Chapter 132: 132

Su-hyeun was angry, but his expression became composed once more .

Just like it had always been, the rational thing to do was to swallow his anger rather than letting it explode . Anger created openings and dulled one’s sword and body .

It was his habit . Of course, that didn’t mean he had forgotten his own emotions .

“You angry?” Thomas was tilting his head in confusion . “Why?”

He seemed to be missing something somewhere .

To look at him, Thomas must’ve been similar in age or slightly older than Su-hyeun, but the way he spoke and the looks he was giving Su-hyeun belonged to a child .

“You should… . ”

Swiiiish-

[Leap . ]

Su-hyeun exploded forward . In the blink of an eye, he flew to a spot just above Thomas’s head and swung his sword down .

Claaaang-!

“… . Think about it while I beat you up!”

Giii-iiing-

Thomas was shoved back . A curtain, a veil of some sort with visible cracks running on it, was spread over his hands .

Was it because of the unexpected force of the impact? Thomas looked quite surprised right then . He clenched and opened his fist repeatedly before raising his head .

At that exact moment-

Craaack, claaaang-!

Kwa-rummmm-!

Powerful sword strikes began raining down from all sides with Thomas caught in the middle . Even then, he didn’t panic . Instead, he spread out both of his arms and moved smartly to defend against Su-hyeun’s attacks .

“This is so cool! So cool!!”

Thomas was smiling brightly while blocking Su-hyeun’s sword as if this whole thing was just too entertaining .

The curtain spreading out from his hands regenerated immediately right after Su-hyeun’s attacks shattered it . Instead of the curtain’s defensive powers, it was Thomas’s control over his own powers that allowed him to quickly regenerate it, shining brilliantly for all to see .

Rumble-

[Flame . ]

Boom, bang, bang-bang-!

Blue-colored divine Flames suddenly appeared and caused a chain of explosions all around Thomas . Previously, he had been focused on the sword so he hurriedly crouched, furrowing his brows .

The explosion of divine Flames blinded his sight for a short moment, and Su-hyeun’s sword exploited the opening by stabbing straight at Thomas’s shoulder .

Stab-!

Whiiiir-

Thomas’s figure faded little by little . There was no sensation coming from the tip of the blade . Su-hyeun instantly swung his sword behind him .

CLAAANG-!

[Doppelganger . ]

A metallic noise echoed from behind Su-hyeun . His sword had caught Thomas’s hand, just about to stab him in the back .

From the sensation alone, Su-hyeun could tell what happened to Thomas’s hand that had changed color to brown .

>

He only knew one light brown metal that was blessed with such hardness .

>

The metal that could easily be called the best in regards to either magical energy conductivity or hardness and lightness .

Even if it only transformed a portion of one’s body, that skill was quite impressive to be able to change human hands into such metal in the first place .

Not only that, Thomas’s movements were rather remarkable, as well . Despite possessing several skills, he was wielding them freely, displaying his mastery over them . Normally, you’d be unable to deploy the right skills at the right moment if you had too many of them, and you’d eventually end up neglecting certain ones .

“Wow, so strong! You’re so strong!”

Clang, clang, clang, clang-

Thomas increased his distance from Su-hyeun and clapped his hands . His palms, modified to replicate the characteristics of adamantium, clashed against each other and produced hard-edged metallic noises .

He looked as if he had lots of leeway still .

“Are you having fun?” Su-hyeun asked .

Thomas stopped clapping his hands abruptly and raised his arms in sheer shock .

CLAAANG-!

Gu-gugugugu-

Su-hyeun’s sword, striking downwards, pressed on Thomas’s body . He crossed both of his arms to defend against the attack, and he finally stopped smiling . Before he could react, Su-hyeun had disappeared once again .

“Why don’t you keep at it, then?”

“Where…?”

Thomas hurriedly spun around . His opponent was definitely in the air above him just a moment before, but now, Su-hyeun was already right behind him .

Clang, clang, clang-

Piiik, pii-piik-

Chwa-aaahk-

Su-hyeun darted in and out non-stop .

