The End That Wasn't
Where the storm of battle had swept through, the heart of the devastation was a field of wreckage—smashed to pieces and strewn about like so much garbage.
Once, they had been called Outer Gods.
And the one who had made that sight was a single human being.
Anyone who looked upon it would not have trusted their own eyes.
An Outer God was, by its very nature, a supreme existence no mere human could so much as lay a hand on. The moment such beings decided to destroy this world, the end of humanity had already been written.
And yet, astonishingly, a single Hunter—Shin Haneul—had succeeded in bringing them down.
It was nothing short of a miracle. He had failed, however, to keep his own life.
"Cough—"
A great hole gaped in his abdomen, and through it his life was pouring out at a terrible speed.
The hero who fought to protect the world slays his final enemy and closes his eyes.
That tired old story.
"So this is how I die."
The unfairness of it was more than he could bear.
Not because he had saved the world and would never taste the glory. He hadn't the slightest lingering attachment to anything like that. Nor was it that he begrudged his own life. He had been prepared to spend it from the very start.
There was only one thing that made Shin Haneul feel cheated.
Those Outer God bastards weren't as strong as I thought.
He had never imagined that the enemies he was meant to bring down at the very end would prove this weak. Of course, he hadn't known he himself could grow this strong either, and so he had remained bound by the common wisdom that the Awakened were meant to fight as a team.
Believing he would need comrades to stand beside him against powerful foes, he had given away what was his without holding anything back.
Weapons. Skill books. Every kind of consumable.
He had told himself that even if his own growth slowed, making his teammates that much stronger was the surest way to raise—however slightly—the odds of saving the world.
And the result?
In the battle against the Outer Gods, he had been alone. The vanguard died before the fight had even begun. The rear guard ran. Not a single supporting shot came from behind his back.
If it was going to end like this anyway—
I should have kept it all. If I'd taken everything for myself, trash like them...
Crushed.
Outer Gods or whatever else they called themselves, he could have torn them to pieces. Climbing the Tower wouldn't even have been worth mentioning.
I avoided the worst of it. I just never imagined there could be a second-worst like this.
Back then, the Tower had loomed immense before Shin Haneul, and the Outer Gods even more so. He could not promise victory even if he threw everything he had against them, and so he had given everything up.
For the sake of his one and only son. To protect the world Minwoo would have to live in.
Money. Honor. Pride.
Things like that went without saying. He had surrendered far more than that.
Minwoo, for instance. He had never taught his beloved son what ordinary happiness was. He had demanded a harsh life of him.
Every day I was off wandering the Tower and the Gates, barely looking after him, and even on the rare days we came face to face, all I ever did was train him.
At the time, he had told himself there was no other way. If he failed, there would be no one left to protect the world—or his son. So the boy had to be raised strong, even if it meant being resented for it.
But Minwoo had not resented him.
"...Please come back."
The day of the final departure. A pendant, pressed into his hands by fingers that had grown far too rough. Even with no artistic sense to speak of, he was not so stupid that he couldn't tell how much care had gone into the thing.
It was not a gift meant for a man who said things like this.
"Don't waste your time on useless nonsense. Spend it thinking about how to get stronger."
In the middle of training so brutal his blisters never had a day to heal, he was making something like this.
Perhaps his son had simply had nowhere else to rest his heart—so much so that he would look after even a man like this, just because they shared blood.
The thought tore his chest open.
If he had known it would end like this, he never would have placed a weapon in those small, soft hands. He would have stayed closer. He would have let the boy laugh the way any child should. And the world still to come... they could have walked it together.
Regrets crowded his mind, far too many of them, and there was not even time enough to turn them all over.
His throat closed. His eyes fell shut. The last thing he felt was only one sensation: the touch of the pendant his son had given him.
I'm sorry. I'm so sorry...
That was Shin Haneul's end.
No. He thought it was the end.
But it wasn't.
"What are you doing, Second Lieutenant Shin Haneul!"
"...?"
"Move it! The monsters will be on us any second!"
When he opened his eyes, he had come back.
To the earliest days after his awakening. To the years he had lived as his country's dog, all so he might pare away—even by a little—the chance that the world would end.