Chapter 824

When dawn comes, the darkness retreats.

It was as natural as water flowing downhill. But to those fleeing a pursuer, daylight was hardly welcome.

Especially when that pursuer was a monster they could scarcely believe was human.

Already?

The Doppelganger bit its lip as it watched the sky slowly brighten.

Dawn had come too soon. No—it had taken longer than expected.

Everything should have been over before daybreak at the latest.

The Doppelganger knew that no amount of regret would change what had happened. Its carefully laid plans had gone awry long ago, and at the center of it all, from the very beginning, was that bastard.

Jin Taekyung.

A throb ran through its body. Just thinking of his name brought stabbing pain to one place after another.

The Doppelganger had died at Jin Taekyung’s hands hundreds of times. It shuddered at the memory of his terrifying power.

I should never have approached him.

It had been a mistake. Greed.

After absorbing Yamamoto Genji, it should have hurried away—or never revealed itself in the first place.

I only needed a little more. Just a little.

The other humans had been its targets from the start: the many Hunters left in the rear. If it had absorbed their mana and life force, it could have achieved its goal.

Damn it.

But Jin Taekyung hadn’t let the Doppelganger go. He had treated it like a slave, never allowing it out of his sight.

That was the Doppelganger’s misfortune—and every other Hunter’s good fortune.

If it had escaped Jin Taekyung’s grasp, put on Yamamoto Genji’s skin, and gone to the main force in the rear… it would have led countless monsters and fanatics into the desert and stained it red with blood.

Instead, the opposite had happened.

The monster army had been crushed, and the fanatics it had spent so much effort raising had become a shield for its escape.

I can’t believe I got beaten this badly.

A bitter taste filled the Doppelganger’s mouth.

It had lost a force tens of thousands strong. Their might aside, what it regretted most was losing a private army that obeyed its every command.

Still, I confirmed he’s the Chosen One… Master will be pleased.

The Doppelganger shook its head at the thought of its master, whose intentions and true nature it could never fathom.

For decades, it had manipulated the world in secret from behind an unseen curtain. Yet before its master, even it was nothing more than a lowly servant.

Just like the foolish humans following it now.

“Are we still far?”

At the question, delivered with deliberate gravity, the man in black carrying it answered. Black cloth and a turban covered him from head to toe.

“We will arrive shortly, O great Prophet.”

“You’re too slow. At this rate, we may be caught. Go faster.”

“Caught?”

“Yes. He’s more of a monster than I thought. There’s no telling what he might do.”

At the Doppelganger’s words, laced with an unusual mixture of impatience and fear, the dozens of men in black running around it like an escort exchanged glances.

They’d been running at full speed for nearly an hour. And now it wanted them to go even faster?

The man carrying the Doppelganger to conserve its strength glanced back at it before speaking carefully.

“I’m sorry to say this, but… we cannot go any faster.”

“What?”

“Forgive our shortcomings, O Prophet.”

His feet kept moving even as he spoke.

The Doppelganger stared at the back of the fanatic’s head. Then it spoke.

“I see. This is my fault. I urged you on without considering how hard you’re already pushing yourselves.”

“We are unworthy of such words. Please, take them back.”

“No. How could I fail to understand your hearts? It cannot have been easy to leave the battlefield while the brothers and sisters you grew up with remained behind.”

“That…”

“And you must have struggled to accept why we had to flee like this, pursued by those evil heretics. Am I right?”

The eyes visible beneath the men’s turbans wavered.

Every word struck home, as though the Doppelganger could see straight into their hearts.

Amir, their leader, had raised them to serve as the Prophet’s personal guard. But the Promised Land they had all longed for had proved to be a barren canyon. Instead of green life and hope, heretics had awaited them there.

Then came the fierce battle, and their brothers and sisters fell, their blood spraying across the ground.

Even so, they had not faltered. They believed they were fighting a holy war to uphold God’s will. They believed their brothers’ and sisters’ deaths were holy martyrdom.

At least, they had believed it until the Prophet they revered appeared in a wretched state and left the battlefield.

Was this really the right choice?

Escorting him west across desert and wilderness, they had passed oases without stopping. As they ran, a question that had flickered through their minds grew harder to ignore.

God was omniscient and omnipotent. The Prophet was a great seer.

Then why were they running? Why had they abandoned the battlefield like cowards to flee a force of heretics less than a tenth their size?

