Everyone Else is a Returnee

[IlHan, what are you doing right now?]

Liera asked in a kind voice. Yu IlHan replied in a bright voice, while pouring a sticky black liquid in the Giant Bucket.

“I’m filling my bath!”

[I know that you’re using the Giant Bucket to replace your baths nowadays. And it definitely does feel good, and it does feel like the internal mana is stimulated.....]

“So you know!”

Yu IlHan made a blinding smile. Meeting someone that liked the same thing as you was a happy thing. Yu IlHan was no exception, and he felt happy. He was also happy that he could give a nice bath to Liera. Of course, he wished she’d refrain from coming in together, completely nude.

[Hih......]

Yu IlHan’s smile was a heart-thumping attack for Liera who liked him. Liera momentarily forgot what she was about to say and stared at him, before coming back to herself and raising her voice.

[B, but why are you filling the bath with the blood of the perverted vibration demon!]

“To be exact, it’s mixed with dragon blood at a 3:7 ratio, and had undergone simple mana crafting with 4th class magic stone powder.”

[Same thing! No, wait, when he hell did you learn to mana craft on blood? The poison and curse would be enhanced!]

Yu IlHan sighed and replied.

“That’s what I wanted.”

[You might really be in danger at this rate.....?]

“I can’t help it though, there are no monsters that have potent poison and curses left!”

[And so you ‘can’t help’ but bathe in curse and poison!? Are you crazy!?]

“It’s fine. I already did the calculations.”

The Giant Bucket reacts sensitively to dragon materials. That was why he mixed dragon blood with the vibration demon’s blood. And in reality, the blood and the Giant Bucket was resonating, so at this rate, the poison would disappear sometime and give birth to a completely new material.

The reason he mana crafted was also to make the poison and curse last longer without dissipating. To him who was absorbing the majority of the magic engineering knowledge, this bloodbath was finished under his meticulous calculations.

Yu IlHan was sure that there would be no problems. If there were any, it would be the pain due to the curse and the poison, but this was something he had to endure in order to train skills, so that didn’t matter.

[Wouldn’t your skin turn green or something?]

“Enough of your worries.”

Yu IlHan ignored Liera’s worries and took off all his clothes. This time, Liera didn’t mention anything about bathing together and just watched him.

“Good.”

Before he took a bath, he checked the defense system of the fortress and renewed the settings to endure even if a higher existence attacked. Then he entered the blood bath without hesitation.

“Wao.”

[You alright? Are you ok!?]

Liera asked the moment he exclaimed as he entered. Yu IlHan wordlessly shook his head and submerged his body in it.

“Hhm, hmmmmmmmmm.”

[Are you really fine? Really?]

Yu IlHan honestly spoke his opinion.

“I feel like I’m melting.”

[Like, literally and not just feeling!? That means you are not fine!]

“I don’t think I’ll need to train Transcendent regeneration anymore.”

[That’s completely serious! Get out right now!]

However, Yu IlHan shook off Liera who was pulling on him and buried himself deeper inside the bucket. Receiving serious damage meant that it was also a suitable environment to raise his resistance to higher curse and extreme poison.

And in reality too, the moment Yu IlHan stepped into the bath, the two skills were stimulated and he could feel it grow very slowly, but surely, into a higher dimension. Of course, that wouldn’t lead to a skill level up immediately, but he estimated that he would be able to master these two skills in this bath.

“And Transcendent regeneration grows to boot.”

[Uu, that seems painful.]

The liquid glowed on its own in resonance with the Giant Bucket and assaulted Yu IlHan. Thanks to the dragon blood in Yu IlHan’s body that reacted to it, his body absorbed all of the poison without much resistance, and the effects were amplified.

However, he recovered all the injuries by transcendent regeneration, ignoring all pain and stimulus. His naturally-generated rest energy couldn’t keep up, and he had to hold a Breath cheerpack on his mouth from some time.

“Wine is best consumed while in a bath.”

[Is it a private romance to drink Breath instead of bloodrink in the bath?]

“No, I thought there might be some synergy since Breath is made of dragon blood.”

[I knew it! Aaah, even your body started glowing faintly!]

Yu IlHan didn’t hesitate to use his body to experiment!

Liera screamed, seeing the bloody water and Yu IlHan glow in the same light, but Yu IlHan himself was very calm. If he felt like a salmon going upstream, right now, he felt like a smooth-sailing boat.

‘But that doesn’t mean that Extreme poison resistance and Higher curse resistance is not rising. This feels strange.’

The pain of his body feeling like it was melting was also temporary. Yu IlHan soon felt like he was floating along with the feeling like he was completely free.

An unknown amount of time passed, when a new change occurred. It was a change that Yu IlHan didn’t expect at all, much less watch for.

‘This, is quite.....’

Giant Bucket, created with the hearts of dragons, bathwater made of dragon blood and demonic blood, the Breath he was drinking, and finally the dragon blood within his body.

While all those elements were interacting with each other inside Yu IlHan, he could feel a small aura that he did not notice until now, peeking its head out.

‘What could this be? An aura that appeared from my contract with Mir?’

The pain due to poison and curse no longer mattered. Yu IlHan closed his eyes and focused on chasing that small power that arose in the small area.

