As if he had been waiting for him, the demon noble turned calmly toward the capitol entrance.

But Yu Joonghyuk did not move a single step. His past lives were telling him.

That is a trap.

Even if it wasn’t a trap, he did not believe the words of a demon king’s underling.

“Prophet.”

Despite Yu Joonghyuk’s call, Anna Croft gave no answer.

When he glanced over, Anna Croft’s complexion had gone pale, and she was staggering.

“For some reason, [Future Sight] isn’t working.”

[Future Sight] wasn’t working. Even in the last regression, Anna Croft’s skill had sometimes broken down.

But at such a convenient timing as this—

After coolly analyzing Anna Croft’s condition, Yu Joonghyuk made a quick judgment.

“Useless every time it matters.”

By now, the demon noble had gotten more than twenty paces away.

Through [Sage’s Eye], Yu Joonghyuk had already grasped its information.

“Demon Viscount Niheterida.”

It was a “viscount-class demon.”

By scenario difficulty standards, a being that should only appear around the eighth scenario.

Such a creature had said,

“The Demon King of Salvation is waiting.”

Inside that capitol, there was a true “agent” of a demon king.

Plausibility-wise, a symbolic body was less likely than a retainer capable of demon-king possession.

In that case, one had to assume at least a count-class demon was present.

Yu Joonghyuk drew a light breath. With each repetition of breathing, the mana condensed throughout his body revolved again and again.

A full-body circulation.

Ordinarily, a “full circulation” meant circulating the mana anchored in the dantian through all the capillaries.

But in the Heaven-Sundering Sword School, “full circulation” was used with a different meaning.

Only when the circulating mana drew a complete circle did the flesh itself become a single eye.

An eye that perceives the world through expanded senses.

Through that eye, humans behold the sky. They realize that the sky, which had seemed only beautiful and vast, was in truth a hideous prison of scenarios.

「“To recognize that this entire world is nothing but a prank of that sky—that is the entry to Heaven-Sundering called the Full Circulation.”」

At his current stage, it was still difficult to count the stars in the sky. But to count the demons on the ground was not hard.

“Four in total?”

Startled, the demon viscount Niheterida looked back.

Then, atop the capitol’s stone architecture, three statues emitted a sinister light.

[Demon Viscount ‘Vrykolakas’ reveals hostility toward you.]
[Demon Viscount ‘Skoupidia’ reveals hostility toward you.]
[Demon Viscount ‘Myrmecoleon’ reveals hostility toward you.]

No less than four demon viscounts.

In no regression had he ever faced four viscount-class demons at once in the seventh scenario.

Rrrrrrumble.

Under the oppressive weight of the demon species pressing down on the area, Anna Croft bit her lip hard.

“They’re the demons who killed my companions.”

These demons were likely summoned in the fifth scenario. If the difficulty was like this already from the fifth scenario, it was only natural that no nation could handle it.

When Moon Halberd shone with a keen light, the viscounts glanced at one another as if finding it strange.

Rrrrumble.

Had it been the last regression, or the one before that, Yu Joonghyuk would never have confronted them. Fighting four viscount-class demons in the seventh scenario was tantamount to suicide.

But Yu Joonghyuk did not retreat. Because this regression was neither the 39th nor the 40th.

This world was the 41st.

The instant Yu Joonghyuk’s figure vanished, the three demon viscounts drew their weapons at once toward him.

Vrykolakas his long primary spear, Skoupidia twin daggers, and Myrmecoleon a swollen cudgel gripped tight.

Mana steeped in deep evil karma erupted in a semicircle centered on the three demons.

Yu Joonghyuk’s Agility was at a level touching the scenario’s limit. Even so, to the viscount demons’ eyes, his speed was plainly visible.

All their pupils fixed at once on a single point in midair.

“Right there?”

Spear, twin daggers, and cudgel struck the same point in the air at the same time. With a merciless explosion, the demon viscounts laughed. They thought Yu Joonghyuk had been crushed without a trace.

But when the black ether that had dyed the air vanished, Yu Joonghyuk was not there.

