Chapter 189
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: 8uhl
Chapter: 189
Chapter Title: The Final Crossroads - 2
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Lee Hyun-wook tilted his head back and stared at the Black Gate, roughly twenty meters up in the sky.
It was slowly expanding, like boiling, sticky tar.
It was about to welcome the third dimensional traveler.
And, as far as he knew, the worst opponent of them all…
- Shhhk— All units, change primary target. Primary target is now designated UDD—Unknown Dimensional Distortion.
- All snipers, await firing orders. All healers, focus your support on Steel Rain.
A series of transmissions from the ROK A.M.T. crackled through his mana messenger.
Though the other Players didn't know the exact nature of this phenomenon, they were also tensing up, preparing for battle.
The entire world was surely watching this scene…
Not a single one of them would understand what was happening, but they would have a gut feeling that Lee Hyun-wook's fight would have a major impact on their fate.
Lee Hyun-wook issued a command to them.
"Ah— This is Lee Hyun-wook.”
At the sound of his voice, the surroundings fell silent.
"Do not approach this area. Everyone, fall back. And relay this message to all Players. No one is to act rashly.”
This moment was more crucial than any other.
‘One wrong move, and everything could fall apart in an instant. The Necromancer from my past life was just that powerful…’
That was why he couldn't allow a single variable, intending to stop even a reckless attack from his own allies.
And there was always the chance that those he thought were allies could shed their masks and join the battle as Villains, so he was preemptively shutting down any unnecessary movements.
‘This moment will be the best chance to eliminate him.’
Based on his past experiences, Lee Hyun-wook knew the moment dimensional travelers were at their most vulnerable.
It was right after they passed through the gate.
‘Even I was helpless and took a hit when I just escaped the Land of Impending Death.’
It was a good thing his defense was far higher than the enemies had anticipated in that moment; otherwise, he would have been left on the brink of death by a single blow and torn to shreds by the pack of werewolves.
In any case, Lee Hyun-wook began preparing to finish the Necromancer in one strike, calculating every possible scenario.
‘…But from what I know, the Necromancer never once allowed himself to be hit.’
Countless experiences from his past life flashed through his mind like a panorama.
‘Not even once…’
It wasn't just that breaking through the Necromancer's undead army was difficult; the Necromancer's own personal defenses were arguably the strongest of all.
He was always surrounded by multiple layers of personal magic barriers, and his MAX-grade Bone Armor skill was also incredibly tough.
‘But… it'll be different with a Holy Sword. Especially the Holy Sword Morglay.’
And then—
Woooong—
Finally, the Black Gate was complete.
Its center began to shimmer, then ripple more violently, and soon it thrashed about as if it would burst at any moment.
Chuuuu—
From it, a figure shot out.
Gwo-o-o-o—
A being shrouded in a dark green aura…
- Quasi-Transcendent (Unknown)
"Ha—"
The moment Lee Hyun-wook saw the figure, he felt his breath catch in his throat. It was as if an old, forgotten trauma had resurfaced.
‘That black robe, the skull mask, the giant scythe floating behind his back…’
That was the Necromancer, the Villains' ultimate weapon who had conquered the entire world, and for all intents and purposes, the strongest Player.
Lee Hyun-wook slowly raised his left hand toward the man.
But then…
"Huh?"
The moment he saw the items the man held in each hand, Lee Hyun-wook couldn't help but let out a frustrated sigh.
"Damn it, that's..."
The spear and shield the man held were none other than…
‘…The Achilles' Armament Set!’
When both items were equipped at once, the user gained the ‘Blessing of the Styx,’ which granted 30 seconds of invincibility.
In other words, he had come prepared with the surest defense of all.
For the next 30 seconds, he could not be harmed!
"—Everyone, don't let him escape!”
The moment Lee Hyun-wook shouted— black smoke billowed out from behind the man, spreading in an instant like a sea fog and beginning to consume the ground.
Tsssssssss—
Fortunately, thanks to the ‘Domain of the Divine Tree’ that Lee Hyun-wook had spread across the area, the place was filled with holy power, which diluted some of the black fog.
‘But this is just a favorable environment; it can't completely seal his actions.’
- Warning! ‘Grand Summoning’ is commencing in this area.
It was a skill that allowed him to store his undead army in a unique pocket space and then release them.
Soon, the silhouettes of figures began to emerge one by one from within the black smoke, their green eyes lighting up like a galaxy.
Tsssssssss—
This phenomenon meant a ‘spatial overlap’ had occurred… and signified the sortie of an army that had been slumbering in another dimension.
Immediately after, the undead, straddling the overlapped space, poured out like an avalanche.
