<The Authority, [Key (EX)] has confirmed the met requirements of an emotion.>
<Filled Emotion: Fear>
<The Authority, [Key (EX)] states that the [Obelisk of Fear] located at the [Basement of Vintage Clock] has been cast with light.>
<With this, 10 out of the 11 obelisks have been cast with light.>
He was scared.
Even when he was at the mouth of a large monster,
Even when his body was shredded by the spears of monsters in the depths and had to release Yeorum’s hand,
And even when Bom found out about his past,
Never had he felt so frightened.
For him, life was a continuance of time for the purpose of death. He lived to die.
Because of that, the desire to live was the same as denying all his life into nothing. Therefore, he was scared of the fact that he wanted to live, even more so than how others would fear death.
With eyes filled with fear, he looked above. Through the extreme tension, with time seemingly stopping at every instant, the blade of the guillotine drew near.
The output was as high as it could possibly be and the bright light emanating out of the blade was so intense that it could fill the world with its brilliance. A blink of an eye and his life would come to an end. Therefore, this was his last chance to question himself.
[I want to live.]
He now had to prove this unbelievably hideous emotion.
1. Life was nothing but pain.
Wasn’t it now so evident that life was just a repetition of pain? How was Ha Saetbyul’s death, and how were all of his innumerable suicides? How was the death of everyone in the village that cherished and looked after him?
Losing to the first sovereign and being locked in a world with a distorted timeline; limbs chopped off, vocal cords torn apart and muscles and guts in full display. What about those 90 years that he was forced to live as an undying piece of flesh in the corner of a prison cell? Was that not painful?
And what about the death of the only source of joy across all moments, the white bird?
Logically speaking, he was an existence that should not live.
2. Do I have the right to live?
He killed people. Inciting other people, he made them kill each other. He robbed with the excuse that there were monsters to be killed and scammed others when he was short of money.
Because it was necessary, he anatomised the dragons alive for over hundreds of times. Even so, he was not confident in confessing his sins and deceived the children until the very end.
He knew the tower of sin was as tall as the sky.
If living required a qualification, he definitely did not have one.
3. Can I change my mind later?
No. It was impossible. Guam, the Monarch of the Highest Heavens, had died to him outside the Providential dimension. He would not come back to life even with his regression. The blade of the guillotine he got from the monarch was already falling, and it would not be able to be used again after this.
Therefore, he would have no chance to change his mind.
Despite all that, do I still want to live?
“…!”
He stretched his eyes wide open.
He wanted to live.
In spite of realising how selfish and despicable it was,
Yu Jitae wanted to live.
Even though there was no logical or emotional reason to live,
He still wanted to live.
Although living was as frightening as how death felt to others,
Even so, he still wanted to live.
“—-!”
He moved his arms. Breaking himself free from the white hands of the abyss, he squirmed his arms and legs to stand up. The nails stuck all around his body, and the hands holding his limbs back started being flung off one by one.
He wanted to live.
He wanted to stay alive and hear Gyeoul calling him daddy.
He wanted to live.
He wanted to stay alive and see Kaeul becoming the guardian of someone else.
He wanted to live.
He wanted to stay alive and watch Yeorum achieve her revenge against her oldest unni and convey the words that had yet to be conveyed.
He wanted to live.
Living on, he wanted to continue the rest of his life with Bom.
Until the very end, he was full of deceit and had never been honest with the kids. That was something he shouldn’t have done. If there was something to atone for, he should have done it. He at least should have tried to even if the kids did not forgive him.
If I was still allowed to live, no matter how horrendous and disgusting it may be, I want to live without running away, without turning or looking away from condemnations, without blaming my sins on pain and by undoing all the entangled knots.
That was how he wanted to live.
I,
Want to live,
And watch the lives of the baby dragons a bit more.
“Kuhkk—-!”
After escaping from the white hands, Yu Jitae grabbed onto as much killing intent as he could and blocked the incoming blade of the guillotine.
Kakakakakangg—-!
The collision against the descending blade resulted in a tremendous aftershock that shook the abyss. His bones were going out of joint and the world was turning half-blurry and red due to the burst in one of his eyes. Even then, he withstood it until he shattered the blade. The golden sword aura scattered and brightened up the darkness all the way to the horizon.
His body was shaking and his mana was trembling as if it would explode with one mistake. On top of that, his legs were also shivering but he started moving without any further delay. Flying into the sky, he ripped through the dimension and returned to the real world.