They tried to suppress their doubts with the faith they had built over a lifetime. But the questions they could not quite bury kept rising.

At last, they became words.

“To be honest, I don’t understand.”

The Prophet on the man’s back gave no answer.

Taking his silence as permission, the man continued cautiously. Their destination had finally come into view in the distance.

“If we stood and fought, we could win. Haven’t you always told us God is with us? That victory and glory would always be ours?”

Whoooosh.

Wind roared around the figures racing forward. Other men in black joined in.

“We abandoned our brothers and sisters and ran.”

“We’re afraid God will abandon us.”

“O Prophet, may we ask what the Almighty told you?”

That was when the Prophet—no, the Doppelganger, which had listened in silence—spoke.

“Stop.”

The men in black halted for the first time since they had set out.

Its strength restored while it rode on the man’s back, the Doppelganger set its feet on the ground and murmured, “We’ve finally arrived.”

The place was desolate.

No trace remained of what had once been said to be the world’s second-largest oil field. Bones of unknown origin lay scattered across ground where not a blade of grass grew.

A land of death.

The thought came to the men in black as they took in the sight. One found the courage to ask, “Where are we?”

The others wanted to know just as badly. Mere servants, they had followed orders without daring to guess the great Prophet’s purpose.

At his answer, their eyes flew wide.

“During the time of tribulation known as the Great Cataclysm, He stayed upon this land for a while.”

“……!”

“……!”

“My master. The master of all creation. He told me, ‘Go to the humans. Wait there until the time comes.’”

For a moment, the air seemed to stand still.

The men in black stared around them, dazed. Then they dropped to their knees as one and cried out.

“Ooh, oooooh…!”

“Inshallah!”¹

“God is great!”

Their reaction was only natural.

The Prophet served only one person, and this was the land where that person had once descended. It was worthy of being called the Sacred Land.

They prostrated themselves, crying out for God’s blessing. Above their heads, the Prophet’s voice continued.

“You said you feared God would abandon you.”

His tone was gentle, as though soothing a fretful child.

“You wanted to hear what He told me.”

His hand brushed the hair of the worshipers bowing upon the Sacred Land. His touch was warm, like a hand tending the painful wound of a groaning patient.

“Then I’ll tell you.”

But the gaze he turned on them was neither gentle nor warm.

The change was as stark as desert sunlight turning to a freezing northern blizzard. His voice had gone cold.

“How utterly worthless you are.”

At that moment—

Boom! Thud-thud.

The men in black blinked, still overcome with emotion.

When they raised their heads from the ground, red blood and pieces of flesh were scattered all around them.

“Huh…?”

A dazed sound escaped someone’s lips.

It was a pure question—and a reality they couldn’t accept.

Before they could find an answer, deep darkness fell over them.

Whoooosh.

A chill ran down their spines. Their hands and feet stiffened like stone, beyond their control.

Bodies honed through a lifetime of training, mana, the swords at their waists—none of it was any use now.

Ah.

A single groan.

Seized by a terror and shock unlike anything they had ever known, the men in black stared at the darkness bearing down on them.

The darkness was as smooth as a mirror, and their faces were reflected in it, clear as day.

This is…

Their voices failed them. Their bodies would not move.

Unable even to scream, they shifted their eyes. Above the darkness enveloping them, they saw a face.

The great Prophet who would lead them all to the Promised Land.

No. The thing they had believed was the Prophet looked down at them and smiled.

It was leading them not to death, or anything else, but into a bottomless pit within a dreadful abyss.

“Listen, you fools. You weak, worthless humans.”

Fwoooosh.

The darkness drained away their living vitality. Dozens of pale souls flowed into it, drawn toward the being within as if entranced.

“There is only one king in this world.”

The darkness swallowed the blood spilling from the seven openings in their faces. Taut skin shriveled. Bones crumbled.

Death drew near. Or perhaps it was the abyss.

As their vision plunged into that bottomless pit, they heard the devil’s final words.

“God…”

Had already abandoned you.

The words echoed faintly.

That was the end.

Where the darkness had fallen, twenty mummified corpses remained, kneeling as though in worship.

And there was only the being that had taken new life, as it had for hundreds of years.

Or so it thought.

Fwoooosh.

That was, until a dazzling beam of light erupted in the air above the ruins.

Until blue-white flames surged and poured forth from within that distant radiance.

Kwaaaaaang!

The mighty flames painted the Doppelganger’s eyes blue.