The Worst Awakening Ability
My eyes fluttered open. My mind was unnaturally clear.
‘I’m pretty sure I fell asleep. Where the hell am I?’
What filled my vision was an endless expanse of pure white nothingness.
‘What is this? Did I jump to another world again while I was sleeping?’
I spun around, frantically trying to figure out where I was.
‘Is this a dream?’
Suspicious, I pinched my arm. A sharp sting shot through me.
“...Ow. So it’s not a dream?”
To figure out what this place was, I started running blindly through the infinite space. But no matter how far I went, the scenery never changed. Everything was the same blinding white. It felt like my sanity was starting to crack.
That was when I saw it.
Far in the distance, a black silhouette appeared.
“Hey! Wait a second!”
I sprinted toward the figure. Then I froze.
Up close, I realized it wasn’t human.
It had the shape of a person, but it was missing everything that should have been there. Eyes, nose, mouth. Its face was just a smooth oval, like a featureless ghost. The rest of its body—arms, legs, torso—was all there, but every inch of it was pitch black, absorbing even the faintest trace of light.
I tried to reframe the situation.
‘Maybe this is some kind of intelligent being from this world… or something?’
Just in case, I tried speaking to it.
“Excuse me. I’m a hero from another world. Who are you? And what is this place?”
It reacted instantly, as if it had heard me.
Shing.
It spread its legs slightly, bent its knees, and lowered its center of gravity. A ready stance. Its left hand moved to the sword hanging at its waist.
It looked exactly like the drawing technique from the Dark Heaven-Defying Sword I’d learned yesterday.
“Huh? A drawing stance?”
In that instant, I thought I saw its right hand draw the sword from its sheath.
-[FATAL WOUND]
‘What the—? What did it just do?’
A chill ran through me. I clutched my chest. ‘Huh?’
My hand came away sticky. When I looked down, there was a gaping hole in my chest.
Splurt!
Blood gushed out, and only then did the excruciating pain flood every nerve in my body.
“...Guhk!”
My legs gave out. I dropped to my knees. The agony felt like my brain was melting.
‘Am I dying? For real? Why?’
I couldn’t understand. With great effort, I lifted my head to look at it.
The thing was calmly sheathing its sword, as if nothing had happened.
My consciousness faded rapidly… and my vision went black.
“Huk!”
I woke with a violent start.
“Huk, huk…!”
Panting desperately, I reflexively patted my chest. The baseball-sized hole that had been there moments ago…
‘…It’s gone?’
Not a trace remained.
‘Did I survive? What the hell is going on?’
The memory of my limbs exploding with pain and blood spraying everywhere was still vivid. Yet my chest, which should have been torn open, was completely intact.
Even more vivid than the pain was the terror of death. It had frozen my very soul. There was no way that had been a dream.
In the midst of my confusion, I noticed the pure white floor beneath my feet.
“……!”
I slowly raised my frozen head. An endless white space stretched out before me. And right in the center of my vision stood that black figure.
“Fuck…”
The terror of death that had been burned into my mind wrapped around me like iron chains. I couldn’t move a muscle.
Regardless, the black figure once again assumed the ready stance for the drawing technique.
It was exactly the same motion as before, without a single deviation.
‘I’m about to get killed again.’
I had to do something. But the fear of death was devouring my body against my will.
‘Damn it, I have to do something!’
I clenched my teeth hard enough to crack them, trying to break free from my paralyzed body and mind.
“Wait!”
I shouted desperately at the black figure. It paused.
‘Good. It can communicate… or can it?’
I didn’t let my guard down. Slowly, I raised both hands.
“Look! I don’t have any weapons. I’m not hostile.”
When I saw it react to my words, some of the tension left me. I carefully patted my body with my raised hands, emphasizing that I was unarmed and peaceful.
‘Huh?’
My hand brushed against something hard at my waist. A bad feeling washed over me. When I looked down, I saw a sword dangling from my belt.
‘…Why the hell are you here?’
The moment I noticed the sword, the figure nodded as if to say, ‘See? Now we’re even.’
‘Fuck. I have to fight this thing?’
I remembered it clearly. The speed at which it had punched a hole through my chest had been invisible to the naked eye. And how did something that thin even make a wound the size of a baseball? If I were still an Ultra S-Class Awakened, I could have blocked it easily. No, I would have smashed it to pieces from the start.