Belatedly, his heart was starting to be filled with regret. The time he had wasted was relatively long and his head turned cold.
“Key—!!”
He roared from his chest. The black cat flew in from somewhere and landed on his shoulder. He asked whether the baby dragons were still safe or not.
<The Authority, [Key (EX)] states that it is impossible to tell even with the status of a [Transcendent Authority] due to the [Dimensional Cruise] being in the [Outer Dimension].>
It was already too far.
Thus, he became even more rushed.
Speeding over the vast ocean at a speed faster than missiles, he flew forward while creating a deep crevice in the water behind his path alongside waves reaching several metres in height.
Now, he would no longer be shaken.
His emotions had been in a turmoil because his longtime conviction had been shaken towards the very end. After setting his heart once and hardening it, he no longer felt confused.
One issue was that the interdimensional drug, [Defrost] was still pulverising his mind into smithereens.
Something floated above in his mind. It was the black piece of trash that reared its head when he was hurting Yeorum with his own hands in the past.
In fact, it might have been staying inside him from way back in time.
The name was Guilt.
Its mouth ripped open, revealing lines of teeth. They looked like that of a shark but there was an abnormally large amount of them.
Alongside an unsightly smile, it asked him.
〚Don’t you think it’s too late?〛
No. It won’t be late.
He was certain from the depth of his heart.
〚You are the one who wasted all that time.〛
Forcing out the remaining effects of [Defrost], he ignored the words of the black filth but it continued blabbering its mouth.
〚You’ve always been arrogant, egoistic, and selfish.〛
〚Sending the baby dragons back home on your own accord, and bringing them back on your own accord again?〛
〚Do you think the world will keep moving the way you want?〛
〚You have to know.〛
〚How much of a powerless loser you are.〛
All the time that went by became a sticky quagmire of poison that tried to grab onto his ankles. He thought he could achieve anything but had failed on repeat – that was what his life was like.
However, it was now different and he could be as arrogant as he wanted.
He was standing here after a long regression.
There was nothing he couldn’t achieve.
.
.
.
Askalifa’s coordinates were etched into his mind.
Heading to the outer dimension, he followed the path of the Dimensional Cruise. The dimensional path that continued like a rainbow led him forward in a world with no direction, no form and no sense of distance.
The reason dimensions were expressed through the visible spectrum in the eyes of a human was because dimensions could hold everything. Because they held everything that jumbled inside without merging with one another, dimensions could be seen by human eyes like a rainbow.
However, a dimension that could not be comprehended by a human would seem empty. Spaces that were incomprehensible to a human eye were located in between those rainbows and that was what the ‘outer dimension’ was.
He, however, could understand them through [Conceptualisation (SS)]. Using his authority, he spotted traces of the Dimensional Cruise that had crashed across the gaps of the dimensions.
He flew after the trace.
Before long, the first dimension they stopped at appeared in front of his eyes. It was a small nameless world.
“…”
The moment he arrived there through the dimensional gap, Yu Jitae gave a frown. The dimension was like a small island and was about as big as Jeju Island. At the centre of the island around 20 km in the sky was the cruise’s totem.
It was the device installed here for the cruise to be teleported safely in case there was a dimensional disjoint happening nearby.
But,
There was something strange about this place…
He raised his gaze and looked around.
The island was covered with a green forest. Innumerable stalks of grass were intertwined and the forest giving off a dense fragrance of nature was nothing unusual, but it was just too much. What he was feeling was unusually excessive, and the amount of nature-attributed mana here should have been less than half of what existed.
Maybe this dimension was one that had more natural essence than others. He decided to leave it at that and threw his body towards the dimensional gap again.
.
.
.
For a fairly long period of time, he flew across the dimension like a missile as the second place they had stopped at appeared before him.
This too was a dimension he did not know of. It seemed to be one inhabited by people with a low level of scientific civilisation. Large blocks of wood were travelling across the sky by following down a steel path while puffing out steam.
It felt even stranger for Yu Jitae.
The mana of nature was even stronger in this place, with there being especially more behind the path of the cruise ship.
Mana of nature.
Dimensional Cruise.
And a very dense cluster of mana…
It was increasingly more suspicious. At this point, it was obvious who the owner of that mana was.
Yu Jitae threw his body into the dimensional gap again while wearing a frown.
Out of the countless things that he had been turning away from because of him believing in his death, there might have been one that he shouldn’t have looked away from.
