CRAAAAACK—!!!
A distant shock crashed directly into my mind.
No, could this even simply be called a shock?
It felt impossible to describe with any single word.
It felt like an enormous vibration spreading through my body, while at the same time a deafening roar rang beside my ears. Reflexively, I covered my ears before realizing something like that would not lessen the noise at all, then lowered my hands again.
“Ah....”
The two divided halves of my mind fused back together into one.
Was the “Seo Jehyun” here and the “me” observing everything like watching through glass really different people?
‘No. That’s impossible.’
Could a person truly become different simply because they lacked memories?
Then had I treated Kwon Taehan as a stranger every single time?
I covered my mouth, only to realize the muscles in my face felt unnatural beneath my fingertips.
It was only afterward that I recognized I was smiling.
The Status Window changed rapidly.
Objective completion...... 88%
Objective completion...... 51%
Objective completion...... 29%
Objective completion...... 17%
Objective completion...... 9%
Objective completion...... 0%
Destruction threshold reached!
You have failed to save the world.
“Haha....”
The shock pouring into my mind was raw terror, overwhelming awe, perhaps pain....
Yes, it was the ultimate form of negative emotion a human could possibly experience.
And standing at the center of those emotions, I laughed.
An unbearable exhilaration boiled up inside me. My heart pounded violently enough to make my ears ache. Blood surged fiercely through my veins. The magical power I had dragged to its limit coursed throughout my entire body.
It was difficult to stop the laughter from spilling out.
This—
was the kind of failure I had wanted.
The moment I realized that, my mind abruptly cleared.
Could enlightenment ever feel this vivid while alive?
It felt as though the haze clouding my thoughts had been wiped away instantly.
The suppressed memories began unraveling one after another with sharp little snaps.
The flood of memories crashing in like waves made my head ache violently.
But that pain was separate from suffering.
A very old, very first memory surfaced.
That day had been exactly like “this” one.
Kwon Taehan stared at something strange and muttered inside a residential alleyway.
‘What the hell am I supposed to do anymore!’
‘H-how am I supposed to save the world? It’s already ruined! This should never have happened in the first place! Dungeons? Why... why do things like that even have to exist...?’
That day, I did not know why I had gone into that alley at all.
It was something subconscious.
I did not want to explain it away with a simple phrase like divine arrangement.
I discovered him by my own will.
Back then, I had not intervened, yet the afterimage of him remained strangely vivid in my mind.
Sometimes, the incomprehensible takes precedence over everything understandable.
I found Kwon Taehan.
And after that day, Kwon Taehan began appearing constantly before my eyes through every possible method. News articles, internet eyewitness stories, controversies stitched together by clickbait channels, comments...
and in person inside Dungeons as well.
Kwon Taehan despaired often.
But he never gave up.
As though he had been assigned some obligation that absolutely had to be fulfilled.
I remembered the moment I became close with him.
I witnessed the exhausted Kwon Taehan staring blankly at the pouring rain falling at just the right moment, and I offered him an umbrella out of goodwill.
Though perhaps the truth was that I simply wanted to observe his despair one more time.
Kwon Taehan looked expressionlessly at me and asked,
‘This was you, wasn’t it?’
It was.
But how he realized it remained a mystery.
Kwon Taehan was not particularly perceptive.
Of course, now I knew the truth.
Even back then, he had probably been staring at the clearly glowing Status Window above my head.
I calmly looked down at him and answered,
‘Yeah.’
‘Why? We’ve run into each other before. ...What’s the reason? You wanna mess with me? You enjoy watching me get rained on?’
‘No.’
‘Then what is it?’
Was there even a reason?
I answered casually.
‘To give you an umbrella.’
‘...What?’
‘That’s disappointing. I thought you’d thank me.’
‘The fact you made it rain and expected thanks....’
Kwon Taehan sounded angry, but I was not the cause of that anger.
After all, nobody gets that upset over getting caught in a little rain.
‘It’s goodwill.’
‘Your intentions are wro—’
I cut him off and opened the umbrella.
Kwon Taehan blankly stared at the umbrella snapping open before I crooked my lips upward slightly.
‘In the end, thanks to me, you’re not getting wet anymore, right?’
‘.......’
‘You should thank me.... It’s kindness, isn’t it?’
At those words, Kwon Taehan moved his lips silently for a long while before finally accepting the umbrella.
The thank-you came the next day through a text message from an unknown number.
After that, I rapidly grew closer to Kwon Taehan.
In truth, I lost interest after breaking through his strange emotional walls, so the relationship was largely built on Kwon Taehan’s one-sided attachment.
Kwon Taehan was unstable.
Desperate.
Miserable.
Kwon Taehan needed me.
Unlike me.
Still, with me around, Kwon Taehan became slightly more grounded in reality.
Several familiar figures came to mind too.
For example... Joo Seowon.
The fairly well-known information broker Kwon Taehan personally found and brought in.
Kwon Taehan contracted Joo Seowon to obtain practical information, while I quietly observed the two of them.
Kwon Taehan’s goal was to save the world.
Joo Seowon’s goal was to save their family.
Kwon Taehan had conviction.
Joo Seowon did not.
The two of them were similar in some ways.
And that was exactly why they could never become truly close beyond a certain point.
