Chapter 38: The Price for Touching Jin-wook

Late at night.

After checking that Jin-wook was fast asleep, I threw on some clothes.

I put on the clothes I used to wear when chasing dungeons in the past, took out a card that looked exactly like the Hunter license I had returned from my wallet, and headed to the veranda.

'Taking this out after a long time.'

A night without even a moon.

I thought I would have to wait a few days.

But checking the calendar, today happened to be a pitch-black night where even the old moon wouldn't rise, so I had no choice but to open the window.

"Hello, long time no see."

When I lifted the card with telekinesis and tossed it lightly into the air, it soon grew to a size large enough for two or three people to ride.

As I climbed on top, the card shook slightly as it accepted my weight after a long time, but soon found its stability.

'Shall we go then?'

Sitting sideways and looking ahead, I raised my right hand to manifest telekinesis, and the card began to fly as I led it.

The cold night wind swept past my face and hair.

The biting cold felt like it was piercing every corner of my skin.

But because I was anxious about what that bitch Riana might say, I didn't have the leisure to enjoy the cold.

Normally, I would have enjoyed the sense of speed with this card I hadn't used in ages.

However, as I got closer to the place where Riana's energy originated, my expression hardened little by little due to the growing anxiety.

"You came?"

Even in the darkness, she greeted me with a smile, her blonde hair seeming to shine brightly.

Riana Peles.

I certainly thought I would never have any business with her again after that day.

"What are you thinking?"

"You're too cold. I crossed from that distant dimension just to see you."

"So, with what intention did you come all the way here? Didn't the deal between you and me end on that day?"

Hearing my words, she wore a fishy smile.

Seeing that appearance, which hadn't changed a bit from when I met her as an enemy in the past...

The defeat I experienced in the other world began to feel real on my skin again.

'If it's now, I can win though.'

I am someone who crossed over suffering the side effect of my body being forcibly reconstructed.

There's no way Riana wouldn't have side effects crossing over to this distant dimension.

Even I barely held on by using all my telekinesis to strengthen my body, and due to the aftereffects, I still haven't fully recovered the telekinesis I had back then.

"Hmm, was that so?"

"But why did you chase me? I never left a debt to you."

"Just, because I missed an old friend?"

"Friend?"

At Riana's word, a sneer naturally escaped me.

In the first place, the reason I was dragged to the other world against my will was that the Empire cast a summoning spell as they pleased, asking to be saved.

Being forcibly summoned to another world simply because I had weak telekinesis at the time—but happened to have the most exceptional combat talent in this world...

It felt like it wasn't that long ago for me yet.

"You said it yourself. I am the strongest on the Demon side, and you are the strongest on the Human side."

"Ha, right. Strongest on the Human side."

Despite that.

To think you are spouting such words.

"I'll say it once again. The business with you bitch ended after the contract was terminated back then. You have no reason to come find me again."

At Riana's words, memories of the times I struggled to survive, crushing the vicious schemes aimed at killing me, resurfaced. I grit my teeth.

You wouldn't know.

"So speak quickly. Before my patience runs out."

"Ha, just because you got a little stronger in this weak world, you have such confidence..."

"You seem to think I wouldn't know."

I jumped straight off the card, grabbed Riana by the neck, and slammed her straight into the mountain below.

BOOM!

Perhaps the shock was transmitted from her back to deep inside her body, as Riana's vision seemed to shake for a moment.

As I glared at her while shutting my mouth, gripping her neck from above, she started to make a painful expression.

"Crossing that crazy distance of dimensions, there's no way your body is normal either, right?"

"Kuh, Cough...!"

"Also, there's something you bitch don't know."

Saying that, I operated my telekinesis as if lightly grasping the ground.

Trees pulled out by the roots, soil, and various plants clumped together.

They rolled up like a giant ball and floated behind my back.

As if to show that I could flatten her into dried filefish right now.

"You'd better discard the thought that the current me is the same trash who could barely handle a few mana swords like back then."

"Cough, cough!"

"So stop testing my patience and speak quickly. Killing you right now is nothing to me."

I threw Riana, whose neck I was holding, backward onto the ground. She coughed violently and collapsed on the floor.

Seeing Riana gasping for breath as she collapsed in front of me gave me a strange feeling.

Because the past me, who was a man, had lost to her once in the other world.

And in the final battle, at that.

"Ha, you lost to me once."

"...5."

"Even if it was because of the contract."

"4."

"Clearly, you were inferior to me...!"

Boom!

The soil sphere made of telekinesis floating behind my back exploded and covered the surroundings.

The trees burst like claymores, revealing holes as if pierced through, turning into dust and falling.

Craters caused by stones appeared all over the ground.

Standing on that ruin were only me and Riana, who barely blocked it with a shield that was on the verge of breaking.

"3."

"Ha, fine. I'll talk. Right now, our world is on the verge of being torn apart because of the alliance you guys formed."

"So."

"Everyone is looking for you with lights in their eyes. Not just within the world, but expanding their territory outside the dimension."

"Why?"

At my question, Riana looked back at me with a dumbfounded expression.

With a meaning asking if I was asking seriously.

"Do you really not know? I told you earlier. That back then, on the Human side, you were the strongest."

"..."

"They think if they find you and pull you to their side first, they can rule the world."

"Ha."

