The Hero Returns

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

The Emperor became utterly confused, but he couldn't help it, especially more so when he stared at the broken treasured sword he had in his hand, Chloe.

"He could have cut my head off."

The other knights must be thinking the same thing, but the Emperor was certain of this fact better than anyone else.

Su-hyeun could have easily killed his obstacles, but he chose to break their swords and stopped there instead.

"Yes, he didn't cut us down and slipped past us."

Just as Su-hyeun's sword came bearing down right in front of the Emperor's eyes, the weapon suddenly vanished.

He cut down all the swords wielded by the knights blocking his path, thereby rendering them powerless, and then, while they were in a flustered state, he slipped past their defensive cordon.

Obviously, doing such a thing was several times harder than simply cutting off the heads of his enemies. Even then, he still chose this method.

Maybe it wasn't a difficult task for him in the end, but there must have been a more fundamental reason for making this choice.

The Emperor muttered softly, "Such as he didn't want to kill anyone..."

"Your Majesty! Are you unhurt, sire?" The loyal retainer of the throne, Nepa, hurriedly approached the Emperor. It seemed that he was worried about his ruler's wellbeing after the latter tried to personally stop Su-hyeun.

The Emperor turned his head to look and noticed that Nepa's sword was also broken. "Sir Nepa."

"Glad to see you are unscathed, Your Majesty. But sire, your sword..."

"It is of no concern. Rather than that, we should be thankful that we're still breathing."

The number one treasured sword of the Imperial Court, no, the entire Pangaea continent, was now broken. Although a broken weapon could always be reforged, this matter was already a great humiliation to the Imperial Court.

However...

"Sir Nepa, the Altar has been destroyed," the Emperor turned his head and stared at Kali's second Altar, now laying in the rubble. With this, the number of Altars meant for sacrifices had decreased once more. "That was the 51st Altar."

One hundred Altars existed throughout the entire continent, and now, over half of them had been destroyed.

"But then...no one among us has died today."

"Your Majesty?"

"It seems that it was the same story for you, Sir Nepa."

In response, Nepa hurriedly hid the broken sword behind him.

A broken sword was a truly humiliating matter to a swordsman. That was why he reflexively hid his weapon, but even then, Nepa knew it only too well. "It seems so, Your Majesty," he said.

"Why did that man not take our lives? Even though he was fully capable of doing so. Do you have any guesses as to why?"

"No, sire. This servant does not know."

A "heretic"—a truly vile villain who defied the faith and teachings of this continent and went around destroying the sacred Altars—was how Su-hyeun was known as. He was a villain, and Goddess Kali had commanded everyone to kill him.

Unsurprisingly, the residents of Pangaea, including the Emperor himself, designated Su-hyeun as a villain and tried to execute him. However, right at this moment, a crack formed on the foundation of that belief.

"I'm curious about what that man's true goal is."

"Your Majesty? His true goal?"

"Yes. One thing is for certain, and that is...he has no animosity aimed toward us."

"Even if that is true, sire, his current actions, seemingly based on his animosity toward the gods, are not something we can easily forgive."

"That...is indeed true," the Emperor nodded slowly. Even though he was nodding his head, his mind was being bombarded with many complicated thoughts right now.

The Emperor's gaze drifted toward the crumbled ruin of the Altar. In front of it were the knights howling out desperately in sadness at this "wretched and unfair" sight.

He stared at them as a single thought began floating up in his head, "The Altar brings death to the citizens, while that man didn't kill anyone."

The figures of these people busy shedding their tears after such a structure was brought down and the figure of Su-hyeun from earlier overlapped in his mind.

The Emperor turned around to leave. He knew that Su-hyeun was probably heading directly to the next Altar.

No individual in existence could stop that man now. The Imperial Court pulled out all the stops, even the Emperor himself participated, yet they still couldn't stop one man.

The only remaining ones that could possibly do it were the gods the residents of Pangaea worshiped.

"Just who is evil? And who is the righteous?" the Emperor quietly muttered while closing his eyes.

