-Suya!
The moment that [Matron] covered my field of view with that hand.
What appeared before my eyes was a small child.
‘That’s.’
...How should I put it.
That child’s figure looked familiar to me, and yet at the same time it looked extremely unfamiliar.
I can barely remember ever seeing them in person.
And yet, it was a child I’d seen a few times in photographs.
‘It’s my childhood.’
It was me, as a child.
*****
The child was bawling like the sky was collapsing.
In their arms was a small white puppy.
Huff, huff.......
I stared blankly down at that puppy.
The puppy panted with difficulty.
Huff.......
And then.
Even that panting breath stopped.
-Suya......!
The vitality drained out of that body that had been warm just moments ago.
The puppy’s body, once soft, gradually grew colder and stiffer.
‘Suya.’
The name of the puppy I raised when I was little.
They were never particularly healthy to begin with, and for something called a puppy, they were old.
If I think about it coldly, Suya at that time was probably reaching the end of their lifespan.
You could even say they’d lived out their natural years.
But.
‘Back then, I was little.’
When I was little, I didn’t really know things like that.
Suya was doing fine like always, and then one day I saw Suya starting to waste away.
And Suya, who I’d assumed was healthy, didn’t even last a week after they started getting sick.
Back then.
I regretted it, down to the bone.
‘I should’ve treated you better.’
That.
“Kgh......!?”
That moment.
A violent pain hit me like someone was striking my heart directly.
‘This is.’
The pain was so extreme.
Cold sweat ran down me, and my vision blurred.
-So you don’t trust me either?
-Yeah. I don’t trust you either, so get lost. Just go.
Inside that blurring vision.
Another scene came into focus, sharp and clear.
A friend I’d been close with since kindergarten—someone I thought was my closest friend.
Maybe it was in middle school.
Something happened that made us fall out badly.
-I thought you would’ve believed me.
I only found out later.
It started entirely from some trivial misunderstanding on my side.
After I realized that, I wanted to find them and apologize.
But by then, everything—contact, anything—had already been cut off.
I regretted, down to the bone, the foolish me who couldn’t trust my friend.
“Kghrk....”
And after that.
Countless scenes passed through my vision.
The memory of being embarrassed after saying something wrong.
The memory of drifting apart from the kid I liked without ever confessing.
The memory of taking a wrong choice and suffering a huge loss.
Even the memory of a junior dying because of my trivial order.
They were things that had dulled as a long time passed.
At the time, I thought they were huge.
But looking back later, most of them were nothing.
But.
“Kh... hhk....”
Back then, they really were.
Things that made me suffer like my world was collapsing.
‘Is this what you meant by making me regret it...?’
Matron’s warning wasn’t some figure of speech.
They were truly making me regret it.
More precisely.
They were making me re-experience every regret I’d ever gone through in the past.
‘Ha, hahah.’
The regret and pain from back then, so vivid.
Without even a second to breathe, it pounded at my head and my chest.
“Kh, khhuhuh....”
While rolling on the floor in pain, I thought.
They were things that happened a long time ago.
Things I thought I could shrug off now.
‘If it were up to me, I want to say something like the past is nothing... and all that....’
But.
Looks like reality wasn’t like that.
‘Doesn’t work, huh.’
Those scenes were all illusions.
Maybe because my “order” had risen.
I could instinctively grasp the way to overcome the illusion, too.
‘You just dismiss it and move on, like none of it mattered.’
The pain from back then was still there, exactly as it was.
But if I could think that even that pain was nothing.
‘If I could just shake off this regret itself.’
Then [Matron]’s attack wouldn’t affect me at all.
But.
Only after suffering these pains again did I understand.
Every single thing I regretted in the past.
Every single thing I thought was nothing now.
‘Still.’
With its grip locked around my ankle.
Clinging on, refusing to fall away.
Trying to act cool, saying the past is nothing.
Saying what matters is the future.
Spouting that kind of crap.
Was impossible for me.
“Kh... damn ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) it.”
I’ve always been a guy with a lot of shortcomings.
Regrets? I had more than I could count.
And I probably will in the future, too.
I’ll regret plenty of things, and I won’t be able to shake those regrets off.
Each time, my steps will grow heavier.
And with those endlessly heavy steps.
I’ll have to.
Force it, grit my teeth.
And move them forward, one step at a time.
‘How horrible.’
I understood exactly what [Matron] was trying to say to me.
“Don’t want that? Then grab their hand... is that it.”
But.
There was only one answer I could give to that.
“F*** off, you bastard....”
No matter how heavy those past regrets were.
No matter how hard it would be to keep moving forward with them.
‘Right now.’
Taking [Matron]’s hand.
Was no different from being tied down there, turning back.
Maybe my heart would get comfortable.
But it was worse than stopping—something I could never accept.
‘Let me go.’
Even if they were steps heavy as hell.
I still had to move forward.
“Khrrk....”
Even as I groaned in pain.
I moved my hand and clawed around the floor.
And then, my fingertips touched something.
‘Dokgogu-style.’
The knife I’d carelessly let go of when I collapsed, groaning.
I clenched that knife tightly in my fist and thought.
‘Breaking this attack properly... is impossible for me.’
Shaking off every regret from the past?
Sure, maybe there are great people who can do that.
But unfortunately, that isn’t my story.
If there’s no other way.
I’ll have to suffer here, buried in those regrets.
And one day I’ll break, and end up submitting to that [Matron].
But.
‘Good.’
That’s only the story.
If there’s no other way.
‘There isn’t... no other way.’
Not long ago.
I remembered the order First Lieutenant Kim gave me.
‘The order to remember everything that happened here.’
Thinking about it.