Rather, I became close to Joo Seowon more quickly.
Joo Seowon felt a strange sense of guilt over using Kwon Taehan.
They confided those concerns to me before eventually stepping back with a muttered, “Forget it.”
The emptiness on that side was obvious too.
People who were desperate always wanted to settle into reality.
The problem was simply that they could not endure the guilt they felt toward themselves afterward.
I threatened Joo Seowon into cooperating with Kwon Taehan.
At first, they pretended to resist quite convincingly, but in the end they obediently cooperated, using my threats as an excuse to discard their guilt.
Since my objective had been to eliminate Joo Seowon’s guilt anyway, the result worked out well enough.
Then Im Haekyung entered the picture as well.
As Korea’s S-rank Hunter running Haeseong Guild and possessing enormous domestic influence, it was inevitable that Im Haekyung would clash with Kwon Taehan.
Im Haekyung found Kwon Taehan’s unwavering sense of purpose interesting, but had no real interest in his convictions themselves.
What interested Im Haekyung was the direction of Kwon Taehan’s purpose.
Im Haekyung’s priorities were different from Kwon Taehan’s as well.
While Kwon Taehan constantly dug into the present and Joo Seowon remained shackled to the past, Im Haekyung prepared for the future.
Only Im Haekyung—
prepared for the future.
I first spoke with them immediately after clearing an S-rank Dungeon.
Im Haekyung looked at me, who had entered as support-type, with amused interest before speaking.
‘You should be careful when investing.’
‘In what?’
‘If you stay too close to Taehan, it’ll become difficult for you. Though I suppose Jehyun won’t care much?’
At the time, I did not understand what that meant.
But after some time passed, I naturally came to understand.
Not long after that, Kwon Taehan misfired one of his Skills and injured civilians, earning nationwide condemnation.
He could not return home, yet at the same time he could not completely move in with me either, and suffered through it miserably.
I remembered the conversation we had outside his house.
‘If I hadn’t awakened, I probably would’ve died. No... I definitely would’ve.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I didn’t really want to live. I didn’t have any reason to.... More than anything, the life I still had left was just too long.’
‘I was drowning in inferiority up until recently too. I wanted to actually live my life properly, but I didn’t even know how.’
‘And then you conveniently awakened?’
‘...There’s something I haven’t fully explained to you. It’s not entirely voluntary. There’s another reason I absolutely have to eliminate the Dungeons.’
‘What a load of bullshit.’
After that, it became complete nonsense.
That he could see messages telling him to save the world.
Kwon Taehan asked me to stay beside him.
And while thinking about exactly when Kwon Taehan had started depending on me, I impulsively told him about my family situation.
I could not explain exactly why I did it, but at the time it felt like it would be interesting.
I thought maybe if I did the same thing Kwon Taehan always did with me—opening up those personal stories—I might understand how he felt.
Of course, that was wrong.
That was roughly where the very first memory ended.
That day, after finishing my conversation with Kwon Taehan and heading home, a sudden Dungeon Break sent my entire car crashing into the chaos.
What I saw amidst the horrifying pain was brightly glowing text.
A warm welcome to ‘Seo Jehyun’!
Prepare for the approaching destruction!
Destruction is approaching.
Please discover compelling plausibility for destruction!
Plausibility for destruction...... 0%
I thought Kwon Taehan’s words were complete bullshit, yet this was how I found out they were real.
The text rapidly changed.
Privilege Granted
1. Customized Reality Manipulation
2. Necessary Skill Provision
3. ------
More than the first two, my attention was drawn to the final blank space.
That section glowed brightly.
3. ------
Analyzing ‘Seo Jehyun’’s inner self to determine the most suitable privilege.
What kind of bullshit was this?
My fading consciousness struggled to focus.
But I was certain I was about to die.
At most, only a few seconds remained.
And within those rapidly flickering moments of consciousness, I made a quick decision.
What could someone powerful enough to manipulate reality and grant Skills possibly give me?
Among everything I could take with me—
what was the most “valuable”?
There was no need to think long about it.
Verification complete.
Privilege Granted
1. Customized Reality Manipulation
2. Necessary Skill Provision
3. Memory Provision
The instant I realized the blank had been filled, the text changed once more.
Authority granted.
Immediately afterward, my consciousness completely cut out.
That was my first death.
When I opened my eyes again, I was inside my familiar home.
I immediately checked the time.
6:30 AM.
Next, the date.
‘Fuck....’
I had returned to two years before the point of my death.
I could not tell whether this was a dream or reality.
It felt too real to be a dream, yet too unnatural to be reality.
At that moment, massive letters appeared before my eyes.
Exactly the same form I had seen before dying.
A warm welcome to ‘Seo Jehyun’!
Destruction is approaching.
Please discover compelling plausibility for destruction!
Plausibility for destruction...... 0%
“The fuck is this bullshit?”
The moment I muttered that aloud, perhaps understanding me, the text rearranged itself as though answering.
If the predetermined ending is not reached, the timeline will repeatedly be deleted.
The current timeline has been deleted <1> time.
“...One time?”
Current timeline: Regressor Kwon Taehan’s 0th life.
A warm welcome to the beginning of ‘Seo Jehyun’!
Once again—
it was the 0th round.