Chapter 203 - Black Dragon (2)

"... What?"

The Black Dragon leader blinked.

The head of the Tower's highest-ranking guild lowered her eyelids, then raised them again. Slowly. A literal instant passed.

Before I knew it, her brows had drawn together.

"Regression? What are you talking about?"

"I've been thinking about this for a long time. You crossed the Aegim Empire with me, Senior. It would have been a weight off my mind to tell you who I really was then, but back then, I still couldn't trust you. So I kept it hidden until now."

"..."

As I continued, her expression grew grave. She could plainly tell that I wasn't joking.

"You used to say it to me, Senior. That you didn't know where a rookie who was nothing like a rookie had come from. That I was too crafty for my age. You were right. I'm not a rookie."

I summoned a skill card.

"Skill card, open."

Golden light flashed. I turned over the card glowing in my hand and showed it to her.

+

[Regressor's Clockwork Watch]

Rank: EX

Effect: Automatically activates upon death. Returns you to 24 hours before the moment of your death. Memories and stats are preserved even after regression.

※However, stronger penalties are imposed as your hunter rank rises.

※This skill was copied from hunter Yoo Suha.

+

"Wait."

She reached out with her left hand and grasped mine, along with the card I was holding. That covered the skill card, preventing her from reading its description.

She herself had stopped me from revealing my skill.

"No."

Ink-dark eyes.

Her eyes, black as a bottomless well, held an urgency I couldn't quite place. They gazed urgently at me. Beyond those eyes, at their very depths, it seemed a handspan of cold water had pooled, lapping soundlessly.

"Don't do this. Please."

It should have been the voice I heard all the time. Yet an unfamiliar tone and tremor ran through it.

"I don't know what you're about to say. But I know how it will end once you say it and I hear it. There are lines between people that mustn't be crossed. No matter how close we are, no matter how well we get along, we mustn't cross them."

She spoke naturally, as though she had long anticipated this happening. Perhaps that ease came from countless experiences in her past.

"Don't tell me your secret. Don't share it with me. If you reveal it now, Death King, we'll cross a river we can never come back across. When people lean too heavily on each other, that stops being support and becomes dependence."

"I know. I understand that too."

"... You and I are good friends. Reliable comrades. We mustn't ask for more than that in our relationships with people. I'll deal with my own affairs, and you'll live your own life. Isn't that for the best?"

She was asking me to agree.

Her earnest words made me reconsider as well. Deciding what sort of relationship to have with someone, and how deep it should go, was always difficult.

Soon, I reached a conclusion.

"Then please decide after you've heard what I have to say."

"By then, it'll already be too late."

"No. We can undo it. Even if we have this conversation now, I can make it so it never happened. I have that ability."

"..."

She fell silent.

In the seaside village's square, people were getting up and instinctively seeking the well. With groans, the villagers released the toxins that had built up inside them during their long sleep. "Uuugh. Ugh." Toxin-laden breaths sounded here and there.

"... For now, let's not talk here."

Still holding my right hand, she murmured,

"Transfer."

The next moment, we were out of the square.

At the village docks.

Ships tethered by ropes creaked with the waves. The sea received their discordant sounds. For a little while, we listened in on the waves.

"All right. I understand."

She nodded, apparently having made up her mind at last.

"I'll hear you out first. But we can't have this sort of conversation sober."

She waved her hand, and a black vortex swirled in midair. It looked as though a single patch of the world had been cut out and painted black. Without hesitation, she thrust her arm into it.

A moment later, her hand emerged holding a bottle of liquor.

I was a little surprised.

"Is that a skill?"

"Yes. [Item Storage]. It can only hold a limited amount, but there's no more convenient skill for disposing of evidence after killing someone."

After saying that as though it were nothing, she took out two drinking glasses as well.

"Consider it an honor. Truly no one knows I have this skill. Of all the hunters still alive, you're the first to witness it, Death King."

I accepted a glass from her.

For a while, we quietly emptied the bottle.

Before the alcohol could eat away at my consciousness, I spoke.

"I am a regressor."

Once again, I said it properly.

"I'm not quite sure where to begin... I have a skill that turns back time. More precisely, an ability that sends me back twenty-four hours when I die. That's how I overcame countless difficulties. The tenth floor. The twentieth floor. I survived all of them by using my regression skill."

I showed her the skill card.

This time, she didn't avert her gaze.

"... I see."

She merely let out a sigh of "Ah," like someone holding the final puzzle piece they had been searching for all this time.

"Had you noticed?"

"A little. At the very least, I knew the [Prophet] claim was a lie."

She tilted her glass.

"No matter how I looked at it, it was too convenient an excuse. I watched you all along from beside you, and you weren't working through [things you already knew]. You always fought as if this were your last chance. So that was it. You weren't seeing the future. You were returning to the past."

She looked at my face anew.

"There's something I really want to ask you."

"Please do."

