Without knowing why himself, Yu Jitae followed his mood and bought alcohol. 29 year old whiskeys with 70% alcohol content – he bought ten of them as they clinked against one another inside a leather bag.
When he returned to the dormitory, he found Bom, Yeorum, Kaeul, Gyeoul and the protector sitting in the living room playing a board game. It was a game designed for five people.
Thus, he headed straight to his own room. “Uh? Ahjussi, let’s play together! Mister Cleaner is so bad!” Kaeul called him but he gave a random wave and walked away.
After entering his room, he opened a bottle of alcohol.
Leaning onto the wall, he started drinking it without any snacks. The sweet savoury smell unique to whiskey floated up. His body was normally unable to get drunk, but he went as far as to deliberately lowering his body’s metabolism speed to that of a normal human.
Moonlight entered through the window. It was a fairly decent day to get drunk, thought the Regressor.
Around the second and third iterations, Yu Jitae had been living as if his life was dependent on alcohol. It was because he could escape from the complexities of the world when he got drunk.
In the early regressions, he had revealed his wounds to others and complained that this was how hard his life was, and that his life was this pitiful. But as the regressions continued, he realised that relying on meaningless consolation was a foolish thing to do. In the end, nothing changed even with others’ consolation.
The world left behind only him, and rewound everything as it pleased. Left behind by himself, the man who was the very definition of normal, had no choice but to take everything in.
Therefore, Yu Jitae no longer desired the understanding of others. Others couldn’t fully put themselves in his shoes, and consoling himself was meaningless. When he no longer consoled himself, alcohol soon lost its meaning.
Thus, he stopped getting drunk.
Drinking alcohol today was just another whim of his. It was when he was opening the fourth bottle, in the middle of being deeply intoxicated by alcohol.
‘It is about time, my lord.’
His clone’s will faintly popped up in his head and Yu Jitae slowly stood up from his seat. In that instant, a thick smell of alcohol spread across with his body at the centre. With that, he had chased the intoxication out through his skin.
‘Let me send you the memories.’
The clone sent Yu Jitae the memories of the things that it had seen and heard during the past week. Yu Jitae opened them one by one and played them inside his head.
Information about the seventy-man raid team;
Report about Prototype X’s movement;
Wei Yan’s rage after losing his cherished colleagues;
And several conferences of the demons.
‘Will you be moving personally for the occasion?’
Yu Jitae gave a nod.
It was dawn already, and after finishing his preparations, Yu Jitae walked out to the corridor in an attempt to leave the house. That was when a pair of olive-coloured eyes faced him from within the darkness.
“What are you doing, not sleeping.”
“Where are you going?”
“Going out for a bit.”
Wearing the same, strange and indifferent expression as usual, Bom stared at him. Although her two eyes were staring at him, they also seemed to be staring at a distant place. When Yu Jitae was about to walk past her side, Bom moved and blocked him from the front.
“Why.”
“I want to go as well.”
“No.”
“I won’t cause you any trouble.”
“You must have seen something. Right?”
“…I can’t tell you anything. Please just understand that ahjussi needs me with you.”
She must have seen something, but in any case, what shouldn’t be done should never be done.
“Stay here. I’ll be back shortly.”
Yu Jitae was about to walk past her again but Bom once again blocked his path. Wherever he turned to, Bom blocked him from the front.
He spoke with a lower voice.
“Bom.”
“…”
“Go back and wait inside your room.”
“…Why are you against taking me along?”
“There is no need for you to know of these things, and nothing good comes from knowing them either. So move aside. If you don’t, I’ll tie you onto a chair.”
He was half serious.
“No.”
“Yu Bom.”
“No. You can’t go alone, ahjussi.”
She was more resolute this time, but he was not in the mood for an argument.
Yu Jitae sharpened his senses a little and formed a serious expression. He then walked past Bom, who opened her eyes wide in shock and remained still.
It was when he reached the shoe racks, and was about to wear shoes.
