“Lee Sungmin!”
Theos approached with a bright expression. Behind his back were the remaining Holy Knights who were raggedly standing along with the other survivors of the subjugation who had miraculously lived through Kim Jonghyun’s utter destruction.
The Holy Knights did not have any open wounds since that was all healed up by Teresa and the other priests. But their clothes and armor were torn from the horrific battle and their mental fatigue was still clearly imminent.
“R- really…… You’re incredible.”
Theos spoke sincerely from the heart with a little bit of disbelief still across his face from the monstrous battle that had just unfolded before his eyes. Kim Jonghyun was the Devil of the North. Theos had only heard rumors of his strength and the horrors of his magic, but this was the first time he had ever fought with him or seen him face-to-face.
Theos had an incredibly rough and arduous time as he was the one to spearhead the Holy Knights brigade into the fray, defeating the uncountable undead and even confronted the Legion of Death Knights.
Even after such a difficult fight… Theos had come right back to the source of where it all began. Kim Jonghyun was the last obstacle in their path, and Theos had put everything on the line and more.
Kim Jonghyun’s magic was something that was so incomprehensible that it didn’t even make sense to call it magic.
But in the end, they had all somehow overcome it. Theos didn’t know exactly what had happened, but Kim Jonghyun was gone now.
There was one thing Theos did know from all the fighting he had just been through and witnessed. Lee Sungmin, the Ghost Spear, was someone unfathomable.
“You’re a hero!”
Theos approached Lee Sungmin and shouted. And unlike the rumors that had tainted the public’s eyes of him before, everyone believed that statement when Theos called Lee Sungmin a hero.
If it weren’t for Lee Sungmin, everyone present would have died without exception. If it weren’t for Lee Sungmin, Kim Jonghyun would have massacred everyone with a horrific smile as he did the deed.
Teresa’s divine power also failed to overpower Kim Jonghyun. The Holy Knights, Paladins, Priests, other members of the subjugation… none of them could do anything against the pure might and will of Kim Jonghyun.
But there was someone who had done so much more. Lee Sungmin had defeated the commander of the Death Knights, Volander, who was one of the five black stars of Predator and then immediately came to fight and stop Kim Jonghyun afterwards.
Knocking down Volander would already be an achievement worthy of being praised as a hero… but to stop Kim Jonghyun as well? It was incredible.
“Lee Sungmin-ssi?”
As he approached Lee Sungmin, who was standing still and staring at the scene blankly, Theos felt a foreboding feeling that something was wrong here.
Something felt strange. It was tingling, pricking at his skin and senses.
Theos did not ignore his senses that had been honed over several years and stopped to look at Lee Sungmin a bit more closely.
Wake up, wake up…….
The noises and shouts for him to wake up were nothing but a blurry image passing by for Lee Sungmin.
The being inside of Lee Sungmin’s consciousness, had become Lee Sungmin, but was also not him at that moment. Lee Sungmin’s existing personality, mindset, and ego had completely disappeared from his body.
The Lee Sungmin, who was standing before Theos, was not the Lee Sungmin he once knew. It was an entirely new being that had been hidden away within the deepest corners of Lee Sungmin’s consciousness.
The worst that Lee Sungmin and Heoju had wanted to prevent… had happened.
No matter how much Heoju and Lee Sungmin believed and tried to prevent Lee Sungmin’s mental walls from breaking, Lee Sungmin was hit by the spell of reversion and had made things turn for the worst.
“Lee Sungmin…?”
Originally, if Lee Sungmin were to have lost by natural causes, Lee Sungmin’s ego would have been completely erased.
Yet that was not the case because of the special circumstances.
The being inside of Lee Sungmin’s consciousness hadn’t devoured Lee Sungmin’s ego, and Lee Sungmin’s consciousness was locked deep inside into a slumber.
What might have made such a miracle happen was Heoju. Heoju had constantly been keeping the entity in check inside of Lee Sungmin’s consciousness and their constant communication had helped Lee Sungmin keep hold of his own sense of self.
‘This is…’
Theos’ eyes started to shake. Lee Sungmin, who was staring blankly at the sky, turned his gaze downwards and locked eyes with Theos.
The odd choices of movements, the ominous look in Lee Sungmin’s eyes…
Theos’ senses were starting to scream at him to get as far away as possible.
Cold sweat started to drip from the back of Theos’ neck into his armor. There should be no reason to leave Theos thought, and his logic was constantly fighting with his instincts at that moment.
Lee Sungmin was not a dangerous person.
