When the invitation offer arrived from the ‘Recycling Center’, Lee Gilyoung thought the moment he had been waiting for had finally come.

Even if it was a trap, that was fine. As long as he could see hyung one more time.

“Don’t you dare move. If you use that thing, I’ll seriously kill you.”

When Lee Jihye pointed at the invitation wavering in midair and warned him, Lee Gilyoung’s expression hardened.

“Why. It came for me.”

“Do you have any idea what might happen if you go there now? Do you even know what’s there?”

“Hyung will be there.”

As Lee Gilyoung murmured lightly, Lee Jihye flicked him on the head.

“Get a grip. What do you think you’re going to do if you go?”

“I’m pretty strong too, you know?”

“Strong or not, this isn’t a place where we can use a hundred percent of our strength.”

“Even so―”

“What are you going to do if something happens to you there?”

“Nothing’s going to happen.”

“Are you confident you can handle it if all the Plausibility gets tangled up? You know exactly why Master and the unnies and oppas are hesitating to interfere with the world line, don’t you? What if you go there and kick up a Backlash. What if the scenario development gets twisted and everyone dies? What if that makes it so Reader-aji can never come back―”

“Okay.”

“What?”

“I said okay, so stop.”

With his head drooped, Lee Gilyoung’s lips twitched. Lee Jihye stared at him for a moment, then lightly set a hand on his shoulder.

“I get how you feel too.”

“…….”

“It’s not like I don’t want to go there either, you know? But first we have to talk to the unnies and oppas. So stop thinking weird thoughts and stay put. Got it?”

“…….”

“Answer.”

“I got it.”

Watching Lee Gilyoung for a moment with uneasy eyes, Lee Jihye finally let out a sigh and disappeared toward the situation room.

Lee Gilyoung looked up at the message wavering in midair.

[An invitation has arrived.]
[Filtering is partially lifted.]
[Someone has invited you to the scenario ‘Philia Academy’.]
[Through this scenario, you can meet the ‘Demon King of Salvation’ once more.]
[Do you accept the invitation?]

He read that message over and over again. Reaching his hand toward the message and pulling it back, over and over.

“Shit……”

Hesitating like that, Lee Gilyoung finally gave up and spat out a curse.

He knew it too. That what Lee Jihye had said was actually right. That he shouldn’t act rashly here.

Just wait for Jihye to come back. Stop causing trouble on his own.

He mustn’t ruin everything because of his own mistake.

Repeating those thoughts to himself, Lee Gilyoung walked off somewhere. The place he headed to was the training room located underground. Among them, the one that had been built recently: the ‘Room of Time’.

The name of the room had been given by Lee Gilyoung, who liked comics.

「Inside this room, time flows more slowly.」

He had named it himself, but this was his first time entering the room.

A room remodeled from a place that imitated a ‘time stratum’ of a dark dimension, a place known in another dimension as the ‘Tower of Nightmares’.

The moment he stepped through the portal into the room, Lee Gilyoung’s breath caught in his throat.

It felt like inhaling compressed air. The overwhelming density of time pressed down on his existence.

The only bastard who would train in a place like this was obviously him.

Lee Gilyoung walked over to the equipment rack in the corner of the training room. There, the sacred relics and SSS-grade equipment that the <Kim Dokja Company> had collected thus far were on display.

Chamado.
Dáinsleif.
Bingryunhwan.
…….

From the treasured blades of <First Murim> to sacred relics of Norse mythology, projectiles said to have been wielded by the previous Demon King……

Among the countless armaments, there was also one weapon he knew very well at the center.

Cheonchongungom (Heavenly Sword of Gathering Clouds and Rain).

Its blade was honed sharp, ready to be used at any time, just like its owner’s temperament.

To the right of that sword was another blade.

Unbreakable Conviction.

The last weapon Kim Dokja had used. But contrary to its name, the sword was snapped clean in half.

