The Main Characters That Only I Know

“You are… truly a cruel person.”

“Is it me who is cruel, or is it this reality?”

Maybe it was both.

Yu-hyun did not bother to deny the fake’s words. He had already made up his mind and he had no intention of backing down.

“…If you are so determined, then I have no choice.”

“Are you not going to stop me?”

“I don’t delude myself that I can stop you with the likes of those guys. If I stubbornly go against your orders, I will only harm myself. And the more I do that, the more fiercely the rebels will act.”

“That’s a wise decision.”

The fake glared at Yu-hyun with a blazing gaze, as he answered with a blank face.

“I tried to do the best I could, but in the end, things turned out like this. Now, no one can stop her.”

“That’s what you had to endure. You and me.”

“Yes.”

The fake clenched his fist and gritted his teeth, as if it was hard to bear that fact.

He wouldn’t have come this far if he could have talked it out with him. He came out himself just in case, but this was the result.

There was no avoiding a fight. And no matter what the outcome was, only pain awaited Kang Hye-rim.

“I am a doppelganger.”

He bluntly revealed his identity. Yu-hyun did not show any surprise and quietly waited for his next words.

“I had no shape at first. I was nothing but a black lump. She picked me up, the current Black Thunder Lord, Miss Kang Hye-rim. When she fought with her comrades and they turned their backs on her, I was the only one by her side. She probably thought of me as nothing more than a pet. A pastime. That must have been all.”

“…”

“Then you appeared. No, a fake who looked like you appeared. He was a trashy human being. He picked up some stories from somewhere, and tried to use her by imitating your appearance. I watched everything as I had no shape.”

The doppelganger told the story of what Kang Hye-rim had gone through in the past five years that Yu-hyun did not know.

“He tried to fill his belly by using her power. The problem was her. She had nowhere to go and her mind was pushed to the limit. She thought of that fake as the real thing. She treated him with utmost respect.”

Kang Hye-rim did not care if he was real or fake. She felt relieved just by having someone who resembled Yu-hyun in front of her.

But the doppelganger could not stand by and watch that scene.

“That trashy guy eventually crossed the line. He tried to make her completely his own. So I stepped in. I changed into your appearance and killed that trash.”

The doppelganger could not forget Kang Hye-rim’s expression at that time.

She looked down at the bloody corpse of the trash with empty eyes, and then smiled brightly and greeted him when she saw him.

The doppelganger realized it at that moment.

She was already broken beyond repair.

That’s when it started. At least for her, he decided to become Kang Yu-hyun.

“Even though she was insane and killed people, I could not stop her. She could not keep her sanity unless she did that. In the end, I did what I could do. As a fake, as someone who could not become real, as a mere stand-in, I hoped that she would not suffer at least.”

The doppelganger said that and glared at Yu-hyun.

Tears ran down his cheek.

Even though he was just a fake made from a story, imitating Yu-hyun’s appearance.

His feelings for her were always sincere.

“I hate you. If I had my way, I would have wished you dead. I wished so desperately that you would never come back like this. That feeling has not changed even now.”

“…”

“I will not forgive you for making her like that, for hurting her. Even if I die here.”

“I…”

Yu-hyun closed his mouth as he tried to say something.

He had no confidence to persuade himself in front of him.

They had already walked on an irreversible path. They looked alike, but they walked on different paths and ran parallel to each other.

They might understand each other, but they would not accept their actions.

There was only one thing Yu-hyun could do here.

“Go.”

“…”

“Tell her.”

Yu-hyun saw things that should have faded away come back to life again.

Even if they are suffering in the story, there is always a way of salvation for them.

Maybe he had been living in such a delusion.

“I’m… going.”

The world did not always have happy endings.

There were stories where someone got hurt and someone else shed tears in the world.

That could be his story too, he realized too late that not everything would work out well.

“You are…”

The doppelganger looked at Yu-hyun’s face and trembled his lips.

Yu-hyun wondered what he was doing right now. But he did not have the courage to check.

“…I understand.”

The doppelganger left only those words and disappeared into the forest again.

The countless signs of the legion quickly faded away.

Yu-hyun waited until they were completely gone and opened his mouth.

“Sometimes I think about it.”

[…What?]

“What made me come this far.”

Was it a self-deprecating remark? Or a plea for sympathy?

Baekryeon did not know.

“I lived and died in a terrible world, and in the new world I started again, I thought I did my best. I couldn’t do everything well, but I lived with the intention of not regretting anything. I thought I got what I deserved for my efforts. But in the end, at this moment when I’m standing here, I have all these arrogant thoughts.”

[Yu-hyun…]

“It wasn’t my will to regress either. There must have been a reason. Yeah. I got curious. If someone orchestrated all this, and if he arranged everything up to this situation. What would happen next? If there is an end to my journey, what awaits me there?”

Yu-hyun said to himself and thought it was funny. The choices he made and the consequences that resulted from them, all controlled by someone else behind the scenes.

But he was sincere when he said he was curious.

In this new world that he could never see before regressing, what awaited him at the end of all these events he faced?

[Whatever it is, you will surely keep going.]

“…Is that so.”

He said comforting words, but Baekryeon was not at ease either.

What he said to Yu-hyun now only made him feel better for a moment, but it was not a fundamental solution.

Reality would never change with words alone.

***

Since he met the doppelganger who took his appearance.

Yu-hyun had no interference on his way to Black Thunder Palace.

Thanks to that, he quickly arrived at the place where Black Thunder Palace was beyond the third city.

The sky was full of dark clouds that looked like swirling ink. In between, black lightning struck down with a rumbling sound, leaving a tail behind.

It looked like a dragon flying over the black sea.

