By Zephyria 
The initial flight was very comfortable and smooth. That is, at least for the first two or three hours.
Seo Yakrin, whose contamination level had risen from using her abilities for a long time, briefly landed on the wasteland they were crossing. She clenched her fists as if to quell her anger and irritation. After a few deep breaths, she unfurled her massive wings with a sound of bones and flesh twisting. They sprang out like springs, as if releasing something she had been holding back.
Seo Yakrin, shaking her head, pecked Yoon Seung-ryong’s head for no reason. As Yoon Seung-ryong let out a squawk, she let out a cry and lowered her body. It was a signal to get on.
“What a temper…”
Yoon Seung-ryong gritted his teeth and leaped onto Seo Yakrin’s body. Yohan also cautiously climbed onto Seo Yakrin’s body, feeling guilty. As soon as Lee Hyun-muk climbed on last, Seo Yakrin hastily took flight. Yohan screamed.
“Aaaah!”
Altitude rapidly increased and then plummeted in an instant. With every flap of her wings, it felt like her organs were being pulled out, and the surrounding scenery blurred past. The wind was so strong it was hard to keep her eyes open. Yohan, fumbling around and finding his Darling, clung to him more and more tightly. Lee Hyun-muk smiled and pulled him into his embrace. Once he was held tightly, he felt a little better.
Although the flight was rough and wild, thankfully Seo Yakrin had enough reason left to know the direction they needed to go. However, there was a problem. Seo Yakrin was not the only flying entity in this Abyss.
Small creatures like the Bone Birds of the Reed Sea were overwhelmed by Seo Yakrin and fled in a hurry rather than attacking. However, larger creatures that moved in groups followed them cautiously, flying nearby. Seo Yakrin’s head kept turning from side to side, annoyed.
Monster birds with particularly long tail feathers cried out with caws. The moment they flew very close, clicking their beaks, Lee Hyun-muk’s lightning strike flashed. A few monster birds, scorched by the electricity, fell, emitting smoke. Then, the birds swimming nearby descended instantly and began to tear at their own kind. Seeing them devour their own kind made Yohan’s stomach churn, and he scowled.
As time passed, even the occasional attacks and the rough flight, which he thought he would never get used to, eventually became familiar. Yohan would occasionally purify Seo Yakrin to prevent her from losing too much reason, and even dozed off. It was only natural to adapt after days of falling, rapid ascents, and attacks.
After landing in a suitable place to rest and flying for nearly a week, they finally arrived at the Ruined City sector.
“I… just for a moment, I’m carsick…”
Just like how people get land sickness after being on a boat for a long time and then stepping onto land, Joo Ho-young was exactly like that. Perhaps because he was accustomed to moving quickly, he suffered alone from motion sickness and let out a groan.
“Noona Yakrin, thank you. Thanks to you, we were able to arrive so early.”
Seo Yakrin, who was also groaning in bed like Joo Ho-young, let out a pained sound while receiving Yohan’s diligent purification. Listening closely, it seemed she had severe muscle pain in her shoulders.
“I’m never doing this again…”
“Me neither…”
After laying the two ailing people down gently, Yohan surveyed their surroundings. They had landed on the rooftop of a tall building. Not a building in the Ruined City. They had flown as fast as possible, but a new sector had already appeared by the time they arrived. This was the rooftop of a building in a newly appeared Korean sector city.
Beyond the rooftop railing, a dark and gloomy city landscape was revealed. The area where the Rift had already progressed and civilians had been evacuated was desolate. Yohan scanned the area for a long time, hoping to find any mercenaries who might have been caught while exploring the Rift.
“What are you looking for, Yohan-ah?”
“Just in case there are people.”
He wondered if there might be others, just as Lee Hyun-muk and Yohan had found each other. However, Lee Chan-ha shook her head and said.
“There’s a reason why there are almost no people in the Abyss. Creatures with a certain level of intelligence can’t survive here for long. Within a few days, most are eaten by monsters, or if they survive, they commit suicide… If it weren’t for Team leader, we probably would have…”
Lee Chan-ha trailed off, smiling faintly. Thinking back, Yohan himself was a special case. He was lucky and survived without being corrupted thanks to his Awakening ability; otherwise, he would have been eaten by monsters before even meeting Lee Hyun-muk.
After Seo Yakrin recovered her strength, they descended the building. The signs in Korean were a welcome sight. Quite a few buildings were still intact. They settled in one of them and waited endlessly. However, as Joo Ho-young had said, the city sector did not get ejected out of the Abyss again.
Yoon Seung-ryong had long since given up and was looking for a place to farm. Joo Ho-young was not greatly disappointed either. That meant he hadn’t expected much in the first place. Only Yohan was disappointed and felt dejected. Seeing the Korean sector city made him want to go home even more.
“Yohan-ah.”