“What—”

Impossible. There was no way a mere incarnation could evade the eyes of evolved demon nobility.

At the instant demon viscount Myrmecoleon sensed something was wrong and opened his mouth—

Skak.

With a sound like the world splitting in two, the head of demon viscount Myrmecoleon flew off.

For the first time, agitation rippled over the demons’ faces.

Say he slipped from their sight—fine. But a viscount-class demon had been felled in a single strike.

“Absurd—”

But for the current Yu Joonghyuk, it was “not absurd.” The power he was manifesting now was obtained at a price befitting it.

[‘Truth’s Constraint’ activates.]
One of his three “tale engravings,” “Truth’s Constraint.”
[Some of your memories are sealed.]

A “tale engraving” that manifests power at the cost of sealing parts of memories from the last regression.

[All your composite stats temporarily break through the scenario’s limit criteria!]
[Explosive power surges through your entire body!]

One memory that he had cherished in his head was fading within Yu Joonghyuk. A memory he offered up.

「“Captain. A birthday present. It’s a wristband I treasure……”」

Lee Hyunsung of the 22nd regression, smiling with an honest face. The worn wristband he had handed over vanished from his mind. The temperature of his heart dropped, and his chest turned endlessly cold.

He would likely never recall that smile again. Instead, Yu Joonghyuk would remember something else.

A memory that would not disappear, not until at last his long journey of regression ended and his life was done.

「“Captain. In the next regression, please avenge us.”」

“I will grant your wish, Lee Hyunsung.”

He would remember only sorrow.

With the hatred born of that sorrow as fuel, he would stand against this world’s sky.

“You cur! How dare you!”

Demon viscount Skoupidia, aghast, swung twin daggers. The jet-black gang qi beading at the dagger tip grazed Yu Joonghyuk’s cheek.

But faster still, Moon Halberd had already pierced Skoupidia’s heart.

Thunk.

Spewing pitch-black blood, Skoupidia died on the spot. Vrykolakas and Niheterida, enraged like fiends, charged together.

It was an attack made in readiness for mutual destruction.

The dark fog Niheterida produced blanketed their sight, and Vrykolakas’s long spear split into a dozen, flying in from all directions. Several pikes grazed Yu Joonghyuk’s thigh and waist.

Skak.

Vrykolakas’s head fell.

Now only demon viscount Niheterida remained.

Reeling as he backed away, Niheterida spoke.

“What are you doing. Why—why are you hostile to us? The demon king bears you no enmity!”

Abandoning even the pride of demonkind, Niheterida cried out as if in a frenzy.

“W-why are you doing this— the ‘Demon King of Salvation’ clearly said it would be fine if we gave his name—”

Realizing the turn of the tide, Niheterida took a hint and whirled around to flee.

[Exclusive skill, ‘Vermilion Bird Steps Lv.10,’ activates!]

Yu Joonghyuk’s thigh muscles writhed like a beast once more. With a thunderous roar, his step drove deep into the ground. Wheeling once in midair, Yu Joonghyuk focused his mana. [Heaven-Sundering Gang Qi], spinning with centrifugal force, shot from Moon Halberd’s tip.

[Exclusive skill, ‘Flash Heaven-Sundering Lv.8,’ activates!]

The mana gathered at the halberd’s tip became a flash itself and bored a large hole through Niheterida’s upper body.

[‘Truth’s Constraint’ ends.]

No sooner had the fully circulated mana been spent than Yu Joonghyuk took a “High-Grade Mana Recovery Potion” from his breast and drank.

The liquid went down in gulps and spread through his whole body.

With a face still bearing a trace of fatigue, Yu Joonghyuk lightly wiped his mouth and immediately examined the equipment items the demons had dropped.

“Ancient Demon’s Necklace.”

“Half-Gloves of Super Strength.”

“Dark Fog Belt.”

All three were not bad gear.

The “Half-Gloves of Super Strength,” which increased Strength, suited Lee Hyunsung, whose mainstay was close-quarters combat, and the “Dark Fog Belt” was suitable for Yu Joonghyuk himself to wear.

