Chapter 775

Every now and then, what I really think slips out before I can stop it.

Like right now.

“What a load of bullshit. What a load of bullshit.”

Michael Silbert showed no reaction to my tone. Instead, he greeted me with the last traces of elation still on his face.

“You’re earlier than I expected. I’ve been waiting.”

“Practicing your musical all by yourself?”

“Musical?”

He considered that for a moment, then gave a short laugh.

“I suppose that isn’t wrong. What happens here today is a musical of sorts. One man directing, staging, and starring in the whole thing.”

“My mother used to say that if you eat whatever’s put in front of you, sooner or later you’ll make yourself sick.”

“No need to worry. Nothing will go wrong, and the show is guaranteed to be a hit.”

“That line you delivered just now was pretty awful. You sure it’ll be a hit?”

“It was only a rehearsal before the main performance, but I’ll take your opinion into account.”

The easy manner. The faint smile on his lips.

As he came closer, my stomach twisted. Each breath felt like a huge needle stirring around inside it.

Was this the effect of Broken Body? Or was it because I was standing face-to-face with the lunatic now right in front of me?

Maybe both.

“Did that friend come with you?”

“Find out for yourself.”

“Not a bad idea.”

Michael gazed at the firmly shut door over my shoulder, then nodded.

“I’ve confirmed it. You brought him here safely.”

An ordinary civilian watching us might have wondered what the hell he meant. I didn’t.

Sss…

There was no sound. No visible shape.

But I felt it: the wave of qi he had sent out, slipping back into his body the instant it found what he was looking for.

He did it with a natural, practiced ease more like a Supreme Peak master of Murim than a Hunter. He was unlike any ordinary Hunter I’d met. Worse, even I couldn’t gauge how strong he truly was. He still hadn’t shown his full strength.

But I couldn’t let him see that anything was amiss.

A brief silence fell between us. I broke it.

“He came with me.”

“Hmm?”

“I didn’t bring him. We came together.”

Michael looked puzzled for a moment, then laughed aloud.

“Very well. If the person involved insists on putting it that way, perhaps there is a difference. But what possible difference could it make?”

“A hell of a difference. Someone like you wouldn’t understand, even if you died and came back.”

“No. What matters is that you and your friend are here. And if anything matters more than that…”

The voice reaching my ears suddenly dropped into a low murmur.

“Your intention.”

“My intention?”

“Yes. Your intentions today.”

He watched me as though he’d suspected them from the start. I let the silence sit for a moment, then spoke.

“Let me ask you something.”

“I’m the one who should hear an answer first, but very well. I’ll permit the question.”

“What are your intentions?”

“What?”

“Why commit all these atrocities? What could you possibly want badly enough to sacrifice so many people and push the whole world into a pit of fire?”

Step.

I closed the few paces between us until our noses nearly touched. I could see the smallest change in his expression, the fine hairs on his skin. I could feel his breath.

Human.

Considering everything he had done, it was difficult to believe, but Michael Silbert was undeniably human, just like me.

Blood, flesh, and bone.

So why?

“Why did you do it? What the hell was it all for?”

Ever since I’d first met him, all I’d felt toward Michael was anger. Not now.

I genuinely wanted to know. I couldn’t understand him. The more clues I found about him, the more questions I had.

“Born on March 18, 1994, in Paris’s Tenth Arrondissement. His father ran away before he was born, and his alcoholic single mother, who lived with him, died in 2012.”

What I’d learned of one man’s life spilled from my mouth.

I turned away from Michael Silbert and began to walk.

Step. Step.

One step, then another. As I crossed the First National Assembly Hall, now a World Heritage site, I retraced his past.

A polite, diligent child despite a difficult home life. Then, after his mother’s death, a late turn toward delinquency and several criminal convictions.

Finally came the event that changed his life completely.

“In 2020, when the Great Cataclysm began, he awakened in his mid-twenties.”

I stopped.

I raised my head. In the stained glass set into the wall, a young man stood alone amid countless heaps of corpses, tears running down his face.

December 25, 2020 — The Great Battle of Paris

They said it had been one of the ten fiercest battles of the entire Great Cataclysm.

