Hoarding In Hell [EN]: Chapter 317

The air turned frigid, thick enough to grab hold of.

I couldn’t decipher Teacher’s emotions through the black Abyss, but I could easily imagine the expression he wore.

Imagining it, I couldn’t help but laugh. Even captured and suspended, I shook with laughter.

“Pfft, heh, ha… Seeing you speechless, it must be true. Going on and on about hell and despair like some *chuunibyou* [a Japanese term for someone who acts like they have special powers or knowledge], but you’ve never even experienced Difficulty: Hell? You had a return stone, didn’t you ever wonder why?”

I could feel my heart clenching from the murderous intent radiating from Teacher.

But I couldn’t stop. How could I give up such a golden opportunity to tease him?

If Teacher got agitated, that was exactly what I wanted.

“Did you get scared watching people in Difficulty: Hell kill themselves or go insane? Is that why you thought I’d die without fail, too? Wow, to think I’d become such a scaredy-cat in my old age, that’s kind of terrifying in its own way.”

“You son of a bitch…”

“Watch your language. It’s not just me who becomes a dog when you curse.”

Crack.

I felt the Abyss finally digging into my body.

Teacher’s Beast had been pressing against me for a while now. I was just desperately holding it back.

But finally, the Abyss slowly dug in and began to tear at my heart.

“Heh, huff, I knew it, I thought it was weird. You couldn’t properly describe what hell was like, but you just seemed scared of it.”

Teacher gathered more Abyss to crush me, trying to shut me up.

Bones broke and organs ruptured throughout my body.

“You, you don’t know, kid. Cough, hack. H, hell, it’s actually, surprisingly livable.”

Even then, I didn’t stop running my mouth. But soon, I was spitting out more blood than words.

Not yet, not yet.

Blood streamed from my eyes, nose, mouth, and ears, forced out by the pressure. But I didn’t take my eyes off Teacher for a moment.

Even the slightest change would do.

I couldn’t miss any change in Teacher.

Even if it meant facing death.

“In that world, Lee Jitae only saw up to Difficulty: Nightmare, there’s no way you would have stayed until hell came…”

Crunch.

Finally, a part of the Yayu, the Binder, broke, and my heart was pierced.

My eyes clouded over, and my tongue finally stiffened.

“Kang Hyun-woo.”

Teacher approached the frozen me and whispered.

“I was going to kill you in one go out of some misplaced affection, but I should stop that.”

Teacher’s eyes gleamed coldly.

“I’ll kill you a thousand times until you stop flapping that mouth of yours.”

Slice.

Having lost the ability to resist, I felt something chillingly pierce my forehead.

I felt my body slump like a doll. Soon, my head was buried in the mud.

Before I could even taste the muddy water in my mouth, everything went dark.

***

Even the slightest change would do.

I couldn’t miss any change in Teacher.

Even if it meant facing death.

“In that world, Lee Jitae only saw up to Difficulty: Nightmare, there’s no way you would have stayed until hell came…”

In that moment, I caught the anomaly that appeared in Teacher. At the same time, I instantly pulled up my aura.

The Beast of the End, reactivated, tore through the Abyss and burst out as if swelling.

The Abyss, which had completely gripped my body, scattered like a grenade exploding in his hand, then clumped together again like oil.

I, too, had hastily used the Beast of the End, so I couldn’t form a proper shape and looked like a broken lump of clay.

But Teacher’s condition was even worse.

“Ha, hahaha. What’s wrong, Teacher? Are you sick?”

Teacher’s face was cracked, and blood was streaming down. His right eye was definitely destroyed.

But it was just shattered like a bead, as if it had been an artificial eye from the start.

He glared at me with an angry expression, struggling to control the fluctuating Abyss.

“Judging by your face, killing me didn’t have good results, did it?”

He rewound it.

Seeing that, I knew my plan had succeeded.

“You crazy bastard….”

“Watch your language. If I’m a crazy bastard, then you’re the son of one.”

Hyeon-woo wanted to burst into laughter. However, Hyeon-woo’s condition was as bad as, if not worse than, Teacher’s.

The Abyss was peeling off his skin and hacking at him, trying to burrow into his body.

But Hyeon-woo had now proven his hypothesis.

“So, you’re not thinking of going further back in time? Is this the best you can do?”

Teacher was silent. Hyeon-woo confirmed that Teacher had sustained injuries in more places than just his face.

All those injuries were traces of the ‘future’ he had experienced.