Something hugged his waist from behind.
Those were Bom’s two arms.
“Oi.”
“…”
“Let go,”
Faint irritation was mixed into his voice.
“Ahjussi, do you think I’m a child and that I need to be protected…?”
“What?”
“The bad things shouldn’t be shown and dirty things should be avoided – we can only be happy once our lives are filled with only good things. Is that what you think?”
Bom was on the mark.
Seeing dirty things was enough with the Regressor alone. There was no need for the dragons to see or even know about those things.
Bom’s voice reached his ears from behind.
“…Does ahjussi know what it means to live as a dragon of the green race?”
Towards his back, Bom said that along with a deep sigh. The life of a green dragon that can read Providence wasn’t something the Regressor could even hope to understand.
But regardless, he had no time to be doing this with her.
“No idea. For now, I can’t take you along. So let go of me before I get angry. I wasn’t joking about tying you up.”
“…”
Her arms became loose.
After wearing his shoes, he turned around and realised that she was holding something in her hands. Bom was holding the protector’s longsword along with its scabbard.
“What is that.”
“I borrowed it during the day.”
After some hesitation, Bom added more words.
“Ahjussi, let’s say there is something you really don’t want to do, but it is something that must be done. What would you do, ahjussi?”
“I would do it. No matter what.”
“Even if someone else hates it? Or even if someone would definitely get hurt by it?”
He quietly stared at Bom. There were many things in the world that had to be done due to a sense of duty. A few of those things weren’t mandatory.
“…If it needs to be done.”
But even if the whole world hated it and would suffer from it, some things just had to be done.
“…Really? Even if you would prefer dying over doing it, doing it is right if it’s something that must be done, right?”
He pondered about the reason why Bom was acting like this. It seemed that she had seen something through Providence, and she must do something accordingly, but would rather not do it.
“Maybe I’m still too young… I know that it must be done. I know, but really. I…”
After another hesitation, Bom slowly extended the longsword out towards him.
“…I didn’t want to give this to ahjussi.”
He looked at Bom’s face. He still couldn’t see what she was thinking from her eyes, but they appeared particularly sorrowful today.
Yu Jitae received the sword.
***
A seventy-man raid team of the International Hunter Association. The objective of this raid team was the boss ‘Kraken’ of an S- ranked dungeon, ‘Hetheia’s Ocean’. In order to have the least number of casualties, strong superhumans with a lot of fame within the association had gathered.
Each individual was within the top 0.5 percentile of superhumans. The power level of this raid team was similar to the military power of a small developing country.
The leader of this raid team was an executive member of the International Hunter Association, a powerhouse who was ranked in the ninety’s worldwide.
His name was…
“I’m Shiraishi Ryuunosuke.”
Wearing a pair of silver glasses, the man with an intellectual look greeted Yu Jitae with an uncomfortable expression.
“Are you Japanese?”
“I live nearby. Do you understand my suggestion?”
Yu Jitae stared deeply at the man’s face.
The man’s nature hanging on the Eyes of Equilibrium was ‘slight evil’. He wasn’t a demon, but had come across demons and had placed a demon of undetectables, Prototype X into the raid team.
He had made a big mistake.
“So you want a spot inside the seventy-man raid team right? And that you want to see the profiles of every member?”
“Right.”
“You… do seem a bit strong. But don’t you think you are asking for a seriously absurd request?”
“Absurd?”
“The day of the dungeon’s raid is tomorrow morning. You haven’t worked with others yet, and you have no connection either. You are not from the Association and your identity is also unclear. Under what circumstance would I trust you and place you in the group? And yet you’re so straightforward that it makes me dumbfounded.”
“…”
Yu Jitae remained quiet.
“Someone that can’t even reveal their identity – I don’t know how you found this place out and came here, but do you think the Association is some random dog strolling around?”
“So you won’t do it?”
“…Your arrogance is too much for my patience.”