Instead of bells ringing through the streets to celebrate Christmas, screams and thunderous explosions echoed through Paris. A thousand Hunters stationed in the city waged an urban battle against monsters that outnumbered them dozens of times over.

For a whole week.

Without reinforcements. A desperate fight in every sense.

When seven days and nights had passed and the last sun of 2020 had set, reinforcements arrived after finishing another battle. They found countless bodies, pools of blood, and one young man standing among them.

“That was you.”

I turned slowly.

The face of the young man in the stained glass was there—the young man who had survived alone in that ruin, more than thirty years ago, while the stench of blood hung thick in the air.

“Michael Silbert.”

He had listened without a word. At my quiet call, he finally spoke.

“I’ll give you credit for the effort. You must have worked hard. The records from before my awakening were erased. They couldn’t have been easy to find.”

“You erased them. Having a criminal record wouldn’t have done your reputation any favors.”

“I won’t deny it. I thought it might stand in my way one day. Everyone was in chaos then, so it was easy enough to deal with.”

Michael Silbert answered calmly, then stared at me.

“But… if that’s all you found, I’m a little disappointed.”

“What?”

“The Tenth Arrondissement, where I was born, was a shithole. Fights broke out several times a day. Gunshots rang out every night. The alley wall I passed on my way to and from school was always dark red. Nobody cleaned the blood off. It would only be red again the next day.”

“…”

“That was my hometown. By day, gangs of every race roamed the streets. By night, neon signs lit up the entertainment district. You called my mother an alcoholic, didn’t you?”

He answered his own question without a change in tone.

“Apparently you didn’t know she was addicted to drugs, too. Whenever I came home from school, she’d be sprawled across that worn-out sofa with men I’d never seen before.”

Everyone had a painful past. Yet as Michael recalled his, a faint smile touched his lips.

“A man who planted his seed and ran. A woman who was my mother only in the eyes of the law. And their child, whose life became a string of assaults and thefts. That was me. But I’m also the hero who saved Paris twice, and the pioneer who was first to speak up for people in danger.”

“…!”

“I used to be ashamed of my past. Not anymore. From slum child to hero of the world. Excellent marketing, wouldn’t you say?”

I stared at him, at a loss for words.

What did someone have to go through to become so worn down? The clock that had run without stopping since the day he was born looked as though it had been ticking for six hundred years, not sixty.

His heart looked much the same.

Under my gaze, Michael’s smile widened.

“You’re looking at me as if I’m a monster. Are you afraid of me now, too?”

“Too?”

“Everyone who knows me looks at me with fear and respect. You aren’t the first.”

“Some of them are dead by now, I’m guessing.”

“If they won’t bow their heads on their own, shouldn’t they be forced to yield? They were fools.”

He wasn’t talking about enemies long gone. He was talking to me.

A warning to lower my head before he crushed me by any means necessary. A meticulous attempt to make sure not even the slightest possibility of things going wrong remained.

I studied him for a moment, then broke the silence.

“You’re half wrong and half right.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s true that I see you as a monster. But this isn’t fear. It’s pity. You could call it disgust, too.”

“…!”

“I just wanted to ask. Whether this could be cleaned up before irreversible sacrifices occurred. Whether any trace of humanity remained in this lunatic. And…”

My voice sank.

“I’m a little disappointed. That you thought I could hold you back with nothing more than a few criminal convictions.”

“What?”

Before he could make sense of it, I turned and held out my hand.

Whoosh. Bang!

Qi flowed from my fingertips and gently pushed the shut doors open. Beyond them, I could sense people drawing closer up the stairs.

I tipped my head toward Michael. His face had gone rigid.

“Don’t keep busy people waiting. Start the inaugural ceremony you were so eager to hold, you fucking bastard.”

“…!”

“You haven’t even transferred the deed, and you’re already acting like the landlord. What a fucking asshole.”

I ignored his icy stare, sat in the nearest chair, and leaned back.

The die had been cast. It was still rolling, and soon we would see whether it came up one or six.

We’d find out who died and who survived, too.

And I had not the slightest intention of dying in a place like this.

Especially not at the hands of a monster instead of a human being.

Step. Step. Step.

Hundreds of footsteps finally entered the now-silent conference hall.

The first page in the history of the new World Hunter Federation was turning.