Chapter 2: It Wasn’t a Return—It Was Regression
BOOOOM!
A tremendous explosion shook the very ground.
People fleeing in panic staggered all at once; many lost their footing and fell.
“Kyaaaah!”
“We’re going to die like this! Get up, quick!”
Citizens scrambled desperately to their feet and kept running.
Moving against the flow, through the crowd, were figures dressed in black suits.
“Please don’t push each other! Everyone can make it out alive!”
“Response Team 1, current position of the ‘Rock Golem’?”
Awakened ones—also known as hunters.
These were civil-service hunters employed by the government.
Their primary duties were to control the scene and evacuate civilians from the monsters pouring out of a runaway gate.
The sandstorm that had erupted from the dungeon gate along with the monsters was steadily expanding its reach.
SWOOOOOSH—
Visibility was near zero in the area engulfed by the sandstorm.
The civil-service hunters searched for civilians who hadn’t yet escaped and dealt with the relatively weaker monsters.
Then—
THUD!
A massive shadow loomed before one of the hunters.
A crude humanoid figure assembled from huge boulders.
A “Rock Golem,” driven purely by mana.
And not just any Rock Golem—this was an exceptionally powerful specimen, an “Elite Rock Golem.”
A monster that was nearly impossible to defeat unless the hunter was grade 5 or higher.
“Rock Golem position confirmed! I’ll buy time until the area is cleared!”
“Keep your distance and use only ranged attacks!”
The civil-service hunters—mostly grades 7 and 8—intended only to stall until all civilians were safely evacuated.
The grade-6 leader of Response Team 1 hurled an explosive projectile at the Rock Golem.
KABOOOM!
The massive blast severed the golem’s right arm, sending it flying.
“As expected from the team leader!”
“Great, just like this—”
But the severed right arm instantly flew back.
SWOOOOSH—CRASH!
The elongated arm slammed straight down onto the team leader.
The grade-6 hunter was crushed to death in an instant.
The team members, who had been staring blankly at the sight, snapped back to their senses.
“S-scatter!”
The civil-service hunters fled in every direction.
Fortunately, the Rock Golem wasn’t fast.
Instead of chasing the fleeing hunters, it headed toward a faint life signature it detected.
There, an injured person was just regaining consciousness.
A frail human who had somehow survived its punch.
Its mental resilience was impressive.
—Survivor detected. Eliminating.
The moment the Rock Golem, emitting a mechanical voice, raised its fist,
The collapsed survivor raised his left hand in exactly the same motion.
The golem’s upraised fist froze as if by magic.
—Operational error. Cause unknown.
Despite the distance between them, it was as though an invisible force blocked it.
The injured man murmured softly.
“Stupid rock-headed idiot. It’s not an operational error—it’s psychokinesis.”
The instant he opened his clenched left fist wide—
CRACK-CRACK-CRACK—
The boulders forming the Rock Golem separated into dozens of pieces all at once.
The chunks floated in midair.
—Critical error. Critical error.
But a golem does not cease functioning until its core is destroyed.
Among the levitating rocks, a single black sphere became visible.
The golem’s core.
When the injured man flicked his index finger, the core slammed into the ground.
Golem cores are extremely durable and cannot be destroyed by ordinary attacks.
The man clenched his open palm back into a fist.
RUMBLE-RUMBLE—
The dozens of boulders converged into a single point.
They looked like one gigantic fist.
As the man lowered his fist—
WHOOSH—BOOM!
The stone fist simultaneously smashed down, shattering the core.
An anticlimactic end for a grade-5 monster.
Having toyed with such a creature, the injured man spat out the red blood pooling in his mouth.
‘What the hell is going on? I was clearly…’
Moments ago, Jin-young had been locked in combat with an overwhelming entity presumed to be the Demon King.
He had pushed his psionic energy to its absolute limit, preparing the strike of his lifetime.
The Demon King’s colossal hand had been about to crush him.
Against his own intention, psychokinesis had warped the space around him.
He couldn’t clearly remember what happened after that.
He had driven his mind to its breaking point.
‘And then I ended up here.’
Although the sandstorm made it hard to see his surroundings, faint voices carried through it.
Korean.
He clearly heard his native language with both ears.
It was the first time in thirty years since he had been transported to the continent of Renard.
Jin-young decided to set aside all those swirling thoughts for now.
First priority: recover his body.
His insides felt completely shaken up, as if he’d taken a direct hit to the abdomen, and no strength returned to his two broken legs.
