Chapter 5: Hunt the Hero (2)

4048 days.

[You have died.]

4047 days.

[You have died.]

4046 days.

[You have died.]

Just as Rome wasn’t built overnight, the Fire Emperor’s legend wasn’t made in a couple of days. I was erasing his seemingly eternal legacy from the Tower. It was difficult, of course, but it wasn’t impossible.

“Fuck...!” I screamed as I killed myself.

Whenever I wanted to give up, I recalled the moment the Fire Emperor had burned me to death as if I were a moth. It brought back the pain, the frustration, and the anger I had felt at the time. He was the one who had set the fire in the old slum, but he had the audacity to come back and blatantly demand money for his help.

I’ll kill you. I stabbed myself in the neck with my dagger. I’ll kill you, Yoo Soo-Ha!

I was killing myself, but it also meant the Fire Emperor was closer to his death.

[You have died.]

[Rewinding 24 hours.]

4040 days, 4039 days, 4038 days, 4037 days... I started to lose track of how many times I’d killed myself. It felt like my work wasn’t going to end, like an hourglass that never ran out of sand. The Fire Emperor’s tower of accomplishments seemed solid like a pyramid that didn't crumble down on its own, but it began to crack.

“The Fire Emperor has cleared the thirty-ninth floor on his own!”

“The Fire Emperor has created another legend by singlehandedly clearing the thirty-eighth floor!”

“Yoo Soo-Ha, the Fire Emperor, has officially become the first Korean to earn the highest place in the Hunter Ranking.”

...

“With the disappearance of the Sword Star, the seat of the world’s Rank 1 Hunter is empty. Who shall inherit his seat?”

“All foreign experts unanimously agree that the most likely candidate is Yoo Soo-Ha from Korea.”

“The unassailable tenth floor has been cleared. Who is this mysterious hero?”

“It has been twenty-two days since the Sword Star went missing. Could this be the start of the greatest chaos the Hunter industry has ever seen?”

The clippings on my studio walls, the trophies of the Fire Emperor’s history, disappeared one by one.

“The Fire Emperor has created another legend by singlehandedly clearing the thirty-eighth floor!”

“Yoo Soo-Ha, the Fire Emperor, has officially become the first Korean to earn the highest place in the Hunter Ranking.”

...

“With the disappearance of the Sword Star, the seat of the world’s Rank 1 Hunter is empty. Who shall inherit his seat?”

“All foreign experts unanimously agree that the most likely candidate is Yoo Soo-Ha from Korea.”

“The unassailable tenth floor has been cleared. Who is this mysterious hero?”

“It has been twenty-two days since the Sword Star went missing. Could this be the start of the greatest chaos the Hunter industry has ever seen?”

One after another, the clippings disappeared like an old man’s teeth, revealing the wallpapers behind.

“The Fire Emperor has created another legend by singlehandedly clearing the thirty-seventh floor!”

“Yoo Soo-Ha, the Fire Emperor, has officially become the first Korean to earn the highest place in the Hunter Ranking.”

...

“With the disappearance of the Sword Star, the seat of the world’s Rank 1 Hunter is empty. Who shall inherit his seat?”

“All foreign experts unanimously agree that the most likely candidate is Yoo Soo-Ha from Korea.”

“The unassailable tenth floor has been cleared. Who is this mysterious hero?”

“It has been twenty-two days since the Sword Star went missing. Could this be the start of the greatest chaos the Hunter industry has ever seen?”

They continued to vanish.

I see the end now!

I still had a long way to go, but... it was okay. It was becoming clear that the psychotic Fire Emperor wasn’t immortal or indestructible. Then I could keep going as long as I needed to.

It isn’t impossible!

I swung my dagger again, eliminating the Fire Emperor’s time of clearing the Tower’s thirty-seventh floor.

“Yoo Soo-Ha, the Fire Emperor, has officially become the first Korean to earn the highest place in the Hunter Ranking.”

...

“With the disappearance of the Sword Star, the seat of the world’s Rank 1 Hunter is empty. Who shall inherit his seat?”

“All foreign experts unanimously agree that the most likely candidate is Yoo Soo-Ha from Korea.”

“The unassailable tenth floor has been cleared. Who is this mysterious hero?”

“It has been twenty-two days since the Sword Star went missing. Could this be the start of the greatest chaos the Hunter industry has ever seen?”

Next was when the Fire Emperor became the best Hunter in the world.

“With the disappearance of the Sword Star, the seat of the world’s Rank 1 Hunter is empty. Who shall inherit his seat?”