Yu IlHan had found that power only at this level. Right now, he couldn’t even follow its shadows, but the resonance of the energy inside the Giant Bucket was helping him. The more the resonance intensified, the more his body glowed.

[IlHan, IlHan?]

“I’m here.”

[It makes me worried if you close your eyes so suddenly.]

“......It’s fine. It looks like it’s successful.”

It was a completely different feeling than when he used the Giant Bucket as a simple bath. What word could best describe this? Awakening? No, to say that, there was a too long path ahead. He instinctively felt that this wasn’t a power that a mere 4th class could acquire.

“Then a higher existence?”

[I said that’s not an easy matter.]

“Yup, I felt it now too.”

[Huh?]

Liera tilted her head at the incomprehensible words, but Yu IlHan did not answer her. He only tried to raise the resonance further by drinking another sip of Breath.

[IlHan, your training for Extreme poison resistance and Higher curse resistance is going well, right?]

“Yeah, although that’s just the side effects.”

[Side effects? Then what’s your objective for going in there!? You aren’t turning into something like the perverted demon, right? Right? Please tell me!]

While Liera misunderstood more, Yu IlHan only buried his body in the bucket. He thought that he may have to bathe in this blood even if he finished training the two skills, and smiled at the thought. Liera shouted while watching.

[What is that suspicious smile? I’ll cry if you turn strange!]

“Please take care of me when I turn into a slime.”

[You’re so bad!]

And one year passed from then on.

Yu IlHan trained all sorts of skills during that time, killed the monsters on Earth with the flying fortress, bathed his body in blood full of poison and curse, and blew away all the monsters that grew like bamboo after a rain with his beams.

Since he killed all the monsters that walked around on Earth without even sleeping, it would be strange if his skills didn’t rise. Extreme poison resistance, Higher curse resistance, and Transcendent regeneration was mastered long ago, and the other skills, such as Deathgod, were asymptotically nearing mastery as well.

The problem was, as he had expected, the blessing of the goddess of fire. He blew away monsters flashily using Blaze whenever he fought, but it didn’t seem like the blessing would come anytime soon.

To Yu IlHan, who didn’t know the specific requirements to receive the blessing, he could just use his flames in the most various ways possible, and indeed, he tried all sorts of artifacts and traps and covered them with Eternal Flame using his full knowledge of his magic engineering, but no matter how much he struggled, he couldn’t see the slightest signs of the criterion fulfilling. Really, a frustrating matter.

“What happened when I received the blessing of the god of smithing?”

[Sorry, I don’t know either.]

“Yup, I don’t know either.”

Do recorded gods really not exist? Perhaps they just give blessings to those they take interest in, without any particular conditions at all?

As Yu IlHan had confidence to come last if there was a competition of gaining interests from other people, if that statement was true, he was planning to give up on 4th class and find a new path.

[I think the firepower of the flames had already gone beyond the extreme. What’s the problem?]

There was Blaze, which was at level 99 and was nearing mastery, as well as Eternal Flame and Dragonic blood that could enhance the firepower. If that didn’t work, then what else needed to be done?

Yu IlHan even wanted to learn fire magic somehow, even though he had no ties to magic itself, but unfortunately, the one by his side was not Erta but Liera.

Yu IlHan narrowed his eyes at Liera. Although he did only think of her has mental support, she really didn’t help out in other areas. At this rate, even Orochi, who was just a thought-soul would be of more help than her.

But Liera noticed his gaze and pouted.

[What do those eyes mean? You were thinking of something rude, weren’t you?]

“No, I was thinking that you were very pretty.”

[Really?]

Liera’s expression brightened. Yu IlHan felt like he would be purified facing her flawless smile, so he hurriedly turned his gaze away to the lands below the flying fortress. It wasn’t just to avoid her gaze, but to find monsters as well.

The blessing of the goddess of fire was a grand objective, and monster hunting was everyday life. If he tried doing whatever he had to do, then he would arrive at the objective some day. Yu IlHan believed in that, and always acted in accordance to that. Now was no different.

[Eheheh.]

“Yes, yes.”

Handling Liera that clung to him, Yu IlHan looked below when he noticed something.

“The speed is decreasing.”

[What speed?]

“The speed at which monsters appear.”

[Isn’t that a good thing? You get less pressure.]

“It’s not. I still have plenty of skills to raise.”

Liera sighed lightly after hearing his words. Well, what could she do when Yu IlHan was running a marathon at sprinting speeds? She only watched over him from the side.

[I don’t think anything bad will come out of slowing down...... *Sigh*. So, what are you going to do?]

“There are dungeons. Although I didn’t touch them until now because I was busy clearing out the monsters outside, the ones that lived for one year inside dungeons wouldn’t be so easy.”

[And so, you are entering them? What about the flying fortress then?]

“It would be bad if I can’t use something I made, so....”

[So?]

At this point, Liera should have noticed. That Yu IlHan was going to do something she had not expected, yet again.

Yu IlHan spoke.

“Liera, have you ever heard of the word ‘backdoor’?”

Author’s notes

Although this would be explained next chapter, backdoors usually refer to snippets of code for the program developer to access the program more easily. There is no need for user identification, so it’s great for all sorts of intrusion on privacy as well as criminal uses. Even nowadays, there are suspicious that some operating systems or programs may have backdoors.