At least his left arm was still fully functional.
As he assessed his condition, an old memory suddenly flashed in his mind.
‘This place… could it be Gangseo Hangang Park?’
April 2028—the Gangseo Hangang Park gate runaway incident.
Nearly thirty people had died that day due to the gate explosion.
The problem was that Jin-young himself had nearly died as well.
He’d later heard that hunters from the Crystal Guild, who arrived to clean up the scene, barely found him, and he spent a week hovering between life and death in intensive care.
‘With my body in this state, no wonder I passed out back then.’
Thanks to the ironclad mental strength forged on Renard, he hadn’t lost consciousness this time.
‘More importantly… if it’s 2028, that’s three years before I was sucked into Renard…’
Which meant he had come back thirty-three years into the past.
Not a return—regression.
Whether only his mind had regressed, his frail twenty-six-year-old body remained the same.
The powerless 9th-grade hunter Chae Jin-young, helpless before an Elite Rock Golem.
His physical abilities and mana capacity were just as pitiful as they had been then.
But not everything had been reset to zero.
The transcendent power dwelling in his mind.
Psionic energy.
The force that had made him a transcendent being was still intact.
In other words:
‘With this power and knowledge of the future, I can become even stronger.’
For five years after his initial awakening, he hadn’t advanced beyond grade 9.
The reason was simple: his innate physical ability and mana reserves were abysmal, and his growth potential was negligible.
That’s why, despite his unique skill “Subspace Storage,” he had been nothing more than a porter carrying other people’s luggage.
But now things were different.
‘With this power, I could dig up the truth behind the disappearance case and take down everyone involved… Wait. It’s April—so the incident hasn’t happened yet.’
Regressing to before the incident was truly fortunate.
He could stop it before his younger sibling got caught up in it.
But first, he had to take care of his own body.
SWISH—
A glass vial filled with red liquid appeared in Jin-young’s left hand.
A healing potion from his “Subspace Storage.”
Since he had regressed thirty-three years, the items he’d been storing back then were still there.
Healing potions were so expensive that he’d never dared use one lightly.
But right now, he didn’t care.
POP—
He uncorked it and chugged the potion in one go.
The moment the red liquid entered his body, the effects kicked in immediately.
His mangled organs began to slowly recover, and the broken bones in his legs started knitting back together.
The only downside was the speed—it was slow.
Of course, that was partly because his injuries were so severe.
As he leaned against a wall, waiting for his body to heal,
“Team Leader, where on earth is Jin-young? The sandstorm’s getting worse—radio contact isn’t getting through either.”
“How the hell should I know? That shuttle bastard’s probably already dead or ran off on his own.”
“He wouldn’t have run away alone.”
“It’s a Rock Golem. An elite one at that. You think a measly grade-9 could fight a Rock Golem? If he didn’t run, he’s 100% dead.”
The conversation between a worried woman and a prickly man reached Jin-young’s ears.
‘Who were they again?’
It had been thirty-three years since he last heard those voices, so the memory was hazy.
Being called “Mr. Jin-young” also felt like something from a distant lifetime.
“Team Leader, that’s a bit harsh…”
“Whatever. Visibility’s shot because of the sandstorm—let’s head back. If we keep going like this, we’ll all die pointless deaths.”
“But the civilians still haven’t fully evacuated…”
“Hey, Jin-sol. Doesn’t the team leader make sense?”
“No, sir…”
“Sigh… You think I’m doing this just to save my own skin?
Huh!”
“…I’m sorry.”
“Whew… Sorry for yelling. It’s all for your sake. Unlike that shuttle loser, you’ve got a bright future ahead of you. You can’t die here.”
“…”
“You know I care about you, right, Junior Jin-sol? I’m the only real man on this team who looks out for you.”
With that, the presence of the two faded into the distance.
Jin-young could have revealed himself, but he chose not to.
Right now, he needed to focus on recovering from his injuries—and more importantly, stopping the gate runaway.
Sssssssss…
A pitch-black, tar-like, viscous sludge was spreading across the ground.
It had already reached his feet.
This substance from another world, dubbed “creep,” was the primary culprit contaminating the land around a runaway gate.
Any human who entered the contaminated zone would be eroded by the creep and transformed into something neither human nor monster.
Unlike ordinary people, hunters possessed some resistance thanks to their mana, but it was far from absolute immunity.
The creep was only weakly toxic when it first formed, so it could be endured for a short while, but its potency grew stronger over time.
There was only one way to eliminate the vicious creep.