After hitting the ground, they pushed themselves up and spread out in all directions, tangling with each other at certain points to begin building a ‘barrier.’
Seen from the sky, it would have looked like a swarm of ants seething on the ground.
‘That’s the Necromancer's style of defensive formation.’
The so-called Wall of Corpses…
Clatter— Clatter—
‘22 seconds, 21 seconds…’
As Lee Hyun-wook mentally counted down the end of the Blessing of the Styx, he devised a way to break down that wall.
He took out the ‘Sudarshana.’
This disc-shaped throwing weapon was characterized by its ability to emit chakra waves and tear through a considerably wide area like a saw blade.
In other words, it showed the best efficiency when dealing with a large number of enemies.
Lee Hyun-wook transferred the ‘Holy Sword’ effect to it, and at the same time, it shot forward, streaking across the bone wall.
Kwadudududu—!
In just a few seconds, with just a single pass, at least a hundred undead were reduced to ash and vanished.
‘So this was possible.’
For Lee Hyun-wook, the scene was almost overwhelming.
In his past life, every time he had clashed with the man, the undead army that wouldn't die no matter how many he killed was more than just tiresome; it was terrifying. But now, it felt surprisingly easy.
‘As expected, with the Holy Sword, I can neutralize him.’
If he kept pushing like this, he could break through the bone wall and strike the man the moment the Blessing of the Styx ended.
“11 seconds—”
But then—
BO—O—O—OM—!
The entire world was suddenly dyed crimson.
His ears went deaf from the explosive roar that seemed to make the very air scream. At the same time, a searing hot wind struck his skin.
"—Keuk!”
Lee Hyun-wook lowered his stance, gathered the nearby adamant to form a metal wall to shield himself, and simultaneously looked down on the area through Hugin.
BO—O—O—OM—!
Here, inside the Giant's Citadel, red flames filled the space, billowing and surging.
‘…Corpse Explosion.’
And it wasn't just any Corpse Explosion. It was one that used the Titan corpses scattered around the area.
Though they were soaked in holy water and couldn't be revived as undead, they were still ‘corpses,’ and thus could be detonated.
The present-day Necromancer had also used Titan Corpse Explosion before.
But back then, it was only a few. The amount of mana required to turn such massive corpses into bombs was by no means small.
However, for the Necromancer from eight years in the future, that amount of mana was something he could use without a second thought.
But now was not the time to worry about allied casualties.
‘Just 4 seconds left!’
After four seconds, all he needed was one clean hit.
Then it would all be over.
Lee Hyun-wook’s eyes widened as he tracked the queen ant—the Necromancer—hiding among the swarming undead, and he saw the man pull out some kind of orb.
And stuck all over that orb were various talismans. The moment the man tore them off—
- Warning! The ‘Night Parade of a Hundred Demons’ is commencing in this area.
This was a skill even Lee Hyun-wook didn't know.
From within the orb, an innumerable number of ghosts began to rise like smoke and scatter in all directions.
Kkieeeeeee—
"Ugh!"
"Keuk!"
A scream, a surreal tone that seemed to dig past the eardrums and into the brain and heart, blanketed the entire area, and nearly every Player within its range cried out in pain.
System messages appeared before their eyes, informing them that they had been afflicted with all sorts of ‘debuffs.’
"Damn it, he can inflict debuffs even from this far away? Isn't that cheating?"
"Hey— watch out! They're coming this way!"
The ghosts seemed to sense living beings, seeking out the Players and starting to cling to them. Just touching them plunged the Players into an even greater curse.
"—Aaargh! Get this thing off me!"
"P-Priests, what are you doing! Do something!"
In the rear, a significant portion of the Player units that had been preparing to support Lee Hyun-wook were instantly neutralized.
‘An unbelievable wide-area curse.’
Just like that, the Necromancer was like a god of war, capable of shaping the entire battlefield to his will.
‘But it won't work on me.’
Still, Lee Hyun-wook was fine.
Kkeeeeeee—
The largest number of ghosts had latched onto him, but startled by the holy power emanating from his body, they scattered in all directions.
He was currently a ‘Great Warrior of Light,’ which gave him perfect resistance to most dark-element curses.
But because of them, his view was obstructed, and he lost sight of the Necromancer.
‘Damn it, this isn't good. Now I can't see what kind of tricks he's up to.’
As expected, he was an opponent on a different level.
But then—
- Shhhk— Leave them to me.
That voice was Emilia Müller's.
Woong—!
A beam of light shot up, splitting the sky. It condensed at a single point before branching out into multiple streams, blanketing the ground in white light.
It was ‘Holy Light,’ the most basic of holy skills, but since the Saintess had poured all her strength into it, its scale was on another level.
