The Hero Returns

Rumble, hiss, sizzle...

The sight of the once-blue planet now glowing in a completely different hue was, without a doubt, something truly spectacular to behold.

Su-hyeun stared at this scene for a long while, his eyes glowing in blue. His Sage's Eye was now taking in the sight of the rotating planet below him.

The divine Flame was a fire that burned only the wicked and evil. The fire containing godhood was basically the same as Su-hyeun's self and left alone those people he didn't want to harm.

And sometime later, the purple fire engulfing the planet died down.

Fuu-wuuk, huff...

Just how much time did pass by?

With his concentration pushed to the absolute max, Su-hyeun wasn't even conscious of the passage of time until now.

He plopped down on Miru's back. Sweat dripped from his body, drenching the clothing beneath his armor. However, he didn't cancel Sage's Eye and continued to scan the planet below.

He confirmed several times, but even then, it remained the same.

"All of them...are gone."

All those monsters that poured out from the dungeons...

And even the dungeons themselves...

All those things that he wished to burn down had disappeared for good.

It was a resounding success.

"Haa-aaah..."

Su-hyeun finished confirming and then lied down spread-eagled on Miru's back.

His built-up tension came undone. The feeling he got right now exceeded the simple relief of knowing this event had been safely negotiated; no, it was as if one of the chains tightly binding his heart until now had come undone.

There wasn't much oxygen up here, yet he could breathe easily. That was because his level of frustration had decreased by a great deal.

"I did it..."

The corners of Su-hyeun's lips curled up gradually.

"I really did it!"

He closed his eyes tightly.

He thought he could faintly see certain blurry scenes—a scene where everything was burning down and falling apart, a scene where body parts of people were strewn about everywhere after monsters ripped and trampled them to death, and then, a scene where he was too powerless to do anything despite watching all these things unfold.

Those scenes that haunted him at least once whenever he closed his eyes were slowly dissipating like a mirage.

Only after Su-hyeun confirmed that those scenes were gone did he open his eyes once more.

"Okay, so, the only one remaining is..." Su-hyeun looked at a faint little purple spot far, far down below. "That one."

That dungeon had appeared only a few hours ago. Its color, purple.

As for its location, the county of Gapyeong in South Korea.

That was a different location from what he remembered, however. The purple-colored dungeon that spat out Fafnir originally appeared somewhere in China, as far as he could recall.

Whatever the case might have been, that bastard had finally shown up.

"Let's go down there."

Grrr...

Miru heeded Su-hyeun's command and began flying again to the ground far, far below.

Meanwhile, Su-hyeun cut off the supply of his energy that had been maintaining the magic circle and relied on the breathing technique to refill his drained magical energy reserve.

They arrived quite quickly at the destination: Gapyeong county of South Korea.

In this particular location where the entrance of the monsters had stripped the mountains and brought all the trees down, Su-hyeun confirmed once more with his eyes that this area was glowing in the unmistakable purplish hue.

There it was, the entrance to the dungeon.

Su-hyeun stood in front of it and collected his heavy breathing for a little while. His heart was pounding away faster than ever before, but that was yet another reason why he needed to remain cool and unflustered.

His magical energy reserve wasn't exactly running low, but it wasn't quite sufficient enough, either. His prana reserve was the same as well.

He ended up exhausting quite a bit of prana during the event just now. Although he had recovered quite a lot of his Death Aura pool, it too couldn't be seen as completely recovered, either.

He needed to be in the best possible condition. Not only that but he should do this only when he wasn't in such an agitated state but still able to maintain a suitable level of tension.

This situation called for such a measure.

"Right. No need to rush it. There is still some time left."

Fuu-wuu...

Su-hyeun deliberately worked on reining his breathing.

The breathing technique was indeed a marvelous thing. Just by following the prescribed pattern of breathing, not only was he able to recover his spent energy but he even felt like his mind was calming down as well.

And so, he spent about half a day like this while maintaining his steady breathing.

That was the length of time needed to recover all of his strength and also for him to feel confident about his physical self reaching the most optimal condition possible.

"Now..."

"Okay, now..." Su-hyeun, collecting his breath while sitting down until then, finally stood back up.

"Let's go and die."

"Let's go and win this."

