1. Regression

Seoul was burning.

Above the concrete ruins, scarlet flames roiled without end, and among the countless corpses flew a banner stitched with a black, two-headed eagle. The banner belonged to House Romanov, a great house of sorcery, one of the world’s Seven Great Families, and co-ruler of the Eurasian hegemony alongside a single other.

“Damn House Romanov.”

Yujin growled low as he watched the banner flap. His right arm was gone. Blood poured like a waterfall from the hole punched through the center of his abdomen, 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 atop the concrete rubble looked down at Yujin, chuckling emptily.

“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.”

He was the incarnation of Odin, divine king of Asgard, and head of House Romanov, a transcendent who had climbed, like Yujin, to the ninth Stellar Rank.

The bastard who turned Seoul into hell.

— Ptooh.

Yujin spat, his spittle streaked with blood.

“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.”

Undying King was the title the System bestowed upon reaching the ninth Stellar Rank, the epithet that had come to be fixed 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 been forced 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 raised the dead and bound them into servitude. Yujin was the first Necromancer ever to climb to that height, and the strongest. There was just one problem: the great beings who had carved their names above the myriad stars would grant no blessing to anyone who ran against the natural order.

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

A golden shimmer coiled around Dmitri, the aura that manifested when a god’s Incarnation drew the blessing of its patron Constellation to its absolute peak.

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

The breath of a Bone Dragon did nothing. Nor did the dark battle-aura of a Death Knight, nor curses and black magic honed to their ultimate height. None of it got through, and he was being beaten down, one-sidedly.

Yujin swallowed a sigh and straightened his spine.

— Drip, drip-drip.

Blood fell 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 auras of fallen wraiths gathered as one and whipped up a gray whirlwind. As a curse-array amplifying the thickened power of the negative dimension layered itself over the storm, an overwhelming death-energy surged up, enough to chill even a Hunter who had mastered magic to its ultimate height.

“A Transcendence Technique with your soul for collateral.”

The final gambit Yujin had thrown down sent a chill down Dmitri’s spine. As he watched the gray whirlwind roar upward, his breath snagged in his throat, an unease standing every fine hair on his body on end. This, truly, was a power that could shake the very order of the world.

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, surfaced as runic letters across his retinas, drawing in mana and forcibly raising it above its station. This was Divine Power, the tier standing one rung above mana, the foundation of the world, a force that reached as far as the very laws of reality. A power beyond the boundary, permitted only to Constellations and their incarnations, took form.

Beams of radiance plunged down from the sky. Drawing nothing but pure destructive force from the nine kingdoms Odin ruled, the runes wove together and amplified to their limit. Divine power swelled as it resonated with itself, and energy enough to annihilate an entire continent converged on 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. It was the power of a Constellation, beyond the reach of any mortal. The instant the secret art he’d cast at the cost of his very life came undone, Yujin grinned.

“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 drawn into the watch.

— Tick, tick.

The second hand, frozen 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 governed time, the user first had to have reached the ninth Stellar Rank. Second, it demanded the power of a Constellation. For Yujin, shunned by the starlight, it should have been 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 ticking 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 by way of farewell.

A familiar ceiling. No matter how many times he shut his eyes and opened them again, the view stayed the same. His mind was fogged, as though laced with static; his breath wouldn’t come right, and his focus refused to settle.

Kheuk.

Yujin bolted upright in bed, his torso snapping up as if flung.

— Thump, thump, thump.

His heart was hammering past a hundred and eighty beats a minute. The sudden surge of blood turned his breathing ragged and set his hands and feet trembling.

Where is this?

The last thing he remembered was driving the Pocket Watch of Kronos into Dmitri’s transcendent magic. The watch’s second hand had rung loud in his ears, and an instant later his vision had blinked out. And then, 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, the past came flooding back. The days after he’d left the orphanage, found a room of his own, and clawed his way through life one grinding day at a time.

I saw this message.

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

Heh.

A single scornful breath slipped past his tightly shut lips. He’d succeeded. A long-shot gamble with the whole world staked on it. The Pocket Watch of Kronos, an artifact so far removed from any Constellation’s blessing that he’d never once thought to use it, had played its part flawlessly.

What happened to the watch?

A large crack was etched across 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 to return to the past, and the message said it could never be done again. 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 lone fact that he’d been clutching the relic, the Pocket Watch of Kronos, in his hands stayed lodged in his mind.

I only learned it was a relic much later.

Only after he’d reached the ninth Stellar Rank, the so-called realm of transcendence, had he been able to recognize the watch’s true worth. The regression had left it useless, yet he still didn’t bother getting rid of it.

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

He slid the watch into his pocket and picked up his 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 had passed since gates, monsters, and Hunters first appeared on Earth. The currents of the world had been reordered around Hunters; each nation’s strength was now measured by the might of its Hunter families and guilds. The houses known as the Seven Great Families had swollen into supra-legal powers, seizing absolute wealth and authority that transcended nations.

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

A ninth-rank powerhouse, sprung up out of nowhere in Korea, a small country in the Far East. If Yujin were to found a Hunter family, he could rise with frightening speed into a force that threatened the established order.

Even though I had no such intention.

— Crrrk.

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

Yujin’s lips parted as he swallowed his fury down, piece by piece.

“Status window.”

The three base class groups a person could change into upon becoming a Hunter, and, beyond that, the very standard by which combat styles had come to be categorized.

Last time, I chose the Magic group.

Among Hunters, only about ten percent carried traits tied to the Magic group. Priests made up a small share as well, but the calling hadn’t suited Yujin’s temperament, so he’d passed it over.

The base class groups aren’t the only options.

As one climbed in rank, it became possible to specialize into a class built around particular skills or equipment. Others could be entered only by meeting certain conditions inside specific gates. Alchemist, Summoner, Martial Artist, Necromancer, to name a handful.

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 filed away in his head. Calling to mind the fortuitous encounters he’d seized hold of before the regression, Yujin readied himself to head out.