Teacher’s words that he would ‘kill Hyeon-woo a thousand, ten thousand times’ were not a joke.

Teacher really did kill Hyeon-woo, and killed him again, and again.

In various forms, in various ways, Hyeon-woo was tortured, slaughtered, crushed, and dismembered.

Hyeon-woo thought that would happen. So, he provoked Teacher to turn back time and keep killing him.

That was the only ‘best’ Hyeon-woo could do in a situation where he was being unilaterally pushed back.

“Did you think I’d be trembling in fear of dying?”

Hyeon-woo asked, covering his twisted and wounded body with the Beast of the End to heal it temporarily.

“You should have gone to hell at least once. Then you might have developed some guts in that tiny little mind of yours.”

However, Hyeon-woo had planted traps behind his countless deaths.

Just once was enough. If the timing came to overcome this moment.

A Hunter grows the most in the moment of facing death.

Hyeon-woo also experienced and overcame countless deaths in Difficulty: Hell. As a result, he was able to acquire numerous traits and skills.

“If there’s one area I know better and am better at than you….”

Hyeon-woo muttered with a smirk.

“It’s that I’ve died far more times than you. You newbie. You’ve never died, have you?”

Teacher would have been quick to turn back time if he felt like he was going to die.

The very fact that Hyeon-woo was alive meant that Teacher had suffered a major setback while trying to kill Hyeon-woo.

Enough to sustain injuries.

Teacher would have experienced that future, regretted it, and turned back time.

Thinking he could prepare more safely and kill Hyeon-woo.

That was his miscalculation.

He failed to kill Hyeon-woo even when he was in perfect condition, so there was no way he could succeed properly while injured.

Teacher would have experienced a few more failures, repeated the process, and then realized that repeating it any further would only harm himself, so he would have stopped.

In other words, this is not the ‘best future,’ but the ‘future where he gave up on the best.’

‘It’s all hypothetical, though….’

Hyeon-woo thought with a bitter smile.

It’s only half a success so far.

There was no way to know what measures he had taken to escape and inflict injuries in a future he had not even experienced.

Only the result that ‘Teacher was injured’ was before his eyes.

‘Finding out that method is the real success.’

He had to find out the ‘method to overcome Teacher’ that he had realized while dying in countless possibilities.

And Hyeon-woo was sure that he would naturally find out.

If he didn’t know, he wouldn’t be alive right now.

“If you still have a mouth, say something. It’s not your mouth that’s broken, it’s that dog eye of yours. What did you have to get scratched by to end up like that? Huh?”

Hyeon-woo slowly provoked him, trying to elicit a reaction from Teacher.

First, there was one clue.

Teacher’s injuries were not from a sword, but from something like an animal’s claw.

It was highly likely that Hyeon-woo had awakened some more traits of Ultimate Skill: Beast of the End while facing the crisis of death.

Teacher was far more overwhelming in his use of the Beast of the End, but if he was careless, he might have achieved unexpected results.

The same trick wouldn’t work, but at least the possibility had to be kept in mind.

Two.

The injuries were most severe on the face, but appeared almost all over the body.

Teacher was surrounded by the black Abyss, making it almost impossible for Hyeon-woo to inflict damage. He had even blocked the Beast of the End, hadn’t he?

‘Is that all for now?’

Currently, the Beast of the End seemed the most likely.

External intervention could also be assumed. Adam Poltra, or the appearance of a strong person he hadn’t anticipated.

Of course, from Hyeon-woo’s perspective, Adam Poltra was still just observing.

“The way you’re still scheming really pisses me off.”

Teacher spat out those words as he roughly swept back his hair. His one eye, wet with rain, gleamed fiercely.

“Even if I tried to figure out what tricks you’ve been using, do you think it would be possible? I just need to turn back time. There will be at least one time when you die without realizing it.”

Hyeon-woo chuckled. Trying to make him give up with such a tactic was absurd.

“Well, I don’t think I’ll ever give up, even if you get tired and quit.”

“……”

“Because I never get tired or exhausted. You’re the one turning back time for me, after all. But you’re the only one who has to fight every time, get annoyed, and lose energy.”

Clench.

The sound of teeth grinding reached Hyeon-woo’s ears. In a fight, the opponent’s anger is the best compliment.

Paradoxically, as long as Teacher was obsessed with being the ‘best,’ he was the only one who would get exhausted.

Even if everyone’s time was turned back, only his time continued to flow.

