LIGHTNOVELONLINE Chapter 10 - 10 years had passed.
Chapter 10
10 years had passed.
I split the sea.
“Is this real…!”
It wasn’t a game graphic; with just one punch, the sea split like the miracle of Moses.
The headless body of the angel fell lifelessly from the end of the aircraft into the sea below.
It was truly the moment everything ended.
“I’m relieved.”
If this were the original story, Busan Port would have turned into a sea of fire, and countless lives would have been lost, but now everyone was safe.
Though I couldn’t see them, the heroines from the original story were probably able to grow up safely because of this.
As I thought about that, I glanced down at my right fist, the one that had smashed the angel’s head.
“……”
“Commander! Please, send me to the hospital! There’s something seriously wrong with my leg! I’m not faking it!”
“I have so many competitions to attend after I get discharged!”
“You bastards! You called me here! Now that I’m crippled, you’re just going to abandon me?!”
A nightmare that couldn’t be called a memory.
A tragedy that unfolded in that ‘prison’ I had entered the moment I became an adult, unable to win anything but silver or bronze medals as a teenager.
The ligament injury in my leg, which wasn’t treated properly, ruptured, making it impossible for me to even run again, let alone practice Kyokushin karate.
Crack!
I had reached the level of Kyokushin that I had once given up on.
In that moment, the enemy’s movements were so fast that I instinctively executed the ‘Kyokushin Karate Basic Technique – Sanchin Stance.’
“I can train in Kyokushin again!”
Just the fact that I had regained my dream was an unprecedented fortune for me.
However, I should have felt joy a bit later.
“Wait, the monster of Jamsil.”
Click.
It seemed the humans had confirmed the situation had calmed down. A woman, who had emerged from inside the ship, aimed a monster rifle at me.
When I turned my head, I saw the rest of the USFK soldiers, all visibly tense as they watched me.
Among them, one person stood out.
An old man with a bushy beard and a pipe in his mouth.
At a glance, it was clear he was the one in charge of this aircraft carrier.
He walked past the soldiers, even bypassing the woman in front who had been on guard.
“Admiral?!”
“Hmm…”
He confidently stood before me.
“Hyaaap!”
Though the movement seemed awkward and imperfect to my professional eyes…
Bang!
His feet positioned in an ’11’ shape, legs spread shoulder-width apart, lowering his posture into the horse stance, one of the basic stances of karate.
Then he thrust his fist forward.
From the fist extended toward me, I could tell.
Even though we were of different races, this was the admiral’s way of showing gratitude, knowing that words couldn’t bridge our gap.
“Krk!”
“…!”
“The m-monster is…”
“Taking the same stance as the Admiral…?”
As a fellow martial artist, I reciprocated by taking the horse stance and extending my fist to accept his gesture.
Seeing me, everyone around us stood stunned.
Taaat.
“…Ah!”
“The Jamsil Monster has left the aircraft carrier!”
“It’s running across the sea at an incredible speed!”
The naval base, watching this scene through the monitors, belatedly attempted to track the Jamsil Monster.
However, even the equipment that couldn’t track the angel’s movements the moment it moved was unable to track something even faster.
“W-What should we do? Should we form a separate tracking team?”
One of the soldiers swallowed hard and looked towards the naval chief of staff for guidance.
“No, there’s no need.”
It was Lee Seok-gyu, the army chief of staff, who answered instead.
“For now, prioritize rescuing the Americans and my wife on the aircraft carrier.”
“…! Yes, sir!”
The naval base shifted its mission from tracking the humanoid monster to conducting a rescue operation.
“Sir, are you sure we don’t need to track that humanoid monster?”
Feeling uneasy, Yu Jun-young, the naval chief of staff and Lee Seok-gyu’s junior back in the army, asked.
Lee Seok-gyu responded with certainty.
“It’s fine. The creature didn’t seem interested in humans in the first place.”
“It didn’t… seem interested?”
“Yes. On the deck of the aircraft carrier, if it had wanted to, it could have killed everyone inside. But for some reason, it just withdrew.”
“That’s true.”
“There’s no need to stir up a quiet hornet’s nest. Besides, with our current capabilities, we wouldn’t be able to catch it even if we found it.”
“…Yes, indeed.”
Patting his junior on the shoulder, Lee Seok-gyu walked past him, feeling relieved that his family was safe.
He then approached his daughter, who had been watching the now-blank monitor with a bright smile.
“Sophia… Were you scared?”
“No! Thanks to that monster man, Mom is safe and it was so cool!”
“I-Is that so?”
Calling it a ‘man’ rather than a ‘monster’…
Even if it looked humanoid, it was still a monster.
Lee Seok-gyu felt conflicted seeing his daughter speak of it like a person.
But he owed that ‘monster man’ a debt of gratitude for saving his family.
“If that creature hadn’t shown up, Rollin would… I’m really grateful.”
Relieved that his family was safe, Lee Seok-gyu lifted Sophia with one hand, as he always did.
With his other hand, he reached for his son, Shin-woo…
“…?”
Where did Shin-woo go?
“Sophia, have you seen Shin-woo?”
“…! Oh, right! Shin-woo!”
Sophia’s smile faded into seriousness as she remembered and landed back on the floor.
“Dad! Come to think of it, I haven’t seen Shin-woo for a while!”
“W-What?!”
