The Apostle's Appointment (2)
Eun-hyeon had received a total of three powers from the three embodiments of fate, the goddesses.
The first was Time Manipulation, granted by Verdandi, who had cherished his body the most.
This power allowed him to literally manipulate the concept of time—but only for his own body.
The most representative examples included applying rewind, pause, and fast-forward effects: turning his body’s age to an extreme youth, or restoring it to a state before sustaining severe damage like dismemberment, burns, or the like. This was the ability known as Time Rewind.
This power turned Eun-hyeon into a being detached from the flow of time.
It granted him a life of eternal youth and longevity, unbound by bodily aging.
It was no different from immortality—or eternal life.
By slowing his perceived time to an extreme near-stop, he could unleash hyper-accelerated cognition in a world frozen on the brink. This was Thought Acceleration via Time Stop.
In simple terms, if it took others ten seconds to count from one to ten at one-second intervals, Eun-hyeon could do it in less than a second.
Thus, he lived in a different flow of time than other beings.
The final power accelerated his physical capabilities, allowing movements far swifter than any ordinary person’s. This was Time Acceleration, bestowed by the goddesses.
With the might of the authority from Verdandi freeing him from the shackles of “time,” Eun-hyeon naturally boasted abilities vastly superior to others.
“Whoa, this time stuff is straight-up broken…”
He couldn’t help but chuckle wryly at the fact that even after granting him such overwhelming powers, his given role was still that of an “extra.” Still, he harbored no real complaints.
The second power was Replication, received from Urd.
At first, he hadn’t understood what it meant to “bring back the past.”
But after exhaustive experimentation, Eun-hyeon realized it was the ability to manifest objects that had once existed in the past directly into the present reality.
Feeling the absurdity of this cheat-like power, he tested the limits of Replication.
He succeeded in recreating various weapons and items from the past, but failed with modern firearms, mass-produced currency like gold coins, and certain other categories.
He suspected it was a deliberate safeguard against things like currency counterfeiting or recreations clashing with civilization—perhaps Urd had preemptively set strict boundaries on the authority’s scope.
Legendary weapons from mythic eras, lacking clear special powers or whose concepts were too vague, also resisted recreation.
Yet he was convinced that, if used wisely, this authority—like Time Manipulation—would prove invaluable in combat and myriad other scenarios.
The third was Fate Pioneering, from Skuld.
This power allowed one not to follow a predestined fate, but to forge their own path.
Every human is born with a fate already etched into their existence; all events and accidents are predetermined.
Humans cannot alter their fated lives through sheer will.
But Eun-hyeon, bearer of Fate Pioneering, was immune to such predestination.
It created the possibility to change fixed events, accidents, and even the future.
Skuld had granted him this power to introduce variables into fates on the brink of ruin—for those with heroic potential whose seeds of talent withered before sprouting, or to avert looming catastrophes.
Among those intentions was her hope that Eun-hyeon himself could pioneer his own brutal, predetermined future.
Thus, having received these three authorities in total, Eun-hyeon had endured countless trials and lived through interminable ages.
Even so, he occasionally reflected on the past.
The Earth on the verge of destruction, the sudden emergence of demons and monstrous beasts.
Family and friends whose faces he could no longer clearly recall.
The loathsome demons, beasts, and the countless otherworldly strangers who appeared alongside them.
Eun-hyeon didn’t know why a scientifically advanced Earth had fused with a magic-rich other dimension to form one world.
The day he had been summoned before the three goddesses of fate, dubbed the “sole possibility.”
Humanity and the strangers banded together against the demonic and beastly threats, and the war ended in victory for the human alliance.
He, one of the survivors, couldn’t comprehend why only he had lived through it all.
Thinking back on those days now centuries past, Eun-hyeon wished he could meet just once more the goddesses who had bestowed their greatest blessings upon him.
“Hey! What the hell are you thinking?!”
Someone shouted at Eun-hyeon.
He halted his blank stare into the void—his reminiscence of the past—and turned his head.
The woman who had yelled at him wore an expression of utter disbelief that anyone could afford to zone out in this situation.
“You’re spacing out now, of all times? Shit, at this rate, we’re all goners. If we die, these things’ll rip our corpses to shreds—wonder if they’ll even give us a proper burial.”
The blonde priestess of fate grimaced at the beasts straining desperately against her magic barrier.
“You’re a priestess—watch your mouth.”
“Hmph. Got a problem? Take it up with Vesta herself in the Ezenia Holy Kingdom.”
The priestess nonchalantly used her own goddess as a shield, scoffing dismissively.
With her striking blonde hair and slender, somewhat frail-looking frame on a petite stature, she appeared at first glance like a fragile girl in her mid-teens, stirring protective instincts.
She looks like a back alley thug in her actions and manners, but in reality she is a 26-year-old lady.
“I am not in the mood for jokes. At this rate, we’re all dead.”
“Yeah, I know. Got any ideas?”
The stoic brown-haired knight smirked faintly but fell silent at the blonde priestess’s question.
In situations like this, finding a solution had always been Eun-hyeon’s role—not his.
True to form, the knight now gazed at Eun-hyeon with eyes full of expectation.
Eun-hyeon, long aware of that look, gave a wry smile and spoke.
“It’s not like there’s no way.”
“Oh?”
Everyone, including the blond priestess, looked at Eun-hyeon with an expression of ‘this time too’ and admired Eun-hyeon’s words with different reactions.
Whenever the team faced a difficult situation, it was Eun-hyeon’s responsibility to always suggest a solution, plan a strategy, and lead the team.
