Ch.129Until Now

A feeling like a massive stone was crushing my body.

Even though I wanted to open my eyes, they wouldn’t budge, as if needles were stuck in my eyelids, and nightmares kept replaying in the darkness.

It was my first defeat after Kaijufication.

The moment I lost against none other than myself.

Sophia…

Being taken away…

I barely remembered anything after taking that punch to the moon.

However, if there was one scene I clearly remembered, it was Sophia disappearing before my eyes, practically being dragged away.

Just that and nothing more.

Yes, just that…

“!!”

“Hmm? You’re awake?”

“…Ms. Katarina?”

It felt like waking up from a truly terrible nightmare.

But as soon as my eyes met Ms. Katarina’s, who was lying right next to my hospital bed.

“Urgh?!”

I had to suffer for a while, swallowing my breath from the excruciating pain throughout my bandaged body that was simply indescribable.

“Don’t move. You want your body to split apart again after we put it back together?”

“Split apart…?”

“It’s just a figure of speech. Well, when we first found you, you were literally split in half, so it was quite a struggle putting you back together…”

I was defeated that badly?

I suppose it makes sense, considering I was dragged into space and went through all that hell.

“…I’m sorry.”

“Ms. Katarina?”

“Damn it, I know joining in wouldn’t have made much difference… but I’m still sorry I couldn’t fight alongside you.”

Ms. Katarina kept apologizing while wringing out the wet towel that had been placed on my head.

But I didn’t blame Ms. Katarina at all.

If anything, I was just glad that neither she nor any other Villain’s Troupe members were there.

“It’s not your fault, Ms. Katarina.”

“Shinwoo…”

“Our defeat was already certain from the moment I failed to subdue him. In the end, it’s my fault for being weaker.”

I told her quietly.

As Ms. Katarina sighed, I wanted to smile at her… but I couldn’t.

I just wasn’t in the mood for it.

‘I want a drink…’

Who would have thought the day would come when I’d crave that liquid my father used to guzzle every day.

But I couldn’t just lie here.

“Urrrgh…!”

“I told you to stay down!”

“No… I can’t just stay still.”

My Kyokushin wouldn’t be broken by a single defeat.

At least my Kyokushin was like that, so I somehow managed to get up from the bed to go after Sophia.

I almost lost my balance and fell right after, but.

“Geez, use the wheelchair. Let’s go outside first.”

“Thank you, Ms. Katarina.”

Ms. Katarina supported me and helped me into the wheelchair.

Thanks to her, I was able to pass through the hospital corridor where everyone seemed to be staring at me and go outside.

And immediately I saw…

“What the…”

An unbelievable, strange sight.

“What is that?”

“Sigh, this is why I wanted to wait until you calmed down before showing you.”

The sky was clearly bright, but what I saw above the clouds was nothing but ‘water.’

A vast ocean, large enough to fill the entire sky, was floating above our heads.

‘This is Seoul, right?’

The sky over Seoul has become an ocean?

That’s exactly what it looked like.

I turned to Ms. Katarina.

“…Shinwoo!”

“Uncle…”

“Shinwoo!”

“Auntie…”

The two parents who ran to me as soon as I came out of the hospital doors and embraced me tightly.

Even though it was my future self who took their daughter away, and they should have started hating me by now, they still warmly embraced me, bringing tears to my eyes for the first time.

“Thank goodness. You’re safe.”

“Uncle, I’m really sorry…!”

“Shinwoo. Don’t say anything. You’re different from that person. You fought for Sophia until the end.”

“B-but… but!”

What does that even matter?

In the end, Sophia was dragged to the future because of me.

Because of this fact, I couldn’t help but shed tears endlessly, even though I wanted to hold them back.

“Oppa…”

“Lia.”

“You worked hard.”

And people around me started approaching slowly.

Starting with Lia, then Ms. Yoo Cheran.

“Mr. Shinwoo.”

“Ms. Cheran…”

“Don’t cry.”

Next was Princess Kitsune Kurumi, who had rushed over from Japan after hearing the news.

“Mr. Shinwoo!”

“Princess Kurumi…”

“Oh my! Your body… it must have hurt a lot? It must have been hard? I won’t tell you not to cry. Just please don’t blame yourself.”

“Thank you…”

After that, Riverine and everyone else who had briefly crossed paths with me each gave me a hug when I was feeling helpless.

Among them were some faces I didn’t recognize.

“Everyone here is alive thanks to you, Shinwoo.”

“Thanks to me…?”

“Why, people who were saved when you transformed into that black monster.”

“Ah… w-what?!”

My identity as a Kaijufied being.

When those words came out of Uncle Seokgyu’s mouth, I was shocked and broke into a cold sweat.

However, the people around me just smiled, as if such a reaction was fine now.

“Don’t worry, no one thinks of you as just an ordinary monster.”

“They’ve all been waiting outside the hospital because they wanted to thank you.”

“Thank me…?”

Looking around as I wondered what that meant, I gradually began to understand.

“It’s been a while, Monster of Jamsil. Remember that straight punch greeting?”

“Huh?! Are you perhaps the commander who was on the aircraft carrier deck back then?”

“Haha. I couldn’t communicate properly back then, so I didn’t introduce myself properly. I’m Major General Talisman, currently serving as the commander of United States Forces Korea.”

