Remnants
Cool, gentle raindrops tapped lightly against Sihyeok's face.
The damp chill of the mountain air sank deep into his lungs, carrying the faint, earthy scent of crushed leaves and grass. Nearby, the valley stream tumbled over jagged rocks, filling the hollows with a low, resonant murmur. Farther off, branches swayed and rustled in the breeze, accompanied by the bright trill of birds filtering through the pale canopy of sunlight. The entire scene was steeped in a quiet, undisturbed serenity.
It felt utterly foreign.
None of the horrors he knew existed here. There was no iron stench of butchered flesh, no acrid scorch of burning gunpowder, no screeching of monsters tearing through dimensional rifts, and no dying screams of desperate men and women.
Perhaps this is what those zealots from the Creation Church were raving about when they preached of paradise…
Yet Sihyeok knew with grim certainty that he did not belong in a place like this. Given the blood-soaked road he had walked, the only destination awaiting him past death was the deepest pit of hell.
What the hell happened?
His thoughts tangled into an incoherent knot. He had detonated his own core to take the monster down with him, welcoming the end. He had no memory of anything after the blast. To find himself waking in this peaceful grove made no sense at all.
His confusion was abruptly shattered by a heavy, squelching step in the mud.
A foul, suffocating mana crept into the clearing, followed closely by the copper reek of fresh blood riding the wind. Disgusting. And sickeningly familiar.
The instant Sihyeok's instincts recognized the threat, the underbrush parted. His eyes narrowed. Crouched low beyond the thicket was a monster, already coiled to spring. Its beastly breath rasped like grating stones.
The moment it crossed into his line of sight, questions of where he was or how he had arrived ceased to matter. A single, singular impulse seized his mind.
Kill it.
By reflex, Sihyeok reached inward to summon his mana, ready to ignite a spell—
Nothing happened.
It was not merely unresponsive; it was gone. No matter how deeply he searched his meridians, he could not find even a single ember of mana. Stunned disbelief washed over him, and for the first time, he looked down at his own body.
Short limbs. Frail, unconditioned muscles. A drastically lowered vantage point. He was trapped inside the body of a young child.
"Krrr-aaargh!"
The beast did not waste the breath Sihyeok spent in shock. Though he caught sight of the monster lunging forward, his underdeveloped eyes could scarcely track its blurring speed.
Even so, he twisted his torso half a step aside just before the claws struck home, letting the savage swipe carve empty air.
It was not physical reflexes that saved him. It was pure, instinctive battle intuition—the supernatural prescience that read the trajectory of an attack before the muscles even contracted. That single, terrifying gift was what had carried Cha Sihyeok to the absolute pinnacle of human strength in his past life.
Yet what good was intuition now? Confronting a monster in the frail, mana-starved body of a child was nothing short of suicidal.
And yet…
"Don't make me laugh…"
Sihyeok had long ceased to care about living. For years, every breath he took had been an agonizing march toward death. The only reason he had clung so tenaciously to his miserable existence was that he refused to let a monster claim his final breath.
Monsters had stripped away everything that mattered to him: his family, his friends, his comrades, his world, and the woman he loved. Because of that, one vow remained etched into his marrow.
You will never have my life.
That was the final obsession burning within him—the solitary remnant of who he was. To think that even in death, this cruel reality sought to snuff out that last defiance filled him with white-hot fury.
…Just how far do You want to drag me down before You're satisfied?
He had thought the grave would bring an end to the nightmare. Had the world denied him even the mercy of eternal rest? Turbulent emotions threatened to drown him, but Sihyeok ruthlessly crushed them beneath an icy calm. Now was not the time for sentiment. Survival took precedence.
His mind raced, analyzing the threat at breakneck speed.
A beast-type monster, Griebrak. Hyena form. It wears down its prey by inflicting shallow wounds, toying with its meal until total exhaustion before feeding. Which means… it won't kill me in a single strike.