His mindset this time was markedly different from the past.

Su-hyeun set foot inside the purple-colored dungeon.

* * *

Shwa-aaaah...

Pitter-patter...

When he stepped inside the dungeon, a completely different world appeared before his eyes.

The size of a dungeon depended on its scale as well as the color. At the smallest, it should be around a high-rise building, and it could even be as wide as an island, too. Dungeons came in all shapes and sizes, in other words.

However, this place wasn't like that.

It was actually a world. A sky was above it, and Su-hyeun could see a distant horizon. This was definitely not on the scale of a small island or even a country.

"And it's raining here, too..." Su-hyeun thought as he looked up.

Raindrops fell on his eyes, but he didn't care about that. What he found amazing was the fact that actual rain was falling.

"But why?" Su-hyeun's voice seemed to have lost all strength.

Even his earlier fighting spirit that was oozing out from his entire figure gradually waned.

Rain was falling. That could only mean one thing.

"Why are you here and not him?" Su-hyeun muttered before raising his head.

He looked up at the sky—more specifically, somewhere within the pitch-black clouds where the heavy downpour came from.

From up there, a pair of eerie, evil glowing eyes were glaring down at Su-hyeun. This creature let out a threatening growl toward him, but the sound got buried among all that falling rain, and he couldn't really hear it well.

It was a humongous dragon—no, wait. It was "something" resembling a dragon, but whatever this creature actually was didn't really matter.

What mattered to Su-hyeun was something else entirely.

"That's not Fafnir!"

He closed his eyes and swept his senses over every presence nearby.

This was definitely inside the purple-colored dungeon.

However, Fafnir wasn't in this world where it was supposed to be. Only the army it commanded, the one made up of countless monsters, was present in this place.

"Strike them down—!" Su-hyeun looked up at the clouds covering up the heavens above. "Somersault cloud."

FLASH—!

KA-RUUUUMBLE—!

A gigantic lightning bolt crashed to the ground. The huge black dragon flapping its wings within the clouds quivered from the shock and descended to the ground.

Pah-ahk!

Su-hyeun unsheathed his sword and leaped on the dragon's back. Then, he pressed the blade against the dragon's neck. "Where is Bradley?!" he asked.

Bradley—that was Fafnir's original name, the one Su-hyeun remembered.

Bradley used to be an emperor of his world before he became a Predator. His overriding desire was to conquer everything.

He was an emperor who had unified an entire world and ruled over it with an iron fist, yet he wasn't satisfied with that. His ambition—his desire—was too large to be satisfied by the small world he lived in.

In the end, he set out to conquer other worlds through his own strength after becoming a Predator that was half-man and half-dragon.

"How come you know our king's name, you bastard?!"

Grrrr...!

The black dragon replied to Su-hyeun's question with a question.

This creature was Fafnir's slave. Back when he was still Kim Sung-in, he remembered having a difficult time when he tried to hunt this monster down.

But things were quite different this time.

He only needed to will it to easily press his blade against this dragon's throat, and he could also cut its head off at any time he wanted.

However, what was important wasn't this damn dragon.

"Shut up and answer me."

To Su-hyeun, the really pressing issue was the current whereabouts of Fafnir that had come back to the past along with him.

"I do not know, either."

"You don't? But isn't he your king?"

"He suddenly vanished without a trace. Even though he urgently came here while saying that he wished to meet a certain human, he suddenly vanished some time ago and hasn't returned yet."

"He vanished?"

Su-hyeun continued to press his sword on the dragon's throat, but his head was getting chaotic right now.

Fafnir had vanished?

It didn't seem like the dragon was lying. As proof, the rain was still falling on this world.

Since rain was falling, that meant this world was still rotating—that it was still alive.

A Predator grew stronger by devouring a world. This logic also applied to Fafnir. As such, falling rain signified the fact that Fafnir didn't stay in this world for long or didn't even show up in the first place.

"Just what is going on here?" he thought.

Fafnir wished to meet him again yet vanished without a trace.

Su-hyeun could easily guess why the Predator wanted to meet him.

"Probably because it managed to come back to the past, all thanks to me."

With the ambition to conquer, along with its desire to gain more power, to Fafnir, Su-hyeun would've been the greatest prey out there. It could be thinking that by running into Su-hyeun again, it might get to travel back to the past once more and acquire an even greater power than ever before.

