TA-TA, TA-TA-TA, TA-TARA-TA-TA…
The sound of reveille rang out yet again.
Dohyeon sprang upright the moment he opened his eyes.
Crackle. Bzzzt-
The speakers emitted static, and—
“Monsters have invaded! It’s a massive army!”
Bae Man-deuk’s voice echoed through the barracks.
‘Again?’
Dohyeon realized that the exact same day was repeating once more.
He immediately looked at Kang Uk.
“Whoa!”
Startled, Kang Uk kicked the locker, and the falling ballistic helmet struck Yun Du-sik on the head.
“Ah, shit! What the hell was that?!”
As Yun Du-sik grew angry, Kang Uk shrugged and spoke.
“Why are you glaring at me? Man-deuk’s the bastard who started it.”
The situation unfolded without the slightest difference.
Dohyeon already knew what Yun Du-sik would say next.
“Didn’t I tell you I’d kill you myself if you pulled that shit again?”
“Didn’t I tell you I’d kill you myself if you pulled that shit again?”
Dohyeon and Yun Du-sik uttered the exact same words almost simultaneously.
The squad members’ eyes went round like startled rabbits.
“Squad Leader, did you learn how to read minds without us knowing? You said exactly what I was about to say, without changing a single syllable.”
“As if that were possible.”
“I’m telling you, we really said the exact same thing just now.”
“You must be imagining it.”
“I swear it’s true...... Or is it not?”
Yun Du-sik tilted his head.
Dohyeon declared so confidently that it was their imagination that everyone grew uncertain and let the matter slide.
Dohyeon swallowed hard.
‘I came back to life again?’
This truly was not a dream.
In his final moments, Dohyeon had unconsciously imitated the strange swordsmanship he had used when he first killed Kirantal.
The swordsmanship he had performed only once by paying with his life—the technique that had carried a ninety-nine-percent chance of killing Kirantal.
This time, however, he had failed.
For some reason, the knee that had easily endured the technique the first time was destroyed on his second attempt. He lost his balance and ended up stabbing the wrong spot.
If he had executed it correctly, he certainly could have killed Kirantal.
His decisive strike had come to nothing.
And Dohyeon had died again.
‘What the hell is going on? Why does the same day keep repeating?’
It was not simply repeating on its own.
The day restarted only when Dohyeon died.
“Get your asses outside already! Anyone who’s late is getting a kick in the rear!”
At Dohyeon’s shout, the squad members scrambled outside.
Dohyeon herded them along like a flock of sheep.
Seeing him, Yun Du-sik’s eyes widened.
“Hold on, Squad Leader. Did you gulp down a bowl of some miracle tonic yesterday? Why aren’t you limping?”
“I took a good pill.”
“Oh? What kind?”
“Dragon Fire Egg.”
“Huh? Dragon... fire... egg? Dragon balls? Why, you little shit!”
“Your English is pretty good.”
“Do you take me for an idiot?!”
When Yun Du-sik raised his eyebrows and shouted, Dohyeon quickly ran toward the parade ground.
Their run and calisthenics ended, followed by the battalion commander’s brief speech.
Everything was exactly the same as the day Dohyeon had already experienced twice.
That meant if he crossed over to Croat and fought the dark elves today, he was guaranteed to die.
His only way to avoid death was to bring down Kirantal.
‘Will the day repeat again if I die?’
The question occurred to him, but he could not simply let himself die on that belief alone.
He had no guarantee that the repetitions would continue forever, and the pain he felt each time he died was anything but mild.
At first, it had merely been a stinging sensation, but gradually that sensation had transformed into excruciating agony.
Put simply, it was a horrific pain he never wanted to experience again.
‘I’ll kill him this time, no matter what!’
Dohyeon made his vow.
That was why he devoted the entire personal maintenance period after breakfast to that strange swordsmanship.
Since he could not practice swordsmanship on the parade ground, he headed to the incinerator at the rear of the base.
No one was there.
Only the occasional veteran soldier came by for a cigarette.
Dohyeon did not care whether they smoked or watched him practice. He trained his swordsmanship in the small clearing beside the incinerator.
Dohyeon remembered precisely the swordsmanship he had used to kill Kirantal the first time.
Whenever he used Equivalent Exchange, he habitually recalled how he had escaped that crisis and worked tirelessly to ingrain the same movements into his body.
Consequently, he had developed a habit of unconsciously remembering the techniques performed through Equivalent Exchange.
Dohyeon assumed his stance.
He imagined Kirantal standing five meters in front of him.
‘When he moves, I charge forward!’
WHOOSH!
Dohyeon kicked off the ground, shot forward with his waist lowered, and drew the sword at his hip like a bolt of lightning.
Imagining Kirantal swinging his sword with terrifying force, Dohyeon used his drawn blade to deflect it.
SKRRAAAAPE—!
The imagined sword slid away to the side, sparks flying.
He dropped his raised shoulders and diverted the blade completely.
Next, he took a long step forward with his left foot, bent his body in the opposite direction, twisted at the waist, and spun his upper body as he thrust his sword straight out.
SWOOSH-
Just as the blade produced a sound sharp enough to surprise even Dohyeon,
CRICK
His ankle twisted, and Dohyeon fell to the ground.
“Damn it!”
This swordsmanship made no sense.
If he had kicked off the ground even slightly harder, he would have destroyed his knee again.
‘How did I pull off this technique the first time?’
He could not grasp it at all.
He had clearly copied the exact posture preserved in his memory, yet his balance always collapsed at the final moment.
