Chapter 242
Chapter 242
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 242
Chapter Title: Future and Past (5)
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“Gah!”
*Fwoooosh!*
The absorbed flames erupted in a whirlwind, engulfing Jo Min-woo.
Unable to defend himself, he was sent flying dozens of meters before crashing to the ground.
“Min-woo…!”
“...I’m fine. I’m bound to win.”
As I watched in silence, Jo Min-woo looked at me and grinned.
“If I, his past self, die, then his future self will disappear too. He can’t kill me. No, he probably can’t even injure me. If I break a leg or lose an arm, his own body would change.”
The Flame Dragon’s lips twisted.
Jo Min-woo knew exactly why this fight, which should have been over long ago, was still dragging on.
“So, please trust me and wait. I think it’ll only be meaningful if I defeat him myself!”
[‘The One Who First Lit the Flame’ watches with interest.]
The flames ignited once more.
But no matter how determined the heart, it couldn't overcome the difference in power.
Jo Min-woo was knocked down again and again.
He took a hit, then another, and another.
Yet, without a single thought of giving up, he pushed himself back to his feet.
Like a phoenix reborn from the flames.
Jo Min-woo, always on the verge of collapse but never falling, continued to fight the Flame Dragon with all his might.
“Why… Why don’t you understand? Why don’t you believe me!”
Finally, for the first time, the Flame Dragon showed his anger toward Jo Min-woo.
“I am you! The you who couldn’t protect Min-ah, who lost her, who was betrayed and abandoned by Kim Se-hyeon, the one you trusted most! The one standing here is the you who fell into despair after losing everything in an instant! I came here to stop you from making the same mistakes, from falling into the same despair, so why are you being so…!!”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you!!”
Jo Min-woo’s voice boomed.
“I refuse to accept you!”
*Fwoosh!*
A change occurred.
The color of the flames clinging to Jo Min-woo’s limbs began to shift.
The crimson red seemed to deepen, then was suddenly overlaid with a coat of blue.
Blue flames. Azure Flames.
What now wreathed Jo Min-woo’s body were, unmistakably, blue flames.
“Blue flames…?”
The Flame Dragon froze.
He stared blankly at the blue flames wrapped around Jo Min-woo’s limbs, not thinking to move, like a broken robot, before his gaze darted to Jo Min-ah.
‘This is.’
The blue flames covering Jo Min-ah’s body were extending like threads, connecting to Jo Min-woo.
Flame Resonance.
Once activated, Jo Min-woo would be able to use blue flames just like Jo Min-ah from now on.
It was a trait shared by the twins, Jo Min-ah and Jo Min-woo, an extremely special and tricky characteristic that only activated when their care for each other was immense, but it was just as powerful.
And it was something the Flame Dragon did not possess.
“What were you doing then! You were her big brother and you couldn’t even protect her! What were you doing until things got that bad! Why are you only blaming Hyung!?”
Jo Min-woo’s blue flames opened wide like a gaping mouth.
Even if they were blue flames, considering the gap between the Flame Dragon and Jo Min-woo, the attack should have been useless.
But the Flame Dragon, making no attempt to defend, took the blow head-on.
***
He had a dream.
A very old dream, one he had been deliberately ignoring.
‘Where am I…’
He looked around.
The place felt familiar somehow.
As he walked where his feet took him, he saw someone kneeling before a gravestone.
‘What is this?’
He squinted, trying to read the name carved on the gravestone.
Jo Min-ah.
The moment he saw those three words, a surge of emotion welled up inside the Flame Dragon.
‘Then the one in front of it is…?’
Shifting his angle slightly, he saw a profile.
Kim Se-hyeon.
The Flame Dragon’s eyebrows shot up, and he tried to grab him by the hair, but his hand passed right through as if through an apparition.
‘Damn it!!’
This was an illusion.
He knew that, but he still wanted to grab him and beat him down.
The Flame Dragon clenched his fist in frustration, glaring at Kim Se-hyeon as if to kill him.
Then, without realizing it, his clenched fist loosened.
“...I’m sorry.”
From that face, which had seemed so devoid of emotion, a tear fell.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have let you go like that. I wanted to find a happy life for you both. You two deserved to be happy…”
His voice grew husky, turning into a choked sob until the end, when his words became unintelligible.
The Flame Dragon forgot his anger and simply watched in silence.
“I did a terrible thing to Min-woo. But… it was the best I could do. I knew Min-woo wouldn’t be able to bear the grief and would have become a wreck. I had to give him some kind of drive to live.”
Kim Se-hyeon wore a bitter smile.
That can’t be.
You… you thought of us as nothing more than disposable pawns.
Such an obvious lie.
“Still… I thought that having Min-woo live on, even like that, was the greatest repayment I could offer you. I will never let Min-woo die. He might bare his teeth and try to attack me on sight… but that’s a price I have to pay.”
In that moment, the Flame Dragon felt a knot in his chest instantly unravel.
‘...Ah.’
Why had I forgotten this?
I should have known what kind of person Kim Se-hyeon was.
*Swoosh…*
Kim Se-hyeon’s form began to fade.
Everything around him signaled that the dream was ending.
The Flame Dragon’s eyes turned to the gravestone one last time.
For some reason, he thought he saw someone’s smiling face hovering above it.
***
[Hey, Kim Se-hyeon. This guy’s awake.]
“Is he?”
“Ah-da-da-dat!! Hyung! It hurts! It hurts!!”
“Jeez. Stop struggling! You’ll open your wounds!”
“Min-ah, you can finish up.”
After finishing the bandage I was wrapping around Jo Min-woo, I turned around.
The Flame Dragon was lying there with a comfortable expression, as if he were in his own room.
