1. Regression

Seoul, burning.
Above the concrete ruins, scarlet flames roiled without cease.
And amid the countless corpses, a banner flew, embroidered with a black, two-headed eagle.

The emblem of House Romanov, sorcery’s great house, one of the world’s Seven Great Families, and co-ruler of Eurasia’s hegemony alongside another.

“Damn House Romanov.”

Yujin growled the words low as he watched the banner flap.
His right arm was gone.
From the hole punched clean through his abdomen, blood poured like a waterfall.
It was a wound that would drop him into fatal shock the instant his focus slipped.
Teeth clenched, clinging to his fading consciousness, he forced strength back into his neck.

“Tsk, tsk. You’d be more comfortable lying down. What a waste of effort.”

An old man perched on the broken concrete looked down at Yujin and chuckled, hollow and amused.

“Whether it’s wasted or not, I won’t know till I try. Dmitri.”
“My name is Dmitri Andreyevich Romanov. Won’t you show some courtesy?”
“Like hell. How’s anyone supposed to memorize a name that long?”
“Then call me the Sorcerer King.”

The incarnation of Odin, divine king of Asgard.
Head of House Romanov.
And, like Yujin, a transcendent who had reached the ninth Stellar Rank.

The bastard who turned Seoul into hell.

— Ptooh.

Yujin spat out a mouthful of blood-laced spit.

“You became the eighth transcendent, only to be cut down before you could even spread your wings.”
“And who was it that shattered those wings, I wonder?”
“Ha ha ha. What can be done? We — the Seven Great Families, House Romanov among them — have no wish to see the existing order collapse. Undying King.”

It was the title the System bestowed upon reaching the ninth Stellar Rank.
Undying King was the epithet that had attached itself to Yujin.

“At least you still call me a king.”
“Because you’re worthy of the name.”

A sneer rose over Dmitri’s lips.

“Honestly, I think we got lucky. Had you been blessed by a Constellation, the family would have had to bleed heavily for it.”
“You don’t know that those exalted ones turned their backs on me?”
“Of course I know. You’re one who defies the natural order — a Necromancer, are you not?”

A class that raises the dead and binds them into servitude.
Yujin was the first, and the strongest, Necromancer ever to climb to that height.

If there was one problem, it was this.
The great beings who had carved their names above the myriad stars would grant no blessing to one who ran against the natural order.

“That, right there, is the difference between you and this old man.”

A golden shimmer coiled around Dmitri.
It was the aura that manifests when a god’s Incarnation draws the blessing of their patron Constellation to its absolute peak.

An absurd, cheat-tier power that cuts the destructive force of every mana-based attack by ninety-five percent or more.

The breath of a Bone Dragon.
The dark fighting-aura of a Death Knight.
Curses and black magic at the ultimate height. None of it got through.
He was being beaten down without a chance to fight back.

Yujin swallowed a sigh and straightened his back.

— Drip, drip-drip.

Blood spilled like a waterfall from his gaping chest.
Short of turning into a Lich, his body was past any hope of escaping death.

“Do you think it’s over now?”
“A Necromancer with no minions is as good as bare-handed, wouldn’t you say?”
“I’ll tell you now why I’ve been listening to your nonsense this whole time.”

The bones strewn across the battlefield began to stir.
The vengeful aura of fallen wraiths gathered into one and whipped up a gray whirlwind.
A curse-array, amplifying the negative dimension’s power as it grew ever denser, layered itself over the top, and an overwhelming death-energy surged up, enough to send a chill through even a Hunter who had reached the ultimate height of magic.

“A Transcendence Technique, with your soul for collateral.”

A chill ran down Dmitri’s spine at the final gambit Yujin had thrown down.
Watching the gray whirlwind roar upward, he felt his breath catch in his throat.
It was an unease that set the fine hairs on his body on end.
This was, truly, a power that could shake the order of the world itself.

Aura alone won’t answer this. Then I’ve no choice but to ready the strongest magic of my own.

— Flash!

The Eye of Odin.
The symbol of the authority granted to Dmitri when he became an Incarnation.
Runic letters surfaced over his retinas, drawing in mana and forcibly raising it to a rank above its station.
Divine Power, one tier above mana, the foundation of the world, a force that touched upon the very laws of creation.
A power beyond the boundary, permitted only to Constellations or their incarnations, took form.

Beams of radiance plunged down from the sky.
Drawing pure destructive force alone from the nine kingdoms Odin ruled, the runes were woven together and pushed to their maximum.
Divine power swelled, resonating with itself.
Energy enough to annihilate an entire continent converged onto a single point.

“Undying King. I’ll annihilate even your soul.”

The crimson flash poured down over his crown like a waterfall and tore the gray storm apart with ease.
The power of a Constellation, beyond the reach of any mortal.

The instant his secret art, cast at the cost of his very life, was undone, he smiled brightly.