Now that he decided not to turn away from life again,
He recalled the ones that had been the most shocking to him in the 7th iteration.
Finding Gyeoul precious was a shock.
Feeling like wanting to protect Kaeul was shocking.
Wishing for Yeorum to live after going back was another shocking emotion.
However, there was one that couldn’t be compared to any of the above. If there was one shocking event that existed within the scope of daily lives, while at the same time being the most harmful to a daily life,
…
There was one such thing…
For now, he decided to deny it.
Because it was just way too absurd.
.
.
.
It took a lot of time to reach the third dimension they stopped at, even though he was currently using all of his power to dash through dimensions. Right now, he was even sacrificing a portion of his authorities through [Conceptualisation (SS)].
Those were abilities that became useless when his strength stopped advancing at the limit of an existence. Even though it was okay to discard them any time, they were the only remaining evidence of his past that had always been aiming for death, so he had been keeping them till now as trophies.
But now, he threw all of them away. He did not need them.
And when he at last reached the third dimension, his face crumpled into a deep scowl.
The name of this dimension was [Arunril], and was the world Yu Jitae had visited when going to the Demon World in the past. It was a world with a severe lack of water compared to the size of the dimension. This place was therefore always under the threat of a drought because the trees with horrendously strong vitalities devoured nature excessively. Those dry trees reached all the way to the sky and stopped the land beneath from receiving any sunlight.
Looking at this place in the past, he thought ‘What a world of firewood’.
But,
Now,
Before his eyes,
Arunril was being scorched into ashes.
This was a very small dimension. It was even a little bit smaller than Haytling but there was no reason why this land would turn into a sea of flames.
And besides, this fire…
“…”
It was the flame of a red dragon.
He was dumbfoundedly gazing across the world when suddenly a dot in the distant sky entered his sight. Going closer, he checked what it was and realised it was a fragment of the Dimensional Cruise.
His heart turned heavy as if a piece of lead had sunk down.
The Dimensional Cruise was invincible against external attacks. It was because any attack aiming for the cruise ship would be from the outside.
He created it so that it would protect the outside as much as possible. It would take more than a few days even if a whole group of dragons were to attack it as a group, because the ship was the best device he had personally made in the 6th iteration.
If so, then what was this?
He looked at the fragment of the broken cruise.
“…”
Why was this here…
.
.
.
He denied it.
He thought that could never be the case.
It indeed was strange. It was so strange that he couldn’t understand it and had questioned himself from time to time.
Why am I feeling a romantic emotion,
To whom is it that I’m feeling such a burning desire?
How meaningful could it be to share affection through bodily intercourse and shaking the male genital?
Why was he interested in her body,
And why did he want to whisper love into her ears?
Why was every moment so hard and unbearably perplexing, and also painful?
Even though she wasn’t any more special than others…
If he had to feel a romantic emotion just because they were special, he should have felt the same way for the other baby dragons.
And since he did not feel a sliver of a romantic emotion to other baby dragons, it was strange that he was feeling that way for someone else.
Without lingering on the topic, he had cast a cover over it.
Because he thought that was just impossible.
However, after flying through the dimensions, when he at last found the Dimensional Cruise that he had sent off,
Seeing the half-broken state of the ship,
His heart dropped by an inch.
After sensing him, the cruise ship opened its barrier as he walked inside while killing his breath.
“…”
There were bloodstains in the corridor.
He felt like his breath was coming to a stop.
It was similar to the scene he saw in his dream.
There was a terribly intense trace of nature’s mana,
And bits and pieces of the ship were turned into ashes.
He couldn’t believe his eyes.
That was when he felt a presence from a distance.
When he opened the door of the hot spring,
At that moment, Yu Jitae found it hard to believe his eyes.
Entangled by black tentacles, Yeorum, Kaeul and Gyeoul were floating on the water. They were still alive, but they were floating unconsciously.
Crouching behind them was a girl. Even though he wasn’t used to her black hair, she was definitely the child he knew better than anyone else.
The black-haired girl was carrying a palm-sized ballista in her right hand, and was pointing it at the neutralised children.
Out of all the possible colours, black.
Black dragons could manipulate memories and emotions and convey them… Because he knew that the best, when the far-off sense of reality suddenly reached his heart.
All the countless doubts that he had been feeling all the way from the past gathered precisely like puzzle pieces.
“Hello.”
Bom said with a smile.