The aircraft carrier commander I met 10 years ago when I defeated the entity named Cheonsa at Busan Port.

Starting with Major General Talisman.

“Th-thank you both for back then!”

“Who…?”

“Mr. Shinwoo. Remember when that pterosaur monster appeared in Hongdae? We were the people you escorted to the shelter together.”

“Ah! Those people!”

Right before meeting Sophia who had returned from America.

The civilians I had inadvertently saved during the tutorial part where Ms. Cheran would have died in the original timeline.

And beyond that.

“Oppa, thank you for taking me in when I was a monster when we first met.”

“Lia…”

Lia, the baby monster born from Cheonsa’s dead body, who almost became Lee Heejeong’s test subject.

“Mr. Shinwoo. If it weren’t for you, my lifespan would have ended by now, and I would have been completely devoured by Amaterasu.”

“Princess Kurumi…”

The unfortunate female protagonist who would have died without even being named in the original story.

The current head of the Kitsune family, Lady Kurumi.

“Our Villain’s Troupe… hasn’t received any benefits yet, but I guess we’ll soon receive favors like everyone else here?”

“Th-that would be nice!”

“Come to think of it, we were Shinwoo’s enemies when we first met, weren’t we?”

The Villain’s Troupe members whom I had tried so hard to avoid at first out of fear of a bad ending.

“Han Shinwoo…”

“Jaewon!”

“No, rather than calling you Han Shinwoo… I’m already convinced that you’re completely different from him, and that you’ll create an entirely different future.”

Jaewon, who seemed to have recovered already and was walking normally toward me.

“Father…”

“!!”

For the first time, I was called “father” by my son Jaewon, as if he had finally acknowledged me.

“Will you go rescue mother, Sophia mother?”

“Of course. I’ve never been broken by something like this.”

And I naturally answered “yes” to my son’s question about rescuing his mother.

“But do you have a way? A way to go to the future, I mean.”

“Yes. The reason I was able to come to the past in the first place was because there was a ‘time machine.'”

“Time machine?”

“It’s currently in the basement of the Villain’s Troupe hideout. It’s designed for one person, but Dorothy and I have been modifying it so that multiple people can ride it, in preparation for a situation like this.”

The reason why Katarina and some Villain’s Troupe members couldn’t participate in this battle.

That was the reason.

“It seems like Jaewon’s time machine was made by my future self.”

“By future Ms. Katarina?”

“Yes. The machine, which looks like an ordinary spaceship, had traces of my abilities incorporated into it. The ability to move between parallel worlds. Broadly interpreted, the past and future are also part of parallel worlds.”

“Th-the leader’s ability to move only in the present has been replaced by machine parts to make it possible to travel to the past and future as well!”

Dorothy, who had helped with the maintenance, finished the explanation.

“But can such things be covered by mere machine parts?”

“No? Of course not.”

“Then how?”

“Those machine parts are merely support devices for this divine tool.”

“…!?!?!? Th-this is!!”

The object that Ms. Katarina showed me with a smile.

It was a cup that had turned black from using more than half of all its energy, but I remembered struggling desperately to obtain this equipment while playing “Hunter’s Blood.”

“The Holy Grail…! The treasure of the Vatican!”

“Yes, the time machine’s energy seems to have come from this Holy Grail.”

“Certainly… something like the Holy Grail could produce enough energy to travel between past and future. But that…”

“Right. It seems like it can only be used about one more time, barely.”

The Holy Grail, which was used as the most powerful buff item in the original work, capable of emitting nearly infinite energy.

Even until the end of the game, it only got slightly scorched rather than damaged this badly, which made me realize just how much energy time travel consumes.

“One more time, huh…”

“……”

Does that mean we can go there again but can’t come back?

If we can’t return to the past even after defeating my future self, it wouldn’t mean much.

Besides, we had one more problem left.

“Shinwoo, you’ve probably noticed by now.”

“…Yes.”

“The moon has shattered. As a result, gravity has been disrupted, and all the seawater that should be on Earth is starting to spread into the sky.”

My future self, Han Shinwoo.

That bastard’s final blow, the punch he threw trying to kill me.

Because of it, our world’s moon has shattered into pieces and is currently scattering far into space.

“Hunters from around the world and many ability users are somehow holding back Earth’s seawater, but they say it won’t last even three years.”

“So even if we safely bring back Sophia, we only have three years left to live?”

“Yes, that’s right… But you know what they say.”

“?”

“Humans are animals that always find the right answer.”

Saying that, Ms. Katarina threw another object into my arms.

It wasn’t the blackened Holy Grail I had seen earlier, but a truly radiant Holy Grail of the present era.

“This is…!”

“It’s an unused Holy Grail.”

“How did you get this, Ms. Katarina?”

“The Saint of the Vatican told me to give it to you.”

“The Saint of the Vatican?”

The Saint of the Vatican.

One of the main heroines of “Hunter’s Blood,” infamous as a villainess who values human lives less than insect lives…

She gave me the Holy Grail, which she values as much as her own life?

“That saint lady asked me to deliver it.”

“What did she say?”

“She said she’s holding a service at the church behind here, so come find her.”

“!!”

Upon hearing that, I decided to borrow a bit of the Holy Grail’s power to move quickly.