Staring at the blade that wasn’t even two handspans long, Lee Gilyoung reached toward the hilt.

A blade that hadn’t been honed for a long time.

Clutching the hilt tightly, Lee Gilyoung drew a trajectory through the air.

Kim Dokja had saved his companions countless times with this sword, yet in the end he had not been able to save himself.

「Kim Dokja used this sword to cut down the ‘Oldest Dream’.」

Strictly speaking, he’d failed to cut it down, and the price of that failure had been the sword breaking in half.

Lee Gilyoung didn’t know what Kim Dokja had always been thinking as he held this blade.

He only felt that he could understand Kim Dokja, at least in the moment when Kim Dokja had tried to cut down his own childhood.

“You’re wrong.”

At the voice that came from the darkness, he flinched and turned his head, and there, a pitch-black man was standing.

Adjusting his grip on the hilt, Lee Gilyoung replied curtly,

“Then how are you supposed to do it.”

Without a word, Yu Joonghyuk gestured toward the air. Then the ‘Cheonchongungom’ hanging on the wall floated up and was drawn into Yu Joonghyuk’s hand.

A realm called ‘Telekinetic Reach’ in Murim.

Lee Gilyoung grumbled.

“If you’re here just to show off some cheap trick―”

Brilliant sword light split the darkness.

At that orderly trajectory, Lee Gilyoung unconsciously swallowed his words.

Sword strikes scattered like falling meteors.

On that fleeting line segment, Yu Joonghyuk’s history was inscribed. Cutting down countless stars, knocking them from the sky, and in the end, toppling even the sky that held those stars―

Did Yu Joonghyuk remember everything he had cut down to reach that trajectory.

He suddenly felt it was unfair, and faint despair followed.

Standing before the overwhelming history Yu Joonghyuk had lived through, he himself felt small.

“You black bastard.”

Watching Yu Joonghyuk swing Cheonchongungom in silence, Lee Gilyoung asked,

“Why are you so strong.”

After tracing the same trajectory several more times, Yu Joonghyuk calmly answered.

“Just get up at a set time every day and go to bed at a set time every day.”

“What bullshit is that.”

“Use each day regularly. Make it so your body gains habits that move ahead of your will.”

“Other than that kind of self-help-book crap, don’t you have any other advice?”

To be honest, he hadn’t really asked expecting to hear some proper advice. He just wanted to hear something, anything, to calm his tangled thoughts for the moment.

But after thinking about something for a short while, Yu Joonghyuk said this.

“Regret often.”

“Regret?”

“Think about the things you could have changed if you’d been just a bit stronger.”

He hadn’t expected to hear that kind of answer, so Lee Gilyoung replied in fluster.

“I already do that all the time though.”

“Regret better.”

Honestly, if it was Yu Joonghyuk of all people, he’d thought there would be some kind of special mental doctrine.

Everyone has regrets. Things they failed to protect. Things they couldn’t change.

Lee Gilyoung had those kinds of memories as well. But now he was afraid to summon those memories.

“What if all my feelings get worn out.”

“Then make it so they don’t.”

“And how do you do that.”

Cheonchongungom suddenly halted in the air.

Yu Joonghyuk stared quietly at the point of the blade ➤ NоvеⅠight ➤ (Read more on our source) for a moment, then answered.

“Every morning when I wake up, I think that I was just born anew.”

“What are you talking about? You want people to wish you happy birthday every day or something?”

At those words, Yu Joonghyuk gave no reply.

He just kept drawing line after steady line through the air.

Watching that line, Lee Gilyoung felt a strange sensation.

Maybe Yu Joonghyuk was still regressing even now.

Even after the regressor trait had disappeared, maybe he was still repeating a regression no one knew about.

“You should do the same.”

“What?”

“Pick up the sword.”

“You saying we should go at it right now?”

Gripping Unbreakable Conviction, Lee Gilyoung growled. The two figures crossed in the darkness, and the crack of impact rang out.