Or maybe it wanted to make the unknown power capable of distorting the fabric of space and time as its own.

Whichever it was...

"So, he simply vanished irrespective of what his wishes were, is that it?" Su-hyeun asked, wanting to confirm the extent of what he could figure out so far.

"You bastard must be the one our king wished to find."

The dragon seemed to recognize Su-hyeun, and its guess was on the money.

"And you were searching for our king, too!"

"That's right."

"In that case, you should consider yourself lucky. I can see that you are indeed an extraordinary human, but—"

Slice—!

The dragon's head was cleanly severed. Su-hyeun thought that there was no point in listening any further and simply swung his sword that he was pressing against the monster's throat.

"You...too weak...to be...king's...opponent..."

Boom—!

The head of the huge dragon crashed to the ground, its voice slowly echoing.

"I also heard that the last time."

Su-hyeun jumped off from the back of the dragon.

There was no need to worry about that warning. This dragon said the exact same thing back when Kim Sung-in killed it as well, so he thought of it as nothing more than the last struggle of a monster about to die.

Grrrr...

Clack, claaack...

Thud, bang...

Su-hyeun looked around and stared at the monsters rushing toward him from all directions. This was Fafnir's army.

If they were in the past, they should've been unleashed outside the dungeon, but right now, they couldn't go to the other side and had been basically abandoned by Fafnir as well.

"I guess I'll use them to vent a little, then."

Although he felt like an idiot for all getting worked up...

There was nothing he could do about it; other than these small fries, Fafnir was not here.

Pah-ahk—

[Leap]

Su-hyeun kicked the air and dug into the middle of the monster horde.

With one hand, he gripped his sword tightly, and then with the other, he held two spears at the same time. As he flew forward, he cocked his whole body back greatly before throwing the spears.

[Dragon Slaying Spear x 2]

"Sweep them away...!"

At the same time, winds wrapped around Su-hyeun's sword.

The Palm Leaf was the first wind to blow at the beginning of everything, and the symbol of this power was to create Mother Nature's calamity—a typhoon—at will.

"Palm Leaf—!"

Kwa-aaaaaah—!

The dark clouds above were ripped apart as a massive typhoon descended on this land.

Su-hyeun dug into the gusts of wind and began his slaughter.

* * *

Meanwhile, in some barren wasteland...

The sky above was dark and lifeless, while the land below suffered the same fate. A world that had lost its "power" became unable to give birth to new life nor support its growth.

However, the skies and the lands hadn't simply turned black.

Crack...

The ground had been split apart in chasms, while huge craters could be seen dug out in several places. A landmass tall enough to be a mountain had been shaved clean off, and the earth previously belonging to that terrain was strewn about everywhere as debris.

In this world where all civilization and life had ceased to exist, a certain creature was collapsed on the ground, bleeding profusely.

Grrrr...

Its torso, which was powerlessly pressed down to the dirt below, quivered continuously.

This creature was a giant with a dragon's head and a humanoid body.

It couldn't travel to the nearby world, its intended destination, because of another existence in this place that had summoned this dragon-headed giant.

"Did you not bring me here to kill me?"

The giant, Fafnir, shifted its eyes and stared at a certain man who was currently shoving its head against the dirt with just one hand.

This man had a small body when compared to Fafnir at around two meters tall and with small horns rising up from his head, too.

His hair was long, and his facial features were delicate and refined. Outwardly at least, he didn't seem all that strong.

But after they started fighting and continued to fight for over a day, Fafnir finally realized that this man possessed strength that far surpassed its own. The loser turned out to be Fafnir, after all.

"No, I wasn't planning on doing that."

The man with the delicate features replied.

During the battle itself, the man said not a single word. He simply summoned Fafnir over here, and Fafnir answered the call and came to this world.

The craters and chasms running on the ground were the evidence of their battle. If this world still had civilization, then it would've met its end from the battle of these two mighty creatures.

"Then why did you summon me here?"

"Well, it was to delay you here for a little while, actually," the man, the Bull Demon King, replied while pulling back his hand that was shoving Fafnir's head into the dirt. "And besides, your demise...It's not up to me to kill you right now."