"The battle on the eleventh floor."

A question she had harbored for a long time spilled from her lips.

"On the eleventh floor, our Tower experienced its first large-scale battle. Everyone rushed in, excited that a stage beyond the tenth floor had finally opened after years. We fought the Demon King's army there. Do you remember?"

"Yes."

"Miraculously, not a single hunter lost their life then. Some were injured, but no one died. But..."

She lingered over that "but" for a long while.

"Did you perhaps..."

"Yes."

"... Regress then too?"

"Yes."

"Until there wasn't a single death in battle?"

"Yes."

She pressed her lips together.

The well submerged beneath her eyes rippled a little more.

"How many times...?"

"Many."

"Ten? Twenty?"

"I think it was a little more than that."

"The twelfth floor too?"

"And continuously after that. Until I met Raviel, that was always how it felt."

"..."

Her breaths came at shorter intervals.

"Why? What made you go that far...? You had no reason to do that."

"It wasn't because I was born a good person. If I'd gone up to the eleventh floor alone, I never could have repeated it dozens or hundreds of times. You were always the ones urging me onward."

I looked straight into her eyes.

"Each time fewer people died on the stage, you smiled a little more."

Times she couldn't remember.

"Until then, I'd never seen you smile. Not a sneer, but a bright smile of genuine happiness. When hunters were dying by the hundreds during the clearing, you did what you had to do, stiff and expressionless... But once the casualties dropped to double digits, you changed a little."

Changes in her that only I remembered.

["My goodness! I think fewer than forty hunters died!"]

["I can't believe it... Maybe fewer than ten died."]

["To think this is possible. That it was possible. On a battlefield like this."]

Her smile had bloomed like tightly closed petals opening into a flower.

Even now, I remembered that moment clearly.

"When I saw that, I thought it was so beautiful."

"..."

"I was happy. For the first time, I realized that my existence could make someone smile sincerely."

I smiled.

"Thank you, Black Dragon leader. Senior."

"Why...?"

"Thanks to you, I was able to walk a path I never could have walked alone. Now, I love my life. I'm with the person I love. Even if you never intended it, the smile you showed me that day let me take that step forward."

This was what I had wanted to say.

What I had wanted to convey.

"You're someone who gives others strength, Senior. At least, you are to me. You're not alone. Even if you worry about the day you'll have to say goodbye whenever you meet someone, you don't have to worry about me."

I had a skill that could turn back a day that had died.

"I'll be all right."

I wouldn't die.

"You don't have to stop the attempts to assassinate me. Don't torment yourself worrying about what might happen if you fail to stop them. I'm here, and as long as you allow it, I'll keep being here."

"..."

"It's all right to fail."

"Saying something like that..."

"You don't need to fear failure anymore. You can pursue whatever you want to accomplish however you wish. Even if something should go wrong, I can give you another chance, as many times as it takes."

"You mustn't say things like that."

She was afraid.

I already knew what frightened her most.

Even when the three of us had gotten drunk with the Paladin, she had murmured it.

["You mustn't be late, Death King."]

["You must never be late."]

Something irreversible happening.

That was what she feared most.

And so, I decided to give her the gift she most desperately needed, out of all the gifts I could offer.

The one thing only I in this world could tell her.

"It's all right to be a little late."

"..."

She flinched as though pricked by a thorn.

"As long as I'm beside you, nothing is irreversible. You can start anything over again. So it's all right to venture a little further, to take a gamble, Senior. You have that right."

A wind that had crossed the sea tousled her black hair.

"You're far more capable than I am. Managing an organization, starting businesses... Governing the entire Tower. That's a talent I don't have. In just the same way, the talent for starting over happened to be given to me instead of you."

My precious friend.

"We can accomplish so much more together."

And so I didn't look at the tears she shed.

I merely lowered my head a little and held her hand.

"I already lean on you, Senior. Please lean on me too."

"You... really."

She swallowed her voice a sip at a time.

"You're a terrible person. After saying all this, you say you can make this conversation never have happened? That means it's all right because if you die and go back a day, our conversation will disappear too. So if I want to erase this conversation, you intend to die...?"

"Yes."

"You lunatic."

She squeezed my hand tightly.

"You lunatic..."

She murmured,

"Just you wait. I'll use you until you're sick of it. What? Regression? You have an ability like that, and you dare share it with me without knowing enough to be afraid? You really have no idea what sort of person heads the Black Dragon Guild. Just you wait. You lunatic, you crazy bastard..."

I waited for her trembling to subside.

After some time had passed, she spoke in a slightly calmer voice.

"Anastasia."

"..."

"That's my real name, Kim Gongja."

I slowly raised my head.

She wore a softened smile.

"I'm going to make full use of you, so you'd better be ready."

"Yes."

I too smiled from the heart.

"Senior Anastasia."

Among the people climbing the Tower, I now had, for the first time, a companion who shared my secret.