Chapter 830

Master of the Demon Realm. Lord of the monsters.

Demon King Asmodeus.

How could I forget that name? The demon who was the beginning and the source of every catastrophe.

“I-I didn’t do it because I wanted to! Have you forgotten? The king ordered all of it!”

I looked down at the Doppelganger as it cried out in desperation. After a brief struggle with myself, I drew back the internal energy I’d been channeling into my foot.

“Cough—hack.”

The pressure on its chest lifted, and it broke into a fit of coughing.

The Doppelganger let out the breath it had been holding, then glared at me with eyes full of pain and fury. But deep inside them, fear lurked—fear it hadn’t quite managed to hide.

It looked so helpless that it was hard to believe it had been a Named Monster at Level 170.

Yet the little shadow before me was the Doppelganger’s essence. Its one and only truth.

It must have stolen countless lives to become so powerful.

It had taken whatever it could, absorbed it, digested it.

Those lives had fed it and served as steps on its climb to power.

But today, the feast it had enjoyed for so long was over.

The fanatics who worshiped it like a god were gone. So was its army of monsters. With no one at its side, only one path remained open to it.

“Spit it all out.”

Crick.

The thousand-geun¹ pressure I’d lifted a moment ago bore down through the tip of my foot once more. I watched the Doppelganger stifle a groan, then continued quietly.

“What you know. And what’s about to happen.”

Demon King Asmodeus.

Evil itself. The source of it.

What I wanted from the Doppelganger was information about that accursed being—and about the future of this world.

“What you said just now.”

The hoarse voice that came from my mouth sounded like someone else’s.

My mouth felt as though I’d swallowed a handful of sand. Exhaustion and thirst weren’t the only reasons.

“He—the Demon King…”

Each syllable was a struggle. I didn’t dare say it aloud, or even imagine it.

But I knew.

I knew what became of people who turned away from reality. I knew what lurked beyond the reality they tried so hard not to face.

To escape a forest fire, you first have to know it’s there.

You have to see the rising smoke and the red flames, feel the heat that threatens to burn you alive.

Just as I was doing now.

“Is he still alive?”

In the suffocating silence, the patter of small stones falling from overhead sounded unusually loud.

I said nothing. Neither did the Skeleton King or the Doppelganger.

For a moment, none of us spoke.

Until I heard the whisper of a shadow, something not of this world.

“Is he still alive?”

Stir.

The darkness rippled. Its pitch-black face, its features barely discernible, split into a long grin.

“You know nothing, Chosen One. Foolish mortal. One day, time will break you, and you will crumble into dust.”

The Doppelganger was laughing.

It had forgotten its anger, pain, and fear of me.

Or perhaps it had covered them all with the presence of its absent master.

“Our Great King overcame the curse of the gods. He may waver, but he will not break. Even if he perishes, he will rise again. And at last, he will make all the earth and water in this world his own.”

“…!”

“That is the only truth. A truth you cannot stop, even now that you know it. Before long, it will become reality.”

I stared blankly at the Doppelganger as it laughed aloud.

The moment I met its eyes, darkness swirling within them, my vision swam.

This is…

No sound came out. The dust and rubble around us vanished. So did the Skeleton King and the Doppelganger.

No. It felt as though my entire consciousness was being pulled somewhere.

At the same time, sights unlike anything I’d ever seen poured before my eyes like a meteor shower.

SHWAAAA…

A brilliant sun rose in the east, painting the world with light. Clouds raced across the blue sky. Sunset came, then the moon rose and darkness fell.

One day. Then another.

Time sped past like a scene from a nature documentary I’d once watched. But there was nothing beautiful about it.

BOOM!

A tremendous blaze erupted with a thunderous roar.

Wild animals scattered across the vast wilderness, all bolting at once as if on cue. Behind them, monsters advanced across the horizon with flames the color of sunset at their backs.

Rumble…

Hundreds of thousands. Millions.

Perhaps even more.

An army of monsters beyond counting poured in from every direction. They shook the earth and blotted out the sky.

Kyaaaaargh!

A terrible roar rang out from above the clouds.

Huge wings swept through them, blocking the sunlight. Then the shadow they cast fell over me.

Whoosh.

My view flipped. Sky and earth turned upside down.

In that inverted landscape, I saw a city burning.

BOOM!

Hundreds of cannons fired at once. Giants as tall as skyscrapers staggered, engulfed in flames, while figures shot like streaks of light through the ruined streets and charged at them.

Their weapons blazed with radiance. They shouted their resolve as if coughing up blood.

“Never retreat! Stand and fight!”

“For humanity!”

They were Hunters.