In his prime, Sihyeok was never the sort to ponder tactical manuals mid-fight; he had always overwhelmed enemies through monstrous instinct and overwhelming force. But facing a catastrophic deficit in physical ability left him no room for arrogance. Fortunately, a passage from the anti-monster tactical codex he had memorized back in his Academy days surfaced from the depths of his memory.
Caught off guard by the child's impossible evasion, the Griebrak stumbled, but it swiftly recovered. Tensing the sinewy muscles of its hind legs, it coiled itself to pounce once more.
Gravel and sod exploded outward as the Griebrak lunged, far swifter than before. The distance closed in the span of a heartbeat.
In that fleeting fraction of a second, Sihyeok ducked by a hair's breadth. The snap of the beast's jaws grazed his hair, and without breaking stride, he sprinted straight for the dense tree line opposite the monster's charge. Navigating thick trunks and tangled briars was far more advantageous than an open meadow for throwing off the creature's linear rushes.
He scanned his surroundings as he ran, searching desperately for anything that could serve as a weapon. But nothing of the sort lay scattered on the forest floor. The Griebrak closed in relentlessly, snapping at his heels as Sihyeok darted between the trunks. Scooping up a jagged stone from the path, he hurled it backward to buy a moment's reprieve.
Crack!
The Griebrak clamped down on the stone midair, obliterating it to powder with its terrifying jaw strength.
"Haah… haah…"
His stamina drained with alarming speed, and still he found nothing usable. Yet his desperate maneuvering was not entirely in vain. Looking out over the terrain, a bolt of recognition struck him.
He had been here before.
This was the mountain valley where his family had taken him on vacation when he was a boy. More than thirty years had passed since then, but the memories remained vivid in his mind. The sheer terror of that afternoon—when a sudden flash flood had surged down the canyon and nearly drowned him—was forever carved into his soul.
For a fleeting second, Sihyeok wondered if his dying brain was merely conjuring a deathbed hallucination. But while he remembered nearly drowning as a boy, he had never been hunted by a monster on that trip.
Sifting through the fragments of that memory, he noticed a critical discrepancy. On the day he nearly drowned, rescuers had pulled him from the water down in the wide, tranquil shallows near the base of the valley. Yet when he regained consciousness moments ago, he had been far closer to the rugged headwaters upstream.
He surveyed the flow of the current and the angle of the gorge, and certainty solidified. Downstream was defined by broad sandbanks and gentle inclines. Here, massive boulders jutted out of the frothing rapids, the water ran ferocious and murky, and ancient pines crowded the edge of the embankment. It was the same valley, but entirely the wrong section.
Sihyeok rapidly mapped the contours of the gorge in his mind. He remembered where the torrential waters had crested all those years ago, and where the most treacherous rapids had formed.
If the timing aligns… that wall of water is still coming.
His mind made up, Sihyeok pivoted and began scrambling up the steep incline of the mountain. With what little stamina he had left, he had to gamble everything on this single play. Luring the Griebrak into the raging torrent and drowning it was the only way a child's body could slay a beast of that caliber.
Drooling thick, viscous saliva, the Griebrak prowled in lazy circles behind him. Realizing its prey was nearing collapse, the beast took its time, savoring the hunt with an intelligence superior to typical lesser fiends. Sihyeok seized that brief lull to steady his ragged breathing before darting toward the upper ridge.
The monster did not pursue with full ferocity. It knew the small prey would inevitably collapse under exhaustion, and it had already learned that the boy lacked the strength to deal any meaningful damage. It simply stalked behind him at a mocking pace.
"Haah… *gasp*… haah…"
Even with the beast trailing casually, scaling the rocky slope with the miniature lungs and limbs of a child was sheer agony. His heart slammed violently against his ribs, his breath caught ragged in his throat, and his legs turned to lead. His physical limits were rushing up to meet him.
Before he could reach the upper banks, his legs gave out completely.
Deciding the entertainment had run its course, the Griebrak sprang forward with lethal intent.
Riiip!
Cruel claws raked across Sihyeok's back.
"Ngh…!"
