Chapter 1
Chapter 1
It was revenge.
Revenge against the villain who killed his parents.
But that became the starting point.
"You have awakened the Heavenly Killing Star."
A villain. By killing people, the instinct that had been sleeping deep within his soul awakened.
At first, it did not bother him.
"Is this really the Heavenly Killing Star?"
But as time passed, Lee Jeon-seok began to feel that something inside him was slowly changing.
A craving for blood, a conflict with murder, impulses that kept rising endlessly without stopping.
It was hard to endure.
He could not endure it.
The number of times he lost consciousness in a single day gradually increased, and whenever he regained his senses, his hands were always stained with bright red blood.
Years passed like that.
No, perhaps more than a dozen years had gone by.
Lee Jeon-seok had become a mad murderer obsessed with blood and slaughter.
He took every life he saw.
Reason and rationality had long disappeared.
He killed and killed, doing nothing but killing without end.
All hunters and ordinary people feared him, and whenever night came, they lived trembling with anxiety.
But after the mutual destruction of thousands of hunters, Lee Jeon-seok finally lost his life.
"Sinner Lee Jeon-seok. Accept your punishment."
And so he fell into hell.
Mugan.
A world where one burns forever in endless flames.
Ironically, it was only then that Lee Jeon-seok regained his sanity.
The environment left him no other choice.
The flames clinging to his entire body showed no sign of going out, and the pain continued every minute and every second.
It was torment.
It was agony.
Even a single tear that flowed out was scorched by the flames and turned to ash.
His soul could not faint, nor could it die, so he was forced to remain conscious no matter what.
And so an immeasurable amount of time passed.
Just when he had even become accustomed to the pain of burning.
"...!"
He heard a voice.
"Son!"
His vision went dark and the pain vanished.
The change came far too suddenly.
Lee Jeon-seok blinked his eyes.
"What is this?"
His mind could not keep up with his understanding.
What exactly had happened?
Soon, light pierced through the darkness.
"Son, are you listening to your mother?"
A voice followed.
It was a familiar voice.
It had been a long time, yet the image remained clearly engraved in his mind.
"Mother...?"
Lee Jeon-seok looked at the woman in front of him.
Yes. It was his mother.
Her name was Han Yuri.
Forty-five years old. One of the only two parents in the world who gave birth to and raised Lee Jeon-seok.
Someone who should not exist, someone who could not exist, was sitting at the dining table in front of him.
Lee Jeon-seok hurriedly looked around.
Home.
A living room of about twenty pyeong.
Furniture such as a TV, a dining table, and a sofa entered his view.
Sunlight poured in through the veranda window and illuminated the living room.
There was not a single trace of flame.
It did not match the word hell at all.
"What is it, son?"
Perhaps because he stayed silent.
His mother, Han Yuri, asked again.
The tone of a parent filled with worry.
It was a voice he had wished to hear once again more than anything, yet Lee Jeon-seok frowned and clenched his teeth.
"Damn it. Now you're even showing me hallucinations?"
A hallucination.
Lee Jeon-seok thought the scene before him was fake.
It must be an illusion created by the messengers of the underworld to torment him.
The reason was simple.
Not every messenger of the underworld was kind.
Some of them deliberately tortured sinners just to relieve their stress.
An immeasurably long time.
How many times had he been toyed with by their tricks?
Because of that, Lee Jeon-seok believed that everything he was seeing and feeling was a false landscape created by them.
"Bastards."
Lee Jeon-seok cursed inwardly.
Of all memories, they chose this time.
Their cruelty knew no bounds.
Even if he was a sinner, did that mean they could abuse their authority like this?
Unable to hold back his anger, he suddenly stood up.
He intended to escape the illusion immediately.
The space they created was like the paradise he had dreamed of, but rather than smiling foolishly in a false fantasy, it was far better to be burned by the fires of hell.
But then.
Thud.
"...?"
Suddenly he felt pain at the back of his head.
It was different from the burning flames.
It felt as if something had struck him.
"What nonsense are you talking about so early in the morning?"
A voice followed.
Step. Step.
Heavy footsteps.
"Stop saying useless things and eat your meal."
A large man sat at the dining table.
He too was a face Lee Jeon-seok had missed dearly.
His blurred memories gradually became clearer.
"Father...?"
Lee Han-seok.
A father who always tried his hardest to take responsibility for the family.
"Son, you're not really sick, are you?"
Han Yuri stared at him.
Her worried gaze and words made it feel as though his chest was being torn apart.
Just then.
"A person who never even catches a cold suddenly being sick? He probably hit his head on the floor while sleeping."
Another voice was heard.
It belonged to a relatively young girl.
Not his father, not his mother.
The girl sitting across from him was his only younger sister.
Lee Ji-hye.
That rude tone and shameless face.
It was exactly the younger sister he remembered.
The scene was far too vivid to be a hallucination.
Even the pain in the back of his head was painfully clear.
If it were merely an illusion, there was no way he could feel such sensations.
And that was not all.
He realized it late, but the dining table, the spoon, the floor of the living room, and even the warm steam rising from the food were all being felt in real time.
"What in the world is going on?"
He had been certain that it was an illusion created by the messengers of the underworld.
After all, he could no longer feel the pain of hellfire.
"But this situation now..."
Everything was vivid and realistic.
As if he had returned to the past.
