprised that Jin had asked the goddess to fuse those two skills together. Since it was an ability created by the goddess, its power was guaranteed.

Moreover, Jin had acquired a skill that supplemented both his strength and endurance, which made it easy to set a goal for him to focus on in the future: Magic.

It's a good skill for Jin, who had it rough due to his irregularly high agility. It seems the goddess was being fairly considerate.

If only she had been as considerate to them in the past… It was unproductive to dwell on what could’ve been, though. Lee Shin-Woo smiled ruefully at the thought.

"But it looks like you haven't changed at all," Kratia said.

"Well, I haven't changed at all."

"Jin received such a great gift from her, yet... Ah, did your entire share go to Jin?"

"No, I got something else."

Lee Shin-Woo made it clear that he had no intention of telling her, and Kratia looked at him coyly. However, Lee Shin-Woo was completely immune to womanly charm and simply responded with a thin smile. She was only accompanying them temporarily to study Lee Shin-Woo's magic, so he had no intention of sharing everything with her.

[Hero's Will]

[As a result of your agreement with the goddess, you have opened up a new quest. Though the graves of the heroes she had sent to the Underground Empire before are mostly hidden, her blessing remains. Please give the heroes peace, inherit their strength and will, and purify the Empire. But be careful. Because these heroes, who have come back as undead, still believe themselves to be heroes.]

[Quest reward - Every hero you put to rest: 1 additional permit to Goddess’s Secret Shop and improvement to Invisible Heart]

Normally, when one took down an undead hero, they’d receive the undead hero's Perium as well as a permit to Goddess’s Secret Shop. Lee Shin-Woo would be getting an additional permit for every kill as well, so if he kept farming them, he could earn another visit to the Goddess’s Garden.

Moreover, there's a reward I didn't even ask for: improvement to Invisible Heart.

So long as it didn’t increase the skill level under the pretense of ‘improving’ it and thus decreasing the number of lives he had, he could honestly say that he was excited about the reward. In any case, he now knew where all the undead heroes scattered around the Empire were, meaning that he had fulfilled his objective in meeting the goddess.

"...I'm back."

"Welcome back... Ooh."

Lee Shin-Woo was silently congratulating himself for making the right decision when Jin returned. Seeing the magic steel armor that completely covered him struck Lee Shin-Woo with awe.

Calling it magic armor didn’t do it justice; it was more than a simple set of armor. ‘Power Suit’ would be an apter descriptor, as it reinforced Jin’s entire body. So that’s what Kratia meant when she said it’d supplement his strength and endurance! Jin wouldn’t feel the impact even if he’s hit quite hard!

"Is your mana okay?" Lee Shin-Woo asked.

"Maintaining it doesn't use any mana. It uses up mana whenever I'm hit, or when I use a lot of force."

"I think you should focus on magic rather than health and strength from now on."

"Yeah, I probably should."

Despite the fact that his ability had developed rapidly, Jin acted way too calmly. Lee Shin-Woo was about to carelessly ask if he was okay, but covered his mouth to stop himself. Jin had reverted back to his human self before turning into a Skeleton Horse again, so there was no way he was okay.

However, Jin noticed the slight bit of hesitation and movement from Lee Shin-Woo, most likely due to their assimilation. He could roughly figure out what Lee Shin-Woo was thinking.

"...I admire you, Shin-Woo."

"Stop it."

Jin understood that Lee Shin-Woo was trying to be considerate, and it surprised him belatedly that Lee Shin-Woo could be so composed despite experiencing the same thing he did. It felt like his own seething emotions were beginning to abate.

"As I thought, it seems to be a good idea to join you," Jin said.

"Man, stop it already."

Jin chuckled when he saw how uncomfortable Lee Shin-Woo was.

Kratia decided not to interfere with their conversation and instead immersed herself in the study of the core. It was good that she did. The two skeleton heroes proceeded to dissect the facade the goddess had put up.

"That woman,” Jin said. “It doesn't seem like she's just ill-natured."

Lee Shin-Woo agreed. "You think she made us into undead on purpose, right?"

"Yeah, but I don't know why she did it."

"I wonder. Perhaps it was for an unexpectedly trivial reason. She could've thought that she should send undead this time since nothing was going right by sending humans."

Lee Shin-Woo thought he'd seen the goddess’s true intentions in her garden. She said that it didn't matter what happened so long as the Empire was purified, but...didn’t that show just how desperate she was? Wouldn't her true intention be that she wanted to purify the Empire, no matter the cost?

"Is that really the only reason...?"

"Even if there’s another reason, we have no way of finding out now. We have to learn more about this world."

Arema Steelworker's Golems, General Seagald's undead, the Emperor in the capital...as well as the Skeleton Commander's last words, 'I wanted to leave the Empire'.