“That’s… Black Thunder Palace.”

A huge structure stood out on the vast plain.

Even though it was far away, Black Thunder Palace’s appearance was clear.

Black crown-like spires that stretched up to the sky. Around them was a huge wall that surrounded them, and on top of the wall were sharp spikes.

It was a design that would be strange if anyone called it a bad hobby, but it came across differently to Yu-hyun.

‘The wall is… exactly like the triple wall of Constantinople.’

That was not all. The spikes on the wall were not spears but pointed harpoons. And all other kinds of structures were not new either, they were all in Yu-hyun’s memory drawer.

Black Thunder Palace, which stood as a symbol of terror to people, was all made of Kang Hye-rim’s memories for Yu-hyun.

No, could he really call them memories? Those twisted things mixed with nightmares showed that Kang Hye-rim had gone crazy.

Yu-hyun composed himself and approached Black Thunder Palace slowly.

They must have known he was coming, but the legion did not show any signs of coming out. Maybe they thought it was useless to do so.

Waaaaah!!!

It was when Yu-hyun approached 1km in front of Black Thunder Palace’s huge gate.

He naturally turned his eyes to the huge roar that echoed from behind him.

“…The rebels?”

At first, he thought it was a surprise attack from the legion in the rear, but it wasn’t.

They had mismatched outfits and weapons, and they shouted to leave as if they wanted to announce their presence to the world, heading towards the Black Thunder Palace.

They were the rebels who had risen up in the cities that Yu-hyun had passed through.

“…How did they gather such a force so quickly?”

He already knew that the rebels were moving. Yu-hyun had guessed that this would happen from the moment he opened the Birth Gate and defeated the Black Sword Sect.

Knowing that, he wanted to finish the job as quickly as possible, even if he had to do it alone, so he came to the Black Thunder Palace as fast as he could, but the rebels’ movement was much faster than he expected.

“The Savior is ahead of us!”

“Let’s join him! Let’s kill the Black Thunder Lord!”

They recognized Yu-hyun and smiled with joy and confidence. There were more than 30,000 rebels gathered here.

More than half of them were purely following Yu-hyun, the Savior, who had been swept away by the propaganda of the original rebels.

But Yu-hyun’s lips tightened when he saw them.

‘No.’

Yu-hyun’s gaze turned to the Black Thunder Palace.

At the top of the pointed spire that rose highest in the center of the Black Thunder Palace, someone was standing.

Before Yu-hyun could examine their identity with his eyes, the shadow’s new form soared high into the sky and was covered by dark clouds.

Yu-hyun’s expression hardened.

The black lightning that struck from the dark clouds became more intense than before.

Rumble!

The wall force that had been raining down from above the Black Thunder Palace began to move at a fast speed.

No one among those who were gathered here did not know where it was heading.

“Everyone, get out of the way!”

Yu-hyun’s urgent warning fell as soon as.

Crack! The dark clouds opened.

Flash!

Boom!

The first thing that was hard to open your eyes was a huge flash that exploded like a bomb. What crossed between them was countless black streaks, black lightning.

The lightning struck with the light, and then followed by a slight delay, thunder swept over.

The rebels who were rushing towards the Black Thunder Palace were swept away without even screaming.

Someone might have screamed. But their last words were buried in the roar of the black lightning that tore through the air.

Countless black streaks connecting the dark clouds and the ground poured down like a shower and poured down again.

Yu-hyun looked at the scene with his eyes wide open.

When the black lightning that had fallen endlessly stopped, all that was left in its place was a blackened earth.

Those who were swept away disappeared without even leaving corpses.

“No, this can’t be.”

“One blow… This much power?”

The lucky survivors of the rebels could not continue their words as they saw the disaster.

Out of more than 30,000 rebels, more than 10,000 people died in the storm of lightning that just swept over them.

If you add up the injured, that number will increase.

With one attack, more than half of the total number of rebels were casualties.

People felt like they were dreaming of this unbelievable reality.

“We… were foolish.”

Someone muttered in a hollow voice.

“How could we think we could do anything to the Lord with just 30,000 people?”

They thought they could try something with this number.

It wasn’t just mediocre, and some strong people were mixed in among them, so they believed it would be more than enough.

That belief vanished like bubbles with one attack.

Then a voice came from above.

“You’ve gathered a lot of bugs.”

A person came down slowly in midair from a crack in the dark clouds.

She was beautiful like a fairy descending from heaven, but her smile engraved on her face was too creepy.

She wore a revealing black dress and black hair like ebony, and around her wriggled black lightning like snakes.

Behind her spread wings stained with blood, like Icarus’.

She was Kang Hye-rim, the Queen of Hell.

She looked down at the ruins around her, a symbol of terror to the liberation army.

“How dare you think you can do anything to the lord by gathering like this.”

Hahaha!

Her laughter, like thunder, echoed in everyone’s ears.

Kang Hye-rim wiped away the tears that welled up in her eyes as she laughed madly.

“How cute.”

The liberation army felt the fear of death from her seductive smile.

Yu-hyun looked up at her with a face of disbelief.

The reality in front of him was different from the image he had only imagined until now.

She, the one he knew, had changed so much from what he thought.

“Huh?”

Kang Hye-rim also felt his gaze and looked at Yu-hyun.

“Oh, it was you.”

Kang Hye-rim smiled wickedly at Yu-hyun.

“How dare you imitate Yu-hyun, you fake…”

That was not the answer Yu-hyun had hoped for.

Kang Hye-rim’s white fingertips pointed at Yu-hyun.

“Die.”

Zzzz!

A black thunder bolt pierced through the dark clouds and fell on Yu-hyun’s head.