"No way."
Impossible.
Such a thing could not exist.
Regression.
It was difficult to believe.
But there was no other explanation.
"Aren't you eating?"
Lee Han-seok asked.
Lee Jeon-seok sat down at the table again.
His mind was still a mess.
He had no idea what was happening.
Silently, he ate the meal laid out before him.
White rice.
Spicy kimchi.
Salty roasted seaweed.
"...It's delicious."
It tasted good.
So good that he could not believe it was a hallucination, and did not want to think of it as one.
For some reason, Lee Jeon-seok felt as if he might cry, but the tear glands that had long since dried up could not release a single drop.
Three more days passed after that.
The scenery did not change.
The sensations remained vivid.
Lee Jeon-seok had no choice but to accept it.
"I returned to the past."
How? Why? For what reason?
He did not know.
There was nothing he could understand.
But one thing was certain.
Everything he was seeing and feeling now was not false.
And the fact that his parents were alive.
"The Heavenly Killing Star..."
Lee Jeon-seok closed his eyes and focused his mind.
His head felt incomparably calm and clear.
He did not feel the urge to kill anyone.
There was no craving for blood.
Was it because his parents had not died yet, and he had not killed the villain in revenge?
Maybe not.
The status window.
A privilege possessed only by awakened ones.
The Heavenly Killing Star was still clearly present there.
Level 1
Strength 10
Agility 10
Stamina 10
Mana 10
Stat points 0
Traits
Heavenly Killing Star EX
Mark of Eternity
His previous level and stats had all been reset.
However, the fact that he had awakened remained even after returning to the past.
The Heavenly Killing Star remained as well.
Heavenly Killing Star
Rank EX
Effect. Randomly steals the traits of the beings he kills. However, in return he will feel a powerful urge to kill whenever he sees blood. The more people he kills, the stronger the impulse becomes, and eventually he will lose his reason and become a being that seeks only blood and slaughter.
The culprit that dragged Lee Jeon-seok down to the very bottom of hell.
The ability to steal traits was incredible, but the price turned him into a psychopath obsessed with blood and slaughter.
But.
"Right now, I feel nothing."
The urge for blood.
The conflict with slaughter.
He felt none of it.
Lee Jeon-seok took the cutter knife on his desk and cut his finger.
A drop of blood flowed down.
Before, even seeing such a tiny drop would cause him to lose control instantly.
But now, his reason and consciousness remained intact.
"…It must be because of this."
Lee Jeon-seok shifted his gaze and checked the other trait.
Mark of Eternity.
Rank unknown.
Effect. A mark granted only to sinners imprisoned in Mugan. A soul bearing this mark will never be destroyed or worn away.
The Mark of Eternity.
It was a kind of shackle.
A device that ensured the sinner thrown into Mugan would never lose consciousness and would experience nothing but pain forever.
But perhaps because it prevented him from losing consciousness.
Even within the endless agony, Lee Jeon-seok had been able to suppress the Heavenly Killing Star and maintain his sanity.
And that remained true even now.
He had returned to the past.
Why had something like this happened to him?
Was it someone's scheme, or merely coincidence?
There was no way to know.
But Lee Jeon-seok thought.
"I can change it."
At this point in time, all the people he had killed should still be alive.
If he did not kill them.
Then the sins that dragged him to the depths of hell would also disappear.
"And I'll accumulate good deeds as well."
Then perhaps in the next afterlife he could enter heaven instead of hell.
Childish?
It did not matter if people laughed.
"This time I will not live the life of the Heavenly Killing Star. I will live my own life."
Heaven would simply be the result.
Proof that he had truly lived his own life.
"Then the first thing I must do is..."
Lee Jeon-seok sat on the bed and thought carefully.
It was certain that he had returned to the past.
In that case, what he had to do was obvious.
Knock knock.
Someone knocked on the door.
Before Lee Jeon-seok could respond.
"Son."
The door opened along with a warm voice.
Han Yuri entered.
"You're really not sick, right?"
Perhaps because he had stayed in his room for three days.
Her eyes were filled with worry.
Lee Jeon-seok smiled faintly and shook his head.
"No. I just had something to think about."
"That's a relief, but if anything bad happens, tell your mother. You know your father, right? He may look like that, but he is still a doctor."
That was right.
His father was a doctor.
A small neighborhood clinic, but he was a respected internal medicine physician.
"Oh right."
Han Yuri continued as if she had just remembered something.
"Your father and I are going on a date today after a long time, so order some chicken and eat with Ji-hye tonight."
Then she closed the door and left again.
For some reason.
"...What did she say?"
Lee Jeon-seok froze for a moment.
His mind stopped.
Then a single word flashed through his memory.
Date.
"No way."
Memories surfaced belatedly.
Lee Jeon-seok quickly stood up and checked the calendar beside his bed.
There was a date circled in red.
July 15.
The day of their death anniversary.
The day his parents died in a villain's terror attack.
The starting point of all tragedy.
The moment that memory returned.
"I have to stop it."
Lee Jeon-seok flung the door open and rushed out.
He knew.
He remembered.
That was why he could not stay still.
This was not the life of the Heavenly Killing Star.
This time it was his life.
But if his parents died, then it would no longer be his life.
Everything would repeat again.
Grinding his teeth, Lee Jeon-seok walked toward Han Yuri.