From the front, then the back; from above, then left and right . Su-hyeun’s sword danced around disorientingly and without any set pattern, causing numerous wounds to appear on Thomas’s body one by one .

“Why… . ? Are you getting faster?”

Thomas’s voice trembled ever so slightly .

The more he blocked the attacks, the faster Su-hyeun got . He rained down more sword strikes, too many to be blocked or avoided .

[Spirit’s Grace . ]

[Thorn Armor . ]

[Reflect . ]

Tiii-iiing-

Several skills overlapped and reinforced Thomas’s body, causing Su-hyeun’s sword to issue a metallic cry .

Even the previously-deep wounds changed into small scratches, instead .

Thomas began smiling again . “Doesn’t hurt anymore . ”

“Nope, wrong . ”

Splaaash-!

Blood spurted from Thomas’s back .

He was so sure he couldn’t be sliced up anymore that he didn’t recognize what had happened for a moment .

The confusion was greater in his mind than the pain . Thomas covered his head with both of his hands and curled up into a ball .

Piiik, pii-iik, pii-piik-

Slash, splaaash-

Wounds began appearing once more on Thomas’s body . Su-hyeun, in the meantime, grew so much faster that his silhouette couldn’t even be seen anymore .

It was at that moment that Thomas remembered what his opponent had said earlier .

“That wasn’t a fight, but a display of one-sided brutality . ”

“Is that right? In that case… it looks like I’ll have to do the same . ”

Not a fight, but one-sided brutality – this was exactly that situation .

Right then, Thomas’s smiling face distorted greatly .

“Euh… I don’t like it, I hate it, I HATE IT!!”

FWOOOSH-!

Pitch-black magical energy began whipping around him violently . At the same time, his curled-up figure grew blurry and faint, before melting into the surroundings .

Shu-sususu-

The dark magical power soon enveloped the entirety of the arena Su-hyeun and Thomas were fighting in . The former stopped his rapid movements and scanned his vicinity .

>

His eyes widened in surprise . He had no idea that he’d stumble into this very skill in this place .

[Black Forest]

Ranked as one of the very best among all the spatial-type skills out there .

No, not just among the spatial-types . It easily qualified as one of the top ten skills ever to exist in the world, even after including all the skills yet to appear in the future . That’s how high-grade the skill was .

“… . So, it was this bastard?”

Thomas Mathiras .

Su-hyeun had only heard that name in passing a couple of times, but, other than what he’d seen in the competition, he didn’t know anything about him . His first and last public appearance was during the Ranking Wars .

His whereabouts afterward were vague, to say the least . There wasn’t even any news about his death either, so people often wondered if he had literally vanished into thin air .

But such a man had activated the skill, ‘Black Forest’ .

-Please don’t hit me, don’t hurt me…

Thomas’s voice came from somewhere in the air . It was filled with palpable fear . But, it didn’t seem to be directed at Su-hyeun, somehow .

>

Thomas definitely made his way onto Su-hyeun’s blacklist just by being able to use the ‘Black Forest’ . There would be a news story a few years in the future—this skill got invoked in the middle of a city and caused the deaths of thousands in the process .

>

Su-hyeun raised his sword, then swung it down on the floor, just like that .

CLUNG-!

The blade simply bounced away .

A sword collided against another sword . And his opponent’s weapon just so happened to be exactly the same as his .

>

Su-hyeun wasn’t sure about the specific effects of the Black Forest . He only knew that thousands of people would get swept up in the skill and lose their lives . As such, he didn’t know of a way to cancel or invalidate this skill .

-My dear Sung-in .

A voice suddenly came to him . A gentle voice that he had forgotten about until now . The name being called out was different, too .

The current him wasn’t Sung-in, but Su-hyeun .

-S-Sung-in… Please, please save me, your mother .

-There was no one beside you, but… Why did you… .

-Why did you do that! Why?! If only you were here, my dad would still be alive!

-Hero? Don’t make me laugh . You’re just pretending to be one!

The voices changed with every passing second .

