Chapter 2

“Gah!”

A dying groan burst out. Spitting up thick, dark clots of blood, Nam Shin-hoo bit his lip. Through blurred vision, he glared hatefully at the monster, the blood vessels in his eyes bursting.

The enemy that had destroyed everything. The disaster that had brought down civilization and ushered in despair.

Shin-hoo gritted his teeth and leveled the tip of his spear at the Nuckelavee. But that was his final struggle. Tears of blood blurred his sight. He wanted nothing more than to tear that body to shreds right this instant, but he had no strength left.

Having lost its heart, his body collapsed uselessly. His knees hit the ground, and before he could even feel the pain, his vision rapidly narrowed into blackness.

A dry laugh escaped him at such a futile end. Shin-hoo let out a final breath filled with frustration and resentment—and that resentment was directed not at the Nuckelavee, but at himself.

‘You fool. You marched forward stepping on the sacrifices of others, and in the end, you couldn’t even pull it off.’

A light appeared in his flickering vision.

Watching his vision go completely dark, Shin-hoo dropped the spear from his hands.

Like a finished play on stage, a blood-red curtain fell over his eyes.

Regaining consciousness felt like a single drop of water falling onto a calm surface.

Blood began to flow from his fingertips, and like static on a broken radio, his awareness gradually returned. His chest ached as if it were tearing apart. Shin-hoo instinctively put a hand over his pierced heart and pushed himself up.

“Gasp. Gasp.”

He gasped for air and fumbled around with trembling hands. The pain-relief cigar he always kept by his side was nowhere to be found. It was something that had never left him from the moment the Nuckelavee appeared…

As his blurry vision cleared, he saw a bright window bathed in sunlight and a white blanket.

“I’m… alive?”

He had definitely died. Unable to handle the monster’s second phase, he had collapsed in vain. Since Shin-hoo, the last human, had died, the world should have ended with him. So how had he opened his eyes in a safe place?

He threw off the blanket and stood up. Sensing something strange as he moved, his gaze fell on his fingertips. His nails were neatly trimmed.

“…”

It felt foreign. Even for a Hunter with slowed aging, his hands in his forties had never been this smooth. Staring at his wrinkle-free fingers, Shin-hoo snapped out of it and looked around again.

It was a familiar space. A place he had seen for a long time, yet hadn’t seen in ages.

“This place is…”

It was where he had lived in his twenties. The room he had stayed in while actively growing the guild—a place that, in the future, had been reduced to rubble by the Nuckelavee.

What had happened? Staggering over to the mirror, he saw a young man standing in the reflection who could easily be called youthful.

A man who looked to be in his late twenties was staring back with wide, glaring eyes. It was him—Nam Shin-hoo.

“What’s going on?”

He thought he was dead, yet he had opened his eyes in the body of his younger self. He turned his gaze out the window. The once-ruined city was shining brilliantly.

The faint hum of passing cars drifted in, and from the park in front of the building came the sound of a flowing fountain.

As if nothing had ever happened.

As he stared dazed out the window, a knock sounded from outside.

“Shin-hoo. Are you up?”

“…Choi Kang-hyun?”

Shin-hoo snapped his head toward the door. His body moved before his brain could even think.

Standing outside the hastily opened door was Choi Kang-hyun. With the large, solid build typical of a defense-specialized Hunter, he looked identical to how Shin-hoo remembered him in his twenties.

Because his stubborn personality matched his abilities, he couldn’t take a joke, but he had been a dependable childhood friend. And…

‘I will cover you to the very end. I am the strongest shield of the Saint Guild, and its last.’

He was also the comrade who had blocked the Nuckelavee’s attacks until the very end. The sight of him standing still, stopped breathing while holding a shattered shield, was still vivid in Shin-hoo’s mind.

At the same time, the memory of his own selfish self surfaced.

‘Hold on just a little longer. As soon as this attack stops, I’ll charge right in.’

