I returned to my guild building and spent the next few hours working through the paperwork Kim Taewon had been waiting for me to handle. When I finally looked up from my desk, I noticed how exhausted he looked, with dark circles beneath his eyes and a stack of documents still waiting to be sorted.
Seo Elena was right. I really should feel bad for this man.
I made a mental note to stop dumping so much work on him from now on. If treating Kim Taewon better would make Elena happy, then I supposed it was worth the effort.
With the paperwork finally out of the way, I gathered my things and drove back to her café, looking forward to seeing her again. However, I hadn't even made it all the way there when an unsettling sensation crept over me, one that was far too familiar for me to mistake it for anything else.
The unmistakable presence of a dungeon.
My grip tightened around the steering wheel as I turned toward the source of the disturbance, and the moment I realized which direction it was coming from, my heart sank.
The dungeon's presence was coming from the very place I had begun to think of as home, where Seo Elena was supposed to be waiting for me.
I slammed on the brakes and abandoned my car in the middle of the road before rushing toward the café, my mind already racing through every possible explanation. Perhaps the dungeon had appeared nearby. Perhaps the Hunters had already arrived and Elena had managed to get somewhere safe.
Who knows? Anything was possible.
Anything... Except, when I reached the neighborhood, what I found was the entire area had been reduced to ruins.
Buildings lay crumbled beneath heaps of concrete, the roads were split apart, and a thick layer of dust hung over the wreckage. Blood stained the broken pavement, mingling with the debris scattered across the streets, while the familiar café that had once greeted me with warmth and the smell of freshly brewed coffee was nowhere to be seen.
No. No, no, no.
"Elena!"
My voice tore through the silence as I stumbled toward the remains of the café, desperately searching through the rubble for any sign of her.
"No! My Elena!"
I threw aside broken pieces of concrete with my bare hands as I clawed through the wreckage. My mind refused to accept what my eyes were seeing, and I kept telling myself that she had to be somewhere nearby, that she must have escaped before the destruction reached her.
She had to be alive. She had to be!
Then I moved a massive slab of concrete, and everything inside me came to a stop. It felt like someone had grabbed my heart and squeezed it until it no longer beat.
Seo Elena lay beneath the rubble, her body motionless amid the ruins of the place she had worked so hard to build. Blood stained her clothes, and there was no warmth in her stillness, no gentle smile waiting for me when I called her name.
She was dead.
Seo Elena had been crushed beneath the collapsing buildings.
She had only wanted to run a café, to live a quiet life and share it with the people she cared about. She had never asked for any of this, never wanted to be caught up in the cruelty of a world that seemed determined to take everything from her.
Yet this was how she had died.
The thought made something inside me snap.
I wanted to burn everything to the ground. The buildings, the streets, the entire world that had allowed this to happen. If the world could so carelessly take her away from me, then what reason did I have to protect it?
Where the hell were the other Hunters?
What had they been doing while the neighborhood was being destroyed? Why had no one protected her? Why had she been left alone to suffer like this when there were people whose entire purpose was to prevent tragedies like this from happening?
I was an S-rank Hunter. I had power, influence, and enough strength to tear through monsters that most people couldn't even hope to fight.
And yet, when Seo Elena needed someone to protect her, I hadn't been there.
My hands began to shake as I covered my face, struggling to contain the anger and grief threatening to tear me apart. I wanted answers. I wanted to find whoever had failed to respond to the outbreak and make them pay for every second Elena had spent trapped beneath the rubble.
I wanted to do something, anything, that would make this unbearable reality easier to accept.
But I couldn't even breathe properly.
"Seo Elena..." My voice came out broken as I lowered my hands and looked at her again. "Come back to me, Elena."
Please. Just come back.
Then a thought surfaced through the haze of my grief, so simple and so desperate that I almost couldn't believe I hadn't considered it sooner.
Right. If I died, I could regress.
That was how it worked, wasn't it? Death would send me back to the past, giving me another chance to change what had happened. I had already experienced it before, and if the same rules applied to this lifetime, then there was no reason I couldn't do it again.
I could return to a time when Seo Elena was still alive.
I could save her.
The moment the thought took hold, I reached into my inventory and summoned my sword, staring at the blade as I weighed the decision before me. There was no hesitation left in my heart, no reason to remain in a world where she was gone.
What meaning did my life have without you, Seo Elena?
I raised the sword and pressed its tip against my chest, positioning it directly over my heart. All I had to do was push it in, and perhaps I would wake up somewhere in the past, back in a time when I could still reach her before it was too late.
I drew a shaky breath and prepared to drive the blade into my heart.
Then I heard a voice.
It was faint, almost swallowed by the silence surrounding me, and it seemed to come from somewhere in the distance.
"...hyuk-ssi!"
My hand stopped.
What was that?
I lifted my head and strained to listen, but the voice was so weak that I couldn't make out anything beyond the last part of my name.
Had someone survived the outbreak?