Of course, the one who got knocked back was Lee Gilyoung.

“You damn coward! I barely know how to use a sword!”

“Get up.”

With a shout, Lee Gilyoung charged again. Unbreakable Conviction drew a fierce arc through the air, and Yu Joonghyuk lightly swung his sword.

Once again, rolling across the floor, Lee Gilyoung shouted,

“What is this! You’re using some weird trick, aren’t you!”

“I just swung the sword.”

“Don’t give me that! You hit me insanely hard!”

“Again.”

Over and over, Lee Gilyoung got back up and threw himself at him. He swung Unbreakable Conviction, already broken, again and again. His breath grew short, his heart pounded violently. A nameless exhilaration began to flow through his whole body.

Clashing their swords, again and again, Lee Gilyoung asked,

“If I keep repeating this, can I get as strong as you?”

“No.”

“If I work really, really hard.”

“……”

“If I work even harder than you’re training right now! Then!”

Unbreakable Conviction and Cheonchongungom collided, sending up black-and-white waves of mana. The two entangled blades were answering in place of Lee Gilyoung and Yu Joonghyuk.

「Will I someday be able to save Kim Dokja.」

Lee Gilyoung didn’t speak anymore, and Yu Joonghyuk didn’t listen. Even so, the same sentence was inscribed atop the histories of the two of them.

“If you worked that hard.”

Lightly shifting his position, Yu Joonghyuk pointed the blade at his own ankle.

“You might be able to catch up to about here.”

“You stingy bastard.”

Lee Gilyoung let out a hollow laugh.

“How long would it take to go a bit higher than that?”

“With your talent, maybe about a hundred years.”

A hundred years.

Considering how long Yu Joonghyuk had been training the sword, it was an extremely generous evaluation. For the regressor Yu Joonghyuk, a hundred years was nothing more than “just a hundred years”.

But for Lee Gilyoung, it was different.

“That’s way too late.”

“……”

“That’s way too late. It has to be right now.”

Once more, the two blades collided, and Unbreakable Conviction flew through the air from Lee Gilyoung’s grasp.

Reaching out with his other hand and snatching the sword, Yu Joonghyuk spoke.

“That’s not going to happen.”

Having had his sword taken away, Lee Gilyoung asked in a flustered voice,

“Then what am I supposed to do?”

“Regret. And get stronger. You’re still young, so you can afford to do a few more things you’ll regret.”

Standing firmly in the darkness, Yu Joonghyuk flicked Cheonchongungom. Spinning in the air, the sword planted itself precisely in the ground in front of where Lee Gilyoung stood.

Blankly, Lee Gilyoung stared down at the sword.

“There are still people here who’ll put up with your childish crap.”

When he jerked his head up, Yu Joonghyuk had his back turned.

Lee Gilyoung stared at that back, then looked down at Cheonchongungom, which Yu Joonghyuk had thrown. Biting his lip hard, wiping his eyes lightly, he said,

“You black bastard.”

“…….”

“I’m off. Just try tattling on me to the girls.”

With those last words, Lee Gilyoung grabbed Cheonchongungom and bolted out.

Yu Joonghyuk watched the entrance where the boy had disappeared, then, after staring for a moment at the pitch-black ceiling of the training room, calmly moved his steps and came out of the training room.

Someone was waiting for him at the entrance.

“You should’ve stopped him.”

It was Yoo Sangah.

“It was a dam that was going to burst someday.”

“And what, you go throw a bomb at the dam that’s going to burst someday?”

In the distance, a portal whirling like a storm could be seen outside the window.

A portal leading to another world line―to the world of the 41st round.

With hardly a moment’s hesitation, Lee Gilyoung had kicked off the ground and jumped in.

“I gave him special permission. That kid was born anew today.”

“What are you talking about?”

Looking down at the Unbreakable Conviction still in his hand, Yu Joonghyuk said,

“There’s one more person who’s going to regret tomorrow.”