The Hero Returns

Trudge, shuffle...

Su-hyeun was stepping outside as he dragged his slippers. The window of a parked car reflected his current appearance.

His face hadn't changed. It wasn't Kim Sung-in's but Su-hyeun's.

Even then...

"Mom's going to come home late from work, so why don't you order takeout when you come home later, son? I'll leave some money on the dining table. And you said it'll soon be the start of exams, right? Do your best to study and wait for me."

His phone that was tucked away in his pocket received this text message. Those words had been sent by Kim Sung-in's mother.

Just what was going on here?

"Did I go back to when I was still Kim Sung-in?"

The Land of the Dead Gods was supposed to show a person what their lingering attachments, their regrets, could be, which meant that all these things happening now were related to Su-hyeun's regrets.

Just as he tried to sort through all the tangled mess of thoughts in his head, his eyes caught sight of a building bathed in an orange hue.

"Entry into this area is prohibited! I repeat, entry into this area is strictly..."

Some people who looked to be soldiers had gathered in a fairly large number to block the roads.

It seemed that a dungeon had shown up here. Su-hyeun pulled out the phone he had stashed back in his pocket and checked the current date once more.

"July 1, 2021."

This date was around the time when dungeons were getting rather active, but they were still not at the level of truly threatening just yet. They infrequently caused a few issues, but that was about it.

"But this scene, why does it feel so...?"

Su-hyeun's eyes gradually opened wider.

Now that he thought about it, this scene, this location, and this date—he was quite familiar with them all.

Gu-gugugu...

Sure enough, the building dyed in an orange hue began quaking ominously. To be more precise, the dungeon had begun quaking.

"They are coming out!"

"Dammit, where are our reinforcements, sir?!"

"I don't know!"

"Prepare to engage!"

Soldiers grew quite busy. There weren't any civilian-looking people nearby; it seemed that the soldiers had them evacuated ahead of time.

"That's right, I remember this," Su-hyeun could still vividly recall this moment.

Before he regressed, when he was still living as Kim Sung-in, this scene happened right before his eyes, and it was on the very same day that Su-hyeun became an awakener.

An orange dungeon had entered an outbreak phase. And then...

"Sir, the report says there's still someone inside the building!"

"What was that?!"

"Son of a b*tch! Why are you telling me that only now?!"

The soldiers became more overwhelmed with urgency.

Their voices and their desperate faces—Su-hyeun could recall them all so vividly.

Wah—! Eung-aaaae!

He could also recall the faint wailing of an infant coming from somewhere inside the building.

Step—

Su-hyeun took a step forward.

No, wait—

Poof!

He vanished from the spot.

Swhoooosh—

The surrounding scenery changed. He slipped past the figures of the soldiers and easily reached the location in question within the building that was currently stuck in the middle of a dungeon outbreak about to go off.

Despite this event of the past being recreated through an illusion, Su-hyeun's strength remained the same.

Eung-aaae—!

In the building, which had already been emptied of people, an infant had been abandoned on a surprisingly high floor. It was unknown where this child's parents had disappeared to, but Su-hyeun didn't even feel remotely curious about it.

"There, there. Everything will be alright." Su-hyeun carefully picked the child up and then lightly flung himself down to the building's ground floor.

Land—

Su-hyeun quickly walked over to the soldiers. He handed the infant over to one of them while ignoring their puzzled faces. "Everything will be alright now."

"Ah...ah, yes! Thank you, sir!"

"Are you an awakener affiliated with the Authority, sir?"

The soldiers realized that Su-hyeun was not a civilian and began asking him questions. However, he had no intention to reply, so he simply waved his hands at them and urgently left the location.

Back then, nothing much of note happened during this outbreak. Even if it was an outbreak, something on the level of an orange-colored dungeon could be dealt with using the firearms wielded by the regular soldiers.

However, one thing about this outbreak stayed with Su-hyeun even after all these years—it was none other than the cries of that infant.

