Ch.124The Final Chapter is a Bad Ending

Words were unnecessary between us.

All we needed was a fist that meant we couldn’t understand each other.

“Grrrr…”

“KRAAAAAAAA-!!”

Black lightning surged simultaneously through both our bodies.

Then the two monsters of Jamsil charged straight at each other.

KWANG-!

We each landed our National Disaster-Level punches on each other’s faces.

With just that single blow, the ground trembled, and everyone living throughout the Korean peninsula ducked as a sudden earthquake shook the land.

PAANG!

“Kyokushin Karate…”

“Grrrrrk!”

‘Basic front kick!’

Next, as our kicks connected with each other’s shins, a massive hole appeared in the clouds above us.

It was truly like being supreme in heaven and earth, interfering with everything in the world.

The two Kaijufied Han Shinwoos were unleashing nothing but undefended, one-sided attacks against each other.

KWANG! KWANG! KWANG! KWANG!

“The, the ground is shaking…!”

“It feels like the entire Earth is trembling!”

“Further away! We need to get as far away as possible!”

Though they thought they had created enough distance.

When they hid behind a skyscraper, the building shook, and even when they lay flat on the ground, their bodies bounced up and down like rubber balls.

Riverine used her threads to grab Lia, who couldn’t even maintain her balance, and then turned to Yurian, who was at a loss for what to do.

“What! We need to run away quickly!”

“B-but… Father…”

“Oh, come on! Shinwoo said he’d be fine, so he’ll be fine. Got it?”

Riverine grabbed the girl, who looked like she was about to cry after being scolded by her father, and fled as far away as possible.

Meanwhile.

Kyokushin Karate.

Straight punch.

Joint kick.

Elbow strike to the face.

Roundhouse kick, and so on.

Using numerous techniques, the past Shinwoo couldn’t help but realize.

This guy really was him.

Every technique was blocked during execution.

Conversely, all the attacks the opponent launched were also being blocked by me.

That made sense because we were the same person.

The one who best knew what attacks I would make and what the weaknesses of my techniques were could only be myself.

“Straight…”

“Punch!”

PANG!

As our pitch-black fists collided, we stood still, staring at each other.

The future me was the first to speak.

“The me of this era was a pushover.”

“…?”

“In the terms of this era, I was a ‘sweet potato.’ Despite my great strength, I was indecisive, not particularly ambitious, and the only thought in my head was to clear the game’s story—just like a typical protagonist in a possession novel.”

“What are you trying to say…?”

“I’m saying I was simply ignorant. A pearl necklace on a pig’s neck. Even though there was an easy path forward, I was too afraid of even the slightest sacrifice—a tiger mixed in with a flock of sheep.”

Kyokushin Karate match.

The first round had just ended.

The break time was about one to two minutes.

After catching our breath, we would immediately enter the second round.

During this time, I was feeling truly complex emotions as I listened to my future self’s story.

“What happened to you that made you change like this?”

“……”

“Answer me! Honestly, I don’t think you’re me at all.”

“…From the moment my future self came to the past, the history of this world will flow in a different direction from my world. However, that doesn’t guarantee that you won’t become like me.”

But conversely, there was no guarantee that I would become like him either.

“You want to know how I became like this?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll tell you if you’re curious. It’s a very simple story.”

After finishing a few words, the future Shinwoo threw a straight punch at the past Shinwoo, who countered with his own straight punch.

As their fists connected.

The cells of the future’s much more evolved monster began to send fragments of memories to his past self.

“?! This is…”

The scene that followed was a world turned completely red and burning.

People who appeared to be civilians were screaming for help, and regardless, tanks loaded with shells rolled over them.

KWAJIK.

The next scene showed refugees in the middle of a barren desert without a drop of water, begging for water.

People kneeling and pleading gradually collapsed one by one from dehydration.

And what followed were only similar hellish situations.

Hell upon hell upon hell—a continuous stream of terrible “memories.”

“What is all this…?”

“It’s simple. This is the world immediately after I cleared the game.”

“What?”

“More precisely, this is what the world looked like after each country, with excess power because I alone solved all the problems the world should have faced together, competed with each other and eventually perished.”

I swallowed hard.

Because I couldn’t believe it.

Of course, I had thought that the happy ending of Hunter’s Blood would naturally be clearing the game.

So I had been running around working hard, believing that when I solved everything by myself, the world would become peaceful.

…But this was the ending I had been rushing toward?

“A child’s lie cannot fool adults forever.”

“……”

“Originally, your identity should have been exposed during this North Korean invasion part.”

“What?”

The final episode of the early part of Hunter’s Blood.