Defeat the boss monster of the runaway dungeon.
‘This dungeon’s boss was probably the Sand Wraith, if I remember right.’
The memory surfaced from when he had barely survived, been discharged from the hospital, and later read the documents related to the gate runaway incident.
He didn’t know exactly what it looked like.
But he’d get a feel for it once he started moving around.
Now that he had recovered enough to move, Jin-young stood up immediately.
The healing potion could only provide emergency treatment; complete recovery was impossible.
‘I need to deal with this quickly and get to a hospital.’
Using psychokinesis, Jin-young parted the sandstorm in front of him to both sides, securing clear visibility.
Then he manipulated the creep-covered ground.
CRACK-CRACK-CRACK—
Like the parting of the Red Sea, the contaminated earth split and rose upward in two halves.
Jin-young walked between the uplifted sections.
***
“Jin-sol! Shin Ji-ho! Can you hear me? Damn it… where the hell am I?”
Kim Young-jae, a grade-7 civil-service hunter assigned to cleanup at the gate runaway site, had suddenly become separated from his team.
The support team’s main role was to assist the monster-response teams rather than engage in direct combat.
In other words, they were composed of hunters with weaker fighting abilities.
Getting scattered like this was rare.
“Fucking hell. If Response Team 1 hadn’t screwed everything up…”
Kim Young-jae believed the support team had been affected because the leader of Response Team 1 had died and the team had scattered in panic.
“Ugh.”
Kim Young-jae clutched his abdomen and groaned.
His white dress shirt was stained red with blood.
It was an injury sustained from a monster he’d encountered right before being separated from Jin-sol.
He had barely managed to kill it, but with the sandstorm and the creep everywhere, threats were all around.
At least the silver lining was that no monster presence could be detected nearby.
Trying to ignore the pain, he took out a cigarette and put it in his mouth. Suddenly, a faint vibration came from the ground.
Then a tremendous rumbling followed.
RUMBLE-RUMBLE-RUMBLE…
Kim Young-jae froze, forgetting even to light his cigarette.
He had clawed his way up to grade 7, but fighting monsters was still something he wasn’t comfortable with.
“Shit… when the hell is Crystal Guild getting here?”
The role of civil-service hunters was limited to scene control and civilian evacuation support.
Dealing with powerful monsters was supposed to be the job of high-grade hunters from major guilds.
Kim Young-jae gripped his automatic rifle loaded with mana rounds tightly.
It wouldn’t even scratch something like a Rock Golem, but it could deal meaningful damage to monsters grade 7 or below.
RUMBLE-RUMBLE-RUMBLE!
The rumbling grew closer, and a human silhouette appeared through the sandstorm.
Kim Young-jae aimed his rifle at the figure.
Before it could get any closer—
RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT—
He fired a burst.
As the forty-round magazine emptied in seconds, sweat poured down Kim Young-jae’s face.
The figure didn’t fall and kept approaching.
Just as the panicked Kim Young-jae tried to reload, A man emerged through the storm.
His mouth was stained red—perhaps from blood—and he was limping.
It was the grade-9 civil-service hunter from the support team, Chae Jin-young.
Kim Young-jae blinked rapidly, unable to comprehend what had just happened.
Could every single shot have missed?
It didn’t make sense, but outwardly there were no visible gunshot wounds.
The moment he decided he bore no responsibility for Jin-young’s injuries, his attitude changed completely.
Kim Young-jae spoke with a cold, expressionless face.
“Hey, shuttle boy. Where the hell have you been hiding? Did you run off alone and get lost?”
At the voice thick with anger, Jin-young glanced around, then pointed at himself.
“Are you talking to me right now?”
“Yeah, you little shit. Who else is here? Did you eat something wrong?”
Kim Young-jae’s mood soured even more at the sight of Jin-young who seemed somehow different from usual.
This was a situation where the guy should be on his knees begging for forgiveness—what was this nonsense?
“Wait… you’re Kim Young-jae?”
At the casually spoken name, Kim Young-jae’s face twisted into something demonic.
“Kim Young-jae, you say? This bastard’s gone insane. Hey, Chae Jin-young—since when do you drop formalities with me?”
“Uh… now that I think about it, I don’t think I ever used them.”
“…”
Kim Young-jae was so dumbfounded he couldn’t find words to respond.
***
Jin-young finally remembered who the man in front of him was.
Grade-7 civil-service hunter and support team leader, Kim Young-jae.
Memories of Team Leader Kim Young-jae began surfacing one by one.
