Divine Seat
You have regressed 30 days.
I opened my eyes on a familiar bed.
In a move that was unlike me, I sat bolt upright. It was my room. Sunlight filtered through the curtains and lit the space. Out of habit I reached to the side of the bed, found my smartphone, and checked today's date.
Sunday, May 30th, 2021 — 1:22 p.m.
Judging by the date alone, I had successfully regressed thirty days.
May 30th, Sunday… What was I doing around then?
The fact that I couldn't quite remember suggested nothing special had happened.
Around this time I was deep inside the Baekhwan world.
If I counted the memories from inside the game worlds as well, I was carrying far more than thirty days' worth of recollection.
I concentrated, trying to dredge up whatever had happened today. There was always the chance that something special had taken place — something that would ripple into the future.
No matter how hard I think, nothing comes up. Thirty days. It's a Sunday, but holidays don't mean much to a hunter. Even less to someone who freelances the way I do.
My fingers kept moving, opening the Game Life App to check my status.
My stats were identical to before the regression.
I came back from the Baekhwan game world and raised my stats on June 10th — that was before the regression.
I checked Baekhwan and the other game worlds. The frozen worlds were no different from before I had regressed.
Just as advertised, the regression didn't touch the Game Life App. Good.
Using a regression ticket could still have gone sideways. Starting over would have been enormous — and an absolute pain.
The files on my phone… they're all intact.
The photos and videos I'd taken as evidence to move the Association were still sitting on my smartphone exactly as they had been.
I backed everything up to my inventory because I figured the phone's data would roll back thirty days along with everything else except the Game Life App. Waste of effort, apparently.
Thinking about it, the Game Life App affected the entire smartphone. This phone was absurdly tougher than any ordinary device, had unlimited storage, and sat permanently at 100% battery without ever needing a charge.
The nuclear warhead I used before the regression is gone… but Hwaryeonbido and Stormbreaker are still in the inventory.
I kept important items in boxes inside my inventory — easy to pull out, impossible to steal.
If I'd left them at home instead of in the inventory, I might have been able to duplicate them.
I clicked my tongue and shook off the regret. Regressing thirty days was enough. I should be satisfied with that.
I scrolled through my call log and message history. The pre-regression records were still there, so I should be able to piece together roughly what I'd done today.
Sunday, May 30th — 2:15 p.m.
The messages Harin and I would exchange in about an hour were already logged.
Han Harin…
My heart hammered. The bloodless face of the dead Harin rose up and vanished. Right now, Han Harin was alive. Everything from before the regression was something only I remembered.
I remember what I did today. On Saturday the 29th I went out with Harin to Hongdae. In the afternoon we grabbed drinks at a plant café, messed around at a karaoke place, had dinner at a restaurant, then hit a famous pojangmacha for round two. We drank, took a walk, ended up at a motel, kept drinking, had sex, and came home at dawn.
Once one memory surfaced, the rest came flooding back in a chain.
I got out of bed. Alcohol didn't affect me. The stat I'd raised — Virility — didn't just work on my testicles; it affected the rest of my body too. Just as my balls were transcendent, so were my other organs. My liver, in other words, was a transcendent liver.
And with Absolute Mind, there's no chance of blacking out drunk either.
To me, alcohol was basically soda.
I left the apartment and took the stairs from the sixth floor of the officetel down to the fourth. Han Harin's front door greeted me. I punched in the passcode from muscle memory. Beep-beep-beep. The door unlocked. Before stepping inside, I stared at the shoes by the entrance.
Everything else was neatly arranged — except one pair. The white high heels Harin loved were kicked off in a mess, as if she'd just taken them off.
It was nothing, but it settled something in my chest. Harin was here.
I slipped off my shoes at the entrance and went inside. She wasn't in the living room. I headed for the bedroom as if it were the most natural thing in the world. There she was — sprawled across the bed.
Disheveled black hair. A long, pale arm and leg poking out from under a thin blanket. Clothes scattered carelessly around the bed. Nearly two years of living with me, and Harin had gotten used to sleeping naked the same way I did.
"Hoo…"
I let out a breath of relief looking at Harin, still asleep with her brow faintly furrowed. She hadn't died. She was alive right in front of me. The tension drained out of me, and drowsiness came rushing in.
I've got plenty of time. So for now…
I stripped and climbed onto Harin's bed. When I pulled back the thin blanket, her bare body was there. Full breasts. A thick thatch of pubic hair below. It was definitely her. The area around her pussy was a mess. There was dried, crusted semen, and from her hole, semen that hadn't fully set yet was still slowly leaking out.
Mine. We had sex at the motel and came straight home to sleep.
Kiss marks I'd left were on her neck and chest.
I pulled Harin into my arms. I buried my face in those full breasts and closed my eyes. A familiar scent of skin… or it would have been, if the alcohol smell weren't so strong.
"Mmm."
Harin let out a soft sound. Her arms and legs twitched. Even so, when I kept holding her, she seemed to give up and wrapped her arms around me in return.
The steady beat of her heart reached my ear.