"Why this moment, though?" he thought. He became more puzzled. Just why was the Land of the Dead Gods showing him his memories of this day?

He kept walking for a bit and spotted an all too familiar street, but the people around him were moving as if they were stuck in fast-forward.

As a matter of fact, they moved dozens, no, hundreds of times faster.

The only person stuck in the normal flow of time was Su-hyeun. He took out his phone and confirmed the date again.

"First..."

"Second..."

"Third of July..."

…

The dates flew right past him. Night and day cycled what seemed like dozens of times, and the sun whooshed past above him to match the rapid passage of time.

It slowed down back to normal when Su-hyeun or, more correctly, Kim Sung-in had been an awakener for just over a year.

"My first dungeon raid..."

The current location was in front of another orange dungeon, and around him, more awakeners were making some sloppy, amateurish preparations.

Their faces weren't all that clear in his memories, but he still remembered some things about them. These awakeners were the members of his party that was setting out for his first dungeon raid.

Kim Sung-in spent about one year inside the Tower of Trials at this point, and he only chose to raid a dungeon after building up sufficient self-confidence first. Back then, half of his raid party lost their lives.

If Kim Sung-in hadn't been among those that survived that raid, he couldn't have regressed as Su-hyeun later.

He muttered, "What is going on here?"

"Sorry? Did you say something?"

"Mister Sung-in? You alright?"

"You know, your complexion doesn't look so good..."

Awakeners of his raid party walked up to him and expressed their concern over his welfare.

They were all good people.

It was hard to remember who among these people survived or died back then. However, one thing was for certain; if Su-hyeun were to choose to do nothing now, half of them would die for sure.

He fixed his gaze on the dungeon before him and then lightly snapped his finger.

"Flame."

Ruuuumble...!

"Huh? Eeeeh?!"

"F—fire!"

"Hold on, the dungeon...?"

The purple-colored flames swept up the interior of the dungeon. At the same time, the dungeon's color grew fainter, and its entrance began to disappear.

"What's the meaning of this?"

"The dungeon has vanished!"

"Dammit! And I worked my ass off to get the dungeon raid permit, too!"

The year was 2022. Around this time, each dungeon raid permit held quite a high value. Not only the competition to acquire one was quite fierce but the Ether stones mined from a dungeon fetched a premium, too.

As such, their dungeon suddenly disappearing was quite a serious problem. Of course, from Su-hyeun's perspective, he had no reason to care about their whining.

"Money can't be more precious than your life, after all."

Su-hyeun pretended to not hear their whining and walked away from there. Regardless of what, all these beings were simply illusions.

None of them were real.

But then...

"Just what is this?"

Ache—

Su-hyeun's chest was aching. Despite knowing that none of this was real, his heart was in pain.

"Why are you showing me all these?"

Su-hyeun looked around him. The scenery had changed once more. The world around him spun in a dizzying fashion. He was alone once more.

And the new scene was...

"Aaaaahk!"

"R—run!"

"Monsters! Mon—Uwaaahk!"

"What are the awakeners doing?!"

Crash, ka-boom—!

Kkyah-aaah—!

It was sheer pandemonium.

Monsters were roaming the streets, while civilians were fleeing. Soldiers and awakeners were urgently hunting down the monsters.

All these disparate elements came together to turn the city into a hellscape of confusion.

Kkyaaaahk—!

Su-hyeun turned his head at that scream and spotted a person being chased down by a large monster that resembled a boar. The distance wasn't far. Just a moment's indecision would have resulted in that person getting trampled to death.

His body reacted before his head could.

Pah-aht—

Slice—

Su-hyeun's sword split the boar monster in half. Right after that, he activated Leap and began chopping and cutting down the monsters that had appeared everywhere.

Huff, pant...

His breathing got heavier and rougher, but it made no sense for him to get tired just by moving only this much. What made him exhausted, however, was this situation itself.

"Even this...it's the same."