For some reason, all of the values he held dear until now felt like being shaken up from their foundation.

* * *

"Water naturally flows downward, doesn't it?"

Su-hyeun recalled the Emperor he met not too long ago. That old man had this pair of rather righteous eyes.

It didn't matter which world it was, the light in most people's eyes would grow murkier once they came to possess some political power or even physical strength. Their moral values would become less defined and blurrier.

However, that Emperor wasn't like that. Whether that was due to his faith in the gods or he was like that, to begin with, it didn't really matter.

"I feel like I've given that elderly gentleman an arduous task, but..." Su-hyeun, riding on Miru's back, scratched his head and muttered quietly, "It's as he said, anyway. They need an example, after all."

It was tremendously difficult to change the world by simply changing a single person, but it would be a different matter altogether if that person happened to be the Emperor who lorded over the entire continent.

That was why when Su-hyeun met the Emperor, he sneakily undid the seal ruling the old man's head, and so, the latter's desire to survive, as well as his instinctive understanding of how important such a thing was, was unlocked.

The Emperor should start questioning certain things in his head now, such as was it really alright to kill tens, no, hundreds of millions of people every year through those Altars? Was that really what the gods they worshiped wanted from them?

Maybe he would even question if these gods existed for the sake of the common people.

Still on Miru's broad back, Su-hyeun raised his head, "Alright, so what will you do now?"

A moment later, an eerie crimson pool of blood rapidly coagulated and morphed into a beautiful figure of a woman in front of him.

It was Kali.

She didn't reveal her true self before Su-hyeun even now; she had been planning to use the residents of Pangaea and have him fight them off, but her scheming missed the mark by a wide margin—all because Su-hyeun chose to avoid direct confrontation.

"I'm sure this isn't what you wanted, right? What you envisioned was a fierce battle where people would shed blood and die in droves, wasn't it?"

Su-hyeun was aware of Kali observing him for quite a while now. More specifically, she had started watching him just before he clashed against the massive army led by the Emperor.

Of course, she did this not through her main body but with her clone.

"Why did you do that?" Her voice was filled with questions as if she couldn't understand his actions at all. A trace of murderous intent was mixed in her tone as well, which was somewhat different from before.

Since this clone was created through a lump of blood, her facial features were not there, and Su-hyeun couldn't see her expression as a result; nevertheless, he had a feeling that it wouldn't be a happy one.

"That's because I could destroy the Altar without killing them. Sure, it's a bit cumbersome, but nothing more than that."

"Is there a reason to take on this cumbersome task?"

"Doing something like this isn't troublesome for me after all. I'm not that impatient enough to kill a few hundred million just because I couldn't be bothered, either."

This was rather obvious, so much so that he didn't even need to ponder on his options.

However, what was considered obvious differed from people to people, as well as species to species—even more so, when one was a Predator and the other was Su-hyeun, who used to be a regular human.

And well...

"I see. You're different from the other gods, then. Is it because you lived longer as a human than as a god?"

It sounded as if the gods weren't any different on that front.

"What are you talking about?"

"In this vast universe and countless dimensions and realms, there is one planet among them that is no different from a small speck of dust, a single little dot. And on that planet, humans who are even smaller than said dust speck exist. How about you? What do you think about that?"

Countless dimensions and realms, a giant planet, and a few humans living on such a planet—when put that way, they really did seem insignificant. In the end, humans were different from the gods; even these humans didn't hesitate to kill ants or ticks who were infinitely smaller than them.

"You are still not a completed god, it seems. Your physical body and mind might have ascended to godhood, but your values are still that of a human. If you were a real god—"

"If I were a real god, I wouldn't have cared about one or two lives, is that it?" Su-hyeun abruptly interrupted Kali mid-speech. "Hey, you."

"Hm?"

"You're scared of me, aren't you?"

Whoosh—

Grab—!

Su-hyeun's hand grabbed Kali's throat made from the lump of blood.

She couldn't put up any resistance. From the get-go, this version of her was merely a copy created through blood, and as such, she couldn't use her normal strength.