This time, I will protect her. No matter what.
I closed my eyes, feeling at ease.
I felt hands on my shoulders, pushing me away, and opened my eyes. Above the warm, soft swell of her chest, Harin's face came into view. She'd woken up, brow creased from the hangover, and looked at me.
"Why are you here? Get off."
"Harin. Just a little longer. Let me stay like this a little longer."
"Haa."
Harin sighed — a sigh of surrender. I held her like that for about thirty more minutes. I would have kept going, but she looked ready to actually get angry, so I let it go.
Harin got out of bed without putting anything on and went straight into the bathroom to shower.
"You shower too. You reeked of booze earlier."
"Got it. But Harin noona — you've got time today, right?"
"I've got training tomorrow. We can't go out like yesterday."
"No, it's not that. I need to talk to you about something important."
"You're not going to say that and then come out with something stupid again, are you?"
"It's genuinely important."
I said it seriously, but Harin looked at me with open skepticism.
"We've got plenty of time to talk. Shower first."
I went into the bathroom.
Under the stream from the showerhead, I sank into thought.
Should I tell Harin about the Game Life App?
I could trust Harin. Whether Harin trusted me was a separate question. I didn't know what was in her heart.
…I'll tell her later.
I trusted Harin, but I couldn't trust everything else. There was always the chance my ability could leak by accident. People who had awakened mind-reading abilities existed in this world.
Something like what happened with Park Su-ho before the regression could happen again. Getting brainwashed and spilling my information. I'll keep the Game Life App hidden, the way I resolved to from the start. At least until I can handle the fallout.
The fact that I'd regressed thirty days, though — that I planned to tell her.
It would make exposing the truth about the Suwol Guild easier. If I just told her Suwol was a bad place and she should quit, she wouldn't buy a word of it.
Suwol Guild is already rotten. Second-ranked in Korea. The shell looks fine, but the inside is putrid. I can't leave Han Ayeong and Han Harin in a guild like that.
The fact that Suwol Guild had taken a commission from the Japanese Association in the first place was already suspicious. There had to be some kind of collusion.
There's no law saying what happened before the regression can't happen again.
I finished what had become a fairly long shower and sat across from Harin in the living room. She was in a short sleeveless top and hot pants — comfortable clothes.
"Drink."
She held out a cup. Honey water. I took a sip of the sweet liquid and opened my mouth.
"Harin. Don't freak out — just listen. I actually regressed thirty days."
Harin stared at me. Exactly as expected, her eyes were full of disbelief.
"Are you drunk? Or is this another one of your jokes?"
"I'm serious. I really did regress thirty days!"
"Haa. Fine. Seong Yujin the regressor. Want to share some rising stock tips?"
"You don't believe me. I'm telling you I actually regressed. I've got proof. And Harin — you… die in the future."
"……"
The atmosphere around Harin shifted.
No — it was my atmosphere that had changed. The face reflected in Harin's eyes was twisted almost beyond recognition.
"…Show me proof that you regressed first."
I plugged a USB into the TV. The materials I'd prepared to drag the Gwangwon Sect into hell. These would be more than enough as evidence.
I was too far gone at the time to have photos or videos of Harin's corpse… but future footage should still be solid proof.
I walked her through the evidence one piece at a time. Among the photos were scrapes of future news articles. In the spare time before Bramasen descended on Earth — before I regressed — I'd captured articles and gathered materials.
"June 8th. An erosion dungeon appears in Hokkaido, Japan, and the Suwol Guild takes a commission from the Japanese Association and sends a raid team. You're on it."
As calmly as I could, I explained everything connected to Harin's death. The Gwangwon Sect. And the mad god Bramasen.
Harin's expression ran through a range. At first it was pure suspicion. Midway through she started looking half-convinced. Then she saw the video of the mad god, and her face went white.
"Ugh…"
"Harin? What's wrong?!"
"Looking at that monster in the video… my head feels like it's splitting."
I killed the video at once.
I had a pretty good idea of the cause. She'd seen the form of Bramasen — an evil god, the god of madness. Even Japanese hunters had gone insane just from looking at him. An A-Class hunter had failed to withstand Bramasen's gaze and lost his mind.
It's only a video, so Harin didn't go completely insane. That's something.
I was grateful she hadn't fully broken. If she had, I might have had to burn an Elixir.
"Haa. Haa."
"Noona. Are you actually okay?!"
"…Be quiet for a second. My head's a mess from the hangover."
"That's not the hangover. That's Bramasen's madness. Your head started hurting the second you saw him."
"…A monster that drives you insane just from looking at it actually exists…?"
"Not a monster. A god. I don't know why, but that thing has been eyeing Earth for a long time. It was preparing before I was even born. The Gwangwon Sect probably isn't the only piece it set up."
Bramasen gave off the impression of being meticulous. An evil god by name — there was no way it would stake everything on the Gwangwon Sect alone. It had to have other means.
This time I don't let my guard down. My women — I protect them myself. No exceptions.
After some time, Harin recovered enough to ask me a question.
"How did you regress?"