My future self was telling me that my identity should have been exposed during the North Korean invasion part, where a National Disaster-Level monster from North Korea crosses the 38th parallel and comes down to South Korea.

“Is… that true?”

“Yes. Twenty years ago, I openly Kaijufied in front of people to save some nameless child. And that was the beginning of misfortune.”

Then my future self’s memories began to be shared.

At first, I was branded as a monster and became an enemy of humanity, but thanks to my wealthy parents and the connections I had made until then, I was barely able to escape being a target for extermination.

But that was it.

From that point on, I began to be treated like a monster, and as the story of Hunter’s Blood progressed toward the latter half, I felt the gaze and contempt from people intensify.

Then finally, at the moment of defeating the final chapter.

“Die, monster!”

“Kill that one too!”

“Shinwoo…”

“Sophia, duck!!”

As if they had been waiting for this moment.

The global military forces, which I thought had been brought along to defeat the final boss together, flew at my future self, exhausted from the battle, and Sophia, who was beside me.

Fortunately, we were able to escape without being exterminated, but unlike me, Sophia, who was just a slightly stronger human.

“Her brain was severely damaged.”

“……What?”

“So… at least she’ll never be able to have a conversation again…”

With the help of the Villain’s Troupe, I had only managed to make her able to move.

At what should have been a happy moment for everyone, she had become a vegetative person who couldn’t even speak.

And that wasn’t all.

“Ma’am! Sir! You need to escape quickly!”

“No. We will stay here until the end.”

“Yes, if we run away, it would be as if we really raised a monster. Shinwoo, we don’t regret accepting you as family at all.”

My parents, who were branded as traitors to humanity along with me.

My future self desperately tried to evacuate them somewhere.

But the uncle and aunt rejected my proposal.

Because they were proud.

Rather, they said they would just stay as usual, feeling that running away immediately would make me seem like a real monster.

Not long after, they too were put on the human judgment stand and killed.

Hell.

What I was seeing was truly a living hell.

If this wasn’t hell, what else could it be?

“Do you understand now?”

“…!”

“No matter how much we save the world, all that remains for ‘monsters’ like us is a life of such hell.”

As I withdrew the straight punch I had been throwing, I found myself back in my original position.

The flow of memories seemed to have been cut off.

“So… so, you killed humanity? All the people around you?”

“I didn’t kill them; I judged them.”

“Judged…?”

“Yes. From the beginning, I had the power to destroy the world. Don’t you think it’s laughable to say that beings like us ‘killed’ mere primitive creatures?”

“……What?”

I finally realized it then.

Why my future self had become a completely different Han Shinwoo from who I am now.

This guy no longer thought of himself as a human like us.

He thought of himself as a ‘god.’

“I lost my parents and the person I loved most. So I decided to take revenge.”

“To the extent of eliminating all of humanity…?”

“Yes, to that extent. I turned every land on Earth except the Korean peninsula into a sea of fire where no living being could survive. I waged war alone against the entire world, and I was finally able to win.”

“Then where are you living now?”

A future where no habitable land remains outside the Korean peninsula.

How did this guy manage to have children and build a home in such a bleak world?

When I asked out of curiosity, he quietly shook his head and then answered.

“I am now… living with the ‘humanity’ I created.”

“The humanity I created…?”

“Yes. Remember the last of the three expansion packs for Hunter’s Blood that we pre-purchased before being possessed in this world?”

“The last third one…? Are you talking about the Humanoid Monster edition?”

“Yes, that’s the one.”

What does that have to do with the current story?

Until now, I could only float question marks above my head, not understanding anything.

“That expansion pack was about ordinary monsters with almost no intelligence suddenly gaining sentience and becoming humanoid monsters.”

“…?! Wait, you don’t mean…!”

“Yes, I already had the monster that would become the starting point of that expansion pack.”

After extracting and researching that child’s genes, he injected the results into all monsters that appeared on Earth.

Thus, he cultivated a new humanity that wasn’t human but had a human form.

In other words, humanoid monsters as his new citizens.

“You’re insane…”

The kingdom my children had told me about, ruled by my future self.

When I first heard about it, I thought it was just boasting.

After all, I thought it would be virtually impossible to establish a nation worthy of being called a kingdom at a point when humanity had perished.

At best, I thought they were just living among themselves and arbitrarily naming it a kingdom.

But to think he was a being with such overwhelming power that he could cultivate intelligent humanoid monsters like Lia at will and build a nation with such monsters.

“I became the god of the new world.”

“What have you done…!”

“And in the name of god, I command.”

The next moment, black lightning was once again surging through the already transformed body of the future Shinwoo.

“I will take back what is most precious to me.”

“!!”