Chapter 818

“Uh, shit. Where the hell am I now?”

“……!”

The moment Jin Taekyung’s voice reached its ears, the Doppelganger froze like a statue. Two questions sprang to mind.

Why is he here?

Magic manifested according to the caster’s will alone.

And the Doppelganger had, of course, cast Blink on itself alone.

Even a full-blown psychopath with a mind that had spun around thirty-five times wouldn’t do something insane like cast a dangerous movement spell alongside Jin Taekyung—a man who could break the Doppelganger’s neck thirty-six times in the blink of an eye.

There was only one answer.

He interfered with my Blink spell… against my will.

Mana interference.

A theory the scholarly Grand Mage Siegfried Bassmann had developed after years of research surfaced among the memories the Doppelganger had absorbed.

The Doppelganger felt a chill sweep through its entire body. As it watched Jin Taekyung stagger to his feet, a second unanswered question lingered in its eyes.

How? How did he survive?

It could set the mana interference aside. The man was a monster, after all.

Absurd as it was—utterly absurd—perhaps a close-combat Hunter really did possess mana control surpassing even a Grand Mage’s.

But that Blink had been an outrageously dangerous attempt. The Doppelganger itself had nearly been torn apart for breaking the taboo and had sacrificed dozens of lives to heal. What more was there to say?

And yet…

“Ugh, my body’s all numb.”

Hearing Jin Taekyung mumble, the Doppelganger’s mind went hazy for a moment.

Numb? He’s numb?

It was impossible. The Doppelganger felt betrayed. Even if Jin Taekyung were an ogre, shouldn’t he at least have lost an arm or a leg or two, out of basic decency?

His body isn’t made of steel. So how?

The Doppelganger had no idea that Jin Taekyung’s physique—once called the Heavenly Martial Physique in Murim—had long since surpassed its limits, enough to withstand even a Blink spell that broke the taboo.

But it could grasp one truth without knowing why.

Jin Taekyung is weaker now than he’s ever been.

The shock set off a long, tangled train of thought. In reality, only a few seconds passed.

And at the end of the suffocating silence pressing down on everything came the Doppelganger’s shout, ringing out like a scream.

“Stop him!”

“……!”

“……!”

The silence shattered. At the same time, the world that had momentarily stopped began moving again. The fanatics, who had been staring blankly back and forth between Jin Taekyung and their great Prophet in that slowed-down moment, sprang into action.

“Inshallah!”¹

“God is great!”

Whoosh! Fwoooooosh!

Shouts and the whistle of weapons rang out on every side. Looking at the countless flashes hurtling toward him, Jin Taekyung suddenly opened his mouth.

No—he let it all out.

“Ugh. Bwaaaaaagh!”

Vomit sprayed into the air before a drop of blood did.

The price of hitching a ride on Blink was a hellish bout of motion sickness.

I’d tried to hold it in. I’d thought I could.

But life doesn’t always go the way you want.

“Bwaaaagh!”

Fuck. I’d been about to say something cool.

Vomit came pouring out instead. Bent over like a grub, I hurriedly rolled across the ground.

Slice! Spurt!

A chill ran through me. I felt a sharp blade cut away a handful of my hair.

As the auras flying in from all sides grazed my body, stinging pain flared across my skin.

After coming all this way, I’m rolling around like a lazy donkey?²

Tears blurred my vision. The one small mercy was that the fanatics hadn’t expected this either.

…It’d be weirder if they had.

What kind of lunatic lands in the middle of his enemies and starts vomiting? I fought down the churn in my stomach and swung the thing in my hand.

Thwack!

Flesh and blood flew with a dull impact.

The Prophet’s arm, torn off in the aftermath of the Blink spell, made an excellent club.

“Oh, power attack.”

“You bastard! How dare you profane His sacred flesh—”

“Then let me rephrase. Holy attack.”

Wham! Wham! Wham!

The three nearest fanatics fell like dominoes.

I hurled the ruined arm like an axe, then stamped my foot in the middle of the enemies packed around me.

Thud!

A shock wave rumbled outward. The ground sank for several meters³ in every direction, and the fanatics staggered as they lost their footing. Their weapons veered off course with them and swept past my body.

Whoosh! Spurt!

The aura and wind pressure carried by the blades left fine cuts in my skin.

That alone told me how skilled they were.

More than half are B-rank or higher.

And I’d counted hundreds of them. The followers the Doppelganger had raised somewhere in a desolate desert no one could find were a match for the World Hunter Federation’s elite, locked in battle barely a hundred meters⁴ away.

Crazy bastard. No—crazy bastards.

The Doppelganger and its disgusting followers were all shit from the same cesspit.

I swallowed the curses rising in my throat and thrust out both hands.

Fanatics who looked like tanks raised round, enchanted shields across my path. They weren’t enough to stop the ten streaks of Finger Qi I’d fired a step ahead of them.