The external leader of this team was a man with brown hair who was the highest-ranking aristocrat and a knight of the kingdom.
However, it was Eun-hyeon who always depended on and followed such a knight.
Eun-hyeon denies it, but the true leader of this team was Eun-hyeon.
He, as always, did not think much of the matter at hand.
In fact, he thought the current situation was not a big problem.
Eun-hyeon and his colleagues were in the middle of a war right now, and they were in the hall of the imperial palace where the emperor, the leader of the hostile country, was.
One small problem was that the imperial palace itself, where they were now, was not a normal building.
Having already sold their bodies to demons and beasts, they were already non-human beasts, and now Eun-hyeon and his colleagues were surrounded by dozens of beasts in the center of the hall.
The reason why they were able to have a leisurely conversation even when they were surrounded by demon beasts was because the black-haired, bewitching witch spread a solid barrier around her companions.
“If there is a plan, tell me quickly! I can’t last long!”
As if the witch was really dangerous, she broke into a cold sweat and spoke urgently. Eun-hyeon nodded her head and explained the strategy.
“Simple. You go up and kill the emperor. I will stop here.”
“What? Are you alone?”
“Anyway, the number of people is up to six. One cannot go.”
The Emperor of the Empire, who became a subordinate of the demons, has already become an existence outside the category of half-human, half-horse.
The demonic energy scattered by the emperor polluted the air and mana in the air.
When normal humans breathe that air, it has a wide-area debuff that turns humans into demonic beasts.
It was as if a so-called vast area of plague had been created.
Eun-hyeon and his colleagues found a way to resist the polluted air and mana.
I was able to find an artifact called ‘Purification Orb’, which was a solution, and I was able to get 7 of them.
However, one bead, which was particularly close to a defective product, could not withstand the contamination and broke.
Not getting spare money was a big mistake.
“Go quickly. If the pollution gets worse, there’s no guarantee that the other Purification Orbs will be able to survive. At this level, I can survive without the purification orb. If you sort it out quickly, I’ll live too.”
In the hall, the behavior of the beasts who were beating to break down the barrier to bite Eun-hyeon and his colleagues was unusual.
Apparently, not only this number, but also a large number of demonic beasts were coming from outside the palace to the inside.
Anyway, there was a need for one person to remain and prevent the monsters from going to their colleagues who were fighting the emperor.
Eun-hyeon brought that role upon himself.
“Why do you have to leave?”
The witch, who was barely maintaining the barrier, challenged Eun-hyeon with an angry expression.
“Why are you taking that part! Do you think you can stop them all by yourself?”
It was an unbelievable story.
If the emperor’s contamination spread throughout the capital of the empire, it means that all the citizens of the capital are also undergoing magical transformation.
Hundreds of thousands of demon beasts were now gathering in the imperial palace under the emperor’s command.
It was an impossible story for just one person to stop it.
“In the first place, this is the role of an extra like me. You have a role assigned to you.”
Would he be making a joke like that in this situation?
Her colleagues frowned as if they thought Eun-hyeon’s words were a joke.
Eun-hyeon always thought of herself as nothing more than a supporting character who helps the main characters in the story by circling the outside of the story.
However, contrary to his own thoughts, all of his teammates were only those tied to a relationship of trust, relying on and following Eun-hyun.
Therefore, even if he knew Eun-hyeon’s intentions and thoughts, accepting them was a separate issue.
Among them, the witch who had the most special feelings for Eun-hyeon couldn’t even accept those words straight away.
The witch bit her lip and shook her head.
“I will stay too.”
“What?”
“I will stay too! We can’t leave you here alone and go up alone. Or, I would rather clean up all the monsters here and go up…”
“Hey, calm down.”
“Oh…!”
“You talked about it earlier. There is no guarantee that the other marbles will survive until then, as long as one of the purification marbles has already broken without being able to withstand contamination. Even now, at the time to talk about it, going up right away and tearing the son of the emperor apart would rather help me. And…”
Eun-hyeon glanced at the barrier the witch had set him on before continuing.
“You really can’t stand it for long. Riod!”
“…Okay.”
The brown-haired knight who answered Eun-hyeon’s call also had a disapproving expression on his choice, but he knew that it was for the best.
“I… I have something to tell you. If even the emperor is torn apart, we…”
“Hey, don’t say that. It’s bad.”
That's where a death flag is set.
Eun-hyeon grumbled inwardly and stopped the witch, who had decided to confess.
He laughed then said.
“I will live to hear it. I promise.”
“…You really promised.”
“Huh.”
Crack!
The magic barrier where the caster set began to crack as soon as the promise was made between the two.
“Run!”
As soon as Riod’s command was heard, the companions started running towards the stairs.
Kyaaaek!
When the barrier was broken, the magic beasts rushed in like crazy, and before they knew it, they were hacked to pieces by the swords in Eun-hyeon’s hands and rolled across the floor.
In less than a second, he hacked and slaughtered 10 monsters, and checked the condition of the body creaking and straining.
Simultaneous manifestation of ‘thought acceleration’ and ‘time acceleration’.
Eun-hyeon muttered as he internally estimated the burden on his body and thought about how much he could endure.
“This must be tougher than catching 200 zerglings with one marine.”
Eun-hyeon sighed.
“What kind of madman would give an extra a role like this? It’s the role that I decided to die right here.”
Eun-hyeon smiled bitterly and rushed at the witche with both hands holding the sword tightly.
That’s how the majority, no, the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people began.