After a moment of silence, Teacher looked around. Lee Ji-tae was still held back, and Park Do-ryeong showed no sign of appearing.

He still had more hidden cards, but he couldn’t invest them all in Hyeon-woo.

Teacher glared at Hyeon-woo with heavy eyes and opened his mouth.

“You are not my only enemy, Kang Hyeon-woo.”

***

“No, compared to my real opponent, you are just a shallow obstacle. What I seek is not some individual’s success or wealth.”

“Then?”

“The best future.”

Teacher sighed deeply and said.

“You probably think the best future is for myself. Well, that’s not wrong. But I’m not satisfied with just avoiding the worst. I know the best for humanity. And I have seen it.”

Hyeon-woo narrowed his eyes and glared at Teacher.

“Are you trying to convince me to commit suicide again?”

“Listen. To be honest, that best outcome wasn’t something I achieved. It was you who went to Difficulty: Hell [an extremely challenging game mode]. From the day I gave you the Return Stone, the day you returned.”

Teacher closed his mouth tightly and then opened it again.

“I was surprised, embarrassed, and jealous. It was the future I had been trying to change, but you achieved it so easily. I periodically checked the future and corrected the mistakes you made, the things you missed. I could have been satisfied with that. That’s why your companions know me. That’s all.”

The reason why Hyeon-woo’s affairs went so unusually well: it was because he had been helping, Teacher was saying.

“You weren’t trying to separate me from the Almighty League?”

“If I were simply trying to separate you, there would have been much simpler methods. But I’m not as bad as you think. Honestly, every time you greatly changed the future, I rejoiced. When I recalled the nightmarish moments I had experienced, I couldn’t help but feel that way. And that was something I myself had achieved.”

Teacher’s expression looked somewhat bitter as he said that.

“No matter how wicked I may seem, who would dislike a bright and happy future for humanity? But that future had one blind spot.”

Teacher revealed a future that Hyeon-woo probably didn’t want to know.

“You weren’t there. The existence of Kang Hyeon-woo was absent from the best future for humanity. You faced the worst enemy and then died. You are honored as a hero, receiving the mourning of those who love you. And Lee Ji-tae became a star, and in a fair and just world, humanity enjoys a new golden age.”

Lee Ji-tae became a star? Hyeon-woo thought it was ridiculous, but he inwardly considered it plausible.

With Teacher’s assistance, it would be easy for Lee Ji-tae to become the strongest, excluding Teacher.

“It’s a happiness you originally couldn’t have obtained, wouldn’t have obtained. It’s all happiness I gave you. But to protect the people you love, you have to die.”

“That’s ridiculous. That future is the future you love, your happiness, so why is it mine? That’s the kind of thing someone who has never been loved in their life would say. If that future was so good to live in, why didn’t you keep living there? Why did you come back?”

“I intended to.”

Teacher glared at Hyeon-woo and said.

“But at some point, the future went awry. Lee Ji-tae didn’t become a star, the game was still in progress, the monster hordes were rampaging, and your extremist followers were creating disasters, pointing guns and swords at all of humanity.”

“That sounds like a thrilling future……”

“It’s not a joke. But I’ve been experiencing these phenomena all along. There are only two reasons why the future changes.”

Teacher spread his fingers and said.

“One, someone who accurately knows the future takes an unplanned action. There is a corrective force that tries not to deviate from the predetermined flow to some extent, but if you deviate from the frame itself, it will eventually change.”

It was the same as Teacher turning back time to change the future.

Repeating the same actions would only repeat the same results. But the act of knowing the future itself was a significant variable that deviated from the frame.

“Two, there was intervention from the external world. That’s your Return Stone, Kang Hyeon-woo. Every time you went to Difficulty: Hell and came back, the future fluctuated.”

Hyeon-woo fiddled with the Return Stone.

Let’s think of a perfectly sealed aquarium.

The water inside may evaporate or remain in a liquid state, but no matter how much time passes, the amount of liquid inside will be the same.

But if more water flows in from the outside, or if the aquarium is broken with a hammer, or if the heat intensifies, the future of the aquarium cannot be the same as the past.

Teacher was explaining that the Return Stone was such an ‘external force.’

“Until now, the results have been positive. But just a week ago, the moment you returned from hell, the best future was shattered.”

Teacher narrowed his eyes sharply and glared at Hyeon-woo.

“What the hell did you do, Kang Hyeon-woo? What were you thinking? Or what did you bring back? Why did you ruin the best future?”