“Hyung.”
The Flame Dragon spoke softly.
“You are going to die soon.”
“...”
It was a sudden declaration.
Jo Min-woo tried to get up, claiming he hadn’t been beaten enough, but he only let out a strange scream and fell back down.
Looks like he’ll be bedridden for a while.
Jo Min-ah asked cautiously.
“Wh-what does that mean? That Oppa is going to die…”
“An unprecedented incident will occur in America… things far worse than you can imagine will happen. So that your trustworthy comrades can reawaken you. Go fully prepared.”
[What’s he talking about? If you’re going to tell us, tell us properly. He’s talking like a prophet.]
‘Well, he did actually see the future.’
[Oh, right.]
He probably couldn’t reveal the future in detail.
That’s just how the world worked.
“I suppose you can’t tell me what’s going to happen or why I die?”
“...No.”
“I see. Then how did you come from the future?”
“One of the members of Team A. There’s someone who has the ‘Time Traveler’s Pocket Watch.’ He said that after a major defeat in this incident, while fleeing, he desperately activated the item without knowing how to use it and ended up in my timeline.”
*Shhhhk.*
Parts of the Flame Dragon’s body began to fade.
Sensing the change, he quickened his speech.
“His goal and mine aligned. So he gave me the pocket watch. To go to the past and kill you, Hyung. If you died and the past was altered, Team A wouldn’t be defeated, and he would automatically return to his own time.”
The fading accelerated.
Altering history affects the past, present, and future.
Now that I knew this information, I would do whatever it took to catch that guy, which meant this future Jo Min-woo would never have come to the past in the first place.
A phenomenon that occurs because the chain of causality is broken, turning this into a ‘past that never happened.’
This future Jo Min-woo was returning to the timeline he originally existed in.
“The world I came from is one where Min-ah is already dead… Even if history is altered, the dead don’t come back. The world doesn’t allow for such things. This world and the one I lived in will probably become different worlds.”
“That’s…”
“Why are you sad?”
The Flame Dragon laughed heartily.
Jo Min-ah tried to hold back her tears, as if trying to burn the Flame Dragon’s image into her memory.
“If I were you!”
Jo Min-woo shouted.
“I’d go to heaven and hell to bring Min-ah back! You have to at least try that hard!”
The Flame Dragon’s eyes widened.
Then, letting out a sound like air escaping his lungs, he laughed for the first time.
“You’re right. You’re right. I still haven’t tried hard enough. When I go back… I’ll go to find Min-ah again.”
The Flame Dragon, who had been staring blankly into space, spoke again after a moment of silence.
“When we were young, I hated being called a little kid.”
“Who likes being called a little kid?”
“Hey, little kid me.”
“You’re doing that on purpose now…”
“If you can’t protect her, you’ll always be a little kid.”
Jo Min-woo’s mouth fell shut.
And when he opened it again.
There was strength in his voice.
“I’m not a little kid.”
“Oh? That’s a relief, then. Because I was.”
The Flame Dragon smiled lightly.
Before long, his body had become so transparent that you could see right through him.
“I hope you become an adult.”
A cluster of light remained.
In the space now occupied by three people, the Flame Dragon’s final words echoed.
“Jo Min-ah. Don’t worry. I won’t let a future like that happen.”
Jo Min-woo was already on his feet.
He was putting on a mature act, trying to hide the pained expression that revealed he was enduring the agony.
“Hyung is here too. Right?”
Jo Min-woo grinned playfully, and I let out a small chuckle.
“Of course. Until the very, very end, you two won’t die.”
“As expected of Hyung… oo-da-da-dat.”
“You idiot! I told you not to get up!”
Jo Min-ah forced Jo Min-woo to lie back down.
I bought a potion from the shop, its price having risen considerably, and had Jo Min-woo drink it.
3000 gold for a single potion. There’s a limit to price gouging.
I had forgotten since I no longer had to worry about coins in the shop, but things like this played a huge part in making EOA’s difficulty skyrocket.
It wasn't possible to buy a lot in advance when they were relatively cheap, either. There was a purchase limit per chapter.
[...Why are you looking at me?]
‘Never mind. It’s not like it’s your fault.’
<...?>
Leaving a tilting-his-head Besial behind, I checked on Jo Min-woo again.
The expensive potion seemed to do its job, as the wounds all over his body were almost completely healed.
‘Even in the future the Flame Dragon existed in, Team A was defeated and fled.’
That must mean our main force is winning.
The Flame Dragon didn’t give any particular warning about that front.
Even so, a strong sense of unease lingered in a corner of my mind.
“All better! Hyung, we can leave now!”
“Hey, you! Even if you used a potion, you shouldn’t be moving around so soon!”
“I’m fine, I tell you. I’m full of energy. Look. The blue flames only you could use, I can use them now too.”
Jo Min-woo giggled, swinging his fists, which were wreathed in blue flames.
In EOA, their bond was also strong.
However, I had never seen Jo Min-woo wield the ‘White Flame’ power that Jo Min-ah was originally supposed to have.
‘Has it changed?’
Was it because their bond was deeper now?
Or was it because the blue flames were a lower grade than the white flames?
I chuckled.
Either way, it was a good thing.
The foundation was laid for Jo Min-woo to become stronger than he was in the original story.
That was enough.
“Let’s get going, then. There’s still a lot to do.”
Hong Gildong’s Nationwide Shrinking Map.
I was finally getting the hang of how to calibrate and use it.
“First, we need to make sure we catch the person who sent that Flame Dragon to the past, right?”
“That’s the most important thing. And if we can get our hands on that item while we’re at it, even better.”
The first thing to do was to catch every last member of Team A.