That order was telling me to escape the influence of [Matron]’s power.
An order so difficult it was ridiculous.
But.
It was an order from First Lieutenant Kim, who’d become an extremely powerful commander through [Meeting Expectations].
And I amplified the effect of that order by even dragging in my cooking.
‘No matter how hard the order is, you still have to solve it somehow.’
As a result.
Using the power lying dormant inside my body.
Power I couldn’t even properly handle.
I succeeded in pushing out Matron’s power that had lodged itself in my brain.
And.
The effect created through cooking is temporary.
But the aftereffects from it are permanent.
The experience of having to carry out that impossible order.
Because of that experience.
[‘20’ divine power settles into your weapon.]
I.
Was able to grasp, at least a little.
The know-how to handle that power.
Countless memories spread out in front of my eyes.
I swung my knife in a huge arc toward them.
RRRIP.......
[The divine power of ‘20’ cuts away the interference of the external existence.]
All those memories, stained through with regret.
Were ripped apart into shreds.
*****
“KHUH-URK...!”
{......How!?}
When I came to my senses.
In front of me was [Matron], flinching as if truly rattled.
{That’s impossible! It’s not power a mere mortal can endure!}
“Th... at’s... right.”
{Even if you had mythic mental fortitude, you couldn’t escape in a way like this!}
And.
The countless bleeding eyeballs that made up [Matron]’s body.
Those eyeballs turned toward the kitchen knife in my grip.
{That power is...... my god!}
More precisely.
They fixed on the power clinging to that kitchen knife.
{So there was a reason you refused the seat of an apostle.}
“Whew... my head.”
{No way.}
Then.
As if they finally understood.
[Matron] muttered in a voice mixed with shock.
{Not just an apostle—you were an idiot aiming for beyond that......!}
And.
Whether they were shocked or not.
“So?”
{What?}
“Didn’t you say you’d make me regret rejecting the offer, or whatever?”
Now that I’d regained some clarity.
I smiled with a crooked grin, pushing past the headache.
“That’s it? It’s less than I expected.”
{You worm-like thing......!}
I wiped the drool at the corner of my mouth and steadied my hazy mind.
I said it was nothing.
But inside, it was a little different.
‘Mirinae wasn’t kidding when they told me to be careful around external existences. This bastard’s an absurd monster.’
No, even “monster” doesn’t fit.
A truly divine existence.
‘This time, I got lucky and managed to escape those memories, but it was a trick.’
If I didn’t have a trick like that.
I would never have been able to withstand that thing’s attack.
No.
Even with that trick, it’s the same.
If that thing had exerted just a little more power.
I wouldn’t have been able to cut through that illusion.
‘If I think about it rationally, being hostile to something like that is foolish in itself.’
An existence that loses nothing by being called a god.
Its specialty seems to be these strange powers tied to this thing called [Regret].
But outside of those powers, its raw strength would also be on a level I couldn’t do anything about.
But even so.
‘It’s not like there’s no way to deal with it.’
To begin with.
If there was absolutely no way like that.
I wouldn’t even be able to think about opposing it in the first place.
In fact.
When I faced Mirinae in that white space.
I acted cautiously, thinking it could be a big problem if I crossed an existence like that the wrong way.
‘Pride or whatever—surviving comes first.’
If it really were an enemy with no answer.
I would’ve dropped to my knees first and begged for my life.
Telling me to become its son?
Throw pride out the window—saying “Yes, Mom!” wouldn’t even be strange.
But.
I didn’t read its mood at all.
I provoked its anger instead.
This attack I just took, too.
Considering the power it might have, it could’ve been pretty dangerous behavior, but....
It wasn’t something I did without thinking.
‘I didn’t feel burdened by looking at this thing.’
I was different from the soldiers who couldn’t look at it properly.
When I looked at the existence inside Morjan’s memories, my brain nearly burst and I almost died.
But not now.
‘Because I’m stronger than back then... that’s part of it.’
They said [Level 40] is the standard for crossing an “order.”
So I really am different from back when I was in the early 30s when I saw Morjan’s memories.
But that can’t be all.
‘It’s much smaller than that monster I saw in Morjan’s memories.’
The more important reason is probably this.
‘More than Morjan, more than Belsnickel, more than Dasmuru.’
I could instinctively understand it.
This thing is definitely a powerful existence, but.
‘......It’s much smaller.’
Probably.
An existence a Level 30 awakened person could look at without a problem.
‘Compared to the ones I’ve seen so far, this thing is small.’
Among the so-called divine beings, it probably belongs to the lower side of the hierarchy.
And if you look at how it failed to notice Mirinae’s concealment even after seeing it right in front of its face.
There’s a high chance its “order” is lower than Mirinae’s, who said they were nothing special even among the immortals.
‘Mirinae said they need a medium to exert their power on this land. They also said I’m the only one with the qualification to accept the power of those external existences fully.’
I don’t know what it’s going to try to do to me.
But one thing was certain.
‘Right now, that thing’s power is being exercised through Jang Youngwoong as its medium!’
Someone in the mid-30s doesn’t have enough qualification to serve as a medium.
In fact, Jang Youngwoong’s face had grown gaunt while he kept that repetition going.
‘There has to be a limit to the power it can exert, too.’
That’s why I could tear through its attack and escape.
When I fought Jang Youngwoong.
The reason I destroyed Seoul indiscriminately was the same.
The more severe the destruction got.
The more power it would take to restore it—because that’s what I thought.
{Less than you expected?}
I can’t defeat it.
But if I can force it to consume as much power as possible.
And drag it down to its limit.
{Then I’ll show you more.}
Then there might be.
Some corner.
Some way to work with.
