Episode 184
Winter Night The man dressed in black raised his head as he adjusted the hilt of his sword.
Looking straight up at the gunman in front of him.
“…What kind of change of heart is this?”
The man in black no longer ran away across the desert. As he said, the escape ended here.
“Do I have an obligation to report it one by one?”
The King of Heroes answered coldly.
With gunshot wounds all over his body, even maintaining his posture using a sword as a cane on a winter night is difficult. It was a wound that wouldn’t be surprising if he fell to his knees right away.
bang!
So the gunman pulled the trigger again. Right under his nose. The bullet landed in Yoo Seong’s abdomen.
Thanks to the bullet’s stopping power, Yoosung’s legs shook and his body bounced as if he was going to fall over, but Yooseong did not break his posture.
Just as humans cannot avoid bullets, no being can avoid fate.
Every time you are pierced by a bullet of fate, you lose your balance, collapse in despair, and any lofty ideals or oaths disappear in vain.
No powerful king or god could be an exception.
And you will be reborn as a cold corpse and buried in the endless, desolate desert.
In front of the hero was a hunter with a fate that no one could overcome, and in front of the hunter was a hero who was destroyed by repeating the same foolishness endlessly.
“Whenever the broken heroes repeat the same destruction endlessly…”
Like the protagonist in a Greek tragedy, the hero struggles in a fate he can never escape and continues to destroy.
“There were countless of me who could not understand their despair and repeated the same foolishness over and over again.”
Young heroes who could not understand the despair of old and decrepit heroes.
Just as a boy grows into an adult and becomes an old man through the endless waves of time, so did the heroes.
The young and energetic young hero never understood the aging hero’s warning. I couldn’t understand their despair. And later, when they too became adults and understood the despair and reality that this aging hero had seen.
“Yeah, I finished it a fucking long time ago. “This is why children don’t listen to adults even when they die.”
In the end, he realizes that he was just a clown playing on the stage of fate.
He failed.
The hero was broken, and everything he believed was precious was cruelly shattered in the name of reality.
“But…
Some people dreamed of being heroes, and some people dreamed of becoming saints.
In this world, someone else dreams of becoming a magical girl.
Please don’t throw away what you cherish…
Not because they are precious, but for the sake of you who cherish them.
He did not want to see the ideals of all those he loved and loved despair and crumble before fate.
He did not want to allow their dreams and ideals to be denied as miserably as his.
I didn’t want to let their dreams be shattered.
That’s why Yooseong adjusted the hilt of the sword in his hand and stood up.
I stood up straight and faced the gunman there.
The hero is broken, despairing, and done before. The fight was not for heroes. The heroic ideal that he thought was precious no longer had any meaning and was not worth it.
“It’s all about feeding the kids and wife.”
However, he did not want to let the dreams of his loved ones meet the same ending as his.
“Are you going to hurt yourself again with cruelty disguised as kindness?”
That’s why the gunman sneered coldly.
“Like hedgehogs desperately embracing each other…
The gunman continued, and Yoosung did not wait for him to speak.
The sword of the winter night moved.
The gunman quickly opened the distance and pointed a revolver at him. At the same time, he took out a revolver from the holster on his waist, held it in both hands, and began to pull the trigger.
Each time the trigger was pulled, that number of bullets flew out. In front of him, things like human logic were meaningless.
There was no need to tilt the striker back or worry about the number of bullets, just to pull it was enough.
That scene was truly an absurd fate.
bang!
A gunshot rang out, and each time a bullet hit Yoosung’s body. Helpless, like a human who cannot dodge a bullet.
However, like an infantryman who breaks through the lines more courageously than anyone else on a battlefield where bullets rain down.
My own existence was no longer important.
After this battle, he didn’t care if the numerous gunshot wounds left him dead.
Just moving forward.
What did I sacrifice to become the Lord of Heroes?
The most complete self-sacrifice.
I swore that I would repeat the same thing endlessly, dedicating myself to protecting the world without being understood by anyone or recognizing that fact.
It was like that from the beginning.
It was never for me. It wasn’t something I wanted to be understood.
I didn’t even want salvation.
It was a decision made only for the things he considered precious.
The broken hero was there.
But no matter how messed up he was, he was still a hero.
The magical girl was there.
The shadow of a hero facing her, facing the countless demonic lords.