He threw himself forward at the last second, narrowly dodging a fatal blow, but he could not escape unscathed. The talons tore away strips of flesh, and bright crimson bloomed instantly across his soaked shirt. But as fiery agony lanced through his spine, a massive surge of adrenaline flooded his nervous system. Power snapped back into his trembling legs, defying biology. As though drawing on reserves he did not possess, he launched himself forward once more.
Just as he prepared to make a final dash toward the riverbank, the Griebrak suddenly froze, flaring its nostrils to taste the wind.
Was it reveling in the scent of blood? Sihyeok wondered for a brief second, only to realize that was not it at all.
Ruuuumble—!
Beyond the fractured boulders upstream, a deep vibration traveled through the bedrock. Moments later, a hollow, deafening roar tore through the trees, growing louder with terrifying speed.
The flood had arrived.
As if puncturing a dam, an enormous wall of churning water exploded from the upper gorge. Uprooting shrubs and swallowing boulders whole, a towering crest of brown, violent rapids crashed into the riverbed.
The torrent roared like an apex predator, cascading down the canyon with apocalyptic force.
Now!
The scales had tipped. Seizing the moment while the Griebrak was mesmerized by the surging water, Sihyeok vaulted off a nearby boulder and drove all his weight into a kick aimed straight at the beast's flank.
Thud!
Caught entirely off guard, the monster lost its footing and tumbled backward, plunging headlong into the basin right as the flash flood struck. Sihyeok threw himself flat against the high ground, narrowly avoiding the spray of the cresting water.
Completely depleted of strength, he collapsed onto the muddy soil. But just as he thought he had survived the ordeal—
Crunch.
A searing spike of agony flared through his calf. Sihyeok looked down in horror to find the Griebrak's fangs sunken deep into his leg. With a desperate heave, the thrashing beast dragged Sihyeok over the lip of the embankment, pulling both of them straight into the churning vortex.
"Aaargh…!"
Submerged beneath the violent current, Sihyeok fought through the blinding pain, grappling against the monster's relentless grip. He twisted desperately to wrench free, but the Griebrak clamped its jaws shut like an iron trap. His oxygen was vanishing. His body was failing. A suffocating sense of helplessness crept over his mind, whispering that it was time to close his eyes and let go.
And then—something gleamed through the murky water.
A magic stone.
The vital core of a monster. It served as both their heart and the wellspring of their unnatural power. If shattered, the mana bound within dissipated, erasing the monster's existence permanently. But so long as the core remained whole, even if its physical form was annihilated, the mana within would eventually coalesce to regenerate the body.
Sihyeok understood immediately. This core had not merely drifted downstream by coincidence; it belonged to another Griebrak that had drowned earlier in the flood.
The realization clicked into place. The strange hesitation the beast had displayed moments before the water hit—freezing and sniffing the air instead of striking—had nothing to do with fear of the flood or the smell of blood. It had sensed the death of its packmate.
Griebraks were social predators possessed of high cunning and intense pack loyalty. That very intellect had proven to be its undoing.
Is this… heaven's grace?
If he could shatter the core, the mana dispersing into the water for that briefest of instants could be seized and bent to his will. That alone could overturn this death sentence.
Since the grip of a child lacked the strength to crack a magic stone barehanded, Sihyeok took the core and slammed it violently against the skull of the Griebrak clamped to his leg.
Smack!
Crack!
Crack—!
With every blow Sihyeok hammered into its head, the beast violently shook its jaws, tearing deeper into his calf. Red clouds billowed like smoke through the churning water, while endless trails of bubbles burst around their frantic struggle. Swept along by the ferocious current, both hunter and hunted were running on fumes, their breath and stamina utterly spent.
All that remained was pure, unadulterated willpower.
A desperate clash between two wills fighting to survive raged beneath the rapids. Finally, under the brutal barrage, the magic stone fractured. A radiant wave of pure mana ruptured from within, scattering wildly into the dark, swirling water.
There were two ways for a vessel without an active core to harness atmospheric mana.
The first was to synchronize one's internal flow with external mana to absorb it—a feat impossible for Sihyeok's dormant, unawakened body. The second was to resonate with ambient mana through sheer, unbridled Willpower alone.
