Chapter 916

It happened in an instant.

In a sliver of time split and split again, it all began and ended like a passing flash of light.

Thnk!

Jeok Cheongang heard it clearly. He saw it, too.

A chilling sound of something being pierced reached his ears. At the same moment, something sticky splashed across his vision, staining it red.

Drip. Splaaash.

The world before him stopped.

Everything was red. The blood covering his face was hot.

And… it hurt.

More than anything ever had.

Why?

The hollow question that rose in his mind faded away.

No—perhaps it was Jeok Cheongang’s consciousness that was fading.

His mind struggled to grasp a sight that should never have happened. Pain and emotion boiled up from his chest, driving him into a confusion and rage unlike anything he had ever known.

Slide.

He was falling. Tilting.

In the slowed world, a familiar figure was slowly flung away, his back to Jeok Cheongang as scarlet blood sprayed from him. The sight burned itself into Jeok Cheongang’s wide-open eyes like a brand.

“……!”

The Fire King Jeok Cheongang understood. He accepted it.

Everything unbelievable unfolding before his eyes was real.

He understood what the second Disciple he had taken in late in life meant to him.

And that he was not the only one who felt this way.

Thump.

His hand reached out through time as it flowed slowly, supporting that familiar back.

It was firm and warm.

Like the heart of the Disciple who had thrown himself forward with all his might to save his Master. Like the blood spilling from his torn-open chest.

You foolish, foolish boy.

Jeok Cheongang had lived for well over a hundred years. Across the vast land, he had seen countless kinds of people, watched them rise and fall, and found the path he meant to walk among them.

He had walked it one step at a time, always decisive, never hesitant.

But even he did not know what to say now.

What could he say to the fearless fool who had thrown himself into Force in his Master’s place? To the unfilial Disciple who dared to leave before his Master?

There was only one thing he knew he had to do.

He could not let the moment his Disciple had bought with his life go to waste. And he had to trust in the boy’s stubborn vitality—the boy who had survived every kind of hell as if by miracle.

You have to survive. No matter what.

With that plea the boy could not hear, the old Master made the flames still burning in both hands flare fiercer.

Tssss.

The air burned. Moisture evaporated.

And within it, time began to move again.

At the end of that moment—

Fwoooosh!

A vast blaze swallowed even death.

Hummm.

Everyone saw it.

No—they took it in with all five senses.

They watched space warp in the terrible heat. Pain filled their muffled ears, and they trembled at the sudden terror borne on the scorching air and wind.

There was not a single exception.

The living and the dead alike.

Even the Eastern Heaven Demon Lord, who had watched wide-eyed as So Gyo tirelessly cut down the charging monsters and Jin Taekyung fell spraying blood, felt a chill seize his spine.

No. It was heat, as though his insides were melting.

This…

He understood instinctively. This strike held something that internal energy alone could not explain.

The old Master’s grief and rage had drawn out a power even he had not known lay dormant within him.

I’ll die.

The fear of death awoke—a fear the Eastern Heaven Demon Lord had forgotten, one he had believed he would never feel again.

Killing intent, deeper and more terrible than what he had felt facing So Gyo over a decade ago, surged toward him.

Toward him and everyone else.

“Ru—”

And in that instant—

KABOOOOOM!

A tremendous roar swallowed his cry, and a pillar of white-hot fire shot forth.

CRACK! RRRRUMBLE!

The fire dragon thrashed, melting the ground and burning everything in its path.

Surging forward like a wave, it filled their vision and greedily devoured everything its enormous body touched. It burned and vaporized it all, as if determined not to leave a single drop of moisture behind.

Blades lying where their owners had dropped them. Impossibly hard bluestone. Even the soil and rock beneath it.

Even bodies that had once transcended death.

KABOOOOOM!

The Eastern Heaven Demon Lord saw it clearly. He heard it without a doubt.

Golden Ox Palace, reborn as one of his followers—a Supreme Peak master formidable enough in life to be counted among the Twelve Palaces of the Zodiac—was engulfed in white flames.

And he heard his dying scream.

GRAAAAH!

Impossible. How could someone who no longer felt pain scream like that?

How could he writhe so desperately?

How…?

The Eastern Heaven Demon Lord stared in shock. At the same time, he felt the Extreme Yang heat, fierce enough to burn away even his soul.

At its center, he saw one man’s eyes glowing red.

“You shouldn’t have touched my Disciple.”

The Fire King Jeok Cheongang.

ROOOOAR!