“All foreign experts unanimously agree that the most likely candidate is Yoo Soo-Ha from Korea.”

“The unassailable tenth floor has been cleared. Who is this mysterious hero?”

“It has been twenty-two days since the Sword Star went missing. Could this be the start of the greatest chaos the Hunter industry has ever seen?”

I eliminated it.

“The unassailable tenth floor has been cleared. Who is this mysterious hero?”

“It has been twenty-two days since the Sword Star went missing. Could this be the start of the greatest chaos the Hunter industry has ever seen?”

And I did it again.

“It has been twenty-two days since the Sword Star went missing. Could this be the start of the greatest chaos the Hunter industry has ever seen?”

[You have died.]

Finally, my old dagger was as good as new again, and my hands were also less wrinkly. I had moved from studio to studio in the past, so I got poorer as I became younger, leaving me in a studio that was much smaller than my previous one.

When I went to the bathroom to take a short break, I could see a much younger reflection of myself in the mirror.

“Ah...”

And there was nothing on my walls. All of the newspaper and magazine clippings were gone. It was completely empty. I had actually erased the name “Fire Emperor” from history.

“I did it,” I blankly mumbled. “I came back...”

It was May 6th, eleven years ago. I returned to a month before Yoo Soo-Ha got his Skill.

***

I don’t need to hesitate or wait.

A hoodie and sweatpants. That was everything I had in my early twenties, and I put them on like armor.

However, I didn’t...feel thrilled that I’d come back to the past.

Yoo Soo-Ha... I won’t let my guard down until I’ve killed that guy....

I’d killed myself 4090 times to return to this day. It was forty times more than I had planned. It also took longer because of my breaks in between deaths. I had also collected every piece of information about Yoo Soo-Ha I could find by repeating May 6th ten times.

11 A.M.

That was when Yoo Soo-Ha usually woke up. Today was no different. He had a deep frown on his face right from the start of the day, probably because he had gulped down four bottles of beer yesterday.

2 P.M.

Yoo Soo-Ha left his studio. His apartment building was popular among Class F Hunters. Low-Class Hunters were often killed during their hunts, so the landlord leased the studios with low rent and high deposits. He was a great businessman.

3 P.M.

Yoo Soo-Ha began hunting slimes in the hunting ground of the Tower’s second floor. They didn’t pay well.

At 3:11 P.M., Yoo Soo-Ha grumbled, “Ah, fuck. When will I get to be famous like the Sword Star...?”

“Gosh, hunting slimes is really boring,” Yoo Soo-Ha muttered four minutes later.

Twenty-one-year-old Yoo Soo-Ha was an ordinary Class F Hunter who hoped to win the jackpot someday. He was nothing like the thirty-two-year-old Fire Emperor.

“I wish I could win the lottery...”

Yoo Soo-Ha’s wish was actually going to come true soon.

The Merchant Association, also known as MA, was the only one that could issue a lottery within the Tower. The winner was announced every week, and all of their names were recorded by the MA. That list was soon going to include a young man who would one day be known as the Fire Emperor. He was going to be so lucky that he would win twice in a row. Although the truth was that it was the first thing he was going to do with his time regression Skill.

And he will win it in three weeks and then again four weeks from today.

However, the Yoo Soo-Ha whom I was watching, was not going to have that future anymore.

You’ll die here today.

Yoo Soo-Ha was going to head to a different hunting ground at 5:31 P.M. Maybe he thought he would get nowhere in life if he only hunted slimes. The new hunting ground was a little more remote and dangerous, so rookie Hunters rarely went there. No one except for Yoo Soo-Ha was going to be there for 36 minutes.

...He’s here.

I had been waiting for him here.

It’s him.

Yoo Soo-Ha swaggered in, yawning. I had traveled back eleven years, but I still didn’t fail to recognize him every time. It wasn’t because I had great eyes; Yoo Soo-Ha looked the same even after eleven years.

He must have found an elixir of eternal youth or something.

I actually wanted to thank him for being such a greedy pig!

Come.

My heart pounded so hard that it hurt, but I suppressed it.

“H-hey, Mr. Hunter!” I said. “Please help me...!”

“Huh?” Yoo Soo-Ha looked at me.

“I got attacked by the wolves... Sob. Please help me. Do you have a potion you can spare...?”

I was covered in blood. It belonged to the monsters I had hunted in advance, but I would look like a rookie Hunter who was about to die in other people’s eyes, including Yoo Soo-Ha’s.