Upon hearing this, Lee Seok-gyu also began to sweat profusely from his forehead, just like his daughter.
Come to think of it, Han Shin-woo disappeared around the time the Jamsil Monster appeared.
Could this really be a coincidence?
It had been too long for him to just be in the bathroom.
Could it be that the Jamsil Monster is…!
“Ah, mister! Sophia!”
“Shin!”
“Woo?!”
Just then.
Han Shin-woo returned, but his face was swollen and bruised as if he had been beaten.
The sight of their son and friend looking like he’d been in a fight caused the father and daughter to be utterly speechless.
“Sh-Shin-woo…?!!”
“S-Son! What happened to your face?!”
“Hahahaha…”
Despite their urgent questions, Shin-woo only laughed.
Following closely behind him was someone else.
“Ah, salute! Hello, I am Captain Yoon Hee-sun, a nursing officer at the naval base infirmary.”
The female officer, wearing a badge with her rank and name, quickly began explaining as she saw the two worried faces.
“Well… Your son had an accident while coming back from the bathroom. He fell down the stairs.”
“F-Fell down the stairs?!”
“Yes. It seems the soldiers on cleaning duty didn’t properly dry the floor, causing the accident…”
In truth, Shin-woo had de-transformed as soon as he arrived at the naval base and used the seawater on his body to fake a fall.
“Dad…”
“Yes…”
Sorry, naval soldiers!
Squirm.
“From now on, you’ll go to the bathroom with me. Understand?”
“Ugh…”
Sophia spoke with a deadpan expression, squeezing my cheeks with both hands.
And then.
“Honey, what are you doing?”
Apparently, personal communication was still ongoing even if base communication wasn’t.
“Not scolding him.”
“Oh, I was just about to.”
Hearing the voice of Mrs. Rollin over the sea, Seok-gyu nodded silently and moved forward.
The place he arrived at was where my junior, the naval chief of staff, was standing.
“…? Sir, what’s going on…”
“Hey, Yu Jun-young…”
“Y-Yes, sir!”
“You little punk. Do you think you can take me lightly just because you ate the sea?”
“Excuse me?!”
“Watch it!!”
With a reprimand that reminded him of PTSD from his days as an enlisted soldier, the army chief of staff started scolding him.
“…so, I’m disappointed in you.”
“I-I’m sorry!”
Ending his lecture with a typical “I’m disappointed in you” military-style scolding, Seok-gyu turned around.
After that, it was all as expected.
“Are there any generals here?”
“Major General Lee Chang-seop!”
“Brigadier General Ko Dae-hee!”
“Lieutenant General Lee Mal-jin!”
“Ha… This naval chief of staff is very disappointed in our generals.”
“?!”
“E-Excuse me?”
The naval chief of staff immediately turned the disappointment he had received down to the generals below him.
“Are there any field-grade officers here?”
“Lieutenant Colonel Shin Jae-hwa!”
“Colonel Park Ji-hyun!”
“I, the admiral, am deeply disappointed in you.”
“…!”
“We will rectify it immediately!”
The generals passed on the disappointment to the field-grade officers.
“Are there any company-grade officers here?”
“Captain Lee Bong-pal!”
“First Lieutenant Han Jung-hyup!”
“Yes. We, the field-grade officers, are disappointed in you for not even managing the stairs properly.”
“S-Sorry!”
“Tomorrow, you will all march towards the sea!”
“Make sure to maintain communication security all the way to the Dragon Palace.”
“Understood!”
The field-grade officers passed the disappointment down to the company-grade officers.
…And by tomorrow, the disappointment would surely trickle down to the soldiers as well.
“Well, at least it’s better than death, right? Marching is not so bad.”
Sorry, but this is the best I can do.
“Dad, dad! What about our king crab party?”
“Huh? King crab?”
“Yeah, yeah! If we eat king crab, Mom and Shin-woo will get better quickly!”
Sophia, do you think king crab is a cure-all?
But if we could actually eat that expensive king crab instead of the usual snow crab…
Gulp.
“Hehe. Shin-woo, you want some too, right?”
“Yeah!”
Maybe it was because I had just exercised, but I was also starving.
“Alright. Let’s eat, and we’ll make king crab porridge for Mom.”
“Yay!”
“That’s unfair~.”
“I’ll treat you to some later. For now, just rest.”
“Okay~.”
We walked through the streets of Busan, which would have been wiped out without a trace if not for the change in history.
Sophia especially held my hand and laughed joyfully.
“Hey, Shin-woo, guess what?”
“What?”
“I thought of a monster to use as a Beast Hunter!”
“Really?”
Sophia whispered in my ear with excitement.
I couldn’t help but be impressed by this girl who ate crab shells whole and was now talking about monsters.
“No matter what kind of monster it is, it looks like it’ll be pushed around a lot by its owner.”
I smiled with satisfaction, seeing Sophia’s bright future thanks to the changed history.
Years passed.
Ten years later.
In the year I turned 19, finally eligible to take the official Hunter exam.
“Liar.”
“Sophia…”
“You said you’d always be by my side. So why are you so weak?”
Sophia, hailed as a prodigy in Korea, had obtained her Hunter license at the young age of 12.
In contrast, I was a talentless, ordinary human who failed the Hunter exam on the first try.
So, our reunion after two years, due to her missions abroad, was…
“I don’t even want to see you…”
“……”
“Get lost, you liar.”
It was, in a word, the worst.