Lee Soo-Ah and Shin Kyung-Ah… Unfortunately, those two women couldn’t come back here.

[The possessed female human was expelled from the party.]

[The possessed female human was expelled from the party.]

Seong-Il must have seen the series of notification messages that popped up last minute, which was probably why he didn’t ask why they couldn’t come back with us. However, it wasn’t something I had done as a party leader. The System had filtered them automatically. Seong-Il seemed to be lost in thought about them even when I was fighting against the Baclan King.

“Can we not go back?” he asked.

“No.”

Silence reigned after that exchange. We were greeted with sorrowful cries on the night we returned from the long journey. We were in an abandoned village in District 15, and the sounds were coming from the monsters beyond the boundary. The other groups were still going through the Final Stage of Act One. The monsters were scattered throughout the area, and the ones that had crawled out of the spires in Act One, Stage Two were also there, wandering through the darkness over the boundary.

The next day, the cries of monsters turned into screams. One combat unit of Awakened seemed to be fighting. Soon, they entered...