Lee Jungryong suddenly wondered.
Where had things gone wrong? And what had gone wrong?
Driving out his hyung’s1 bloodline and seizing control of Ares Guild?
Committing all manner of crimes to keep the Guild growing, then feeding his greed without ever learning to be satisfied?
Or perhaps…
Making an enemy of him?
Lee Jungryong’s gaze settled on one person—a young man whose body was stained with blood from the bleeding wounds covering him.
The young man looked up at the sky, drew a deep breath, and parted his lips.
“Jungryong.”
Why was it? The moment Lee Jungryong heard that quiet voice, a chill ran down his spine. Though he had not suffered a single wound, he felt as if a blade had cut him.
Looking at him, Jin Taekyung formed a savage grin.
“Let’s clip those claws.”
“…!”
Fwish!
The wind stirred, and in the instant the space between them vanished, Lee Jungryong swung his sword with a sharp whistle.
Shwick!
A dazzling concentration of qi sliced through Jin Taekyung’s body. But instead of blood, only wind scattered through the air.
An afterimage. Not the real thing.
A red alarm bell rang in Lee Jungryong’s mind.
Behind me!
It was too late to swing his sword. Lee Jungryong spun around like lightning and drove out his fist.
A fist wrapped in pure-white Force collided with a palm carrying blue flame.
Kwaang!
The world shook.
No—the thing shaking was Lee Jungryong’s vision.
Flung backward by an irresistible force, he twisted in midair and righted himself.
His fist throbbed, and something surged up from deep inside him. But he was not even given time to spit out the blood.
Shweeeeeek!
A spearhead had already rushed up to his face.
The spear Jin Taekyung had hurled was aimed straight at Lee Jungryong’s chest. Gritting his teeth, he poured all his strength into knocking it upward with his sword.
Kagagagagak! Kwaang!
The spear narrowly missed and smashed through the concrete, leaving a massive crater.
Lee Jungryong succeeded in deflecting it, but the spear’s terrifying power and spin tore his hand open, sending blood spraying into the air.
He paid it no mind and thrust his foot through the thick cloud of dust.
Boom!
The dust and fog scattered in every direction, unable to withstand his blinding speed.
At the end of Lee Jungryong’s step stood a single person.
“Reckless, aren’t you? My kind of guy.”
Jin Taekyung was already holding a new spear. He brought the spearhead down in slashes from every direction. Space split apart, and flames surged upward.
The tip of Lee Jungryong’s sword pierced straight through the center.
Whoom! Boom!
Compressed air burst outward. The flames parted, opening a new path.
Lee Jungryong shot through it like an arrow, charging toward Jin Taekyung.
Die.
His sword held a single thought. It shone brilliantly and moved as fast as light.
Yet within the slowed-down world, Jin Taekyung’s eyes were clearly smiling.
This is…
Something was wrong.
Before Lee Jungryong could finish the thought, Jin Taekyung’s hand gripping the spear blurred.
At the same time, tremendous force slammed into the blade that had seemed poised to pierce Jin Taekyung’s throat.
Shick! Kwaang!
A thunderous boom rang out, loud enough to leave his ears ringing.
Lee Jungryong slid more than ten meters2 against his will and swallowed the blood rising in his throat.
It isn’t over yet.
He could not fall. He could not show weakness.
He was Lee Jungryong—the man who had fought his way through the vortex of the Great Cataclysm, the most violent upheaval in human history. An ambitious warlord born of his age.
Lee Jungryong tightened his grip on his sword, now webbed with fine cracks.
I won’t die. I can’t die.
There had been countless twists and turns on the road that had brought him here. He had known bottomless despair and days of unbearable rage.
He had spent half his life in someone else’s shadow, branded as number two.
No. Perhaps even now…
But…
“Not anymore.”
Crack. Crack-crack-crack.
Veins bulged across his body, and his muscles swelled.