The latter was a technique reserved only for the extreme few who possessed indomitable souls. But Cha Sihyeok was a man who had once stood at the absolute zenith of mankind. His willpower surpassed all others.
In an instant, the loose mana answered his command, converging fiercely around his right forearm. As the arcane waves expanded outward, even the violent torrent parted around the luminescent glow. A piercing azure light blazed to life through the murky silt. Realizing something catastrophic was unfolding, the Griebrak released its jaws in terror, trying desperately to pull away.
It was already too late.
Pulse Blade
BOOOOM—!
The moment the intangible blade of azure mana punched through the Griebrak's chest, a cataclysmic shockwave erupted outward. A colossal geyser detonated toward the canopy, sundering the surging waters and carving the sky in two. The thunderous boom rolled across the mountain ridges like artillery fire.
The blinding flash of arcane light tore the rapids apart, and in the next heartbeat, the Griebrak was shredded into unrecognizable crimson mist, scattered harmlessly across the riverbed.
By the time the brutal struggle concluded and Sihyeok drifted back to consciousness, the current had washed him down to the peaceful shallows of the lower valley. Hauling himself upright, he found the water only reached his chest, and he staggered out onto the pebble bank.
His right arm was fractured and ruined from the severe recoil of channeling mid-tier magic through an unconditioned child's body, and his shredded calf had bled so heavily that all sensation had vanished from the limb. Yet, despite the agonizing battering…
I survived.
A flicker of relief passed through him, only for immediate self-loathing to follow. Survived? Had he not spent years practically begging for death to take him?
"Ha…"
A hollow, self-mocking chuckle escaped his lips. Glancing down at the placid pool beside him, he caught his reflection in the water. Looking back at him was the spitting image of his childhood self.
Piecing together every detail, the conclusion was inescapable: he had regressed to the past. Whether it was the exact past he had lived through or an alternate reality closely mirroring it remained uncertain, but the raw, visceral sensations of his body left no room for doubt.
"Phew…"
Leaning his back against the trunk of an oak tree, he closed his eyes, losing all track of time as he rested his battered frame. Then, the panicked crunch of footsteps broke the silence.
Two young people came sprinting through the trees, pale and frantic. The moment the woman caught sight of him, her knees buckled. She collapsed onto the gravel, wrapping her arms around him in a crushing embrace. Her hands trembled violently as her fingers dug into the fabric of his shirt, and tears poured unhindered down her cheeks.
"Sihyeok… I told you not to wander off so far… *sob*…!"
The man dropped down onto one knee beside them. His eyes were rimmed with red, but he visibly strained to keep his expression firm. Though his tone was stern, he could not conceal the tremor running through his voice.
"A few minutes later and something terrible could have happened! You are grounded from wandering off alone, do you hear me?"
They… must be my parents.
Too much time had passed. So many decades had washed over him that he could no longer recall what their faces looked like. Facing them now, they felt like total strangers. And that reality sliced through him with unbearable agony.
There had been a time when he intentionally tried to forget. The weight of loss, guilt, and bitter defeat had steadily eroded his sanity. Merely existing had been an unending torment. So he had chosen numbness—burying his memories, his emotions, and his past. He had even turned to narcotics, desperate for anything that would grant him a few hours of escape from his waking nightmare.
Only now did he realize how cowardly and foolish that choice had been. To forget the faces of the very people who had sacrificed everything for him… he was nothing more than a wretched sinner.
Yet held tightly within their embrace, a strange sensation washed over him. It felt as though everything he had ever suffered was being quietly forgiven and comforted. Knowing full well that he had no right to such solace, the dam broke. Tears welled up in his eyes, spilling past his eyelashes against his will.
"Ugh… *sniff*…"
"It's all right, Sihyeok. It's okay now. Mom and Dad are right here… you're safe…"
He had forgotten. Though he had lived burdened by guilt and suffocated by daily regret, one truth had never changed.
He had given everything he had to every single moment. And beneath the mantle of the savior people worshipped, he had never been an invincible hero.
He was just a fragile, ordinary human being.