But the current me? I was so weak that stubbing my toe on a rock would send me rolling on the ground in agony.
‘I can’t fight it head-on. I have to dodge!’
It reached for the hilt again. The drawing stance. The first form of the Dark Heaven-Defying Sword—Heugam-dol.
There was no doubt about it. According to my perfect memory, that stance was unmistakably Heugam-dol.
When the Heavenly Venomous Old Man had demonstrated it, I’d sneered inwardly, thinking, ‘This is supposed to be a fast sword? Where?’ But the Heugam-dol this thing was using was nothing like that. It was a true light-speed sword—calling it a “fast sword” felt almost insulting.
It was as if the black figure was saying to me:
‘Watch. This is the real Dark Heaven-Defying Sword.’
The perfect form was on a completely different level from my clumsy imitation.
‘I can’t block it. I have to dodge.’
I focused every nerve, waiting for the exact moment it would draw the blade.
Shing.
‘Now!’
The instant the tiniest sliver of the blade left its sheath, the moment light reflected off the edge and hit my retina—I threw myself sideways.
“Kuaaak!”
An unimaginable pain exploded from my waist. I collapsed exactly as I had been when I tried to dodge, sprawled across the floor. My vision was filled with blood, blood, and more blood.
Huh? And whose lower half is that, flying through the air?
Oh. It’s mine.
The moment I registered my cleanly severed lower body, my consciousness cut out.
And then everything went dark.
“Kuaaaaak!”
I woke up screaming.
The moment I opened my eyes, the exact same scene greeted me. And standing right in front of me was that black figure.
An overwhelming sense of despair wrapped around my entire body.
“F…uck.”
The crude curse brought my mind back to reality.
‘I… didn’t die again.’
Every time I opened my eyes, the same scenery unfolded. Endless white space. And that black “thing” occupying the center of my vision. It looked like a single drop of ink that had accidentally fallen on pure white drawing paper.
Yeah. Just now, I had been “accidentally blotted” by that thing.
“Hoo, hoo, hoo…”
I tried to steady my ragged breathing. My heart felt like it was about to burst out of my chest. With bloodshot eyes, I glared at the “black error” in this white world.
‘Right. I don’t stay dead.’
The immense pain I felt when I died was terrifying, but bearable. The primal fear of death carved into my instincts, however, was on another level. It was so terrifying it made me shudder.
Even though I had rationally realized I would come back to life, I couldn’t overcome that ancient instinct. An ordinary person would have already collapsed, swallowed by that terror.
‘But I’m different.’
I wasn’t an ordinary person. I was an Ultra S-Class Awakened. Humanity’s hero. A warrior and a strategist.
‘I’ had to remain calm and make rational decisions in situations like this.
I knew. Before I awakened, I had no talent for studying, sports, work—anything. I had been frustrated, but I never gave up. People always laughed at my efforts. Yet I had still evolved from an A-Class Awakened to an S-Class Awakened, something everyone said was impossible.
‘Yes. That’s the kind of person I am.’
So there was no way I would fail to overcome a trial like this.
First, analysis.
It always aimed for my chest. The first death—exactly a hole through the heart. The second death—if I hadn’t thrown myself aside, the trajectory of its sword would have definitely been aimed at my chest. The pattern was clear.
‘This time, it will aim for my chest again.’
Then I could block it. The moment it drew its sword, I had to draw mine faster and protect my chest.
In the distance, it once again took the ready stance for Heugam-dol. I mirrored it exactly.
‘That thing ignores distance when it attacks.’
The strike would come from well outside my range. How that was possible didn’t matter right now. What mattered was that any clumsy counterattack would be useless. I had to defend my chest. No matter what.
I focused every ounce of my attention on the hand gripping its hilt. The instant its hand moved, I would draw my sword and block my chest!
Twitch.
‘Now!’
The moment its hand moved, I unleashed everything I had into the drawing technique. I drew my sword and brought it up to guard my chest.
[Slice!]
...Huh?
My vision… was spinning.
As my field of view rotated a full 360 degrees, I saw the headless torso that had been standing there just moments ago.
‘Ah…’
My head had been cut off. That rotten bastard. This time it hadn’t gone for my chest—it had gone for my neck.
In my fading consciousness, I wanted to curse, but I couldn’t even muster the thought.
And then—
“You son of a bitch!”
I opened my eyes again.