Fwoosh! Thud-thud-thud!

The wind blew, and ten fanatics fell like reed leaves.

Through the gap that opened for an instant, I caught a glimpse of someone’s back. I’d lost sight of him for a moment.

There you are.

The glimpse was brief, but I’d seen enough. The bastard was leaving the battlefield.

He was using the countless followers he’d raised as bait, treading across their blood like a carpet as he fled beyond my reach.

Just as he always had. And…

He’ll keep doing it.

Too many people had already died.

I still didn’t know what plan the bastard had spent more than thirty years building. But I had to bring it down here, today, with my own hands.

If I didn’t, my world—and the people in it—would fall apart.

“You won’t get past—!”

Crack. Thud-thud!

I broke the neck of the fanatic blocking my way and used his body to shield myself from an arrow flying in from ahead.

Its mana-infused head punched through the corpse, grazed my cheek, then lodged in the eye of another fanatic nearby.

“Gyaaaaaah!”

Blood sprayed as he screamed in pain. Moments later, a cold slicing sound cut the scream short.

Slice.

A red line crossed the fanatic’s neck. A heavy voice, announcing his death, rang out.

“Hassan. Brave warrior of God. We shall meet again in the Kingdom of Heaven, far in the future.”

Thud.

The screaming stopped. His head fell.

His body crumpled like a scarecrow and never moved again. Only then did faint beads of blood begin to gather on the cut surface of his neck.

This is…

Even after facing countless powerful fighters, I couldn’t help being astonished by the skill. I stopped and looked at the speaker, eyes wide.

Among the fanatics surrounding me stood a sturdy old man, tall as an iron tower, looking straight at me.

“This is the first time we’ve met face to face, Jin Taekyung, king of the wicked heretics.”

His turban was wrapped so carefully that not a strand of hair escaped it. His back was straight, his gaze deep and still.

I’d sensed it from the moment I opened my eyes here: the old man was immensely powerful.

Not merely as one of the Awakened known as Hunters in the modern world, but as a martial artist in his own right.

And I knew instinctively that if the Doppelganger was the untouchable symbol the fanatics revered, this old man was their real commander-in-chief and the heart of their fighting force.

“Yahya Muhammad Ahmad Bedouin… Did I get that right? That’s one hell of a long name.”

As I read aloud the information in the holographic window floating above his head, the old man’s eyes widened in surprise.

“How do you know my name?”

“God told me, you crazy old bastard.”

“Nonsense. God would never tell such a thing to the king of the wicked heretics.”

“You’re the one talking nonsense. I’m an atheist, so I’m not a heretic—and I’m definitely not a king.”

“Do not deny the existence of the great God with your vile tongue, demon.”

“Come on, sir. It’s time to take your pills.”

Slide. Thump.

His robe slipped from his shoulder and spread over the ground.

Holding a crooked staff in one hand and a scimitar—what Murim would call a curved saber—in the other, the old man stepped forward. The air grew cold, and the ring around me tightened.

Step. Sssssss.

Killing intent from every direction made my whole body prickle.

It wasn’t just the old man in front of me. I could see more than thirty men in black, wrapped head to toe in black robes and turbans, scattered among the fanatics.

Those are the real deal.

Every one of them was skilled enough to hold their own anywhere in the world. And unlike Hunters who weren’t used to killing other people, they showed no hesitation at all.

Seasoned killers.

Perhaps it wasn’t my imagination that I saw the martial artists of Dark Heaven superimposed on them.

They were alike in their blind loyalty and faith in one being, and even more so in their willingness to do any terrible thing for that being.

And…

I’ve killed countless people like them.

There were too many people in the world who needed killing. That was all.

Deep down, I had a vague sense that an absolute being called God might exist in this world. But I didn’t believe in him or pledge my loyalty to him.

In the end, people were the ones who accomplished things through hardship. Like countless others, I’d survived that way.

But if that god was the one who’d slipped a beat-up capsule to someone who’d suddenly lost his job a year ago—to a young man climbing a steep alley, worried about how he’d get through this month… Well, in that case, I might be willing to believe in him a little.

“Then your deaths at my hands will be God’s will, too.”

I muttered the words and closed my hand around empty air. Where there had been nothing but air and dust, my fingers caught a spear that had been away from my side for a while.

The old man saw something even magic couldn’t explain, and a stubborn crease formed between his brows.

“Demon. You truly are a demon.”

I wanted to tell the old man in front of me, and the fanatics all around us, that the real demon was running away and leaving them behind. That the monster they called a prophet was racing toward a new catastrophe.

Instead, I stepped forward. The wind burst, space vanished, and I charged.

Whoosh.

A scorching wind swept away the darkness. White Flame’s spearhead traced a path no one could block.

Slice—KRRRUNCH!

A thick mist of blood settled over everything.