“This is the moment I’ve been waiting for.”

The battered old pocket watch in Yujin’s hand met the dark-blue flame head-on.

The Miracle Dmitri had manifested was sucked into the watch.

— Tick, tick.

The second hand, still until now, began to move.

“What have you done?! Undying King!”
“What’s wrong? Something not going your way?”

The Pocket Watch of Kronos.
To activate the artifact, which embodied the authority that governs time, the user had to have reached the ninth Stellar Rank.
And second, it required the power of a Constellation.
For Yujin, shunned by the starlight, it was an object he could never use.

If I can’t do it with my own power, I’ll just borrow someone else’s.

Yujin grinned.

— Tick, tick.

The turning of the second hand grew faster and faster.
And the world’s timeline rewound.
His vision blurred.

“See you again. You damn eagle bastard.”

Yujin raised his middle finger and left Dmitri with a parting greeting.

A familiar ceiling.
No matter how many times he closed and opened his eyes, the scene stayed the same.
His mind was foggy, as if laced with static. His breath wouldn’t come properly, and his focus refused to settle.

“Kheuk.”

Yujin bolted upright in bed, his upper body springing up as though flung.

— Thump, thump, thump.

His heart beat over a hundred and eighty times a minute.
The sudden surge of blood made his breathing ragged and set his hands and feet trembling.

Where is this?

The last thing he remembered was shoving the Pocket Watch of Kronos into Dmitri’s transcendent magic.
The sound of the watch’s second hand had rung loud in his ears, and right after, his vision had flickered out.

In that instant.

A semi-transparent window shimmered before his eyes.

So. I really have come back to this day.

As he stared blankly at the status window hovering in the air, memories of the past came flooding back.
The days after he’d left the orphanage, found a room of his own, and scraped through life one hard day at a time.

I saw this message.

Twenty-three years had passed, yet the overwhelming emotion he’d felt back then was still vivid in his mind.

“Heh.”

A single scornful breath slipped through his tightly shut lips.
He’d succeeded.
A long-shot gamble with everything in the world staked on it.
The Pocket Watch of Kronos, which he’d never even thought to use since he sat so far from any Constellation’s blessing, had played its part flawlessly.

What happened to the watch?

A large crack was etched into its surface. A fracture that hadn’t been there before the regression.

So there’s no second chance.

Yujin carefully set the broken watch down on the table.

Regression.
The miracle of turning back time and returning to the past. The message said it couldn’t be repeated.

Even so, Yujin didn’t throw the Pocket Watch of Kronos away.

My parents, huh.

Yujin had almost no memories from before he was left at the orphanage.
Just one.
For reasons he couldn’t explain, the single fact that he’d been clutching the relic, the Pocket Watch of Kronos, in his hands was lodged in his mind.

I only learned it was a relic much later.

It was only after he’d reached the ninth Stellar Rank, the so-called realm of transcendence, that he’d been able to recognize the true worth of the Pocket Watch of Kronos.
It had become useless once he carried out the regression, yet he didn’t bother getting rid of it.

Well, I’ve got other uses for it anyway.

He slipped the pocket watch into his pocket and picked up his cell phone.

Forty years since the Great Cataclysm. How has the world changed?

Arahan, Korea’s number-one guild, has formed a partnership with House Romanov, one of the world’s Seven Great Families…

The birth of the Korean Peninsula’s first Hunter family?

Forty years since gates, monsters, and Hunters appeared on Earth.
The world’s currents had been reorganized around Hunters.
Each nation’s strength was decided by the might of its Hunter families and guilds.
And the families called the Seven Great Families had grown into supra-legal entities, grasping absolute power and wealth that transcended nations.

That’s exactly why the Sorcerer King came after me.

A ninth-rank powerhouse suddenly springing up out of Korea, a small country in the Far East?
If Yujin were to found a Hunter family, he might rise rapidly into a formidable force that threatened the existing order.

Even though I had no such intention.

— Crrrk.

Dmitri. House Romanov. I’ll make you regret ever laying a hand on me.

Yujin parted his lips and swallowed down his fury, bit by bit.

“Status window.”

The three base class groups one can change into upon becoming a Hunter, and, beyond that, the standard by which combat styles came to be categorized.

Last time, I chose the Magic group.

Among Hunters, only about ten percent have traits tied to the Magic group.
Priests were a small share too, but the calling didn’t suit Yujin’s temperament, so he hadn’t picked it.

The base class groups aren’t the only options.

As one climbs in rank, it becomes possible to specialize into a class built around particular skills or equipment.
And there are classes you can change into by meeting conditions inside specific gates.
Alchemist, Summoner, Martial Artist, Necromancer, to name a few.

Let’s move the starting point up.

There was no need to take the long way around a road he already knew.
The method for becoming a Necromancer was already stored in his head.

Yujin recalled the fortuitous encounters he’d seized before the regression, and got ready to head out.