Lee Hyun-muk approached Yohan, who was sipping a drink Yoon Seung-ryong had somehow procured. Yohan leaned slightly against Lee Hyun-muk, grateful for his presence. Then, he gazed blankly up at the dark, dark red and gloomy sky of the Abyss.
“Is there really no way to get out of here?”
“There must be, but we just haven’t found it yet,” Lee Hyun-muk replied, embracing Yohan. He had never given up on any goal since falling here. Yohan sighed and looked at the Black Mountain peaks beyond the city skyline. Eternal Stones, shining exceptionally white like perpetual snow, were clustered there.
He recalled his first settlement in the Japanese sector, which had been ruined by the Flood. It was a place he had put considerable effort into and grown fond of, only to be swept away and disappear in a horrific and disgusting disaster in an instant. This time, having dealt a significant blow to the core of the Abyss, the Flood would not come for a while. Even if it did, it wouldn’t seem like such a serious threat.
But, when that time came, they would have to leave the places they had painstakingly made their homes again. Waiting for new sectors to fall from Earth, settling and leaving, settling and leaving again… Just thinking about it made him sigh. Was there truly no way out? Was it just that they hadn’t found it, as Lee Hyun-muk said? Yohan pondered Joo Ho-young’s hypothesis once more.
‘Let’s assume the Abyss is a disguise, and the Flood is a kind of powerful stomach acid. And if it ‘digests’ too much, the Abyss spits it out and swallows it again…’
He then re-examined his own abilities. He could purify and remove Corruption with his purification. It would eliminate even digestive fluids, which would be a significant problem. It couldn’t digest, and it couldn’t supply nutrients. Purification prevents the Abyss from digesting… And it must be in a weakened state after suffering severe damage recently…
At that moment, an idea flashed through his mind. Yohan thought of the city sectors they had passed through. Old, worn, dirty, and full of monsters. On the other hand, this Korean sector had not been in the Abyss for even a month.
This place was a large chunk that had barely been digested…
“We need to purify it.”
Yohan mumbled what had suddenly occurred to him. As he spoke it aloud, his thought became more concrete. He stood up abruptly and turned to his Darling, who had been silently by his side. With eyes shining brightly, he shouted loudly.
“Lee Hyun-muk-ssi, I think I know how to get out of here!”
Yohan urgently gathered the group. The members, who had been idly lounging around, having settled in the relatively comfortable new city sector, all gathered in one place. Yohan, his face flushed red with excitement from earlier, said.
“Um, I’ve been thinking about it a lot. The Abyss doesn’t just swallow any place on Earth, right? It only happens in areas where a Rift phenomenon occurs first and becomes sufficiently contaminated.”
“Uh… right. It seems so.”
Yoon Seung-ryong nodded, furrowing his brow as if recalling a distant past. One day, a crack like a Rift suddenly appeared in the air, and the contamination level rapidly increased around it. After being left unattended for years, or months, a strange black hole-like phenomenon would suddenly appear and swallow everything.
“The Abyss can only consume contaminated land. If that’s the case, then what Ho-young saw back then – wasn’t it that it swallowed areas that weren’t Rift zones and then spat them back out? So, if we purify this entire city… perhaps we can get out of the Abyss by the same principle!”
After he poured out his words excitedly, a moment of silence followed. Yohan, thinking he might have said something wrong, shrank back dejectedly when Seo Yakrin let out a bewildered sound.
“Huh. …Is that so?”
Then, Seo Yakrin also became very excited and jumped to her feet. Yohan’s conjecture sounded quite plausible. Joo Ho-young’s face, which was always pale and white, showed a rare flush of excitement.
“That’s right! We didn’t have purification ability users back then… it’s something we’ve never tried before. It might actually work!”
However, Lee Chan-ha, who had been listening with a deep frown, slowly shook her head.
“It sounds like a plausible theory. But can you really purify this entire city, Yohan-gun?”
“That… I’m not sure.”
Yohan answered hesitantly. The sphere-shaped purification field he projected had a truly powerful purifying force, but recalling its size when he deployed it over the Reed Sea or Black Mountain, it didn’t seem like it could cover this entire city. However… Lee Hyun-muk seemed to read Yohan’s mind and asked.
“Yohan-ah. Your abilities significantly increased after you were severely ill this time, didn’t they?”
“Yes, that’s right! I’ve completely recovered now too!”
Yohan said, almost stamping his foot. Every time he used his abilities, squeezing them out of his entire body, he experienced great growth. And perhaps because he had pushed himself to the point of bleeding in the core of the Abyss, this time the growth was even greater.
“Then, let’s try it first, without overdoing it. And… we need to consider how the Abyss will react to this attempt.”
Lee Hyun-muk’s words made Yohan pause. He recalled how monsters had swarmed like rabid dogs when they tried to break the core in the Abyss. The group had said that the Abyss swallowing a new sector was unusual. If it had forcibly swallowed it out of immediate need for nutrients, it wouldn’t likely let them make it spit it out.