Dusk (BL Light Novel)

When you're running a dungeon—especially a story dungeon—if there's an important gimmick involved, the game usually drops some kind of hint. That means an NPC like Adam or Abrea will casually toss out a line like, “I think this might make things easier if we do it this way!”—a subtle pointer on how to proceed.
And if not that, then at least an interactable object will sparkle like hell, making it painfully obvious. After all, not every player is a seasoned gamer like me or Retaking, so the devs throw in a few kindnesses here and there.

But not this time. This time I just felt numb. Was being a veteran one of the hidden prerequisites for unlocking this hidden quest? Otherwise, how the hell could they justify making it this unforgiving?
…No, wait. What's done is done, and there’s no rewinding. May as well think positive. We suffered through this hell because we missed the gimmick—but now that we know, the next trash wave should go a lot smoother. Even if the game didn’t spell it out for us, we figured it out ourselves. That counts for something.
[Party] Retaking: The real issue is... how are we supposed to figure out the gimmick when the mobs are already dead?

After that, Retaking went silent and started combing the garden. I just stood still and spun my camera to track him.
First, he looked for hidden interactables. He stared for a while at a broken mirror in one corner of the garden, then walked up to a large flowerbed with oversized blossoms. But when he couldn’t find anything useful, he looked a bit lost, pacing uncertainly.
Then suddenly, he darted off toward the edge of the garden like he had a new idea. He started walking in a perfectly straight line along the wall, changing direction only when he came across an odd-looking bush with strange flowers. From the smooth, deliberate path his character walked, you’d think he was gliding—but I knew that in real life, his left index finger was probably hammering the F key nonstop, hoping not to miss a single object, like a robot vacuum going to town.

Feeling too guilty to let him do all the work alone, I sidled over to the left-side hedge wall and started circling clockwise. But if I’m honest, it didn’t feel like we were gonna find anything. We’d already killed all the mobs, and if the gimmick involved them somehow, then it was probably already invalid.
I decided I’d finish circling halfway around before reporting that to Retaking. That’s when my character came to a massive arched door—one that led back into the structure. Curious, I moved the mouse to look around and spotted a weathered metal sign hanging vertically next to the door.
[Pullpullpullpullpullpullpullpullpullpullpullpull]

The most misread sign by Korean people. I guess the mobs here couldn’t read it either.
Aside from that, there wasn’t much worth checking. Pressing F near the “PULL” sign didn’t trigger anything, so I figured it was just decor.
I backed off and jogged over to inspect the opposite side. But just as I passed the center of the archway, it happened.

With a loud, grinding noise, a massive lock suddenly slammed shut over the door. Thick chains shot out from either side, winding around the frame until it was completely sealed. Startled, I instinctively hit my dodge key and rolled backward.
[Invaders cloaked in illusion. I know not how ⊛ Nоvеlιght ⊛ (Read the full story) you came to find this place, but—]
[Party] Retaking: ?

[Party] Honeybread: uh?
Text floated in the air, followed by a distorted high-pitched voice, speaking in a language I couldn’t understand. It sounded like a voice recording played on fast-forward.
Then, a glowing green object shot out of the lock and flew to the center of the garden. It looked just like the angel that had been guiding us earlier—same movement, same light, everything.

[You will be the last ‘god’ to set eyes upon this place.]
The screen began to shake. A cutscene started playing.
[Party] Retaking: ?
[Party] Retaking: What did you do?

[Party] Honeybread: ??
[Party] Honeybread: Walked??
[Party] Retaking: ?

[Party] Honeybread: ??
While I bickered with Retaking in party chat, the scene played out—vivid and detailed.
The garden floor began to crack. The lush grass and wildflowers trembled, then burst upward in jagged chunks of earth. These earthen platforms, all different sizes and shapes, floated into the air. Some still had roots poking out.

Then all those fractured landmasses began clustering toward a central point. And from that chaos emerged… a golem.
A massive construct—one of the “puppets” supposedly made by a long-lost race known as the Elementals.
I remembered a brief mention of them in an old story cutscene: the Elementals, who were said to have brought down divine wrath upon themselves after instigating disasters to wipe out their own “children,” the Shin-Ah tribe. It was said they were annihilated completely for this crime. But originally, the Elementals weren’t evil.

Before they were wiped out, they peacefully tended to nature. Sometimes, they’d craft golems from the elements to carry out tasks their fragile bodies couldn’t handle—just like I used my character in-game to do things I couldn’t in real life.
But those days were long gone. According to lore, the Elementals had been erased by the gods.
Since then, their golems—lifeless without a master—had never moved. You’d see them sometimes in ruins or dungeons, but they were always dead still. Just statues waiting forever for their account owner to log back in.

But now, for the first time, a golem was moving.
[- Abrea: “How is that golem moving!? It’s supposed to be impossible without Elemental power!”]
[- Adam: “If a golem that requires Elemental energy is moving… doesn’t that tell you everything?”]

Abrea turned to Adam, blue eyes wide with confusion.
[- Adam: “The Elementals are still alive.”]
As soon as he said that, a pale green aura shimmered across the golem’s body. The color was different from the mineral Abrea found at the trading post, but the glow was unmistakably similar.

The golem, which had been stiff and clumsy, suddenly began moving with fluid precision. Its joints, once grinding together with heavy thuds, now floated slightly apart, like repelling magnetic poles. As its movements grew smoother, it flexed its thick fingers with surprising speed.
By the time it stood upright and looked down on us, it was about three times the height of my character—massive and hulking.
[- Abrea: “Alive…? But the Elementals were wiped out by the gods for rebelling against them and destroying the Shin-Ah tribe…”]

The contradiction between what he’d been taught and the reality in front of him left Abrea visibly shaken. Adam delivered the final blow.
[- Adam: “You don’t need to deny it. You’ve been traveling with one this whole time.”]
That one.

Adam was saying that the “angel” guiding Abrea here—the one that emerged from the mineral—was actually an Elemental.
Abrea didn’t respond. He just stood there, dazed. I could guess why.
The revelation that the Elementals still existed shattered two deeply rooted beliefs for him:

First—“Were the gods actually powerless?”
If an all-powerful being, said to rule over all creation, failed to erase a single race… that meant the gods weren’t omnipotent.
And even if that omnipotence was just a myth, there was still the second question:
“Did the gods lie to us?”
If the Elementals were merely banished, why pretend they were destroyed? Why fabricate a narrative of total annihilation? Even if the gods couldn’t actually eliminate them, they still proclaimed it so—projecting absolute power to the Shin-Ah tribe.

Either way, the image of the gods Abrea had clung to was now cracked.
And Adam, the one who led him here, seemed curious to see what he would do—what he would think—after being forced to face the truth.
Abrea stood frozen, dazed.
And Adam, who had dropped this bomb with perfect calm, turned away from him and started walking toward Retaking.