Even if the entire world saw Lee Sungmin as the murderous rogue named Ghost Spear who was the sole disciple of the man known as Sima Ryunju, the Demonic Emperor, Theos confirmed with his own two eyes that Lee Sungmin was not such a person.
At least here, and now… everyone present was saved by him.
‘But why? Compared to when I met Kim Jonghyun, my senses were not screaming at me like this? Why is my body telling me that Lee Sungmin is much… much more dangerous than Kim Jonghyun right now?’
Theos didn’t have time to continue his thoughts as he found out the answer the next moment.
In that brief moment of time, Lee Sungmin’s eyes had something that Theos finally understood.
Those golden eyes that locked with Theos’.
As Theos looked into them… he felt no emotion at all.
Lee Sungmin’s mouth curled up and Theos then saw his canines protruding out from the corners of his mouth. Lee Sungmin’s teeth were sharp to a degree that made no human sense.
“Oh…”
Theos’ face turned white. He immediately knew at that second, he needed to run. Theos raised the sword in his hand hurriedly.
Theos’ sword, which had not cracked even when fending off the brutal attacks of Kim Jonghyun, split cleanly in half. It was not Lee Sungmin’s spear that cleaved it however. It was his claw-like hands with nails that were only growing in length.
Spurt!
Blood spurted out from Theos’ chest.
Although Lee Sungmin cleaved through the sword and even Theos’ armor, luckily the reach of his claws were not long enough to kill Theos in one blow.
The faces of Teresa and the other members of the Holy Church turned white watching the blood spewing from Theos’ chest.
“The- Theos?”
The other Holy Knights next to Theos shouted out in confusion and took a few steps back.
Fortunately, Theos had avoided fatal injuries. At that moment, taking a few steps back according to the warnings of his instincts had in fact, saved Theos’ life.
“Everyone, run away!”
Theos did not know why, but Lee Sungmin was clearly not sane at that moment.
However, Lee Sungmin moved faster than the response. He swung his right hand ferociously, holding back nothing with his claw-like hands.
Purple internal energy gushed out from Lee Sungmin’s body at the light gesture. Theos hurriedly flew back, spewing blood.
Luckily, the other Holy Knights had succeeded in retreating to a safe distance thanks to Theos’ warning.
But it wasn’t just Theos or the members of the Holy Church who were targeted by the attack. A small crowd from the remnants of the subjugation army, disappeared in a mist of thick blood and flesh from Lee Sungmin’s attack.
“Ahhhhhhhhhh!”
Lee Sungmin’s yell was like more of a sharp screech as it echoed out horrendously.
In the deep world of Lee Sungmin’s consciousness, Heoju was still not giving up as he yelled over and over for Lee Sungmin’s original ego to wake up.
[Didn’t you decide not to become a monster you bastard?!]
But Heoju’s cries were almost completely silent.
[N-…..NO!]
Heoju’s continuous shouts eventually, however, had a small effect.
Deep inside of his subconscious, Lee Sungmin opened his eyes and slowly lifted himself up.
‘Where am I?’Lee Sungmin gasped for air as he came to, and looked around.
There was nothing but a pitch black darkness around him. Lee Sungmin belatedly realized where this place was because he had been here before.
He had last been here a long time ago in that fateful time in the City of Endless Nights. Lee Sungmin had been trapped in this space when he had first turned into a monster and had lost control of his body to the entity that was trapped within his own mind.
Lee Sungmin had come to this very place.
“But it’s different from then.”
Lee Sungmin spoke his thoughts out loud in a blank realization. At that time, Lee Sungmin was not alone and there was Heoju with him as well from beyond a barrier that he could not see at the time.
But now Lee Sungmin could not see a single thing besides the darkness that enshrouded everything. This time, it was different in the sense that Lee Sungmin’s body had now turned into a complete monster and there were no more mutations left to undergo.
“What happened?”’
Lee Sungmin just couldn’t understand. Why did the seal suddenly break? Why did his body completely morph into a monster? More than that, why did Kim Jonghyun just suddenly and completely disappear?
“The Dark Wizard.”
Lee Sungmin, who was walking in the dark aimlessly with his footsteps, stopped walking.
“Before he was deported from the confines of time and space within your world, he seemed to have left you a very interesting gift. The spell of reversion…… Huhuhuh…. The magic that turned him into a Devil was aimed directly at you but instead you’ve reverted to being a monster, not a demon.”
This voice.
Lee Sungmin could tell.This voice did not belong to Heoju.
“You were lucky. Thanks to that yokai’s insistence and perseverance, your ego is still intact. However, that’s it. You will just wander around this place endlessly.”