It was a light so intense you couldn't look directly at it, as if the sun itself had drawn near—
Chiii—!
Every ghost that touched it was instantly annihilated.
It was a satisfying strike, one that perfectly captured the image of germs being sterilized by sunlight during sun-drying.
Soon, his vision cleared, and the Necromancer came back into view. Lee Hyun-wook caught the Necromancer's lower face—his mouth—twisting.
‘That expression… amusing.’
Even such a trivial display of emotion brought a strange thrill to Lee Hyun-wook.
“…Right, you didn't expect the Saintess to still be alive, did you?”
Unlike the other dimensional travelers, this man had shown the foresight to come through the Black Gate prepared with the Achilles' Armament set, but it seemed even he couldn't have accounted for the Saintess's existence.
That was because, in the previous timeline, the Saintess had already been assassinated before he began his activities in earnest.
In other words, the Saintess barely existed in his memory.
‘The world I've created is not a stage that favors him.’
Lee Hyun-wook slowly exhaled, imbued Morglay with the Holy Sword effect again, and began to take aim.
‘…I failed to strike him upon his arrival, but I can't get hasty. I'll aim for a single blow, the final blow.’
He suppressed his impatience and, with the mindset of a sniper, focused all his senses on the Necromancer.
But… as Lee Hyun-wook watched the man's face, he noticed him muttering something.
‘What? What is he suddenly saying?’
He focused a bit more and read the man's lips.
- …We're screwed. W-what do we do now?
Strangely enough, he was speaking as if asking someone a question.
- Should I just release everything and fight them head-on?
It didn't seem to be a mistake. The man was truly conversing with someone, and from his polite, pleading tone, it sounded like he was speaking to a superior, not a subordinate.
‘Could it be… there's someone else?’
But Lee Hyun-wook's senses detected no other presence. And wasn't this event designed so that only the ‘individual’ in question could cross over?
‘But there might be something I didn't anticipate.’
However, for now, he needed to focus solely on the Necromancer.
Lee Hyun-wook just spread a bit of his awareness to his surroundings to prepare for any unforeseen circumstances, then once again began to search for an opening to drive Morglay into.
‘Not yet. I need more space.’
Lee Hyun-wook rained down metal weapons and advanced his dragon tooth warriors, striving to create an opening.
At that moment, the man began to wave his hand.
Kwa-deu-deu-deu—!
Then, hundreds of undead turned to ash and were absorbed into the man's body. His body began to sublimate, turning into black smoke.
Lee Hyun-wook knew what this was.
The so-called ‘Twilight Form.’ It was a powerful movement technique that was difficult to obstruct, created by sacrificing hundreds of undead to turn one's body into an intangible form.
Fwooooosh—
Immediately after, the man's body became a whirlwind of black smoke and shot straight up into the sky.
But Lee Hyun-wook was still not anxious.
‘Right, I knew you'd do that.’
As if he had been waiting, he took out a weapon.
It was ‘Mjolnir.’
Lee Hyun-wook imbued it with the Holy Sword effect.
Then he took out a small jewel and touched it to the weapon…
- The ‘skill cooldown’ of this item has been reset by the <Blessing of Thoth>.
This was a very rare consumable item that forcibly reset an item's cooldown, and he had prepared a few before the battle.
With this, he could once again use the ‘Wrath of the Thunder God’ skill, which normally had a 12-hour cooldown.
Rumble—
Soon, from within the dark clouds that filled the sky, lightning infused with holy power began to spread.
"Park Jun-mo! Spread that out like a net!"
"Yes, sir!"
At Lee Hyun-wook's words, Park Jun-mo's voice answered from somewhere.
The Wrath of the Thunder God poured down to the ground, and under Park Jun-mo's command, it split into thin streams and scattered in all directions.
And just as Lee Hyun-wook wanted, it spread out like a net, completely covering the sky.
Pza-za-za-za—!
Nothing could be faster than the speed of light.
The same went for the single stream of black smoke soaring high into the sky.
It—the Necromancer—was engulfed in a blue current of electricity and began to slow down.
"Keuk…"
In the end, he couldn't hold on and returned to his original form.
Perhaps that electric shock was the first damage the Necromancer had ever taken.
"Right. A very unfamiliar feeling, isn't it?"
Just like that, Lee Hyun-wook, having grasped all of the Necromancer's combat patterns, was preemptively shutting down every new attempt the man made.
But the man didn't give up.
This time, he opened a ‘Grand Summoning’ again, completely surrounding himself with all sorts of flying undead like skeletal Bone Wyverns and Zombie Griffins.
‘He’s not bringing out the Bone Dragon, though?’