Powerful qi erupted from Lee Jungryong’s entire body, pressing down on everything around him.
He drew out every last scrap of strength he had saved for the very end and glared at Jin Taekyung with bloodshot eyes.
“He’s as good as gone now. The greatest in the world is… me.”
Vrrrrrrm.
Everything around Lee Jungryong trembled.
Jin Taekyung watched him with calm eyes that held not the slightest hint of doubt.
“I don’t think so.”
Kuwaaaaaang!
The waves of energy pouring from both men clawed at everything around them.
In a fleeting instant split into countless fragments, they charged toward each other at the same time.
Kwaang!
Their collision came like a flash of light, and the aftermath was immense.
Amid thunderous booms that shook the world, they became two streams of wind twisting together.
A spearhead wrapped in blue flame and a sword enveloped in dazzling light flew at each other.
Shwish-shwish-shwish-shwish!
Masses of light tore through space as they charged.
Jin Taekyung kicked off the ground and soared into the air, driving his spear down with tremendous force.
One strike. Two. Three.
Every time spear and sword collided, a thunderous boom erupted along with a massive shock wave.
Before long, blood from the corner of Lee Jungryong’s mouth was scattering in droplets.
“Cough.”
He staggered for an instant.
At the brief glimpse of weakness shown by the old lion, the young male lion bared his teeth.
The spearhead swept horizontally, slashing fiercely toward Lee Jungryong’s side.
Kwaang!
The ground shook as though an earthquake had struck.
They were close enough to feel each other’s breath. Lee Jungryong barely managed to block the spear, and over their locked weapons, his gaze met Jin Taekyung’s blazing eyes.
He’s young. Just as I once was.
Why?
Why had that thought come to him now, of all times?
Why had remembering his own pathetic, wretched past kept him from blocking Jin Taekyung’s flame-wreathed palm?
Boom!
Heat.
The qi protecting every inch of his body shattered, and terrible heat seeped deep into his lungs.
Amid the blue flames filling his vision and the searing pain, memories from long ago flashed through Lee Jungryong’s mind like arrows.
“Your name?”
“Pardon?”
“Ah, yes. I meant you.”
“What’s this sudden exchange of names?”
It was the early days of the Great Cataclysm. They had met while surrounded by countless monsters, trapped in a desperate life-or-death crisis.
“Just because. You looked about my age, and it was nice to see someone my age.”
“Young fellow, you’ve suddenly gotten awfully casual. You look much younger than me.”
“Then should we be friends? I don’t mind.”
“…Do you really have time to say things like that in a situation like this?”
“Maybe not.”
Lee Jungryong had thought the man was half-mad with fear of death.
At least, he had thought so until that madman suddenly stepped forward and swept away more than several thousand monsters.
Crack-crack-crack!
“What the hell…”
“Now! Charge!”
After the battle, the man returned and asked him the same question.
“Your name?”
“Lee Jungryong… sir.”
“Cool name. How old are you? Oh, I’m five years older. That’s hardly a difference. Should we just be friends?”
“No. Hyung.1”
He looked absurdly young and was unbelievably strong.
At their first meeting, A-rank Hunter Lee Jungryong had found his hero—and, at the same time, an immense mountain range he could never cross.
“By the way, hyung.1”
“Yeah?”
“What’s your name…?”
“Oh, I haven’t told you yet.”
The man had grinned and said,
“Cheon Taemin.”
Cheon Taemin. Cheon Taemin. Cheon Taemin…
No matter how many times he repeated the name, it resonated deeply within him.
Even when he tried to forget, the face remained etched in his mind.
A giant who cast an immense shadow over Lee Jungryong’s life.
“Get lost! I said get out of my sight right now—!”
Lee Jungryong roared, his voice boiling with rage.
The vision that had been bleached white with pain shattered like glass, and the wind rushing past his ears was fierce.
When he came to his senses, he was crashing through a high-rise building and slamming into cold concrete with tremendous force.
