Chapter 3. But, You Die (2)
Chapter 3. But, You Die (2)
"Huh?"
"I said it was bullshit. A bluff. You don't know what that is?"
The Flame Emperor smirked.
"I don't have some skill for detecting lies. I was just bluffing to feel out the Saintess. Wow, the Saintess, and you too, pal. You're really naive. You actually believed me?"
"Th-then..."
My lips trembled. I was in shock.
"You killed the Saintess without any certainty at all?"
The Saintess, the rank 9 hero. Unlike the psychopath in front of me, she was a hunter of upright character who donated most of her earnings to an orphanage. That was why she'd earned the title of Saintess. And he killed her just because he was a little suspicious?
'If that's true...'
This bastard wasn't the greatest hunter of all time. He was the greatest lunatic of all time.
"Hey, what kind of person do you take me for, saying something so harsh? Of course I was certain. The Saintess really was trying to kill me. If I hadn't killed her first, she would've poisoned me tomorrow."
The Flame Emperor spat on the ground.
"Goddamn it! Now that I think about it again, I'm in a shitty mood."
"H-how do you know that...?"
"I know everything."
He answered as if it were obvious.
"I just know. I have a way of knowing everything."
"..."
"And what that way is, you don't need to know, pal."
For a moment, I was speechless.
It wasn't only because the Flame Emperor was absurdly self-assured. A certain conviction was settled in the Flame Emperor's eyes. The conviction that he had truly killed the Saintess for a reason. At least, that was how it looked to me.
"Well, seeing as you brought up lie detection, you really do seem innocent."
"Ah..."
"Though, I've never seen your face before either. I memorized the mugs of the rat bastards who were lurking around here. Eighteen of them in total. Fitting for shitheads, the headcount matched too... Hm. Anyway, yeah. None of them were as meek as you."
The Flame Emperor touched my head. A pat. He was smiling.
Had he finally come to believe that I was innocent?
"Th-thank...!"
"But you know that I'm the Flame Emperor. And you saw that the Saintess died by my hand."
Pat.
"So you'll have to die."
Pat. The Flame Emperor's hand slowed.
"My name is Yoo Soo-ha. Farewell."
That was the moment. My head grew hot. No, the inside of my head grew hot. For a very brief instant, it felt as though the crown of my head had touched a frying pan. But then my brain matter instantly burst into flame. It sizzled.
My skull boiled like a drum of oil.
"...Ugh...!"
Words wouldn't come out. I couldn't even scream. When the pain was truly unbearable, a human couldn't even scream.
'At the hands of a madman like this... So this is how I die.'
Kim Gong-ja (金孔子).
The name the orphanage director gave me, telling me to become great like Confucius, lived a life nothing like Confucius and died a dog's death nothing like Confucius.
I was sad.
'Ah.'
To put it in gaming terms, it was a trash game.
To put it plainly, it was a ruined life.
A life that ended broken.
[You have died.]
I hated it.
[Skill conditions are met through death.]
Why did I have to die like this?
No, why did I have to live like this?
I felt wronged. I felt resentful. Everything just felt unfair. I could have lived a little better. It would have been okay to live a little better. I had the right to. I had simply made a mistake. Today, I made three mistakes. I died by mistake. I had lived making mistakes. I was born by mistake.
Had my very birth been a mistake?
[Randomly copying a skill from Hunter Yoo Soo-ha.]
[Forming a skill card.]
I couldn't hear anything. I couldn't see anything.
But something like a faint cluster of light flickered. Fireflies seemed to flit before my eyes. Some fireflies were copper-colored. Some were silver. And some were... golden.
It was fast.
The golden firefly flew swiftly. It was so quick that it seemed impossible to catch. The copper fireflies were numerous. They'd be easy to catch. The silver fireflies were also somewhat numerous. I could catch those too. But the color of the sun. The firefly flickering gold—there was only one.
[Please select a skill card.]
I reached out toward the one and only golden flame in this world.
[Selection complete.]
I caught it.
[Copying skill.]
And then I died.
* * *
Skill activated.
Name: I Want to Be Like You.
Rank: S+.
Rule one.
Automatically activates upon death by an enemy.
Rule two.
Copies one skill from the enemy who killed you and makes it yours.
Rule three.
You cannot copy the same target more than once.
Rule four.
Which skill is copied is determined randomly.
But you die.
* * *
Do you know what hell looks like?
I'll tell you in your place.
First of all, there was no hellfire. There wasn't even an ordinary fire. There was a gas range, but its firepower alone wasn't enough to kindle hellfire. Ah, unexpectedly, hell also had a small refrigerator. A narrow bed too... and a secondhand television.
"Huh."
In short, it looked exactly like my studio apartment.
No, it simply was the studio apartment where I lived.
No matter how I looked around, this wasn't hell. It was definitely my 3.5-pyeong single room, attractive for its refreshingly reasonable monthly rent.
"H-huh... huh?"
I felt my head with one hand. It was fine. Just in case, I checked my reflection in my smartphone screen. A face that looked like someone had started sculpting an Apollo statue and given up halfway. In other words, moderately handsome and moderately ugly.
There were no burn marks anywhere.
"...What? What happened?"
What on earth had happened?
'Did the Flame Emperor heal me and bring me here?'
That was ridiculous bullshit.
But... other than that, I couldn't think of any way to explain this situation. Maybe the Flame Emperor was kinder than I'd thought. Maybe he was crazy, but not a crazy psychopath, and he'd pretended to kill me but actually saved me.