As far as Lee Hyun-wook knew, the most powerful undead the Necromancer commanded had not appeared.
‘He's wary of my Holy Sword's power, so he's saving his high-tier undead.’
That meant he had no intention of engaging in a full-scale battle here; his primary goal was to escape.
‘But that's a mistake. With just those, he won't be able to block my attack…’
Lee Hyun-wook's left hand rose to the sky.
He sensed the ‘War Box’ floating in low orbit far away and succeeded in activating it.
And so, a single streak of light shot down.
Ba-ba-ba-boom—!
It was a 2-ton Morglay replica. It bisected the world, completely shattering the flying undead that had surrounded the Necromancer, and finally struck the man's body.
Kaaang—!
In that fleeting moment, Lee Hyun-wook precisely observed the Necromancer's form through Hugin.
‘…As expected, just dropping a 2-ton Morglay isn't enough.’
Even though it was imbued with the Holy Sword, the impact only sent him flying and crashing somewhere in the Othrys Mountains; it hadn't dealt any real damage yet.
That was because the barrier surrounding the man's body was not made of dark power, but the power of a ‘Dragon Heart.’ That power was emanating from the red jewel in the necklace he was wearing.
‘That's the item Edward Woods had. As expected, after I died, Britain was eventually conquered too, it seems.’
Up until the moment Lee Hyun-wook met his end, Britain had been fending off the Villain invasion, but it was like a candle in a hurricane.
In any case, for that reason, the magic barrier could not be broken by the power of the Holy Sword.
‘But if I keep hitting it, it will eventually break.’
Lee Hyun-wook had more than enough firepower for that.
He entered another command into the ‘War Box.’
"I'll make it perfectly clear to you that this is not a place where you can run rampant—"
Immediately after—
Whoong—!
Another Morglay plummeted toward the man's position. Simultaneously, ‘Shock Wave’ and ‘Flare Whip’ erupted in succession, cleanly leveling the surrounding forest.
Kwa-gwa-gwa-gwa—!
The Necromancer, caught in the storm, was tossed about like a leaf in the wind, tumbling here and there, colliding with all sorts of debris and letting out helpless groans.
"Heuk…"
It must have been a humiliation he had never experienced before.
‘As expected, he can't predict any of my attacks.’
That was because, on the stage where he ran wild in the previous timeline, the Saintess was not present. Nor was there a ‘War Box’ that dropped weapons from an unseen location. Furthermore, there had only been one Morglay.
‘In other words, all of this is unfamiliar to him.’
Of course, knowing that the first dimensional traveler, William Bernard, had been defeated, he might have predicted up to two, but he would never have imagined a third or fourth, leaving him no choice but to helplessly allow the attacks.
And the firepower cornering him didn't end there… Suddenly, scattered rock fragments defied gravity and soared into the air, then began to rain down on the undead army moving to save the Necromancer.
Boom—! Boom—! Boom—! Boom—!
It was a scene like a meteor shower.
Under the onslaught, the undead fell like bowling pins.
‘…Huh? What's that?’
Even Lee Hyun-wook was puzzled by the scene.
- Shhhk— We just need to get him, right?
That voice was Kang Seo-yoon's.
She had contacted him via mana transmission.
"Oh, Chairman Kang?"
- Yes, we came too. How could we not, when a fight this explosive is going on? You can tell us what that bastard is after this is all over, right? You're always so mysterious, I don't really like it.
In other words, her companions, the Zmeun-narae Guild and the Guardians… among them, the gravity mage Lee Seong-yoon, had arrived.
Soon, several figures appeared in the western sky.
Lee Seong-yoon, Kang Seo-yoon, and other Guardian members were floating in the air, defying gravity and looking down on the ground.
And with them was the Fist King, Han Tae-san, who must have joined them at some point.
Furthermore, Donald Harris and the Spirit King, who had been nearby from the start, also stepped forward and began to crush the squirming undead army crawling toward its master.
The whole world was fighting alongside Lee Hyun-wook.
Overwhelming forces had added their strength to a situation where he was already pushing the enemy back.
‘With this… there's no way I can lose.’
Lee Hyun-wook also lifted his own body into the air and looked down at the Necromancer, who was picking himself up from within the crushed forest.
‘…He looks like a cornered rabbit, doesn't he?’
And Lee Hyun-wook and the heroes of this world hovered above the man's head, like hawks eyeing their prey.
"Here, all the heroes you bastards assassinated are alive. So…"
Lee Hyun-wook clicked his tongue.
“…You are nothing here.”
Then, he lowered his left hand toward the ground,
And a 100-ton Holy Sword plummeted straight down toward the man.
The most destructive execution in history had begun.