Butterfly Effect (7)
After Purple Devil vanished in the blink of an eye, Lee Yu-seol stood rooted to the spot as if someone had nailed her there.
This is… what exactly…?
She tried again, straining to confirm Purple Devil’s ability through Sense. It was pointless. The speed with which he had kicked off the ground and vanished was simply beyond what her perception could follow.
None of them had probably noticed it yet—that Purple Devil had already slipped into the Dio Guild building.
“……”
Lee Yu-seol had spent her life as a hunter, and during that time she had seen more than her share of monsters in human skin. A guild representative from another guild who ran across the surface of the water and subdued an aquatic monster in a single stroke. A race from within a Gate that had knocked out an entire combat unit. A nationally notorious villain who had butchered seven A-class hunters on the spot.
Every one of them had left an unforgettable scar in her memory.
They were all monsters.
And yet none of them possessed physical abilities as absurd as Purple Devil’s.
I couldn’t even track him, let alone see him.
How? How much? What kind of training would even be required to reach that level? Ten years? Twenty? A lifetime?
Lee Yu-seol bit her lip.
No. This goes beyond the limits of the human body altogether.
Then there could only be one answer: he had awakened with some extraordinary talent.
No matter how coldly she analyzed it, it still made no sense.
What kind of Talent does he have…?
She didn’t have time to finish the thought before a sudden explosion ripped through the sky.
Bang!!!
Rain mixed with grains of sand came pouring down as the entire building shuddered.
The source of the blast was the rooftop.
The Dio Guild agents guarding the entrance looked up in shock.
“W-what?”
“What was that?”
“……Oh my God.”
On top of the building, masses of mana burst apart like fireworks.
Lee Yu-seol closed her eyes.
In the darkness, her perception reached for the tip of the spire.
“Ugh!”
She clutched her temple.
Two beings of a higher level than her were fighting up there.
One was Go Ju-hun, the representative of the Dio Guild.
The other was Purple Devil.
The two of them traded blows with ferocious intensity, neither yielding an inch.
Lee Yu-seol found herself wondering.
The fight between Go Ju-hun and Purple Devil.
Who will win?
It didn’t take long before her expression loosened.
The momentum was clearly shifting.
The one being pushed back was…
Purple Devil!
Lee Yu-seol felt relief wash over her.
Of course.
The man she trusted and followed, the man she truly loved, would never be defeated by some gutter thug like that.
Lee Yu-seol headed for the entrance, then shouted to everyone inside.
“Everyone, listen up!”
When the armed agents spotted her, they snapped to attention.
“A high-risk villain has infiltrated the Dio Guild building!”
The agents blinked at one another, question marks practically floating over their heads.
“When did that happen?”
“I haven’t seen a single rat.”
Lee Yu-seol’s voice rose sharply.
“Right now, the head of the Dio Guild is fighting that bastard himself. And you’re just going to stand here and watch?”
The guild might have seemed like a tightly knit fighting force from the outside, but structurally it was no different from a large corporation.
The agents were paid to do a job. They didn’t have any grand sense of mission or overwhelming loyalty.
The Dio Guild was full of misfits with bad habits and a talent for causing trouble, people who had nowhere else to go. The agents had come to feel something special for Go Ju-hun, the man who had taken them in.
“We’re going to support Representative Go! Relay the order! All units, charge the rooftop!”
The agents’ faces filled with determination.
“Yes, ma’am!”
“Who the hell does that asshole think he is?”
“Can I be the one to rip his head off?”
Someone raised a hand.
“Team Leader Lee. Code X has halted the elevators, so getting to the rooftop by lift may be impossible.”
The Dio Guild building automatically shut down its elevators whenever it entered combat mode.
If someone forced them to move anyway, the doors would close and the car would explode immediately afterward.
If an intruder came in without knowing that, they’d be trapped inside the elevator and melted alive in a furnace of fire.
The bombs would only be disarmed when Code X was lifted.
“What should we do, Team Leader Lee?”
Lee Yu-seol hesitated.
Purple Devil had also chosen not to use the elevator, heading for the emergency stairs instead.
That was probably because he’d judged it the faster, more efficient route.
Eighty-eight floors, and then the rooftop.
For an ordinary person, it would take at least half an hour, maybe even an hour.
But for trained Dio Guild agents…
Ten minutes. Maybe less.
In that span, there was no telling what might happen on the roof.
Maybe it’ll already be over.
Lee Yu-seol decided Go Ju-hun would be the one standing at the end of it.
Purple Devil will probably be a corpse by then.
With a smile on her face, she sprinted through the revolving door.
“Run!”