The senior who had constantly mocked and belittled him, calling him “shuttle.”
Like Jin-young, Kim Young-jae had an awkward unique ability, mediocre mana reserves, and poor physical stats—he too had been stuck without growth for three years.
His greatest life achievement was being two grades above the grade-9 Jin-young, and he wore that pathetic badge proudly while hurling verbal abuse and committing acts of harassment.
That was the sum of all Jin-young’s memories about the man named Kim Young-jae.
“Hmm… No matter how hard I try to recall, not a single good memory comes up.”
Jin-young said, looking straight at Kim Young-jae.
Still, he didn’t feel an immediate urge to kill him.
Compared to the countless pieces of trash he had encountered over thirty years on the continent of Renard, this guy was almost cute.
Kim Young-jae, momentarily speechless, shook his head once before speaking.
“Hah… you worthless trash. Once this situation is over, you’re dead. For now, just hand over a healing potion.”
“I don’t have any.”
“What?”
“I almost died, so I used it.”
“What did you just say? You used a healing potion?”
Veins began bulging in Kim Young-jae’s eyes.
“Is there a problem?”
“You fucking bastard—do you have any idea how expensive that is? How dare a lowly grade-9 like you just gulp it down? Did you think I entrusted it to you so you could use it yourself? If you’re a shuttle, act like one!”
Watching Kim Young-jae explode in rage, Jin-young felt a strangely refreshing sensation.
It had been a long time since anyone had dared threaten him.
He hadn’t seen anything like it in the last ten years or so on Renard.
Because anyone who tried had long since had their necks snapped and died.
“Wow, quite the temper. Is it because of that wound in your stomach? I’ll finish off the boss quickly and take you to the hospital, so—”
SHING—
“Argh… Just die, you worthless trash!”
Kim Young-jae drew the longsword from his waist and charged at Jin-young.
The sharp blade was a split second from slicing Jin-young’s neck.
SWISH—
“Huh…?”
Suddenly, both of Kim Young-jae’s arms bent backward, and the sword slipped from his grasp against his will.
The sword, now freely escaping his hand, seemed about to fall to the ground—
SLASH—
But instead, it sliced cleanly through both of Kim Young-jae’s legs as it passed.
SPLURT—
Blood sprayed from the neatly severed cross-sections of his thighs.
“ARRRGH!”
A scream burst out involuntarily from pain so intense it made him forget the wound in his abdomen.
But the scream didn’t last long.
“Shut up. You’re too loud.”
Jin-young’s psychokinesis forcibly sealed the man’s lips.
Now legless and collapsed on the ground, Kim Young-jae thrashed even more violently.
Dozens of small tendrils extending from the creep were trying to cover his body.
He desperately emitted mana to push the tendrils away, but his mana was not infinite.
Watching this, Jin-young used psychokinesis to lift Kim Young-jae into the air.
“Mmph! Mmmph!”
“It’s been a while since someone overestimated themselves and attacked me like this. Let me think for a moment about what to do with you.”
On Renard, he had always eliminated anyone who posed a threat.
That was a world where it was allowed.
But here—in the Republic of Korea—it was not.
Jin-young also preferred to quietly build his strength rather than live recklessly.
“Hey, Kim Young-jae. Open your eyes nicely. If you do, I might feel even a tiny bit of desire to let you live.”
“Mmph! Mmmph!”
Tears streamed from Kim Young-jae’s eyes as he looked at Jin-young with a desperate plea for life.
“Hmm… the look in your eyes passes, at least. If I spare you, will you live a good life?”
Nod nod.
Kim Young-jae shook his head up and down as if his neck might break.
So even a piece of trash like this wants to live.
“Oh, really? But how are you going to explain your missing legs?”
“…”
At Jin-young’s question, Kim Young-jae’s face went blank—he clearly hadn’t thought that far.
“Yeah, this won’t work after all. Just die.”
“Mmmph!”
“Ah, for the record, I’m not the one killing you, so don’t hold too much of a grudge.”
Jin-young dropped the man back to the ground. If left like this, the creep would turn him into a “demonized” being, and there was no telling what harm he might cause to others.
There was also a chance Crystal Guild might find him right before the transformation completed.
That would be even worse.
Jin-young pulled a massive boulder from the ground and spoke.
“I’ll get revenge for you—on the Rock Golem that killed you.”
A shadow fell over the face of Kim Young-jae, lying on the ground.
And then—
WHOOSH—SPLAT!
The boulder slammed down, crushing him completely.