I didn't know. I couldn't even remember how long I had been kneeling there, surrounded by broken concrete and the remnants of a life that had disappeared in an instant. The rain had only just stopped, leaving the ground damp beneath my knees, and a narrow beam of sunlight had broken through the depressing clouds to fall across Seo Elena's lifeless body.
It was almost cruel, the way the light illuminated her as if to remind me that she was gone from this world.
I looked at her one last time before tightening my grip around the sword.
"I'm sorry, Elena."
I raised the blade again, determined to finish what I had started, but just as I drove it toward my chest, something caught the sword and stopped it in its path.
The sudden resistance jolted me out of my thoughts.
I opened my eyes.
Seo Elena was standing in front of me.
For one impossible moment, I couldn't understand what I was seeing. She was holding the blade with both hands, her fingers wrapped around the steel as it pierced her chest, and blood slowly spread across the fabric covering her body.
Her face was pale, and her entire body trembled as she struggled to keep the sword from going any farther.
"S-stop..." she whispered, her tear-filled eyes fixed on mine. "Jinhyuk...ssi."
The haze clouding my vision suddenly cleared, and I immediately reached into my inventory for the holy potion.
It was one of the rarest potions in the world, a miraculous creation that only a handful of Hunters possessed. An apothecarist had recently managed to produce a single batch, and the price of obtaining even one bottle had been enough to bankrupt an entire country.
Yet, even with something so precious in my hands, I wasn't certain it would be enough to save her.
I carefully grasped the hilt of the sword still lodged in Seo Elena's chest, my fingers trembling as I prepared to pull it out. I had to do this quickly. The longer the blade remained inside her, the worse her condition could become, so I gritted my teeth and yanked it free in one swift motion.
She cried out in pain.
The sound pierced straight through me, and for a moment, I could barely bring myself to look at the wound left behind. A deep, horrifying hole gaped in the center of her chest, and the sight drained every last bit of color from my face.
I bit down on my lower lip so hard that I tasted blood, struggling to keep my hands steady as I leaned closer to her.
Then Seo Elena's eyes fluttered open.
Her face was as white as a sheet, and even the simple act of breathing seemed to take everything she had, yet she still managed to look at me and force out a few words.
"I-I'm okay..."
Shit.
How could she possibly be okay?
"Yeah. You're okay," I answered immediately, my voice trembling despite my desperate attempt to sound reassuring. "It's not that bad. I'll heal you, all right? Just bear with me a little longer, Seo Elena."
I didn't know whether I was trying to convince her or myself, but I couldn't afford to fall apart now. Not when she was still alive and there was something I could do to save her.
Muttering a string of curses under my breath, most of them directed at myself, I uncorked the holy potion and carefully poured its contents over her wound. I could only imagine the pain she was enduring, and the thought that she had been forced to suffer like this because of my carelessness made my stomach twist.
She was a civilian, someone who had never been meant to endure the horrors of a Hunter's battlefield. She shouldn't have been bleeding in my arms, struggling to stay conscious while I desperately tried to undo the damage.
If anything happened to her now, I would never forgive myself.
Thankfully, the potion began to work almost immediately, its effects spreading through the wound as the torn flesh gradually knitted itself back together. I watched every second of the process with bated breath, unwilling to look away until the last trace of the injury had disappeared.
Only when her chest had completely healed did I finally allow myself to breathe.
If it hadn't been for that potion, I might have fallen for the creature's cruel nightmare and lost Seo Elena all over again.
The realization made my blood run cold.
I carefully moved her away from the immediate battlefield, making sure she was far enough from the creature before turning my attention to the strange symbols surrounding her. I still didn't fully understand the nature of this power or how I had come to possess it, but I couldn't afford to waste time figuring that out now.
I focused on the symbols and forced my power to respond, shaping it into a protective barrier around Seo Elena. A faint shimmer spread through the air, forming a shield that enclosed her within its boundaries and separated her from the destruction outside.
That should keep her safe.
At least, it was supposed to.
I stared at the barrier for a moment, my jaw tightening as another wave of self-reproach washed over me.
I should have done this sooner. If I had protected her from the beginning, she wouldn't have been injured in the first place.
But there was no point dwelling on that now. I couldn't change what had already happened, and the only thing I could do was make sure the creature never got another chance to lay a hand on her.
With that thought firmly in mind, I slowly turned around.
The black figure was still standing where I had last seen it, seemingly unconcerned by everything that had just happened. Its attention appeared to be occupied by something in its hands, and it was making strange, childish noises as though it were enjoying a snack.
"Nightmare. Delicious. Yummy. Very."
It spoke in a halting, almost toddler-like manner, repeating the words with a peculiar satisfaction.
I couldn't have cared less about what it was eating or what those words were supposed to mean.
My gaze settled on its shadowy form, and the last remnants of warmth disappeared from my expression.
Whatever this thing was, whatever power allowed it to manipulate my memories and use Seo Elena's appearance against me, I would make it regret ever laying a hand on her.