The End of a Long Adolescence – 6

From a height so dizzying it was difficult to observe from the ground, a red light flickered from beneath the clouds that obscured the surface.

The red light grew larger, surging upward.

“Oh, my… someone’s awfully upset.”

A tall, long-limbed man watched the increasingly bright light beneath him and spoke.

After a brief wait, something pierced through the clouds with a burst of heat, soaring into the sky.

It was a tiny human comet.

The comet circled the Crown once before stopping in mid-air.

The flames subsided, and the figure within the fiery mass gradually became visible.

“You son of a bitch with no business ethics.”

The man of flames wore a face of disbelief, anger, and weariness.

“I was just about to head down to the ground, and you come to greet me like this.”

The Crown greeted him with an exaggerated gesture.

“Hey, do you know what day it is today?”

He asked out of the blue in the middle of the standoff.

“I wonder… is it some important day?”

As the Crown shrugged, Kang In-ho wore a twisted smile.

“It is important. Very important. But, I don’t think you need to know. You’re going to die here anyway, so there’s no point in knowing. Right?”

“Hahaha, I acknowledge your strength in defeating two of the Four Heavenly Kings… but I’m the Crown, remember? I feel the need to remind you that I still vividly remember you kneeling before me, bowing your head.”

The Crown dredged up Persona’s painful past.

“……..”

It was an attempt to shatter his opponent’s composure, but the reaction was more lukewarm than expected.

“Why so silent? Are you perhaps too scared to speak?”

He decided to provoke him further.

What words would make his opponent feel even more humiliated? Before he could speak, Kang In-ho’s hand covered his face.

An unimaginable pressure crushed his face.

“Just die.”

Kang In-ho increased the force on the hand gripping his face.

With the sound of bones rupturing, the Crown’s face began to twist grotesquely.

“You’re… awfully angry, aren’t you?”

The Crown spat out blood as he sneered. And a few seconds later, with a pop, the Crown’s face exploded.

Only blood gurgled from the spot where his face had been, and pieces of his pulverized face scattered in all directions.

Kang In-ho stared at the bloodstains that had soiled his hand for a moment, then turned around.

He heard the sound of wind being cut, and he reflexively crossed his arms in an X shape, raising them.

A massive impact struck his arms.

“Ta-da! It was a dummy.”

The Crown, unharmed, had already finished his attack and was lowering his foot.

In a brief moment, the Crown had aimed for Kang In-ho’s back with a kick, and Kang In-ho had blocked it.

Kang In-ho looked around. Dozens, hundreds of Crowns were now surrounding him.

“You really like dummies.”

He exclaimed.

“The more insurance, the better.”

The Crown grinned.

“Why? Scared?”

“Hahaha… if you’re going to joke, at least stay within the bounds of decency. It’s unpleasant.”

The Crown’s face hardened.

“I don’t intend to just do a half-assed job and go back today. I plan to kill you and find the Magical Girl and kill her too.”

“Sounds like you were doing a half-assed job before. Even though you were desperate.”

Kang In-ho took a stance and beckoned with his hand.

And with his words as a signal, countless Crowns began to surge toward him.

[Listen to the following and choose what the woman is buying.]

As soon as the English listening comprehension test began, Kim Sung-ah’s skin crawled, and her mind became complicated.

‘Ahjussi, I hope he’s okay.’

It seemed like a larger number of enemies than usual had appeared. Her hand, gripping the mechanical pencil, was clenched tightly.

She was worried. She had an uneasy feeling that something might happen to Ahjussi.

Ahjussi’s safety was more important than this stupid college entrance exam. She couldn’t understand why she had to be sitting here.

She reflexively brought her hand to her mouth and chewed on her fingernails.

A collision of immense power. It was a ripple of power spreading from a very distant place, but she could feel it.

Neither side was overwhelming the other. One side would gain the upper hand, then the other would be pushed back.

‘Ahjussi….’

The next question began. She forced herself to listen.

She desperately wanted to burst out of the classroom, but she couldn’t move.

The test continued, and the battle raging in the distance continued as well.

The Magical Girl, bound by her promise, grew more anxious.

“Huff… huff….”

Kang In-ho placed his hands on his knees and gasped for breath.

Blood flowing from his forehead dripped down to the distant ground. If someone unlucky got hit, they would post it online as a bizarre incident.

“Cough… you… just what…!”

The Crown, more than half of his body burned and blackened, spoke to him in a dying voice.

And those were his last words.

The Crown, who had led hundreds of dummies and clashed with Kang In-ho, the one considered the strongest of the Four Heavenly Kings, had been defeated.

Black ashes scattered, and the Crown’s body, barely maintaining its form, began to crumble.

“Hoo….”

Kang In-ho barely managed to steady his swaying body. If he lost his balance here, he would freefall straight to the ground.

He had won, but it was a pyrrhic victory. He had given up too much.

Drip, drip

Along with the stream of blood that had started from his forehead, this time blood began to mix with his saliva.

It seemed that his internal organs were severely damaged.

His mask, which had flown off at some point, showed how fierce the battle with the Crown had been.

Sure enough, the sun had already set.

Even considering that the days were getting shorter, it clearly showed how long the battle that had started at 1 PM had lasted.

And with the end of the long battle, the senses he had heightened to the extreme began to dull in an instant.

Therefore, Kang In-ho failed to block the attack that came next.

Bang!

Something in the shape of a giant fist struck him.

Knocked away by the impact, Kang In-ho began to fall straight to the ground.

In Kang In-ho’s blurry vision as he fell at high speed, he barely caught sight of a woman in a black dress looking down at him.

“That was quite an interesting fight.”

The owner of the giant fist, whose long, voluptuous figure was incongruous with it, spoke to him.

“Your application of flame magic was excellent, wasn’t it? You never showed it to me before.”

Even as the distance widened as he fell, for some reason, the woman maintained a constant distance.

“Lilith, Tols, Crown… all the guys I gave power to and thought I had raised strongly are all dead. In other words, I’ve just been wasting my time all this time.”

The woman in black frowned as if annoyed.

“There’s no way I’ll ever be compensated for the years I’ve wasted. So you can think of this as just a simple venting of anger. Persona.”

As the woman in black flicked her fingers, the giant fist that had struck him appeared.

“Entertain me.”

It was the appearance of the Witch.

Watching the fist flying towards him, Kang In-ho closed his eyes.

It was resignation.