‘That’s enough, Kang-hyun. Lower the shield now. Dodge before the Nuckelavee falls.’

‘Kang-hyun? Choi… Kang-hyun?’

The friend who had died with his eyes still open, holding his shield. In the end, the last order Shin-hoo had given him was simply to hold on—to hold out in front of him until death.

“You don’t look so good.”

Kang-hyun supported Shin-hoo, who had an expression he had never seen before. A man who was always proud and never showed weakness looked fragile enough to collapse at any moment.

Grasping Kang-hyun’s arm and catching his breath for a moment, Shin-hoo looked up. He bit his lip as he looked at Kang-hyun’s youthful face.

“Is something wrong?”

“No, it’s nothing.”

Shaking his head in denial, Shin-hoo wiped away a tear that was threatening to escape. He had no right to cry right now.

In a corner of his vision, the quest window he had seen in his final moments remained open, glowing clearly as if to prove this situation wasn’t a dream.

“Kang-hyun.”

“Yeah.”

The answer came back in that same steadfast voice.

Feeling the reaction of a living person—no longer cold or pale—Shin-hoo gripped Kang-hyun’s arm tightly. Seeing his friend act so out of character, Kang-hyun’s expression hardened.

“Is something really not wrong?”

“I just had a bad dream. Yeah… a really terrible dream.”

Looking at Kang-hyun staring at him strangely, the corners of Shin-hoo’s eyes trembled. He composed an ambiguous expression, caught somewhere between a smile and tears.

He didn’t know what this current reality meant or why it had happened. But one thing was certain.

This situation was a miracle and a final chance given to him.

Entering his office, Shin-hoo sat at the desk and stared blankly at his status window.

The status window he had looked at his whole life had changed. Seeing it filled with blocked information even though it was clearly his own, Shin-hoo leaned back against his chair.

The blocked section next to his age seemed to be due to regression. But the traits were an issue he couldn’t easily overlook. The only traits he originally had were up to ‘Guiding Guardian.’

Because he possessed such traits, he had acted arrogantly. Blinded by the ‘Guardian’ trait, he had believed he was the protagonist destined to protect the world. Yet he hadn’t managed to protect a single thing.

And now, the trait added after that was ‘False Savior,’ along with an unidentifiable title.

“Really… pathetic.”

A hollow laugh escaped him. Every time he saw his altered traits and the quest window, an indescribable feeling weighed heavily on his shoulders.

‘False savior and true savior.’

It was a harsh phrasing. The quest cruelly pointed out that Shin-hoo could never be the savior. It felt like a scolding, telling him to stop playing the fake and go find the real one.

Whenever he closed his eyes, the horrific scene of Seoul was painted vividly. He remembered the final moments of those who had died pointlessly just for believing in him. The gruesome sight where it was hard to find a single intact corpse felt as fresh as reality.

Creak— The armrest of the chair, crafted from dungeon materials, bent along the shape of his tightly clenched fingers.

“Shin-hoo.”

Kang-hyun called out.

“You seem unusual today. You’ve been like this since morning.”

“I guess I just have a lot running on my mind.”

“…”

“Really. Well, my shoulder feels a bit uncomfortable, too.”

Shin-hoo smoothed things over and changed the subject. In truth, saying his shoulder bothered him wasn’t a lie.

When he first woke up, he hadn’t noticed because he was out of it, but as time passed, his shoulder strangely began to ache. Seeing traces of treatment, it seemed he had injured it recently.

Even trying to recall what event might have caused an injury around this time, nothing particular came to mind. Back when he was actively growing and running the guild, getting hurt was frequent, so it was probably just a minor injury.

“If your shoulder keeps hurting, should we use another potion?”

“Save it. We don’t have any dungeon raids for a while anyway. It’ll heal if we just leave it alone.”

The visible wound was already healed. That meant the strained muscle was in the process of recovery, so using a potion now would just be a waste.