Strike
A world where not a single reader had ever set foot.
Through countless calamities that tore a hole in the heavens, let myth come flooding in, and brought the world down in ruins, a boy who had lost his family survived all the way to the end—by luck, and by the help of those who stood with him.
His name was Dan Chuyeon.
He was the protagonist of the comic Forever.
Not since the universe began had anyone possessed talent so extraordinary. No one had ever grown so fast.
An Absolute, born already holding the qualifications of the strongest. Nature, born inside a human vessel.
The miracle nature had wrought.
Its fragments.
Were blooming.
If the world itself possessed a will, would it look like this?
From the fingertips of an ordinary high schooler, a motion occurred. His index finger flicked, up and down—less a movement than a tremor, a minute motion. At that motion, the barrier of the immortal arts split and collapsed like a spiderweb.
Crash!
Like a shattered window. Shards of the barrier pattered down.
Where the barrier had been, something dense remained. Where there was light, it was devoured. Where there was darkness, it was devoured. A void that permitted no existence. The void's lid sealed the battlefield completely.
"Cough."
Blood burst from Dan Chuyeon's mouth. No—what spilled was life, only recognized as blood.
Why?
As if drought had struck a green field of rice, Dan Chuyeon's skin cracked, and from the splits, life ran in thin streams.
…He's forcing it.
The dragon drew a cloak of Life around himself. Behind his back, Life snapped and fluttered like wings.
Right. Calling on power like this with no warning at all doesn't make sense.
His thoughts accelerated. He read the enemy's condition and his own, reckoned how much time remained, and laid the enemy's advantages beside his. His brain browned in the heat.
Even I had to stake my life. One wrong step and my sense of self nearly blew apart. And he grows this far in a matter of days? Impossible.
A hypothesis near enough to the truth, drawn from experience. The evil dragon's body affirmed it. A brief squall sank away into a sea of calm.
He's lost his reason to rage. With his reason in ruins, he's hauling in power past his limits with no restraint at all.
Crack. Teeth struck and shattered. The fragments tickled the tip of his tongue, and Life restored the broken teeth.
Absurd. A single year later, and I never could have had my revenge. Not in all eternity.
Dan Miryong admitted it. His opponent was overwhelming. Even if the evil dragon had revived in full, before that thing he would have been less than an insect.
The answer is to stall until he destroys himself. I have Life. On that point, I have the advantage.
Dan Miryong's eyes lit red and green.
Cling. Drag it out.
The dragon chose the method he was best at.
"Finished thinking?"
Dan Chuyeon spoke as if he had been waiting.
"…Big talk. From a man about to die."
Strength gathered in his legs.
"Don't move. Move even a little, and Dan Miryu's head bursts."
His one advantage. A hostage. He didn't expect it to work. A lump of meat already dead wasn't worth much, and once the fight began he probably wouldn't find so much as a hair. But now, when every minute and every second was precious, a few words were enough if they could buy him a little time.
Even dead, you'd better make yourself useful.
He swallowed the cold sweat and fixed on the enemy's every gesture. Emotionless green eyes turned his way.
"You can still move?"
"I ca—"
The words slowed. It felt as if muscle had packed his vocal cords.
"Wh… a… t…"
"Not a complete stop, then."
Dan Chuyeon walked over as if nothing were wrong. Dan Miryong could only stare, blank.
What's happening?
His body had slowed. He couldn't move a finger, as if he had stopped entirely.
T… u… k…
He was not the only thing that had slowed. A chip of stone Dan Chuyeon kicked as he walked drifted downward through the air, far too slowly. Dan Miryong counted to ten in his head, and it hadn't moved a centimeter.
The world had slowed. All but one.
"…T… i… me…"
"Asking if time stopped?"
Dan Chuyeon spoke the dragon's question for him. Pupils rolling at a crawl starved for an answer.
"I tried to stop it. I wasn't strong enough. It didn't take."
The question stopped. Doubt pried into his mind, and denial knocked at the floor. Common sense fled, and despair came down.
This is too far. This is way too far!!!
Time.
A space no human could ever reach, not in all eternity. An eternal bondage hung upon every existence in the world, which even gods knelt and obeyed.
A mere human had touched it.
He had known there was a gap. He had known the enemy was strong. He had known nothing at all. The moment his purpose was achieved, he should have left. Useless bravado and pride had laid his neck on the block.
Even so—!!!
He would not beg for mercy!
A will rose against the will of the world. Even inside the slowed world, Life did not lose its light.
"Graaaagh!!!"
The sound came out properly. Life was undoing the shackles of time. Infinite power ignored even law.
"Ghk!!!"
The dragon, having undone the strongest shackle in the universe, glared at Dan Chuyeon.
Dan Chuyeon, having neatly secured Dan Miryu, was doing something else. The human sleeping in peace was wrapped in the void. The dragon understood by instinct that he could not break that.