Lee Shin-Woo was sure that the secret surrounding the Underground Empire was far from simple. He needed to move more proactively, if for no other reason than to figure that secret out.

"Do you think our senior heroes will know anything about it?" Jin asked.

"Maybe. I can't really ask them about it in the chatroom."

Lee Shin-Woo shrugged. Truthfully, he was in a similar boat as Kratia. He couldn't easily trust someone before meeting them in person. Jin agreed to some degree; he hadn’t even been using the chatroom.

"Then what do we do now?"

"Before that... Kratia?"

"I want to keep studying this a bit more."

Kratia's cheeks were flushed because she was pissed that she hadn't been able to understand the core.

That would mean that she, who studied magic all her life, was lagging behind Lee Shin-Woo, so she couldn't help but get angry! Of course, Lee Shin-Woo was only able to understand it because of the unique circumstances he found himself in.

"It's probably impossible for me to create a Golem's mana,” Kratia muttered. “But now that it's come to this, I'm going to figure out a way to hack the generated mana no matter what."

"Remember to tell me how you did it, if you do find out."

"Yeah."

Lee Shin-Woo was only more talented than Kratia in changing mana and handling it, but he fell short in terms of magical theory. It might actually be a good idea to leave the core with her, he thought as he stood up.

"Then we’ve got to go to the sewers now. I'll eat some Puddings[1] no matter what."

"I wish it were actually pudding that we could eat..." Jin grumbled.

They had been talking about profound topics like the goddess’s true objective and the Empire's secret, yet their conversation suddenly shifted back to reality, namely the sewer dungeon awaiting them, which was truly depressing.

Regardless, Jin had to follow along, so he simply sighed and asked, "You don't need to go to the Secret Shop?"

"There’s a long way for me to go before I reach level 6, so it’ll be a while before I visit the shop."

Lee Shin-Woo had reached level 5 since his last visit to the Secret Shop, as well as accumulated more than 3,000,000 Perium from clearing out the Golems and purifying a city. However, he had to raise his stats by around 1,500 to reach the next level, so what would buying one or two bones do? Moreover, he only had one permit to Goddess’s Secret Shop left after entering Goddess’s Garden, so he planned to gather more Perium and acquire at least one more permit.

"So we’re going into the sewers..."

"I wonder if there's a secret facility here as well,” Lee Shin-Woo said. “It'd be great if there is."

Unfortunately, they had no such luck; there was no secret facility in this particular sewers, which wasn’t surprising since Anti-Skull wasn’t found in every single city. However, the sewers were overflowing with Slimes that thrived from eating filth, and Lee Shin-Woo wasn’t going to just kill them.

"For the past few decades, these Slimes had gradually and naturally fused together and developed their abilities. However, the Great Slime I encountered last time was afraid of my flames and started to eat any Slimes it came across."

"How can you be so sure that it’d work?" Jin's goblin fire shone with sympathy as he watched the Slimes run around hectically from the flames attached to their heads. "And you call yourself a human?"

"Can't you see I'm a skeleton?"

Perhaps because this was a commercial city that various people frequented, the amount of wastewater in the sewers was no joke; the quantity of discharged mana was equally large, which might be the reason why it was a level 3 dungeon. The Slimes they encountered at the entry area were at least level 2.

But how could Lee Shin-Woo progress by killing weak monsters like them? The only answer was for them to fuse.

"Now fuse! I said, fuse!"

"You..."

Soon, one of the Slimes responded to Lee Shin-Woo's devilish whispers. Ultimately, it realized that if it didn't want to be burnt and leave behind only its core. It would have to eat its comrades!

Its target struggled, but failed to escape the fate of getting absorbed. The Slime seemed excited about its newfound size as it started to eat the others as well. In no time, it had gathered a considerable amount of mana, and managed to level up and become an elite!

[Lv3 Great Slime]

"See? It worked. It's really easy to make an elite monster."

"..."

Jin looked terrified. The Great Slime staring at them vacantly had finished eating all of the Slimes and was rushing further into the passageway, as if it knew it was still no match for Lee Shin-Woo.

Since it was a level 3 dungeon, there should be some level 3 Slimes. The Great Slime should be able to transform into a King Slime after eating all of its competitors, no, perhaps even something greater than that! Lee Shin-Woo didn't hide his excitement as he followed behind it. Jin just prayed that he would be able to leave these dirty sewers soon.

[Ggureureureureureuoooooooh!]

"Oooooooh!"

Finally, their target had finished eating all of the other Slimes in the dungeon and evolved into a level 5 Great King Slime. It wanted to get revenge on Lee Shin-Woo, but unfortunately, it couldn't move properly because it had gotten too big. In the end, it got swept away by Lee Shin-Woo's flames and died after one grand explosion.

1. T/N: His 'affectionate' term for slimes.