Chapter 5. Hero Hunt (2)
Chapter 5. Hero Hunt (2)
Day 4048.
[You have died.]
Day 4047.
[You have died.]
Day 4046.
[You have died.]
It was the work of erasing a single person's history. The work of erasing a legend that seemed as though it would be etched into the Tower forever. Just as Rome wasn't built in a day, the legend of the Flame Emperor hadn't been made in a mere few days. Naturally, it was difficult.
But it was not impossible.
"Fuck......!"
I screamed. Screaming, I killed myself.
Whenever I wanted to give up, I remembered. The pain I felt when the Flame Emperor burned my body, the injustice, the rage. His face when he had the nerve to come back after burning down a village and say, 'What are you going to give me?'
His expression when he looked down on me like a bug.
'I'll kill him!'
Stab!
I clenched my teeth and drove the sword into my own throat.
'I'll kill you, Yoo Soo-ha!'
This was the act of killing myself.
But further than that, it was the act of killing the Flame Emperor.
[You have died.]
[Regressing 24 hours into the past.]
Day 4040.
Day 4039.
Day 4038.
Day 4037.......
* * *
How many times had I killed myself?
Like an hourglass that never ran out, my work seemed as though it would never end. The Flame Emperor's achievements appeared as solid as a pyramid that would never crumble.
That pyramid slowly began to crack.
「Flame Emperor solo clears Floor 39!」
「Floor 38 cleared solo! Another legend of the Flame Emperor!」
「Floor 37 clear success!」
「Hunter Yoo Soo-ha. Ascends to world rank 1. First Korean ever.」
「The throne of rank 1, left empty by the Sword Saint's disappearance. Who will be the next to claim it? Foreign experts agree: "The strongest candidate is Korea's Yoo Soo-ha."」
「Impregnable Floor 10 breached. Who is the mysterious hero?」
「Sword Saint, day 22 of disappearance. Is the worst chaos in the hunter industry upon us?」
Scraps of newspaper taped to the wall of my rented room.
Those certificates displaying the history of the Flame Emperor vanished.
One by one.
「Floor 38 cleared solo! Another legend of the Flame Emperor!」
「Floor 37 clear success!」
「Hunter Yoo Soo-ha. Ascends to world rank 1. First Korean ever.」
「The throne of rank 1, left empty by the Sword Saint's disappearance. Who will be the next to claim it? Foreign experts agree: "The strongest candidate is Korea's Yoo Soo-ha."」
「Impregnable Floor 10 breached. Who is the mysterious hero?」
「Sword Saint, day 22 of disappearance. Is the worst chaos in the hunter industry upon us?」
One by one.
One. Then another one.
Like an old man's teeth falling out one at a time, more and more of the wallpaper was exposed.
「Floor 37 clear success!」
「Hunter Yoo Soo-ha. Ascends to world rank 1. First Korean ever.」
「The throne of rank 1, left empty by the Sword Saint's disappearance. Who will be the next to claim it? Foreign experts agree: "The strongest candidate is Korea's Yoo Soo-ha."」
「Impregnable Floor 10 breached. Who is the mysterious hero?」
「Sword Saint, day 22 of disappearance. Is the worst chaos in the hunter industry upon us?」
They vanished.
'I can see it!'
The end was beginning to come into view.
There was still a long way to go, but... it was fine. I could endure it. The Flame Emperor, who had seemed eternal and immortal. That psychopath was neither eternal nor immortal. As long as this fact alone became certain.
I could endure as long as it took.
'It's not impossible!'
I swung the sword.
I swung it, and killed the time of the Flame Emperor who had cleared Floor 37.
「Hunter Yoo Soo-ha. Ascends to world rank 1. First Korean ever.」
「The throne of rank 1, left empty by the Sword Saint's disappearance. Who will be the next to claim it? Foreign experts agree: "The strongest candidate is Korea's Yoo Soo-ha."」
「Impregnable Floor 10 breached. Who is the mysterious hero?」
「Sword Saint, day 22 of disappearance. Is the worst chaos in the hunter industry upon us?」
I swung the sword again.
I swung it, and killed the time of the Flame Emperor who had risen to the top of the world.
「The throne of rank 1, left empty by the Sword Saint's disappearance. Who will be the next to claim it? Foreign experts agree: "The strongest candidate is Korea's Yoo Soo-ha."」
「Impregnable Floor 10 breached. Who is the mysterious hero?」
「Sword Saint, day 22 of disappearance. Is the worst chaos in the hunter industry upon us?」
I killed it.
「Impregnable Floor 10 breached. Who is the mysterious hero?」
「Sword Saint, day 22 of disappearance. Is the worst chaos in the hunter industry upon us?」
I killed it.