“Who are you?”
Lee Sungmin held back any thoughts he might have on what happened and decided he needed to know who this person was. But all he got back in response… was laughter.
“Hahahah….!”
The baleful laughter echoed out in the darkness. Lee Sungmin swallowed his breath and moved toward the direction of where he felt the laughter coming from. With every step he took, Lee Sungmin saw countless images emerge from the dark like a panorama.
They were scenes that Lee Sungmin knew of.
They were scenes from his past life, his current life, his time in the Trial of Time and much more.
Everything in these scenes were experiences he had gone through.
Even the scenes of when he was summoned to Genavis for the very first time in his first life.
Lee Sungmin focused on this memory with mixed feelings. He was fourteen at the time and was forcibly summoned into Eria without any knowledge of martial arts or magic. He was a hopeless no-class with nothing.
He remembered at that time he had picked up some cheap spearmanship martial arts. He originally had picked up the spear because Lee Sungmin had thought it would be safer to attack enemies from a distance than up close and he had heard the spear was beginner friendly.
That’s how he had lived.
As a mercenary.
A C-Class mercenary that was part of the Mercenary Guild. He had admired and been jealous of the man known as Xeon at the time. Xeon, who came from the same no-class background as he had and broke through the limitations and deposition other no-classes faced and had reached the Peak Realm. At that time, Lee Sungmin had honestly thought that Xeon had reached the apex of all strength and that the Peak Realm was the sky. But only later on, in his second life did he realize that it was nothing compared to the true limit of power one could ever achieve.
He had admired Xeon in his past life, and desperately wanted to be like him. However, the Lee Sungmin of that time had put zero effort into growing stronger.
He had died living day-by-day seeking menial pleasures and had died miserably like that.
“Isn’t it trivial?”
The owner of the voice speaking to Lee Sungmin beyond the darkness spoke with a smile. Lee Sungmin continued to walk. He felt that the owner of the voice was not too far.
But every time he took a step forward, Lee Sungmin saw more scenes. If the scenes that he had just focused on were a mix of scenes that mostly centered around his previous life, now Lee Sungmin was looking at more of the experiences and scenes he had experienced in second life.
Lee Sungmin glanced at the scene that showed when he first met Wijihoyeon. He had met her, gotten to know her and even made her his goal of aspiration and new rival to reach.
There was the scenes of when he went to the Mountains of Mush.Even the scenes where he met Frescan and had obtained the Black Heart.
“Oh! That’s an important one.”
The ownerless voice giggled when Lee Sungmin focused on the scene of obtaining the Black Heart.
After that, Lee Sungmin traveled to the Shaolin Temple. After practicing there and meeting the Grandmaster Bulyeong and Jihak, he killed the Solitary Blade Dokgo, and met Denir.In the next scene, it showed Lee Sungmin going to the Sleeping Forest where he had first met Heoju and Rubia.
“Oh, that one is also quite important… Hahahah!”
Lee Sungmin then reunited with Wijihoyeon and Baek Sogo in the dungeon. He traveled North after that and had encountered Geniella, and met with the Crazy Heavenly Demon, Byuk Won-Pae after killing the Bloody Heavenly Demon.
After that, he had kept his promise to reunite with Wijihoyeon in Rubes after ten whole years. He had then met Sima Ryunju and fought against An Zun in a bloody battle. He continued after that to move to the South and killed Qian Zun to resolve the curse on Wijihoyeon and had inherited Heoju’s treasures.
“This place too.”
The voice spoke when the next scene came. It was when Lee Sungmin traveled to the City of Endless Night and met Yana and fought against Arbeth and Aine.
“That one is very important.”
In the next scene, Lee Sungmin moved further South. He killed Guan Zun and killed An Zun in the rematch. More and more scenes passed by.
Lee Sungmin witnessed the death of his only master once more through these scenes. Of course, Lee Sungmin didn’t feel good about that no matter how many times he witnessed it or re-lived it in his memories. The next scene was where Oslo had helped him inherit and compress Sima Ryunju’s heart to something he could consume and grow stronger. When that scene played out, the owner of the voice laughed hysterically and clapped his hands loudly.
He didn’t say it, but Lee Sungmin knew that scene was probably also incredibly ‘important’.
But what did they mean by ‘important’? What else made all these ‘important’ scenes all connected?
The last few scenes came to play.It was where Lee Sungmin killed Volander and then confronted Kim Jonghyun.