Ryuunosuke’s two hands flickered in light and in an instant, a bow appeared in his left hand and an arrow in his right. His switching speed (Battle setup) was extremely fast.
In the blink of an eye, he nocked the arrow and pulled the bowstring before letting go. Immediately after, Yu Jitae grabbed the arrow mid-air and stabbed it into his left wrist. The arrow pierced through the wrist as well as the table under it.
Ryuunosuke could no longer hold the bow.
“…!”
Everything happened in the blink of an eye and Ryuunosuke frowned while feeling the pain.
“Damn it. You seem to be more of a bigshot than I thought.”
Despite one of his hands being pierced through by an arrow, Ryuunosuke gave out a relaxed smile and used his other hand to reposition his glasses. However, he couldn’t stop his increasing heart rate.
“What if I still refuse?”
“Who knows. Maybe I need to wear your skin or something.”
“Though I appear quite young, I’m pretty old. The skin of an old man is quite rough and wearing it over you will probably be…”
He, who was deliberately faking a relaxed smile, stopped his words after seeing the man’s eyes. Ryuunosuke was one of the rankers who was praised in Japan for being one of Japan’s 12 Zodiacs.
Although he was barely holding onto the last seat, he was a strong ranker, and he had never felt fear for the past twenty years while staring at a superhuman. But right now, he was frightened by the man’s gaze.
Cold sweat appeared on his forehead.
He had to run away.
The moment he came to that realisation, his body moved. Ryuunosuke’s entire body emitted mana as they all turned into light and before long, the entire office was filled with light.
[Luminous Light (A)]
It was an active skill that blocked the sense of sight and touch of everyone else present. Ryuunosuke pulled the arrow out from his wrist. As his bone caused a friction with the arrowhead, blood spurted out and he could feel the wound opening up but he had no other option.
For a split second, he contemplated. Should he break the outer walls of the building and escape? No. It was likely that he would come chasing after him and thus, he threw his body to an inner wall inside the office.
On the other side of that wall was a corridor, connecting onto a door which contained a teleportation machine for emergency escape purposes. Since pursuing the traces of teleportation was difficult, he should be able to escape.
But when he was a step away from the room with the teleportation machine, his feet were forced to a stop as a groan escaped his mouth.
Through the gap behind the door, a longsword came shooting forth and drove itself into his mouth.
“…!”
Ryuunosuke with a sword in his mouth was frozen stiff.
Soon the door was slowly pushed open, and the man that left the room, was the mysterious man who had been inside the office up until now.
Step. Step.
With the sword deep inside Ryuunosuke’s mouth, the man slowly walked forward while pushing the sword forth. In order to not have the back of his head pierced by the sword, Ryuunosuke matched the man’s footsteps and slowly walked backward.
And after walking backward, he was made to enter the office which he had left just then.
Soon, the seventy-man raid team became a seventy-one-man team.
“I have found it.”
That was when a woman opened the door and walked into the office. It was an old woman with her head shaved – it was Yu Jitae’s clone who mimicked the head researcher Vera.
After walking up, she handed a document over to Yu Jitae.
“I have found the profiles of the seventy people.”
“Right.”
Yu Jitae opened the document up and checked the faces and names of the members one by one.
“…My lord.”
The clone carefully spoke up.
“Yeah.”
“…”
“Why.”
“…The document related to Prototype X is placed at the very last page.”
“Have you gone through it already? You should have passed the memories over after finding it.”
“…My apologies.”
The clone’s reaction was slightly strange. Although he found it odd for a split second, Yu Jitae turned over to the final page of the profile list.
Who would be the new Prototype X that had changed for the first time in the seventh iteration? In fact, it didn’t really matter who it was, because that wouldn’t change the fact that it would definitely have to be killed.
But as he looked at the contents of the last page.
– Number 42 –
Name: Ha Saetbyul (26)
Nationality: Korea
World Ranking: 871
Position: Operator
Authority in Possession: Danger-sensing Eye
– – – – – – – –
Yu Jitae’s hands came to a stop.