Chapter 348:
“Keep your formation tight!”
“Break through!”
At the front line of the nightmare world, a battle that resembled a war was raging on.
The collectors faced the endless waves of phantasms that surged like the stormy sea. They clenched their teeth and swung their weapons, unleashing their skills.
Lights and explosions erupted everywhere, turning the phantasms into texts that crumbled away, but more phantasms filled their empty spots.
In this exhausting war of attrition, the collectors pierced through the phantasms and advanced steadily.
“Everyone, hang in there! Their offensive is weakening!”
Among them, the high-ranking collectors who led the way were dazzling.
The black iron knight Huang Se-eun opened a path with his sword. Bang Sang-shi and Yu Seong-a followed him and shattered the phantasms’ formation.
The power of the high-ranking collectors was comparable to strategic weapons.
Every time they moved and used their skills, they created huge holes in the dense crowd of phantasms.
“Phew. This is something. These mindless monsters are hard to deal with.”
The high-ranking collector Lim Geon-woo whistled and threw a punch.
The flames wrapped around his fist stretched forward and incinerated all the phantasms within a 100m radius.
He was a mage, but also a martial artist who used his fists. And he didn’t use just one element, but mixed various elements to fight in an unconventional way.
But even though he spoke casually, Lim Geon-woo’s complexion was not very good. He acted like a rascal on the outside, but he was actually pushing himself hard to open the way.
It was hard, but he couldn’t stop. It was his duty as a high-ranking collector.
“You should take care of yourself a little.”
“Huh. Ye-ri.”
Lim Geon-woo looked at Choi Ye-ri with half-closed eyes as she supported his shoulder.
Choi Ye-ri worked as Lim Geon-woo’s secretary externally, but she was also a collector. Lim Geon-woo and Choi Ye-ri always moved as a team. ƒreewebɳovel.com
Choi Ye-ri rolled her feet and a barrier spread around them, protecting Lim Geon-woo’s body.
“How long do I have to babysit you?”
“…Thank you.”
“Thank you is not enough. After we get out of here alive, promise me you’ll behave yourself and not cause any trouble.”
“That’s harder than dying.”
“Then die if you want.”
“As expected, Ye-ri is too harsh on me.”
Lim Geon-woo still smiled. He could feel her concern for him even though she spoke like that. That gave him strength, and Lim Geon-woo barely managed to hold on to his wavering will.
“I’ll assist you, so just make a way, Collector Lim Geon-woo.”
“Okay. Let’s show them my full power for once.”
“But don’t get too cocky. If you get in trouble, I’ll have to save you again.”
“I wanted to ride on Ye-ri’s bus for a while, but too bad.”
The two exchanged such frivolous conversations as they opened the way.
The collectors followed them. They all fought with gritted teeth to protect the world.
As if that was the best thing they could do.
***
Flashes of light exploded in the darkening sight.
Yu-hyun felt the distant pain that surged like a tide in his whole body, and the sensation that ebbed away like a low tide. He glared at his enemy with bloodshot eyes.
The blue knight of death was swinging his spear.
‘Damn, he’s strong.’
Yu-hyun had already surpassed the limit of transcendents and reached the highest level of strength that a human could achieve, but he had a hard time gaining the upper hand against the blue knight.
He was strong. The blue knight, who was made of all kinds of supernatural deaths, was an absurd and irrational being.
How could a living being defy death?
Life was nothing but a reprieve before facing death. In the end, all living beings die. That’s what death is.
Facing the blue knight, who embodied that very thing, as an individual was an impossible task.
‘Don’t make me laugh.’
Yu-hyun stared at the blue knight with fierce eyes. He didn’t utter any lament or revenge for this situation. Even if he did, the knight wouldn’t listen or answer.
Death doesn’t know how to speak.
So he resists desperately. No, he overcomes this oppression and subdues him.
Yu-hyun’s right hand moved and turned into a spear-like white lotus. At the end of the white lotus was the will to pierce through anything. And the energy of the Seven Demon Black Sky Divine Art that could destroy anything.
Seven Demon Black Sky Divine Art, Variation Technique, Fire Point Sky.
The endlessly spinning spear aimed at the blue knight’s vital point. The blue knight took a defensive stance. Yu-hyun didn’t intend to let him block it.