Never being intimidated by the countless swords
of the Heavenly Demon held in the hands of shadows .
“In the end, he wasn’t understood by anyone
.”
The Demon Lord sneered coldly.
“…it is not so.”
And in front of that ridicule, Lily quietly shook her head. “
Now I can see
what that person has suffered, what terrible despair he feels .
Because she was never an ordinary human being.
“Then why do you endlessly hurt him with cruelty disguised as kindness?”
The Demon Lord asked back. As the shadow of the hero, he understands the darkness of the hero better than anyone else.
Lily bit her lip in silence.
“I know it’s cruel.”
After biting down, Lily answered.
“But Lily… she doesn’t want her dad to deny her dreams.”
He didn’t want what he thought to be precious to become worthless.
Therefore, no matter how cruel it was, he did not want it to stop.
He believed that one day, in the endless desert, there would be a destination where his entire journey would be rewarded.
Lily didn’t know whether that belief was right or wrong.
You just stick to what you think is right.
No matter how selfish, self-righteous, and self-satisfied it may be.
I didn’t want to give up hugging my loved one just because there were thorns growing on my body.
Taang!
A gunshot rang out.
And in front of the ringing gunfire, the sword of the winter night was swung.
One bullet froze along the cold blade and bounced off.
However, the bullet fired from the second revolver was not like that.
Phew!
Once again, a bullet struck Yoosung’s body, and the stopping power of fate swallowed him up.
Every time you are pierced by a bullet of fate, your body loses its balance, your posture collapses, and any lofty ideals or oaths fade away.
But still he didn’t stop.
I took one step.
Not to flee across the desert, but to reach the gunman pursuing him.
Another step narrowed and a bullet was fired.
One bullet, which he could not dodge, struck him between the eyes.
Stand tall.
A single shot landed and the hero’s movements stopped.
The bullet that hit between the two eyebrows left a large hole between the hero’s eyes.
Drops of blood flowed like tears between the two eyes.
Blah blah blah.
And that was right then.
There was a sound of something breaking apart. It was the sound
of the hero’s face
cracking like a turtle’s shell.
face?
It wasn’t.
It was a clown’s mask.
A mask of all things that intersects with all kinds of joys and sorrows and emotions, neither laughing nor crying, nor expressionless.
Kwasik!
The clown’s mask split in half and shattered, and ‘the clown’s true face’ was revealed beyond the shattered mask.
And the clown had a human face.
“…
Leaving behind the shattered clown mask and the bullet stuck in the mask, the clown kicked the ground.
The sword of winter night in his hand swung.
The sword of the winter night was swung at the gunman’s arms, and the two wrists holding the revolver were cut off. Blood gushed out over the cross section of the cut wound.
But
the hero didn’t stop there.
He reversed the sword of the winter night in his hand and stabbed it with all his might.
Toward the gunman’s chest.
He put the blade down and slashed it straight down. The sword of the winter night ran along his body.
The gunman’s body was torn to pieces and blood poured out like a fountain.
“…is it.”
In the pouring blood rain, the hunter of destiny sheds a bitter smile.
“Are you… a true human monarch?”
Those were fate’s last words.
At the end of one sword strike, Yooseong looked back, leaving behind a body that seemed ready to break at any moment.
Beyond the desert sand he is stepping on.
The countless masks of jesters and the broken remains of heroes stretched endlessly beyond the horizon.
Literally like a mountain of corpses.
How many people challenged him and how many fell before his bullets?
Nevertheless, the broken hero did not stop repeating the same thing endlessly.
I finally understood.
It was a very small crack.
The first hero would have done nothing but create a very small crack.
However, when one crack became two cracks and two cracks became three cracks, there was a crack there that countless heroes had built up, breaking and destroying themselves and endlessly repeating the same foolishness.
The person there was not a hero.
He was simply someone who struck the final blow from the shoulders of giants upon the remains of true heroes.
He unconsciously stretched out his arm and touched his face.
The clown’s mask was no longer on.
He could just feel the human skin hidden behind the mask along his fingers.
Hey, do you want to be a hero?
The voice of a broken hero was suddenly heard. I couldn’t tell if the voice really existed or if it was just an auditory hallucination. It wasn’t even an important issue anymore.
That’s why the King of Heroes smiled quietly.
It was a very comfortable smile.