Heugam-dol → Reverse Heaven Slash → Phantom Strike
My arm flew away.
The moment I barely deflected its first form, Heugam-dol, using my blade, the second form—Reverse Heaven Slash—surged up from below. Before the afterimage of Heugam-dol even faded, the linked Reverse Heaven Slash rose from my blind spot beneath my waist. In the end, I lost an arm to the invisible-speed combo.
With no time to staunch the bleeding from my severed shoulder, I grit my teeth.
The third form, Phantom Strike, rained down in dozens, hundreds of variations. I responded with the same technique, parrying its sword forms.
[Clang! Clang! Clang!]
But every time an attack I couldn’t block grazed me, a red line was carved across my skin.
The Heavenly Venomous Old Man had said that the third form, Phantom Strike, was a fast sword and illusory blade that created dozens of feints for a single real strike.
...Bullshit.
The Phantom Strike used by that black figure had no feints. Every single motion was a real strike.
[Kaang!]
Reverse Heaven Slash shot up again from my lower blind spot. I bent backward to dodge, then used the momentum to unleash a straight thrust that borrowed from the principles of Heugam-dol.
It was like thrusting a spear—blindingly fast and aimed beyond normal striking distance. I stepped forward as if leaping, twisted my waist to its limit, threw my center of gravity forward, and whipped my shoulder and arm like a lash.
A lightning strike that pushed the mysteries of Heugam-dol to the extreme. A fast sword that extended the body’s center forward to claim the distance as my own, and a fierce attack meant to sever the opponent’s breath in a single blow.
‘The guy who created the Dark Heaven-Defying Sword is a crazy bastard. He made it so that from the very first form, you’re forced to gamble your life.’
My lightning strike was blocked by its fifth form, Shadow Curtain Sword, which gathered shadows to form a defensive barrier in front of the blade.
[Slash!]
This too was completely different from what the Heavenly Venomous Old Man had shown. He had said it was simply the “principle,” that actually gathering shadows was impossible. He had only been imitating it. But the Shadow Curtain Sword this thing used was a real defensive wall made of actual shadows.
Every time it struck my sword away, black energy spread from its blade and protected its vital points.
‘How the hell does it do that? I can’t even imitate it.’
It deflected all my attacks, then slammed the ground with its fourth form, Netherworld Breaker, which supposedly “opens the gates of the underworld.”
[Boom!]
The ground beneath me rippled from the shockwave. Having just used the lightning strike, my balance was already off. I lost my footing and tumbled.
In that instant, a chilling sensation stabbed toward my chest.
‘Chest!’
I instinctively twisted my upper body.
[Squish!]
Its sword pierced my shoulder instead of my heart.
“Kugh!”
Still in the awkward position of having fallen on my ass, I swung my sword at its calf. But it didn’t even pull the sword from my shoulder. It simply swung horizontally.
[Slice!]
The blade buried in my shoulder carved through my body and burst out the other side of my neck.
“Fuck…”
I wanted to spit out some other curse, but after dying to it over and over and cursing every single time, I couldn’t come up with anything fresh.
How many times had I died now? Ninety-nine? …Yeah, that sounded right. So this would be the hundredth death?
Would I come back to life again? Just how long was I supposed to keep doing this?
As my consciousness blurred, what I felt wasn’t fear anymore—it was pure annoyance and irritation.
Consciousness returned once again. It was so damn tedious. The frustration and rage were piling up.
I decided to turn my hellfire-like fury into a Lion’s Roar.
The moment I opened my eyes, I roared.
“You fucking Gapjil bastard!”
I shot upright.
...Huh? I shot… upright?
And in response to my Lion’s Roar, a thunderous shout rang out.
“You crazy bitch! How dare an ugly thing like you insult this old man’s nickname!”
It was the voice of Gapjil Jijon.
Other shouts followed immediately.
“Damn it! I should just leave this place because it’s too filthy!”
“Young lady, please wake up normally. You’re making me sad.”
Where had the white space gone? And what was this dark, damp place?
The voices of the demonic heads? …Come to think of it, I think I was trapped in some strange cave with the demonic heads a few years ago…
Only then did I look around.
What the—? This was the Repentance Cave!
Ah! Fuck! A dream! It was a dream, right?
Only then did the relief hit me. My knees gave out and I collapsed onto the floor.
It had felt like years had passed in there, but it had only been a single night’s dream…