Rainwater soaked through my suit and streamed down my body.
“……Hah, huff.”
In just a few exchanges, my body had been reduced to a wreck.
One eye had swollen so badly I could barely see out of it. The jawline of my mask had been torn away. The cuts carved across my body stung like hell. Both fists throbbed as though I’d gone and punched a boulder. Every place Go Ju-hun had hit me pulsed with a dull, murderous ache.
Damn it.
Right before I clashed with him, I’d bought Super Kid’s Divine Aura.
Mana spread through my body, wrapping me in a thin protective shell. Ordinary blades and bullets couldn’t even leave a scratch on my skin. Not even the twins had managed to break through it.
And yet.
Just as diamond can be shattered if enough force is applied, no matter how hard it is, the shield around me had been ripped apart by Go Ju-hun’s attack without the slightest mercy.
The damage went straight through to my organs.
“Cough.”
A mouthful of blood spilled out.
Go Ju-hun washed the blood from his hand with the falling rain.
“All that hype, and this is it? Nothing special.”
The amount of mana pouring from his body surged even higher. Go Ju-hun spoke again.
“My Talent is Predation. It’s useful when I’m killing someone, sure, but I also build experience every time I make contact with an enemy.”
So he was telling me his ability without the slightest hesitation.
That didn’t look like simple confidence.
This bastard was…
“At first, everyone’s the same as you. They come at me all full of themselves.”
Go Ju-hun curled one corner of his mouth into a sneer.
“They all ended up dying horribly in my hands, though.”
He folded his arms over his own body.
“Mana is great, isn’t it? Sometimes it’s warm. Sometimes it’s ice-cold. And sometimes it gets people so high they feel like they’re on drugs.”
A filthy, arrogant narcissist.
At last, I was seeing Go Ju-hun for what he really was.
“It’s like being a god. No, I’m going to become a real god. Standing at the top of this world—if that isn’t a god, then what is it?”
Go Ju-hun held out both hands.
Shapes began to ripple into existence in the rain.
“Grrk!”
“Kekek!”
“Khehk!”
Three figures that looked vaguely like Go Ju-hun burst out of the air.
Their skin was pale, their hair long.
They were naked, but there was no sign of genitals. Each of them wore a leash, and Go Ju-hun was holding the leads.
They were bizarre beyond words.
Beings that should never exist naturally in reality.
He’s a make-type Talent.
A class that manifested things through mana.
Go Ju-hun had materialized living creatures.
And they were none other than copies of himself.
“I don’t care about anyone except myself. I focus only on me, and then I focus some more.”
The result was those puppet-like dolls.
Go Ju-hun threw an arm around one of his doubles.
“My friends will do anything I order them to.”
Closer up, I could see they were a little taller than he was, and more muscular too.
“If I tell them to kill each other, they’ll lunge at one another without a second thought.”
Go Ju-hun tossed something onto the ground.
A steel dog collar.
“I’ll give you two choices. First: become my dog.”
He pointed at the collar.
“Put it on and swear you’ll do whatever I tell you for the rest of your life. If you do that, I’ll let you live.”
Go Ju-hun pointed at me.
“Second: don’t become my dog. If you choose that, I’ll cripple you, rip off that mask, and kill everyone you know. Heh heh.”
His shoulders shook as he laughed.
“I won’t kill you. I’ll isolate you completely and make you lonely. Until the day you die.”
Go Ju-hun jingled the leash in his hand.
“Now choose.”
Go Ju-hun’s doubles drooled as they crouched, ready to spring.
“Grrrr…”
I looked at the dog collar half-submerged in a puddle of rainwater.
Living alone didn’t scare me. I’d been alone in my previous life, too, and in a way that had gone on long enough to rot my bones.
What I was really afraid of…
was the thing poking out from the torn jaw of my mask.
I stuck out my long tongue.
“I’d rather bite it off and die than kneel to a bastard like you.”
The moment I finished speaking, Go Ju-hun’s doubles lunged at me.
They fought in a style completely different from their master’s.
Where Go Ju-hun moved with elegance and refinement, they were like zombies that hadn’t eaten in days.
“Kraaaah!”
“Khaaaah!”
“Kaaah!!”
All three of them slashed at me with their claws at once.
Slash.
Even the last remnants of Divine Aura were torn away completely.
I rushed to activate Judgment of the Superhuman, but there was no way those slow, clumsy fists of mine were going to catch them.
“Damn it!”
I threw up both hands to guard myself, but everything that wasn’t protected got shredded.
The moment I hesitated, one of them bit into my shoulder blade.
Blood from the wound streamed down my arm and soaked my wrist.