He saw all the scenes from a third party’s point of view, and with this, Lee Sungmin was able to see Kim Jonghyun stretch his finger toward him and cast the spell of reversion on him before he completely disappeared in a white light.
“Where did Kim Jonghyun go then?”
“Abel scraped up all the remaining life force he had left and cast one last spell with the Weiss. It’s a kind of spell that deports whatever is confined within the space to another dimension and bans whatever is trapped inside from ever re-entering Eria in any time. Kim Jonghyun will never be able to return to Eria. Whether that be the past, present or future, he cannot return.”
“Then… what happened to Abel……?”
“He died. He probably died with a sense of satisfaction. He probably didn’t even imagine that Kim Jonghyun would have cast such an interesting little spell on you right as he was being deported.”
The owner of the voice spoke with a hint of contemptuous laughter behind his words.
“No matter how much you want to keep your humanity, Even if you desperately try to maintain your reason and instinct, it can’t be helped. The spell of reversion is absolute. It’s already a great feat to have your ego intact here.”
“But then what happens to me from here on out?”
“You’re probably going to wander in this state of unconsciousness for eternity. Unless any variables intervene outside your control, there is no way for you to break out of here on your own. Your body has already turned completely into a monster’s.”
“I don’t understand.””
Lee Sungmin muttered in a quiet voice.
“Most of the monsters I have seen, have maintained their own reasoning and consciousness of their bodies. In a way, it was like they were more humanistic than they were monsters…….”
“Woah, woah there! That’s too hasty of a conclusion for you to even come up with. There aren’t a lot of monsters you even know in the first place. That aside, there are only two monsters who have communicated with you properly. Heoju and Yana, and those two have reached their peak strengths as monsters. And what is it you said again? HAHAHA! They were more like humans than monsters? That’s incredibly hasty of a judgement and downright arrogant. What do you know about Heoju? What do you know about Yana? Do you think what they’ve shown to you is everything to them?”
The owner of the voice laughed and even sneezed in utter contempt at Lee Sungmin’s rash words.
“They had too much favor for you because they had something to also gain from you. That’s why they were nice to you in the first place. If Heoju was as cheerful and rational as he looked to you and sometimes even naive, would he have been called the Nightmare of the South 400 years ago? Do you think people just banded together to kill him just because he was a nice guy?”
The answer was no. Heoju was not a ‘good’ monster by any means and Lee Sungmin knew this because Heoju had told Lee Sungmin some of the things he had done in his prime when he was alive.
He would proudly say that he had caught and killed a Dragon just because it was flying around in the sky of his territory.
“What Yana showed you, was courtesy and adoration for Heoju’s soul which was residing within you. If you were a simple human being, do you think Yana really would have been so kind to you?”
The answer was no, again. Yana tried to overpower Lee Sungmin and turn him into a complete monster the moment she saw him.
“They were more like humans than they were monsters? What the hell is being a human to you? What do you even know about monsters? Hahaha…… monsters have little distinction between good and evil. For monsters, the most absolute criterion for determining one’s behavior is one’s own desire. The reason they are viewed so poorly by humans is because of how humans look at their own kind that pursue pleasure and desire without caring about the effects of who it might harm.”
Lee Sungmin stopped walking. In front of him, someone was sitting neatly with his back turned to him.
“I know what you’re curious about. You, who have become a monster, do not have any kind of reasoning or sanity. The monster within you just tries to kill everything he sees and eat it. All he can do is commit atrocious deeds and his only form of speech is crude shouts. It’s like a being a toddler that was given the power of a god and doesn’t know anything about what he can do with that power.”
It was true. Lee Sungmin truly did wonder why that was the case for him. It just felt so odd and foreign to him based on what little he did know about monsters, and everything the man had said about desire made sense..
“The reason for that is actually quite simple. Your desire as a monster doesn’t exist at all. It never did in the first place. You possess nothing at all. The reason I am here though… hahahahah! I’m here to fill that emptiness of desire for you!”
“……What the hell- who- no…. What are you…?
Lee Sungmin started to feel genuinely afraid at that moment of the words the mysterious man said and his body inside the world of his unconscious state, started to tremble.
“Hahaha….”Once again, the man just laughed eerily.
He slowly turned around and looked at Lee Sungmin. He didn’t have eyes, a nose, or any facial features besides a mouth. And with that mouth on the empty white face of his… was nothing but a creepy smile.
“Me?”
The man raised his hand and pointed at himself.
“I’m the Predator of Massacre.”
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Amidst Lee Sungmin’s confusion and fear, the man just broke out into a cackle louder than ever before.