I Became The Only Healer In The Academy [EN]: Chapter 299

299

The master of the Second Dimension, having finished everything, finally felt the returning power throughout his body and removed the barrier.

“Ah…”

Even the air he inhaled felt different.

Each breath, fatally sweet, seemed to scan the master’s brain before exiting again.

“What is this…”

Along with Padron’s quiet exclamation, a spectacle unfolded.

The moment the master regained his power, all the magical beasts present began to bow their heads towards him.

They welcomed the advent of their true master, seemingly oblivious to the enemy behind them seeking an opportunity.

“It’s all over. Now, all that’s left is to clean up.”

The master raised a hand and waved it in the air, and an unknown black aura began to descend upon the magical beasts.

It was perhaps a power similar to that of a Saint—the domain, a power possessed by every master.

As the master’s gesture ended, the magical beasts that had bowed their heads to him slowly began to rise.

“…Everyone, prepare yourselves.”

Losing Saint was a profound sorrow.

It stung so much that it was hard to express simply as sadness.

For Lich, Saint was not just a stronger hunter, but a comrade.

However, he couldn’t afford to be lost in sorrow.

It pained him to lose Saint, one of the people he wanted to protect the most, but there were already too many others to protect here.

After Saint disappeared, Lich and Padron, as well as all the believers and non-believer hunters present, reverted to their previous states.

Of course, they were stronger than before, but the overwhelming advantage that Saint’s mere presence had provided was now gone.

‘At this rate… we’ll be annihilated.’

If it only ended with the annihilation of the hunters, it would be fortunate.

The moment even one of them was missed, humanity would be destroyed.

And the only hunters who could prevent this were Padron and Lich.

“Mr. Padron.”

“…I know.”

Padron’s confidence was still there, but now Padron himself was beginning to doubt.

Was the confidence he held now just arrogance?

The magical beast that had fought Saint was, for some reason, emitting a much stronger aura after dealing with Saint.

It wasn’t deliberately emitting it; its mere existence was causing this aura to be felt.

When Padron sparred with Saint, the difference wasn’t this great.

But now, he couldn’t even make eye contact.

The fear that seemed to strike the moment he made eye contact was preventing even Padron from fully raising his head.

“Are you the ones?”

However, the master had no mercy.

He had already perfectly grasped that Padron and Lich were the strongest among the remaining hunters, and he appeared before them immediately after the battle with Saint ended.

They didn’t realize it until the master spoke, and by the time they did, it was too late to do anything.

“As expected, the residents of the First Dimension are interesting.”

They were a race with quicker wits than anyone else.

As proof, they were aware that he had thoroughly crushed their hope and were not showing any movement.

If they had tried to do something, if they had tried to resist again, the master would have killed them without hesitation.

“I’d like to kill you all if I could…”

If the day ever came when the master of the First Dimension awakened, he planned to use them as hostages.

And also use them as slaves.

To do that, he needed someone who could effectively govern them.

The children of the master of the First Dimension had already passed away that day, so the two of them were the most likely candidates to actually govern.

“Stay where you are.”

Of course, he wasn’t just giving them the position.

He would give them the power to govern, but he would have to receive a price.

“You will gain power, authority, influence, qualifications, and everything else. But there is a price.”

What could that price be?

“What I will take is one thing: your egos.”

Perfect puppets with their egos completely taken away.

All the master wanted from them was one thing: just loyal workers who did what they were told.

Lich and Padron wanted to reject the master’s hand reaching for their heads, but they couldn’t disobey the order to stay still.

After Saint died, they had no means to resist that order.

‘Like this…’

This would be the last time they would be frustrated, angry, or even think for themselves.

The moment that hand touched their heads, everything they thought and did for themselves would become just a dreamlike memory.

They didn’t even know if that memory would remain intact.

So they had to resist and escape somehow, but they couldn’t move, just with a single word.

Soon, the master’s hand touched Lich and Padron’s heads, and as the master had said, and as the two had expected, all freedom slowly began to disappear.

And filling that void was a single belief: absolute loyalty to the master.

“S, Saint…”

“Interesting. Even in this situation, you’re worried about a corpse that’s already rotting…”

That was then.

The pain of a stinging sensation was felt near the heart.

Lich’s last words were not about regret and apology towards the dead Saint.

He had merely spoken the name of the last being he saw before losing everything.

“Was it around here?”

“…How…?”

Saint pierced the master’s heart as he had been pierced.

Of course, he didn’t grab anything, but the mere fact that he had pierced it erased all the humiliation he had suffered earlier.

“You should have aimed somewhere else. My heart no longer exists, and it’s not a weakness.”

The master grabbed the hand that had pierced his heart.

He didn’t know how he had come back to life, but he could just kill him again.

He had already absorbed all the power, so there was nothing to worry about.

‘Weakness Detection.’

However, nothing was shown by the Weakness Detection [a skill that reveals an enemy’s vulnerabilities] he had taken from Saint.