Humanity’s sword and shield against those accursed beings.

Warriors given a sacred mission by someone unseen.

I couldn’t move a finger. From high above, I watched their magnificent charge.

They fought monsters that outnumbered them dozens of times over. True to their cries, they never retreated. They shed their blood for humanity and fell.

Until the sun went down and the moon rose.

Until the last of them was gone.

All I could do was watch.

As if someone were controlling me, I saw Niagara Falls turn red with blood. I saw hundreds crushed to death beneath the shattered Leaning Tower of Pisa.

I was a consciousness without a body. Nothing more than a spectator.

There was nothing I could do.

As the scene changed without pause, my only right—and my curse—was to watch civilization burn to ash and hear the screams of the dying.

Death beyond counting. Destruction.

Corpses covered the streets. A broken church cross lay plunged into a pool of blood.

A child, unaware of what had happened to their parents, could no longer bear the hunger and crawled out of a small box. When the child saw a pack of goblins in the alley, the doll in their hand fell to the ground.

Catastrophe.

A word for an unexpected, unfortunate disaster.

But even that word, a symbol of the Great Cataclysm, could not begin to describe the horrors I had seen.

In place of the voice that wouldn’t come, one word suddenly occurred to me.

The end.

Yes. This was the end.

The civilization humanity had built over countless years lay in ruins, and not a scrap of hope remained in anyone’s heart.

More precisely, their hope was already dead.

One person at a time. Slowly.

Torn into hundreds or thousands of pieces, they disappeared into the bellies of hungry monsters.

“To Magic Johnson.”

A quiet voice carried across a vast plaza lit by countless flickering candles.

A face both familiar and unfamiliar.

Team Leader Choi, his face covered in scars and one arm gone, drained his glass.

Xiao Shen lifted a bottle with tearful eyes and filled the empty glass.

“To ‘Uncle Chuck’ Hagel and our friend Stone-King, who became eternal stars one year ago today.”

As I heard the names called out with every glass filled and drained, I understood.

This was a memorial for the fallen.

A send-off before battle, one last remembrance of the heroes who had gone ahead—the people who had been humanity’s hope.

And…

“To the bravest man of all.”

“To the light of humanity, who stood against the darkness and always lit the way for everyone.”

I was nowhere to be seen.

“To Jin Taekyung…”

The trembling voice fell silent. Team Leader Choi drained yet another glass and clenched his fist.

Crack.

Blood ran from his hand, mingling with the shards of the shattered glass and dripping onto the ground. The candles went out all at once, and silence fell over the entire plaza.

At the same time, light swelled at Team Leader Choi’s waist.

Fwoosh.

The Hero’s Sword.

Cracked and broken though it was, its blade still held a keen edge. Brilliant light welled up along it, spreading across the candleless plaza and faintly illuminating the deep darkness.

Flap.

A powerful wind swept in from afar and whipped dozens of flags, large and small.

A crossed sword and shield. The design was crudely drawn, but I recognized it: the flag of the World Hunter Federation.

“There’s nowhere left to retreat.”

Thud. Thud-thud.

Thousands—perhaps tens of thousands—of feet stamped the ground. The light gathered on the Hero’s Sword picked out their faces one by one.

“And we must not retreat.”

Clang! Clang-clang!

Blades clashed in the air, spitting sparks. The tanks slammed and pounded their massive Tower Shields like mad.

They moved with a single purpose, like the pulse of one enormous heart.

For those who had gone before them, and as they waited for the battle ahead, they looked to their new Alliance Leader.

They waited for his final words.

“Today, we fight until the very last person.”

Clang-clang-clang!

“WAAAAH!”

Countless auras surged upward at once, as if on cue. Their distant cry rose as one voice and drove back the darkness.

The candles that had lit the plaza were long since out, but humanity’s flame still burned.

At least until they fell here today.

Until the darkness came to extinguish that final flame.

SHWAAAA…

At that moment, the wind stopped.

The air trembled.

The plaza, heated to a fever pitch, went cold. Countless eyes turned in the same direction.

There stood a being cloaked in darkness.

“Ah…”

A moan escaped someone’s lips and reached my ears.

My senses, floating as if submerged in water, came back to me. The hairs all over my body stood on end.

The Demon King.

Instinctive fear and wariness rose in me. Unlike before, I turned my head of my own will. Following everyone’s gaze, I looked at him.

Demon King Asmodeus.

The accursed king who had driven humanity into the flames in the past—and would do so in a future that had yet to begin.

And the moment I stared into the writhing darkness in the distance—

Crack…

The world around me collapsed. Every illusion shattered.