The power of Maxwell’s demon activated. Probability, possibility, futures that wouldn’t happen. They twisted and distorted and intervened in reality.
Whizz! Before the blue knight’s spear and Fire Point Sky collided, space twisted and Yu-hyun’s spearhead pointed at the blue knight’s forehead. But it didn’t hit. The blue knight turned his head to avoid the attack.
Even the reality that was implemented in the best possible way among all possibilities couldn’t inflict a proper blow on the blue knight.
But he didn’t complain.
Yu-hyun saw a possibility there. A possibility to hurt him, to wound him.
He seized that point and went in.
Whoosh! The blue knight also judged that the previous attack was dangerous and made his blue eyes shine brighter.
Death arose from the blue knight’s body. Unlike the faint mist, it had a complete shape and color that was closer to fire.
Death swept over Yu-hyun’s body once. If he were an ordinary human, he would have died as soon as that energy touched him. But Yu-hyun endured. The ultimate flesh, Darwin’s demon.
The collapsing flesh recovered in an instant and nullified death.
Yu-hyun’s eyes saw the future. A scythe swung at his neck, a spear shot at his heart.
Yu-hyun lowered his body to dodge the scythe and used White Lotus as a shield to block the spear.
Clang! His body was pushed back by the impact, but he forced it back and shot a divine technique at him.
Their bodies crossed and exchanged blows in an instant. Space shook and flames exploded.
The clash between the devil of injustice and the personification of death was a natural disaster in itself. No one would find it strange to call it that.
‘I can do this.’
In his previous life, he and his comrades, including Choi Do-yoon, had to join forces to attack the creature that was their equal.
Now, Yu-hyun was facing the blue knight alone.
The power of the fragments. Thanks to that power that transcended cognition, he could do it. Yu-hyun reached out his left hand toward the blue knight.
The surrounding space twisted strangely, and countless clones appeared and ran toward the blue knight.
The power of Descartes. It bestowed illusions on reality, and those illusions became reality. As the blue knight tried to counterattack with his scythe, a huge energy fell from above his head.
Seven Black Sky God’s Power, Third Demon’s Change Grass Style, Heavenly Pressure Silence Wave.
The enormous pressure crushed the blue knight. At the same time, the clones stabbed their spears at the blue knight. The blue knight stabbed his spear into the ground instead of swinging his scythe.
Chwajajak!
Black thorns pierced through the ground and skewered all the clones. The blue knight swung his scythe vertically as soon as he got rid of the interference. The energy of the Heavenly Pressure Silence Wave that had been pressing down on him was split in half and disappeared.
A black line wrapped around the blue knight’s body.
Black Lightning. The thread of strong energy that would not break held the blue knight and his skeleton Demon tightly. The blue knight’s eyes became more intense.
Pabababak!
The Black Lightning that bound the blue knight’s body broke. But some of the Black Lightning successfully fulfilled their role. Hehehehing. The skeleton Demon that the blue knight rode on was shattered and fell down.
The blue knight jumped off the skeleton Demon and landed on the ground.
“Isn’t it unfair that only you have a ride?”
Yu-hyun taunted him, but the blue knight did not answer. He just silently watched Yu-hyun with his scythe and spear in his hands.
To the blue knight, words were nothing but a means to help his convenience. His main body was still very strong.
Yu-hyun threw Baekryeon. Baekryeon swelled up explosively and soon turned into a huge black sea beast that bit at the blue knight.
Kwaaaaaaak!!!
Leviathan. The mythical beast that tried to tear apart the blue knight disappeared as soon as the blue knight stabbed his spear at it. Pusuk! Leviathan vanished without even screaming. Even a monster from mythology could not escape death.
‘He’s really strong.’
He was pushing him hard with most of the abilities he had, but the blue knight showed no signs of falling.
He wondered if he ever got tired. He looked alive, but he was dead. He was death itself, so it was obvious.
Can death be killed? That was a contradictory statement.
‘It’s possible. Choi Do-yoon did it in my previous life.’
If he could do something once, why couldn’t he do it twice?
If he did it, so could he now.
Yu-hyun’s new form collided with the blue knight again.
***
Kwon Jiah had a dream.