He had already pierced the heart, so it didn’t exist, but at least the basic human weaknesses like the head or other places should have been visible.

“…You. What the hell…”

Then, magic began to flow in through the wound in his pierced heart.

A magic that was clearly different from before.

A magic that reminded the master of that old, bitter memory in his mind.

“Could it be…”

“Why? Does it feel familiar?”

“How, how?! I clearly can’t feel it…!”

Then there was only one thing to suspect: that space that was impossible to interfere with, so naturally impossible to recognize.

“But humans…”

Humans clearly couldn’t enter, but when he thought about it, the master had directly fulfilled the conditions.

“…I see.”

Now everything was starting to connect.

The master of the Third Dimension directly creating the door, and suddenly entering annihilation instead of eternal slumber.

The master of the Third Dimension loved his sons terribly, so he believed that he had annihilated himself to be reborn anew after losing all his sons.

There were more things that the existence called master could do by annihilating himself than one could imagine, enough to achieve his own new birth.

So he just believed that was the case.

However, the master of the Third Dimension sacrificed his annihilation to awaken the master of the First Dimension from eternal slumber, not to return him to his original state, but to annihilate himself for the sole purpose of awakening him.

“That won’t change anything.”

“Maybe not.”

Saint roughly shook off the hand he had pierced, and the master distanced himself from Saint with that recoil.

‘Purification.’

“…Huh?”

“S, Saint?”

The freedom that had been faintly visible was now back in an instant.

And Saint stood in front of the two of them, as always, as if nothing had happened, showing a more reliable back than ever before.

“Are you okay?”

It was definitely Saint. The voice too. Everything felt right in that voice.

“…Yes!”

“Ha, Kim, you son of a bitch… You son of a bitch…”

Unlike the somewhat rough words, Padron’s voice sounded like he was about to cry.

“Are you crying?”

“What? Bullshit.”

“You both seem okay.”

These two weren’t the only ones who had been waiting for Saint.

“Hey!! Kim Saint!!”

“…”

Inhwan and Sangyeon were also running towards Saint.

Seeing the traces of something flowing under their eyes, it seemed that these two were quite desperate too.

“Don’t make a fuss. Do you think I’d die? Go and guard your positions.”

“You son of a bitch. Okay.”

“Understood.”

Inhwan and Sangyeon returned to their positions to command the guild members and other hunters.

“Is the unfortunate reunion over?”

“Don’t pretend you were waiting. How dare you.”

“…How dare I? Did you say how dare I?”

The master’s emotional change, which had rarely been seen, was now apparent.

Perhaps if it had been Saint before his death, he wouldn’t have reacted to those words like that.

But now, it was different.

The master had realized that Saint had reached the same level as him.

Saint smiled at the master’s emotional change and said, “You… you felt inferior.”

“Inferior…ity?”

“How dare you say such nonsense to my father…”

The moment the master’s son, who had been fighting Padron, couldn’t stand Saint’s arrogance and opened his mouth, Saint interrupted.

“Step up when it’s your turn.”

Saint, who had moved directly behind that son, pierced the son’s heart as he had been pierced a moment ago.

He hadn’t used magic separately, nor had he used his level, just pure physical movement.

With just this, the master’s son, although his level was lower, couldn’t even react.

“Ugh…! What, what is this…”

The son was at the level right below the master, but unfortunately, their hearts were their weak points.

Saint burst the extracted heart without any hesitation, in front of the son’s father.

Thud.

A sound more insignificant than a balloon bursting was heard, and at the same time, the son fell to the floor in front of his father with a lost look in his eyes.

“You…”

“Looking at it like this…”

Saint didn’t even give the master’s reaction a glance.

The place Saint’s gaze was directed at was the master’s other children.

There were still five children left, which meant he had to make the master taste the pain of a father losing his children five more times.

“Kill them all.”

The master made the best decision in this situation.

He had something to protect, but Saint was the same.

His army was much stronger than the residents of the First Dimension, so he believed that he would surely be the one to win this war in the end.

Saint, who had pulled out the son’s heart, stood in front of Lich and Padron again.

“Are you going to block them alone?”

“No.”

Saint began to wield the higher level of magic.

The magic itself was so pure that it seemed visible, just like Saint had felt earlier.

‘Holy War.’

He hadn’t been able to utilize it properly because of the condition of being a race, but in the current situation, he could specify the target more clearly than anything else.

‘The target of the Holy War is…’

The Second Dimension.

Some of them, who couldn’t be called magical beasts, didn’t recognize themselves as magical beasts.

However, since the master of the dimension had directly mentioned the Second Dimension, no one could escape this target, not even the master of the dimension.

Saint’s magic, which had been used with the start of the Holy War, began to soar into the sky.

Then, like the master had spread his domain, a magic that emitted a sacred light poured down and began to fall on everyone.

“Commencement of War.”