It didn't matter. At last, the two of them were alone.
"Hooo."
A breath left him.
Thud. Tok.
The stone chips fell.
"What are you doing, not coming in? We'll be here till morning."
The ease of an absolute power stabbed him through the heart.
"…As you wish."
The dragon unleashed everything he had. He cast off the human shell and molted into a complete dragon—but he changed the shape of it. Not a dragon that was merely enormous, too clumsy to move. A perfect dragon warrior.
He compressed the vast scales and fused them with human skin, and turned human muscle into dragon muscle. He reshaped his face so it could wield a terrible weapon, and expanded the vessel of his flesh. What he lacked, he supplied with Life, and at the end of sculpting that body, a dragon-man of Life was born.
"I'll kill you. Dan Chuyeon."
The most powerful warrior on Earth charged at Dan Chuyeon.
Dan Chuyeon's fingertips twitched. A motion occurred. Space was hauled inward, and between the dragon-man and Dan Chuyeon a distance opened, deeper than the sea.
The dragon-man's thighs swelled. A blaze hotter than the sun was caged in the muscle.
———!!!
The instant the tension in his thighs let go, the dragon-man accelerated. A brute breakthrough. Overwhelming force does not bow to physical bonds. The stretched space failed to buy a single second.
Dan Chuyeon stood right before the dragon-man's eyes, blank as ever. In the instant a hand closed on that frail head, something crushed down from above with terrible force.
Slammed into the earth mid-flight, the dragon-man tried to rise.
"Twenty times."
BOOM!!!
A sinkhole opened. Cracks spidered outward. An island in the endless sea within the void began to descend. Life slipped out beyond the island, and the dragon-man restored his crushing wounds at furious speed.
"…Damn… grav… ity…!"
The foundation that makes a star. The power that births a star. The law that holds a star together. Physics no human could ever reach.
Gravity.
However overwhelming one's strength—could it truly surpass the physics of the universe?
"So you've still got the breath to talk."
The protagonist murmured, looking down from the rim of the hole.
"Thirty times."
CRASH, CRASH, CRASH!!!
The island was collapsing from underneath. Where the debris went, sucked down into the void, no one would know until the universe itself came to an end. The black hole beneath his feet turned the dragon-man's blood to ice.
"Kahahahaha!!!"
Life shoved gravity back. The vitality he possessed, his very force of existence, resisted a law that had been bent by hand.
"Cough."
As if the shock of that resistance had reached him, life burst out like a dam giving way. For an instant, the power weakened. The dragon-man did not miss it. He tore up the ground and burst free.
"Dan Chuyeon!!!"
The thin neck was caught. A hand planted itself on the chest. Life leveled a dagger at throat and heart.
"Dieeeee!!!"
The Life at the neck spun at impossible speed, and the chest was hammered like a pile bunker.
"Ghk…!"
But the killing intent had changed its target. The Life that should have ground Dan Chuyeon apart was grinding the dragon-man. Nothing was wrong with Life itself.
Dragon eyes flashed. Doubt collapsed, and an answer thrust forward. The answer was spatial transfer. The attack was crossing space and coming back at the dragon-man.
"Parlor tricks…!"
"The parlor tricks are yours."
A motion occurred. Sight vanished.
"…!?"
At the sudden loss of sense, the dragon-man's body locked. Countless fine lines were drawn across it.
Fwoooosh!!!
Dragon blood fountained.
"…Guhk!!!"
His whole body seemed to tear into strips. The dragon-man thrashed in a tide of pain.
A twitch—!
Dodge—!
At death's warning, the dragon-man flung his wings wide to shield his body. The warning did not betray him. The wings were pierced. Every scale was stripped away. Wind passed in and out of his belly and his right chest. A moment later, and his heart would have been destroyed.
"Damn it…!"
The wounds closed at once, but his sight did not return. Against a phenomenon even Life could not answer, the dragon-man grew desperate. Unable to see, the boldness drained out of his movements. He endured a long while on defense and recovery alone, and little by little his vision was coming back.
"…Ha!"
The moment he could see ahead, he understood why he had gone blind.
Light.
There was light there.
A man of light had been fired at him. No—he thought it had been fired. He could not make out the speed of light.
"You just keep them coming…!"
An arm was gone. He didn't know how the attack had landed. He didn't know why he had been hit. The dragon-man wrapped his whole body tight in Life. There was no way to fight the light. Endure until it spent itself. That was the only choice.
And, as if it had been waiting, the light stopped.
When the shell of the man of light peeled away, Dan Chuyeon was there, dying.
"Cough!"
Dan Chuyeon, his whole body pickled in black fluid, made a motion. Around the dragon-man, hunched small with everything given over to defense, clouds rose.
"…!!!"
Dan Chuyeon made one motion more.