It was a distant past that she could not even remember now. It was a time that was special among hundreds of lives that she had repeated.
It was before she became a regressor, when she was an ordinary person.
Back then, Kwon Jiah was an ordinary person who knew nothing… no, rather, she was much more lacking than that.
She awakened as a collector, but she was ostracized and bullied because of her personality, and she did not show any remarkable achievements even after graduating and entering society.
But this was all she knew how to do, and she worked as a low-level collector so that she could at least not starve to death. That was all she had. But Kwon Jiah worked hard and dreamed of a better life.
Five years passed like that, and a change called apocalypse came to Earth.
The tellers who had been quiet until then killed people with their own hands and threatened them, and countless people died every day.
In a world that was heading for destruction, Kwon Jiah shed tears.
She had endured hard thinking that someday fortune would come, but it was too cruel that the end was the destruction of Earth.
The Earth after the apocalypse was a world where it was better to die. What meaning could she find in a place where there was nothing left but pain?
Let’s die. Let’s just die. Kwon Jiah cursed this world and wanted to die.
But when she had such thoughts, she felt wronged.
Why do I have to die? What have I been living for until now, and why do I have to give up my life so vainly?
She felt resentment. When she was alive, she lived because she couldn’t die, but when she thought she had to die, she longed for life more.
She didn’t want to die. She just wanted to live. And more than that, she wanted to give this damn world a blow.
She had always been a loser in life. She had accepted that as natural until now.
But that was not the case.
She wanted to win at least once.
She wanted to prove that she was not a loser. Not to anyone else, but to herself.
She would never have thought of such a thing normally, but she didn’t know what wind blew her to do so even now.
So she lived. She struggled desperately to survive. And she tried not to lose her humanity.
How long did she endure like that?
‘It’s strange. He shouldn’t be here at this time. Where did the change start?’
She met a man. A man with a cold gaze that felt no emotion and who thought of people as tools, not as people.
He looked at Kwon Jiah and said it was strange. She couldn’t be here, and she had to die.
At his words, Kwon Jiah choked up and shouted.
I don’t want to die. I’ll survive until the end and see the end of this damn world.
She clenched her teeth so hard that she didn’t know where the courage came from. The man who listened to her words until the end did not get angry. Rather, he opened his eyes wide as if surprised, and then nodded and reached out his hand to her.
‘Then follow me.’
Kwon Jiah became his colleague like that. There were other people there besides her.
They were all skilled enough to be called named in the apocalypse.
Among them was the regressor of Vanishing who wore a red coat. He was surprised that a man who could lead a group by himself wherever he went was only one of the members.
Some possible ways to continue my response are:
Kwon Jia felt a surge of hope then. She thought that if she moved with this man, she could survive in this world.
She thought that she was chosen.
With that thought, she fought her way through the apocalypse. There were times when she almost died, but she survived until the end.
When she defeated the four Demonmen of the apocalypse, the 99th trial, and reached the 100th trial.
She saw it.
‘Another failure.’
The man who always led the people from the front, who was her idol, was kneeling and giving up.
‘How many times do I have to repeat this process?’
The man who was always cold and strong was covered in wounds and spat out weak words. Kwon Jia couldn’t believe it.
Why? Why are you saying that?
We made it this far. We all survived together until here.
‘I thought… maybe there was a chance, but I was wrong. I’m sorry.’
The man apologized.
He said he was exhausted. He said he couldn’t do it anymore.
She didn’t want to ask what he couldn’t do. Kwon Jia grabbed his collar with rage in her eyes.
She didn’t remember what she said then. She lost her reason and just blurted out whatever came to her mind. She couldn’t find any meaning in those words.
But the man seemed to feel something from her scream, and smiled at Kwon Jia.
‘I’m done. I don’t have any confidence to do better than this. This must be my limit.’
He said that before she could ask what he meant.
‘So you do it. Please.’
With those words, the man died. Kwon Jia let go of his collar. His body fell limp, and Kwon Jia collapsed on the spot.
What do you want me to do?
Kwon Jia looked up at the sky blankly. Countless lights were falling from the sky.
The end of the world. The end of this world awaited her, who survived the 100th trial and beyond.
That’s how Kwon Jia died.
‘What is this?’
She returned to the past.
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