The fire dragon roared loudly enough to shake the entire Imperial Capital. Hearing it, the Eastern Heaven Demon Lord prepared to die and drew up every last scrap of strength he had.

He blamed the subordinate who had been so damned faithful to his orders that he couldn’t stop, and blamed himself for bringing about the touch upon the reverse scale¹ of the dragon called the Fire King.

But…

It isn’t over yet.

Not his life. Not the revenge he had pursued for more than half a century.

Fwoooosh.

The deathly energy of the dead closed around the Eastern Heaven Demon Lord’s body. The flames breathed out by an old, weary dragon crashed over it.

KABOOOOOM!

I don’t know.

How much time had passed. How much time I had left if I was going to die here.

My senses had dulled and my vision was blurred. Neither told me much.

The ground shook as if there’d been an earthquake. A roar kept pounding against my muffled ears.

And then there was the heat.

It was hot. My body lay sprawled beyond my control, but I could feel that heat more clearly than anything else.

Old Master’s really pissed.

I wanted to cackle, but what slipped between my trembling lips was sticky, and it wasn’t laughter.

Cough.

Blood. Dark red blood with little clots in it.

I felt around my mouth, touched something soft and squishy, and paused to wonder.

Was that my lip? Or a piece of my insides?

…Damn it. I know which.

I let out a small sigh.

It was sad that I could even say this, but it wasn’t the first time.

One strange, almost galling thing was that I’d never been this badly injured back when I was an F-rank Hunter.

Of course, getting stronger is the only reason I’m still alive.

I scraped together enough strength to lift my head. Dust and ash filled the air. With the aftermath still hanging over everything, all I could see was my own body.

Wounds covered me from head to toe.

And my chest… Force had torn through it, leaving flesh and bone horribly exposed.

Cough. Cough.

I coughed up blood again. This time it was darker still.

Proof that the sword strike I’d taken earlier had reached more than my flesh and bones. It had hit my internal organs, too.

That was insane.

Yeah. It had definitely been insane.

Something I wouldn’t have done if I’d been thinking straight. No—even a reasonably crazy bastard wouldn’t have dared try it.

But I did.

I had to.

How was I supposed to just watch?

If I hadn’t thrown myself in at the last moment, even turning my back on Ma Sanbao, Jeok Cheongang would be lying here instead of me.

The Eastern Heaven Demon Lord wasn’t just a sorcerer who commanded the dead. He was an incredibly skilled fighter, and even Jeok Cheongang couldn’t have taken him and another Supreme Peak master at the same time.

Part of me had hoped it might work, though.

To the Eastern Heaven Demon Lord, I wasn’t just an enemy he had to bring down. I was someone the Lord of Heaven wanted.

So much for taking me alive. He just went and stabbed me.

I laughed, coughing up bloody foam.

I’d gambled my life and lost spectacularly.

Now here I was, sprawled like a corpse, feeling my senses slip away one by one as I waited to die.

But I could laugh because I was the only one who’d lost this gamble.

My life alone wouldn’t decide the outcome of the much bigger gamble playing out on this battlefield.

Some would lose and pay with their lives. Others would win and survive.

I was one of the former. That was all.

Regrets?

I’d be lying if I said I had none.

But I knew the state of my body better than anyone. No—maybe what I felt was just human instinct.

Death.

I could see it.

The thing that had already taken a father from my family—the unwelcome visitor I’d narrowly avoided through every danger I’d faced—had finally come for me.

Even now, through my fading vision, a black shape seemed to waver amid the falling ash and dust.

Don’t come.

I tried to squeeze out a voice with all my strength, but all that came from between my lips was a little blood and a ragged breath.

I didn’t give up.

Clinging to a consciousness that seemed ready to go out at any moment, I swallowed the blood pooling in my mouth and forced myself to stay alert.

I was afraid. Of death.

Afraid of leaving everyone like this.

There was still so much I had to do. So many things I wanted to do with the people I loved and who loved me.

But, but why?

Why was that shadow coming closer to me?

Why wouldn’t it stop walking, even now?

I wasn’t ready yet. I didn’t want to die like this.

Just a little longer. Even for the briefest moment.

Gasping for breath, I begged it to wait.

Even if it took me after that, I wanted time to say goodbye. I prayed desperately to see, just once more, the faces of the people whose lives had become bound to mine. My family.

I prayed to a god I had never seen.

No.

To the System.

“Please…”

And in the moment those words escaped me, wrung from the last of my strength—

Ding.

A clear chime that only I could hear rang out across the whole world.