「Sword Saint, day 22 of disappearance. Is the worst chaos in the hunter industry upon us?」
At last.
[You have died.]
My old sword had at some point begun to gleam like new.
The wrinkles on my hands had lessened a little. My rented room had shrunk bit by bit as I moved again and again. The further back I returned to my younger days, the poorer my living situation became. When I went to the bathroom to rest for even a moment, I could see my face in the mirror, suddenly much younger.
And then.
"Ah......."
It was gone.
There was nothing on my wall.
No countless newspaper articles. No magazine interviews. Not a single scrap of paper hung on the wall of my rented room.
Blank space.
I had erased the history of the name Flame Emperor.
"I did it."
I murmured without thinking.
"I came back......."
Eleven years ago. May 6th.
One month before the Flame Emperor Yoo Soo-ha awakened.
I had regressed.
4
'There's no need to hesitate.'
Shabby clothes.
'There's no need to wait, either.'
A worn hoodie and sweatpants. That was everything I had in my early twenties. I wrapped everything I had around me like a single layer of armor and went out.
The excitement of having returned to the past... was absent.
'Yoo Soo-ha.'
Not until I killed that bastard.
'I won't let my guard down.'
4,090 times.
That was the number of times I had died to return to this day.
I had died forty more times than my initial calculation. The time it took to kill myself thousands of times. The time it took to rest. All of it added up to that.
That wasn't all.
I had collected everything, every piece of information about Yoo Soo-ha.
By repeating this single day, May 6th, ten times over.
'11 a.m.'
Yoo Soo-ha almost always woke up at 11 a.m. May 6th. On this day, too, he woke at 11 a.m. without fail. Perhaps because he had downed four bottles of beer the night before, he was scowling from the moment he got up.
'2 p.m.'
Yoo Soo-ha leaves the officetel he rents monthly and heads to the hunting grounds. An officetel where F-rank bottom-tier hunters often stay. Knowing that bottom-tier hunters die often while hunting, the landlord had set the monthly rent low but demanded a hefty deposit. Good business sense.
'3 p.m.'
Yoo Soo-ha hunted slimes and the like on the Floor 2 hunting grounds. But hunting only slimes didn't make for a decent day's pay. At 3:11 p.m., Yoo Soo-ha.
"Ah, damn it. When am I ever going to live large like the Sword Saint......."
He grumbled to himself. Four minutes later, at 3:15 p.m.
"Wow, hunting slimes is really boring."
He muttered.
An ordinary F-rank hunter.
A life spent waiting for a windfall to come someday.
That was Yoo Soo-ha at twenty-one. Not the Flame Emperor at thirty-two.
"If only I could win the lottery......."
Before long, the twenty-one-year-old Yoo Soo-ha would have that wish granted.
As soon as he obtained his regression skill, Yoo Soo-ha used his ability to win the lottery.
The Merchant Alliance. The guild commonly called the Merchant Alliance issued a lottery every week. The Merchant Alliance was the only guild that could run a lottery inside the Tower. And every hunter who won this lottery was recorded.
Among those winning records was the young man who would later be called the Flame Emperor.
As the lucky man who won first place not once, but twice in a row.
'That's three weeks and four weeks from today.'
But.
That future would never come for the twenty-one-year-old Yoo Soo-ha I was looking at now.
'You die here today.'
May 6th. 5:31 p.m.
Yoo Soo-ha left the Floor 2 hunting grounds and moved on. Had he decided there was no hope in hunting only slimes for the rest of his life? He headed toward a place novice hunters rarely went, a zone with a somewhat higher difficulty.
A place more remote and treacherous.
A place where, for the next thirty-six minutes, no one but Yoo Soo-ha would pass through.
'...He's here.'
I was waiting there.
'That's him.'
A man slouching along, yawning. Yoo Soo-ha.
Even though I had traveled eleven years back, I recognized him instantly. It wasn't because I had a keen eye. It was simply that the bastard Yoo Soo-ha looked about the same now as he would eleven years later.
'He must have gotten his hands on some elixir of eternal youth later on.'
Thank you.
You greedy pig, bursting at the seams with avarice!
'Come.'
My heart pounded like mad.
I swallowed my tension and opened my mouth.
"H-hey, hunter sir! Please save me...!"
"Huh?"
Yoo Soo-ha looked my way.
"I was attacked by wolves.... Hic. Please save me. Just a potion......."
I had smeared blood all over my body. I was drenched in it. Not my own blood, of course, but the blood of monsters I had hunted beforehand. To anyone else, I would look like a novice hunter on the verge of death.
"Ah, shit. What's this?"
Naturally, that was how I would look to Yoo Soo-ha as well.
"Mister, you already messed with the monsters over here? Goddamn. So today's hunt is ruined."