The more damage I took, the more mana turned to light and got siphoned toward Go Ju-hun.
“……Ha. Good! More! Just a little more!”
My damage had become Go Ju-hun’s source of power.
A pool of blood gathered beneath my feet.
My body was shaking.
Cold. Dizzy. I felt like I was about to black out.
…This is bad.
Judgment of the Superhuman and Divine Aura were both shut down.
I wanted to use Speeder’s Infinite Acceleration, but both of my legs had been trembling for a while now.
I’m not even sure my body would hold together.
Nothing was worse than spending money and not being able to use the power you bought.
I’ve got no choice. I have to try something new.
A new technique I’d earned by completing a full marathon.
Awakener's Balance
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Ding.
I purchased Regeneration.
Mana surged up from my ruined body.
Swoosh.
The wounds began to heal.
At the same time, my balance was burned down at a frightening rate.
The amount that had exceeded one billion dropped into the nine-hundred-million range.
Speeder, according to his setting, had become a hero after being struck by lightning in a laboratory. He didn’t just have the ability to run; he could also stimulate his cells and heal injuries on his body.
Go Ju-hun tilted his head.
“A healer? No, self-repair? You’ve got quite a few tricks. So what now? Are you going to keep healing yourself until you die?”
He wasn’t wrong.
Regeneration was a defensive skill.
I couldn’t turn the board with this ability alone.
And if I tried to slug it out with Go Ju-hun, I’d only end up making him stronger and stronger.
Isn’t there some other way?
Flash!
A bolt of lightning tore down from the sky.
A split second later, thunder screamed so loudly it felt like it was shredding my eardrums.
Yeah. If I use that…
The instant Go Ju-hun looked away, I quietly picked up the thing that had fallen to the ground.
Go Ju-hun patted the heads of his doubles and said, “My babies. You hungry?”
He shoved one of them in the back.
“That guy over there—eat everything except the torso!”
The moment the words left his mouth, the three monsters clung to me like vengeful spirits.
They bit into my arms, my legs, my neck—anywhere they could reach, tearing at me wildly.
Rip! Ssskkk!
Skin burst. Blood sprayed across my eyes.
Hot blood surged up my throat, and a strong, metallic taste flooded my tongue.
As my body was torn apart, my balance dropped and the damaged parts regenerated, but the pain was beyond anything I could have imagined.
“Aaaagh!!!”
The agony was so horrible it felt like my brain was about to explode.
It was like someone had bound me down and started inflicting the most brutal torture imaginable.
I can’t go down here!
I clenched my teeth so hard I could feel them cracking.
Dragging the doubles all over my body, I forced myself to take a step forward.
Go Ju-hun snorted.
“Oh? You’re still standing? Fine. Let’s see it then.”
The doubles’ assault became even more savage.
Arms and legs snapped. Sharp claws sank deep into my back.
Crack! Crack-crack! Crunch!
“……Kh.”
I couldn’t even scream properly anymore.
My vision kept flipping over. My body kept listing to one side.
Chunks of flesh that had been torn away filled in again. Bones that had split open fused back together.
But the monsters showed no mercy, and they destroyed every part of me all over again.
The hell of construction and destruction went on and on, as though it would last forever.
Once the pain went beyond simple pain, despair hit me like I’d fallen into a bottomless pit.
Maybe…
I want to die…
My half-dislocated jaw trembled like a nutcracker.
Cold. Sleepy.
But not yet. Not now!
One step. Then another.
I walked on, dragging my ruined body forward in a miserable, stubborn crawl.
And then, before I knew it, I was right in front of Go Ju-hun.
“……Ugh.”
I was standing squarely between the living and the dead.
My scalp had been torn away, and my right ear was gone. My innards were laid bare as I bled like a broken pipe.
The doubles were still clinging to me, greedily devouring what was left of my body.
Go Ju-hun bared his claws and aimed for the center of my forehead.
“How ugly. Enough. Disappear.”
High above the city, rain poured endlessly down behind Go Ju-hun’s back.
Lightning flashed through the black clouds, and the sight of it was magnificent.
I smiled through lips torn ragged.
“Ugly? It’s beautiful.”
With my right hand, I lifted the thing I’d been holding into the sky.
It was the metal dog collar Go Ju-hun had thrown.
That was right.
Speeder was a hero born from lightning. Depending on the moment, a bolt of thunder could become his driving force.
“You should disappear instead.”
For a split second, Go Ju-hun’s pupils widened.
“What?”
I threw my left arm around him with all my strength.
BOOOOOOM!!!
An infinite surge of energy came crashing down from the sky, straight onto Go Ju-hun and me.