“This one should go to that guy.”

The “Ancient Demon’s Necklace,” which increased stun resistance, belonged to the guy who fainted at the drop of a hat.

Useless as he was right now, if this was strapped on him, it would help a little.

Having finished the re-equip in an instant and risen to his feet, Yu Joonghyuk drew a look of disbelief from Anna, who asked,

“What exactly did you do?”

“There’s nothing for you. You didn’t help in the fight.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

In truth, Yu Joonghyuk knew what Anna Croft was astonished at.

It was understandable if she couldn’t believe it. The divine might he had just shown was at a level incomparable to any incarnation in the same scenario.

“Don’t tell me you used a ‘tale engraving’? Have you forgotten what became of the villains who used that?”

Yu Joonghyuk also knew the ends of those “villains.” Some of them he had sealed because he could not find a way to kill them.

“You’re borrowing a ‘tale’ that doesn’t belong to you. That power will gnaw at your soul and your memories.”

“None of your concern.”

“What did you lose in exchange?”

Yu Joonghyuk did not answer, but Anna Croft could tell what he had lost.

「“Prophet. I need a memory. Use [Retrospective Sight].”」

For a regressor, “memory” is the whole of existence.

“Why would you do that…… sealed memories do not return! Now you have lost that memory forever. Do you even know what that means?”

Worlds that had vanished exist only through his memory, and he too lives by maintaining his identity through not forgetting those memories.

Such a Yu Joonghyuk had offered up his memory as the price.

“You will end up becoming someone else. You will become unable to know what you are.”

“You speak as if you know what you are.”

As if any further conversation were meaningless, Yu Joonghyuk started striding forward again. With every step he left, a demon’s bloodprint was stamped.

Anna Croft stared vacantly at the footprints he left.

If he were to fail, what meaning would these footprints have.

If someday even she reached the moment she gave up reading the past with [Retrospective Sight]. When that time came, who would remember the long failure record of that regressor.

“Wait. I said wait, Conqueror!”

Snapping out of her reverie belatedly, Anna Croft quickly chased after Yu Joonghyuk.

But before they had gone far, Yu Joonghyuk came to an abrupt halt. There was no need to ask what was wrong. For a being was walking out from inside the capitol.

A dreadful miasma that made one’s whole body crawl.

“Run, Prophet.”

For the first time, Yu Joonghyuk’s expression hardened.

“A ‘marquis’-class demon.”

*

Anna Croft’s story ended there.

“Hold on. So what happened?”

Weren’t all the important details missing.

What happened to Yu Joonghyuk, who fought a marquis-class.

Given that such a thing occurred, how could she assert the party was safe.

So who, on that side, was the “Demon King of Salvation”?

In the end, ❀ Nоvеlігht ❀ (Don’t copy, read here) unable to bear it, I pressed her.

“Don’t tell me you threw Yu Joonghyuk there and ran away alone?”

“Before I tell what came next, there is something I must ask you.”

I already knew what “question” Anna Croft would ask.

From the start, she began this story to buy time.

The incarnations who had surrounded the outside of the parlor from a while ago were proof of that.

Of course, no matter how many incarnations surrounded this place, they were no great threat to me. That was only if we were measuring merely the incarnations’ combat power.

“We possess a ‘tactical nuke.’”

“And?”

A tactical nuke. It seemed they had somehow secured a modern weapon from the pre-scenario era.

“You’re not thinking of dropping that on the Washington Dome, are you? You know it’s useless to do something like that.”

A nuclear weapon of that level of destructive power was impossible to activate under the scenario’s structure.

The moment they pressed the launch button toward the Washington Dome, the nuclear weapon would cease to function due to the backlash of plausibility.

But now, instead of launching a tactical nuke at the Washington Dome, she had brought that weapon to me.

“I heard from Christina. That you are a demon king’s ‘retainer.’”

No doubt Anna Croft had made up her mind. That if it came to it, she would use that “nuclear weapon” here.

“Is the name of the demon king you serve the ‘Demon King of Salvation’?”