-Breaking news.
Then had the Flame Emperor also turned on that television before leaving?
-The Black Dragon Guild sets out to conquer the 40th floor of the Tower.
-They were confident they would finally show the power of a top-tier guild, weren't they?
-Unfortunately, they have returned empty-handed once again.
But no.
The Flame Emperor was not in the 3.5-pyeong single room. He hadn't just stepped out for a moment after leaving the television on.
Instead.
-Hunter rank 1!
-The Flame Emperor has once again soloed the boss!
Instead, the Flame Emperor was frowning on the television screen.
2
-Hello, Flame Emperor!
-Ah, yes. Hello...
-You've set a new record again today. You're the only one who has set this many records, Flame Emperor. Could we get a few words from you?
-First, I'd appreciate it if you changed that dogshit title.
-Pardon?
In the corner of the broadcast screen, an English word was written in capital letters.
LIVE.
I stared blankly up at the old television.
-First, I'd appreciate it if you changed that dogshit title.
-Pardon?
-Flame Emperor. Why do you call me by some shitty nickname when I have a perfectly good name?
Yoo Soo-ha.
The world's rank 1 hunter. The protagonist of this era. The hero I had envied was there. Yes. Perhaps it was inappropriate to simply say he was "there."
Because he had killed me, and I had died by his hand.
"No way."
Even as I said "no way" aloud, my hand was already checking my smartphone. I looked at the date. It was yesterday's date.
My hands trembled.
I went onto an internet community.
-Hey, the Flame Emperor is spouting nonsense again!
Here too.
-Can't he watch his mouth when the whole world is watching?
There too.
-The Flame Emperor has a girlfriend! They say he's dating the Saintess!
This site, that community, social media too.
They were all the same. The same posts I'd seen yesterday were going up in real time. Even though they were definitely posts I had seen yesterday, other people were reacting as if seeing them for the first time.
"Ha..."
Nevertheless, there was exactly one difference.
-I want to be like the Flame Emperor.
The comment I had written was gone.
Of course it was. Originally, around this time yesterday, I would have been busily writing comments, but right now I was just spacing out.
I had truly returned to yesterday.
"...Skill card. Open."
Whoosh!
A golden card bloomed before my eyes like a flame.
[I Want to Be Like You (S+)]
A skill I had already checked several times since yesterday and memorized completely. An S-rank ability that could never be used. A trash skill of the ages, whose price for use was my own death.
But that wasn't all.
"Good lord."
Two.
The flames burning before me numbered two.
[I Want to Be Like You (S+)]
[Regressor's Clockwork Watch (EX)]
Two golden cards were floating.
'How?'
My heart pounded.
Regressor's Clockwork Watch. It was a skill I'd never seen before. It hadn't been there when I checked yesterday, and it hadn't been there until I died to the Flame Emperor. I'd only had a trash skill I couldn't even use. A skill with a name like that... and a golden skill at that—there was no way I'd had one.
'How did this happen?'
I didn't know.
How that skill had become mine. How it had come to be mine. I didn't know. I couldn't understand it yet.
But.
'It's mine.'
I could at least know the fact that this card was mine.
'Mine.'
And the fact that it might be a card that would change my life.
I reached out and grasped the card.
I flipped it over.
+
[Regressor's Clockwork Watch]
Rank: EX
Effect: Automatically activates upon death. Regresses to 24 hours before the moment of death. Memories and stats are preserved even after regression.
※However, the higher your hunter rank, the stronger the penalty imposed.
※This skill was copied from Hunter Yoo Soo-ha.
+
Regression.
Upon death, return to 24 hours in the past.
"Ah..."
My head trembled as if struck by lightning. My heart pounded.
I had realized it.
"This is... the Flame Emperor's secret..."
How the Flame Emperor had become world rank 1.
How he had single-handedly defeated the boss of the impregnable 10th floor of the Tower.
And finally, why the Flame Emperor had been so certain that the Saintess would kill him.
I finally understood.
-The Saintess really was trying to kill me.
-If I hadn't killed her first, she would've poisoned me tomorrow.
The Flame Emperor had said.
-I know everything.
-I just know everything. I have a way of knowing everything.
-And what that way is, you don't need to know, pal.
He had actually died to the Saintess.
As he himself said, he had been poisoned to death. Because he died, he regressed 24 hours into the past. And then, grinding his teeth, he paid the Saintess back.
For revenge.
'And he killed me too.'
I clenched my fist.
'Me, who had done nothing wrong! Just because I was in the way!'
He cut off my foot. He burned my head. He killed me. He toyed with me like a bug.
On the cheap television, the interview was still underway.
-Finally, a word for the viewers, please!
-Haah.
At the reporter's question, the Flame Emperor scratched the back of his head roughly.
Yesterday, I had seen a hero in that figure. Now, I saw a psychopath. It didn't matter that he was world rank 1. It didn't matter that he was a hunter praised as a hero by countless people. He was my enemy.
The Flame Emperor glared straight into the camera.
-Those who are meant to make it will make it anyway.
I also glared straight at him.
-But even if you succeed later, don't come at me.
I gripped the golden card tightly. The same card that man possessed. The skill I had copied from the Flame Emperor. The Flame Emperor was rank 1 and I was a nobody who couldn't even make the rankings, but at this moment, the two of us stood at the same starting line.
-You die.
Now it was my turn for revenge.