Su-hyeun remembered all those voices . The ‘voices’ buried deep within his memories were leaking outside of him .

It was like a nightmare .

Rumble-

Suddenly, the image of a burning city appeared before his eyes . But it changed in an instant . Now, it showed the pitch-black skies and the destroyed cityscape .

The voices from his past stopped plaguing him . Su-hyeun had been living on, forgetting about the life of Sung-in .

>

No matter how bright your personality was, the past memories you didn’t want to remember were bound to exist . People without a reverse scale didn’t exist . No, the difference between them simply had to do with how much that reverse scale could painfully affect you .

The ‘Black Forest’ attacked that very reverse scale . In other words, it forcibly dragged out the past the targets didn’t want to remember and crushed their minds in the process .

The scene currently laid out before Su-hyeun’s eyes was the most horrifying image he had ever seen in his life . The sight of a devastated, ruined world, and the voices of people crying out the words of resentment that squarely blamed him .

-I’m sorry .

A man knelt in front of Su-hyeun .

It was none other than his past self, Sung-in .

-I’m truly… sorry .

Su-hyeun remembered himself from back then . He couldn’t forget even if he wanted to .

Back then, he had to choose between two outbreaks occurring in Tokyo and London . Regardless of which one he chose, it’d be too late to help the other one .

In the end, he chose to save the one nearer to him, Tokyo . And that’s how countless people ended up dying in London .

>

Many people died because of me—that’s how he blamed himself .

My family’s dead because of you, they said .

He was subjected to curses and denunciation several hundred times the level of resentment he had been receiving all his life until that point . That caused his previous feather-light body to suddenly feel heavy like a ton of bricks . For a while, back then, he couldn’t eat anything and even forgot how to smile .

It was the worst memory Su-hyeun possessed .

Unfortunately…

“Sorry about this, but…” Su-hyeun wasn’t even remotely moved by the illusion before his eyes created by his old trauma . “I’ve reflected on it for so long that I can’t even feel anything particular about it anymore . ”

Ever since this life began, Su-hyeun had been moving tirelessly to change the future he knew . And, in the process, he couldn’t help but retread his past .

If he was scared of the approaching future and tried to hide, then he wouldn’t even have thought of changing it in the first place .

He chose to confront the future since he had already faced it and knew it couldn’t be avoided .

And that’s how he got over it . The painful past was now nothing more than that—the past .

Shu-rururu-

The illusions disappeared from his eyes . It seemed that something or, rather, someone had realized Su-hyeun couldn’t be shaken by these things . Although he didn’t know whether Thomas or something else had made this admittedly rational choice, it was still a logical one nevertheless .

Rumble, tumble-

But that didn’t seem to be the end just yet . The black space filling up the battle arena began to quiver and wiggle around . He couldn’t be sure what else was in store for him, but he definitely wasn’t planning to sit back and let it happen .

>

He couldn’t forget, the ‘Black Forest’ was a top-tier grade skill . Su-hyeun didn’t possess a higher-grade skill that could potentially overcome it .

>

Rumble, ruuumble-

Flames lit up all around Su-hyeun . Pure blue flames illuminated his surroundings, their awakening causing the Black Forest to wriggle slightly and display hints of rejection .

It wasn’t enough, though .

Rumble-

The color of the divine Flame changed from blue to dark navy blue next .

RUUUMBLE-!

His entire body was soon wrapped up in divine Flame .

Light, to fight against the darkness .

>

This couldn’t even be called a proper cancellation method . No, he was simply ‘experimenting’ on where the limits of the Black Forest currently trapping him lay, that’s all .

“Fine, then . Let’s have it . ”

RUUUMBLE-!

The divine Flames sticking close to Su-hyeun gradually grew bigger and wider . The navy-blue colored flames were now forcing the darkness back .

The world of darkness .

This spatial-type skill was seen as one of the top ten best skills available, even after including the skills that would appear in the future .

He didn’t know how to counteract it . It wasn’t even known in the first place . But that didn’t matter .

The absolute difference in power would simply ignore everything, after all .