He vividly recalled this scene, too. He remembered it all.

Right after the third wave of outbreaks, monsters poured out into the middle of this city. Countless people died then, and Kim Sung-in had rushed to this city to stop the slaughter.

And if his memories still served him correctly...

Vrrrr—!

As expected...

Su-hyeun's phone rang, and he quickly took it out and answered the call.

The caller was Bak Yun-gyu.

"Foreign nations requested your assistance."

He was speaking to Kim Sung-in; unlike Su-hyeun's current relationship with Bak Yun-gyu, Kim Sung-in was an awakener affiliated with the Authority that the latter was working for.

Meaning, they were in a clear hierarchical relationship.

"Are they Japan and France?"

"How did you know that?" Bak Yun-gyu asked back, surprised.

Although Su-hyeun couldn't answer back, there was no way he didn't know; in Su-hyeun's timeline, the future had been rejigged, and this event never happened, but as Kim Sung-in, he could never forget this event even if he tried.

"I'll head to both locations."

"What do you mean, both? They are occurring at the same time! You can only choose one!"

"I'll go to both locations. Please do not worry," Su-hyeun replied like that and one-sidedly ended the call. He then summoned Prince Nezha and gave it a new order, "You head to Japan. I'm going to France."

It was impossible to cast Provocation over the entire Earth like before without the amplification magic circle, but even then, taking care of dungeons appearing in two different locations shouldn't be that hard.

"If only I had this sort of powers back then..."

That line of thought popped up in his head subconsciously, but getting a move on took priority over mulling over things.

* * *

Paris, France, had fallen into a panicked state from the appearance of a blue-colored dungeon. This city was waiting for the arrival of one person.

"Kim Sung-in isn't here yet?"

They were waiting for Kim Sung-in, known as the world's strongest awakener. He was even exalted as the hero of the new era.

Without help from someone like him, it was not possible to deal with a large-scale dungeon that had appeared in Paris.

"Sir, I heard a report that a similar incident has taken place in Japan right now!"

"What?! Okay, and then?"

"They seem to have lodged the request to the South Korean Authority as well, but…as their timing matches ours..."

"Dammit! Don't they know that this dungeon is about to blow up sometime today?! Did you make sure to deliver that part of the message, too?!"

"Sir, Japan is having the exact same situation as us. Even the part about failing with their raid and missing the optimal timing..."

"Crazy son of a..."

The Minister in charge of the French Awakener Authority, "Brut" Placé, began mouthing some curse words that he normally shied away from—the situation definitely called for it.

The moment that dungeon before his eyes entered the outbreak stage, then without a doubt, Paris would be turned into a devastated wasteland.

And that signified the complete collapse of France's economy. It was not feasible for a country to return to normalcy after its capital was wiped out, after all.

"Mister Minister, sir. You should at least evacuate from this location."

"Got it. In that case—"

Gu-wuuuu—

It was at that very moment that the dungeon seemingly blanketing the entire street began rumbling. That was the first sign of an impending outbreak.

"M—minister, hurry!"

"Paris is finished, then," Minister Placé chuckled hollowly as he was evacuated from the scene.

Without a miracle, it was no longer possible to save Paris. Minister Placé was already thinking that fleeing this place was a pointless act.

Kiiaaaaah—!

Monstrous howls came from inside the dungeon; what a chill-inducing noise that was. Those cries made one's body shudder even more than calls of any known vicious predators in the wild.

The outbreak was only moments away. Monsters were gathering up before the dungeon's exit, itching to get out of there as soon as possible.

Then, a short while later...

Crush—!

A red-furred monster's massive front hoof revealed itself outside the dungeon and crushed a building.

"They are coming out!"

"Stick to your formations! Get ready, everyone!"

"Warrior-type awakeners, pick up your shields and—Huh?"

Whoooosh—

Rough winds that seemed too refreshing to suit the current situation suddenly blew, and along with those winds, a voice said, "Blow away, Palm Leaf."