"I know that you acquire strength through warfare, bloodshed, and sacrifices, and that's why you issued that command to kill me, causing all those people to start making their moves. But someone like you should already know that normal people can't do anything to me."

To Su-hyeun, playing a numbers game no longer meant anything. No matter how many people the other side brought to the table, if Su-hyeun wanted to, he could easily kill tens of thousands, no, hundreds of millions in one go.

Even then, Kali schemed for the residents of Pangaea to fight Su-hyeun so that her power could grow even further.

"I am scared of you, you say?" A hint of laughter could be detected in Kali's voice. However, she didn't deny it.

"Indeed, that might be true. No, for sure, I am scared of you. At the same time, I'm interested in you, too."

Smirk—

Kali's lips, also made out of blood, arched up in a smile. Such "enjoyment" in that smile was reminiscent of Kalira's from earlier; that Predator also smiled like this when it was fighting against Su-hyeun.

"Yes, I am scared of you because you have escaped the fetters of your fate and became an unpredictable existence, after all. Maybe you will be the one to put an end to my far-too-long life."

"Are you scared of that possibility?"

"No, I'm not scared of dying. However, I'm indeed scared of not being able to fight anymore. Also..."

Slurp, wriggle—

A single eye floated upon her head made out of a lump of blood.

She was gradually taking on a more complete silhouette of a person now.

"Asura...for the sake of finishing my battle against that fool, I must fight that black dragon."

The black dragon? She must be talking about none other than Fafnir.

Kali and Asura were long-time rivals. They started fighting each other a very long time ago but could never find out who was the true victor in the end, and Kali's obsession with achieving that victory meant she now held this animosity toward Fafnir. Since she could no longer fight against Asura, she might as well fight Fafnir, who was responsible for felling Asura.

Winning against Fafnir ultimately meant she won against Asura, after all.

"I wonder about that. From where I stand, that will be difficult for you."

"It will be difficult, you say?"

"I know something about that black dragon dude, and you won't win against him, anyway. That's because..."

Fwhoooosh—

Su-hyeun's glare peered straight through Kali's clone, "Before you even have a chance to meet him, you mustn't die by my hands first, you see."

[Insight]

Shwa-aaaah—

Through this clone, Su-hyeun's vision locked onto the real body of Kali somewhere else. He did this all thanks to Insight's power of seeing through the truth.

He peered into the origin of his opponent's power. With that, he figured out the current location of Kali.

"So, you're in that direction."

The distance to cover was rather considerable. However, he still got to more or less determine the location.

He thought, "If it's in that direction, then..."

He recalled the map of the Pangaea continent in his mind. Out of the hundred Altars, Kali had been staying in one of them, and that place was...

"The last Altar, huh?"

The hundredth Altar, the very last one to be built, was Kali's current location.

"You're quite proficient with Insight, I see."

"It's not that difficult to use, you know, and since you were so kind enough to create an eye like this, how can I not find out?"

"Is that so? Still, you located me faster than I expected."

"It's all thanks to you. If you didn't help, it would've taken a bit longer. By the way, you aren't thinking of running away, right?"

"Of course not. But before that..."

Drip—

A drop of liquid fell from above.

"It's still unknown whether you'll be able to reach me unscathed or not."

With those last words, Kali's clone vanished.

Su-hyeun wiped away the droplet that had fallen on his head.

This drop of "rain" was reddish in color. It was not water but blood.

"The land of blood, is it?"

Everywhere seemed to be dyed in red—the ground, the sky, and so on...

The land soaked in blood quickly lost all vitality. One by one, drops of blood fell from the sky.

With this expansive land of blood, what Kali wanted this time was for Su-hyeun to get devoured in this place and become some lump of blood instead.

Su-hyeun stared at this unfolding scene and muttered to himself, "If it's fighting over a territory, then..."

[Flame - Land of Fire]

[Flame - Territory Declaration]

Ruuuumble—

Purple-colored flames rapidly spread out to the surroundings.

"I've done it a few times by now, too."