"A p-potion, please......."
"Potion my ass. I'm not even going to make my daily wage now. Hah."
Yoo Soo-ha sighed and walked over.
"How much are you going to pay?"
"Huh?"
"I said how much are you going to pay for the potion. Mister, you don't think I'm some charity worker who's going to give you this expensive potion for free, do you? To a total stranger? That's really not how it works."
Yoo Soo-ha pulled out a plastic bottle. He shook it in front of my eyes. Slosh. Inside the bottle engraved with the Alchemy Ministry guild mark, a red liquid sloshed like blood.
Twenty gold from the Alchemy Ministry. A recovery potion that sold for nineteen gold each when bought in bundles of five.
"T-twenty gold... I'll give it to you. I'll give it, so please hurry......."
"Wow, look at this guy. You've got some nerve."
Yoo Soo-ha bent his knees to meet my eye level.
"Mister, can't you read the situation? You're about to die right now. About to die. This potion is the thing that'll save your life. And you want to buy your life for a measly twenty gold? Is your life worth twenty gold?"
"Uh......."
"I mean, what if I just up and leave right now? You just die. If you don't want to die, you should calculate the price of your life properly."
"......."
Fine.
I knew it.
"F-forty gold......."
"Forget it. Hand over everything you've got."
I knew he was this kind of bastard.
"Ah, well. Even if you wanted to give it, you can't move in that state, can you? Can't even move your hands? Don't worry. I'll collect it for you. I've got that much of a service mentality."
Yoo Soo-ha reached out and rummaged through my clothes. My outer pockets. Inside my hoodie. He even groped through my pants pockets. The bastard finally found my leather wallet and grinned.
"Let's see. One gold, two gold, three gold....... Hmm, about sixty gold? Mister, why are you so poor? Carry more around with you."
"Ugh. That's... my entire savings......."
"It's fine. I'll put it to good use."
Yoo Soo-ha pocketed the wallet and patted my head.
Just like he had done 4,050 days ago, no.
Just like he would do 4,050 days later, when he burned me.
"That's just how life is, right?"
Heave-ho. The bastard pulled something from his chest. The recovery potion he had promised to give me went back into his pocket. Instead, what he drew out was a sword.
A blade.
Not a tool for saving lives, but the exact opposite—a tool for killing.
'Ha.'
I looked up at Yoo Soo-ha. I wasn't so much angry as simply dumbfounded. But perhaps he interpreted my gaze differently, because Yoo Soo-ha shrugged his shoulders.
"Hey, don't look at me like that. I did think about giving you the potion, but... if I save you here, you might come back for revenge later, right? Can't have that. A man's got to live without leaving loose ends, and you've seen my face, so......."
Yoo Soo-ha was smiling.
"You'll have to die."
The hunter I had once seen only from behind on television. The man I had worshipped as a hero for ten years, the man I had envied so desperately, wanting to succeed like him.
The hero's bare face was hideous.
Far more than I had imagined.
'Good.'
I quietly watched Yoo Soo-ha grip his sword.
'I'll live without leaving loose ends.'
The bastard slowly raised his sword high.
And then.
I lifted my right foot and kicked him square in the crotch.
"Guh?"
Yoo Soo-ha's stance, poised to bring the sword down, wavered for just an instant. But that instant was more than enough for me. I narrowly dodged the path of the sword Yoo Soo-ha swung.
"Huh?"
And stabbed my sword into his throat.
"......!"
I was different from Yoo Soo-ha. With the man I had to eliminate, the prey I had to kill, right in front of me, I didn't waste time spouting nonsense. The moment I stabbed his throat, I twisted the sword and slashed up under Yoo Soo-ha's jaw.
"Kuh, huk......!"
A fountain of blood erupted. My hand was instantly soaked. Yoo Soo-ha let out strangled groans—guh, guh—before collapsing to the ground, finally letting out something resembling a scream.
"Aaaaagh!"
But even that lasted only a moment. Blood foam bubbled up, clogging his throat.
"Guh, kuh-heuk......! Guh......!"
With every second that passed, Yoo Soo-ha died a little more.
The bastard seemed to instinctively feel himself dying. Yoo Soo-ha stopped flailing on the ground and arched his back. He pressed both hands against the wound on his throat. But the blood didn't stop. Instead, it flowed even thicker through the gaps between his fingers.
"Yeah."
I pressed my foot down hard on Yoo Soo-ha's throat.
"......!"
The bastard's eyes went wide. Why. How. Questions and rage filled his gaze. A gaze that would soon go dark. I had no need whatsoever to answer it.
"Consider it a valuable experience."
I gripped my sword.
The sword that had killed me 4,090 times.
And I swung it.
To kill the monster.