Kwa-gwa-gwang!
“Cough.”
Dark-red blood spurted between his lips.
His vision blurred, and pain assailed him from every part of his body.
Perhaps his shattered ribs had pressed against his organs, because breathing was difficult. His broken left arm and leg dangled uselessly.
A potion. The potion…
This was his last chance.
The attack had stopped, if only for a moment. He had to heal himself now.
Lee Jungryong groped at his side with his relatively uninjured right arm, but the spot where his dimensional pouch should have been was empty.
Instead, he found someone approaching from far away.
“Ah, looking for this?”
Rrrrrroll. Clink.
A magic-enhanced glass bottle rolled over and came to rest at Lee Jungryong’s feet.
It was a Top-Grade Potion, a miraculous medicine said to save anyone as long as they still drew breath.
There was, however, a considerable difference between it and the state Lee Jungryong remembered.
“I was so thirsty that I drank it. Man, it was refreshing. Did you just come back from a mineral spring?”
As Jin Taekyung approached, speaking as casually as ever, Lee Jungryong let out a hollow laugh.
Jin Taekyung.
His name, face, and personality were all different.
But at that moment, Lee Jungryong finally understood.
When he had first encountered Jin Taekyung, he had felt something familiar deep in his chest. He had tried to ignore it, disguising it beneath the words anxiety and interest.
“Jungryong.”
The quiet voice pierced his ears.
Jin Taekyung was already standing before him, the image of another person superimposed over his face.
Lee Jungryong groaned out the words.
“Who are you? Who the hell are you?”
He wanted to ask. He was desperate to know.
How could Jin Taekyung resemble him so closely?
Why had some lowly F-rank Hunter grown stronger instead of Lee Jungryong—the man who had followed Cheon Taemin, accomplished countless feats, and been hailed as a hero?
“Me?”
The next moment, Jin Taekyung smiled and continued,
“Jungryong’s personal bully.”
Then, like an echo returning from far away, the face and voice of someone buried deep in Lee Jungryong’s old memories overlapped with his.
“Brothers. Sworn brothers.”
The two men had spoken different words with different meanings, yet both were smiling.
Lee Jungryong stared blankly at those goddamn similar smiles, then slowly—very slowly—opened his mouth.
“I…”
Decades of his life and countless emotions rose and faded.
The wait lasted no more than an instant, yet felt like eternity. At last, a hollow voice slipped between his lips.
“I don’t regret it. Never.”
If someone asked whether he had not even a handful of regrets, the answer was no.
But Lee Jungryong could not regret it. He did not want to.
He simply believed this was the ending that suited him best.
“Kill me.”
A cold reply fell upon Lee Jungryong’s bright smile.
“Your last words. I heard them.”
Fwoom.
The spearhead that followed, wreathed in blue flame unlike that cold voice.
The flames roared to life in an instant, searing with tremendous heat. Once they had burned everything away, they died down.
All that remained amid the melted concrete and blackened ruins was the trace of someone who had once been there.
And the chime of a bell that only one person in the world could hear.
Ding.
System
- Defeated Lv. 153 Lee Jungryong!
- Gained a massive amount of EXP!
- Level up!
- Level up!
Listening to the cheerful System notification, I slowly withdrew my spear.
Damn old man.
That final smile kept coming back to me.
What kind of life had Lee Jungryong lived? What had he been thinking at the end? And then there were those movements and his strange behavior…
No. I’ll think about it later.
The fight with Lee Jungryong had not been easy for me, either.
Mental exhaustion suddenly washed over me, but ironically, my body felt lighter than ever thanks to the Top-Grade Potion and the effects of leveling up.
More than anything, I had a reason to keep moving forward.
The Arch Lich.
The source of all this.
Before that bastard transformed the enormous city into a Gate, I had to kill—
“H-human.”
The Skeleton Warlord’s trembling voice reached me.
Every hair on my body stood on end as I raised my head.
There he was.
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