"They all think so. That given the friendship built with you in the past, you would come to them. That for the past events, they just need to offer appropriate compensation."

I shouldn't have listened.

I reached out and called the card I was riding.

Do they really think the 'friendship' I built with them back then was true friendship?

"Well, you look like you have absolutely no intention of going back."

"Yeah. So if you go back and meet those bastards, tell them clearly. The moment they come to find me, the only thing waiting for them is death."

Sitting on the card, I glared at Riana again.

Riana looked at me as if asking why I was looking at her like that, then was caught by my telekinesis, slammed into the ground, and pushed backward leaving a gouged trail on the ground simultaneously.

"This is the price for touching Jin-wook."

After talking to her, who had fainted, I left the spot.

They are looking for me again.

Even if not right now, I had a premonition that something bad was going to happen.

"...I might see you again."

Looking at Riana collapsed from the sky, I turned direction toward home and began to cut through the atmosphere again.

Eventually, that night, my head was too complicated to sleep.

The only fortunate thing was that the final exams were over, so I didn't have to go to school anymore.

"Haa."

I let out a small sigh looking at the sky outside the window, where dawn was breaking before I knew it.

After deliberately losing due to the contract with Riana, who was the Demon King in the past, and somehow returning to the original world with the help of her magic...

I thought the connection was over.

Since the mana circuits in my body were all blown away as they were reconstructed into my current body.

I can no longer use mana like the Awakened ones.

'Jin-wook must still be sleeping.'

I stared blankly at the door of the room where he would be sleeping, then stood up from the sofa.

When I carefully opened the door and entered so as not to make a sound, Jin-wook was sprawled out in a 'big character' (大) shape, snoring.

I sat beside him and carefully held Jin-wook's hand.

"Jin-wook-ah."

So that he wouldn't wake up, I slightly blocked both of Jin-wook's ears with telekinesis.

I began to open my mouth carefully.

The story of the past 4 years that disappeared from the modern era—which I ended by simply saying I went to a world I saw for the first time because no one seemed to believe me.

"Do you remember I disappeared while shining right in front of your eyes on the way to school?"

When we were young, we just thought it was fascinating.

Because my parents strictly made me keep quiet, the telekinesis was shared only between me and Jin-wook.

"I told you I went to another world back then."

I was forcibly summoned because I was chosen by the damn Empire due to that telekinesis.

They said, 'Sorry to the Hero, but our situation is more urgent, so it can't be helped.'

Oppressed by the energy of those who threatened me halfway, I was forced to become a Hero semi-forcibly.

Otherwise, they had planted a threat in me that I wouldn't be able to go back home—in me, who realized the preciousness of my family as soon as they disappeared.

The demon invasion of the human world getting worse day by day.

And to overcome those demons, I was chosen as a Hero. The deal made with the Empire after defeating the Demon King at the end of training.

Deceived by the words that they would definitely send me home if I defeated the Demon King and returned, I swung my sword at the demons.

My mana sword, moved by telekinesis, slaughtered enemies ruthlessly.

Unaware of how those bastards, whom I didn't even want to call comrades, were recruited by the Empire and how they would stab me in the back.

"That platinum-blonde monster-like woman you saw earlier... she actually came to see me."

However, unlike my expectation that she would be quite evil, the New Demon King Riana Peles, whom I met at the end of that war...

Was an existence whose inner intentions I couldn't know.

She was like a person harder to understand than people.

'You wanna make a deal with me?'

'Shut up, Demon King. I won't be fooled by your snout.'

'Hmm, really? Unlike those bastards over there, I can send you back to your original world right away if you just set your mind to it.'

Seeing her, the Demon King, proposing a deal to send me home—to me, the Hero—my comrades shouted.

'Do you know how evil demons are?'

They shouted at me with veins popping in their necks, asking if I was really going to be fooled by such demons.

'You don't know what they are thinking, do you? They absolutely won't send you home. They don't even have the ability to do so in the first place.'

'Bullshit...'

'If it sounds like a lie, try fighting me and winning.'

The things she told me, which I couldn't verify just by listening at the time.

Riana had evidence revealing the truth about those I trusted as comrades.

I was appalled to learn the thoughts of those who pretended to be close on the surface but planned to discard me immediately once my use was over. So I held hands with the Demon King.

'To them, you were just an existence of that level from the start.'

'Here, think about it. Who would want to keep you, someone who isn't even from this world originally?'

'You're just a time bomb with too much power.'

'The world is originally like that. Don't be too disappointed. It's just that you didn't know well because you were young, and they have lived in this world longer than you at least, right?'

Riana was such an existence.

She tells the ugly truth, leads things in a direction that brings maximum benefit to herself.

And in that process, she doesn't care at all about the damage others suffer.

Such an existence.

This was why.

The reason I was extremely wary as soon as she revealed herself in this world.

Surely, informing me that those in that world are looking for me must have been said with some intention hidden inside.

"She said they are looking for me again in that world I was dragged to."

Lying next to Jin-wook before I knew it.

Talking while looking at his sleeping face, sleepiness came flooding in slowly.

"But you know, I won't go back. Even just for the sake of my people, including you."

I closed my eyes.

Jin-wook tossed and turned, then took a posture as if hugging me.

I didn't push him away and quietly fell asleep in Jin-wook's arms.

"So, you will keep staying by my side too, right?"