“Ah, shit. What? You already messed with the monsters in this area? Fuck, I won’t be able to hunt anything today.”

“Pl-please... Do you have any potions—”

“Are you freaking kidding me? You’re the reason why I have to go home dirt poor today. And you’re asking for my potion?” Yoo Soo-Ha approached, sighing. “How much are you going to give me?”

“What?”

“How much are you going to give me for my potion, mister? I don’t do charity, so do I have a reason to donate this expensive potion to some dude I’ve never met before? I don’t really think so.” Yoo Soo-Ha pulled out a plastic bottle with the Alchemist Office’s label and dangled it in front of me.

Red liquid sloshed inside the bottle. It was a health recovery potion that cost twenty gold a bottle. The office also offered a set of five recovery potions that cost nineteen gold.

“I-I’ll give you twenty gold... I’ll pay you right now. Please—”

“Wow, you’re one stingy dude, aren’t you?” Yoo Soo-Ha crouched down and met my eyes. “Can’t you tell what’s going on? You’re about to die, and this potion will save you. And you’re going to buy your life only with twenty gold? Is that how much your life is worth?”

“Umm...”

“I know it’s harsh, but think about it. If I leave right here, you’ll die, mister. Unless you want that to happen, you have to pay the right price.”

Yeah, I knew that already.

“F-forty gold...”

“Just give me everything you have right now.”

I knew what kind of a person he was.

“Well, you can’t even move your hands, so I guess you’re in too much of a mess to give it to me even if you wanted to. Don’t worry, I’ll do it for you. I can do that much.” Yoo Soo-Ha reached out and went rummaging through my pockets, making sure to check my hoodie as well.

When he finally found my leather wallet in my pants pocket, he grinned. “Let’s see. One gold, two gold, three gold... Hmm. It looks like sixty gold in total. Why are you so poor, mister? You should carry around more than that.”

“Urgh... That’s all my savings...”

“It’s okay. I’ll put it to good use.” Yoo Soo-Ha stroked my head after putting my wallet in his pocket.

Just like how he had done—no, he was going to do 4050 days later as he burned me to death.

“That’s just life, isn’t it?” Yoo Soo-Ha put his recovery potion back in his pocket, despite his promise. Instead, he pulled out a knife. It was a tool that was used to kill people, not save them.

Ha. I looked up at Yoo Soo-Ha, but I wasn’t angry. I just couldn’t believe he was the same as ever.

He seemed to understand my reaction in a different way.

“Don’t give me that look, Mister,” he said with a shrug. “I thought about giving you the potion, but... you might take revenge on me later, you know. I don’t want that to happen. People shouldn’t live looking over their shoulders. Since you also saw my face, you need to die.”

Yoo Soo-Ha never stopped grinning. I had spent ten years worshiping him as a hero, and I had been so jealous of him; I had only gotten to see his back on the screen before any of this, but I had desperately wanted to become like him. It turned out that a hero’s bare face was much uglier than I had thought.

Alright. I quietly watched Yoo Soo-Ha adjusting his grip on his knife. I won’t leave anything to look over my shoulder for.

When he slowly held up his knife, I kicked him in the groin using my right foot.

“Urgh!” Yoo Soo-Ha lost his balance as he was swinging his knife.

It was only for a moment, but that was enough for me.

“Huh?” He murmured.

After narrowly dodging Yoo Soo-Ha’s knife, I stabbed his neck with my dagger. I was different from Yoo Soo-Ha—I didn’t waste time by needlessly talking to my target. The moment I pierced his neck, I twisted the dagger and cut his throat. When I withdrew my dagger, a fountain of blood splashed out from his neck, quickly drenching my hands.

“Ur-urgh...!” Yoo Soo-Ha groaned. Only once he hit the ground did he let out a scream.

“Arghhhhh!!!!”

It didn’t last long because the surging blood slowly suffocated him to death. He must have also instinctively realized that his life was draining away second by second. He stopped writhing on the ground and hunched over on his side. Although he clamped his hands over the wound, it wasn’t enough to stop the bleeding; the hole actually bled harder, squeezing blood through the gaps between his fingers.

“Okay.” I stepped on Yoo Soo-Ha’s neck.

His wide eyes were filled with questions and anger, but I didn’t have the slightest reason to answer his questions. His eyes were going to turn blank soon.

“I’ll just think of this as a good learning opportunity.”

I swung the dagger that had killed me 4090 times. This time, it was to kill a monster.