‘Again!’
Dohyeon did not give up.
If once was not enough, he would try twice.
If twice was not enough, he would repeat it three times, then four.
If he repeated it endlessly until he succeeded, then one day, he surely would.
Dohyeon assumed his stance again.
WHOOSH!
He shot forward and repeated the same swordsmanship he had just performed.
But at the final moment of every attempt, his ankle twisted or too much strain bore down on his knee, destroying his balance.
“Again!”
Dohyeon repeated the swordsmanship without stopping.
And so the entire morning personal maintenance period passed.
A full four hours.
The time Dohyeon had spent repeating this absurd, bizarre swordsmanship was by no means short.
His entire body drenched in sweat, Dohyeon returned to the barracks. When it was almost two in the afternoon, he crossed through the Gate with his squad members.
They crossed the field and dismounted from the armored vehicle.
They advanced through a forest packed with trees dozens of meters tall.
Once the brief battle ended, the canyon lay just ahead.
Steeling his resolve, Dohyeon entered the canyon.
When he encountered Kirantal again, he activated Equivalent Exchange.
Three choices appeared before his eyes.
▶Choose the price to be paid through Equivalent Exchange.
①Success Rate: 41.2% / Price: Life
②Success Rate: 13.2% / Price: Severed Right Arm
③Success Rate: 6.3% / Price: Immobilization for 5 Seconds
The choice with a ninety-nine-percent probability still did not appear.
The only encouraging part was that the probabilities had risen by the tiniest amount compared to before.
He suspected that might be the result of his training.
At that moment, Kirantal charged toward Dohyeon at terrifying speed.
“Move, Squad Leader!”
As always, Kang Uk appeared and shoved Dohyeon aside.
SLASH!
Before Dohyeon could stop him, Kang Uk’s head went flying. Enraged by his squad member’s death, Dohyeon—
RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT!
—mercilessly pulled the trigger and fired a volley of Magic Bullets.
But Kirantal lightly swung his sword and deflected every Magic Bullet. Then he kicked off the ground and charged Dohyeon at dazzling speed.
Dohyeon charged straight at Kirantal in return.
Then he performed that unnatural swordsmanship with all his strength.
After deflecting Kirantal’s blade and redirecting it to the side, Dohyeon twisted his body while supporting his entire weight on his left foot.
At the same time, he spun his upper body and thrust his sword.
CRUNCH!
His knee burst apart again, and he lost his balance.
Dohyeon’s sword stopped against the armor directly below Kirantal’s neck.
“Kamtokpuranmang twi!”
The instant Kirantal shouted with a terrifying look in his eyes, someone charged at Dohyeon, who was kneeling on one knee with his sword extended.
“How dare this fucking bastard lay a hand on Lord Kirantal!”
With that shout as the last thing he heard, Dohyeon felt horrific pain in his neck and lost consciousness.
***
TA-TA, TA-TA-TA, TA-TARA-TA-TA…
The day began again.
Dohyeon sprang upright. The instant the startled Kang Uk kicked the locker, Dohyeon snatched the falling ballistic helmet out of the air.
“No need to thank me.”
Yun Du-sik’s jaw dropped at the sight of Dohyeon catching the helmet just above his head.
“How did you do that? Did you see the future or something?”
“Something like that.”
After their brief exchange, Dohyeon ran out toward the parade ground.
As soon as personal maintenance time began, Dohyeon headed straight to the incinerator.
Once again, he trained by repeating that strange swordsmanship.
WHOOSH!
He shot forward.
THUD—
He kicked off the ground and twisted his body.
If he spun his upper body and thrust his sword straight ahead, it should have pierced his enemy’s neck perfectly.
But his body always broke down at this point.
And so Dohyeon’s day continued to repeat.
The fifth time he faced Kirantal, Dohyeon dodged aside the instant Kang Uk rushed in and hurled him in the opposite direction.
Thanks to that, Kang Uk did not die.
But then—
SLASH!
Instead, Dohyeon’s neck was severed.
He had already died and come back to life twenty-three times.
Fortunately, the probability of killing Kirantal shown among the choices generated by Equivalent Exchange continued to rise.
Only after repeating this death for the forty-sixth time did Dohyeon find a path that allowed both Kang Uk and himself to survive.
When Kirantal landed in front of him, firing Magic Bullets before using Equivalent Exchange allowed him to save Kang Uk.
Immediately after saving Kang Uk, he had to use Equivalent Exchange, check the choice showing his probability of killing Kirantal, and then perform the strange swordsmanship.
But then—
SNAP!
Without fail, his knee ligaments tore, and his sword stabbed the wrong place.
Then came someone’s shout.
“How dare this fucking bastard lay a hand on Lord Kirantal!”
Even when the order of the fight changed, this crazy woman appeared like a ghost and struck Dohyeon’s neck.
The agony of death did not improve at all, even after dozens of repetitions.
The feeling of his bones grinding together and the pain of his nerves snapping strand by strand were maddeningly excruciating.
Dohyeon was already enduring that horrific pain for the eighty-seventh time.
Even so, he did not stop training.
No, he could not stop.
He had even developed a sense of duty that he absolutely had to kill Kirantal to end this repeating day.
Within the repeating day, training steadily for four hours beside the incinerator during every morning personal maintenance period had become Dohyeon’s daily routine.
To everyone else, it merely looked like Dohyeon was practicing swordsmanship for the first time. For Dohyeon, it was training he had repeated for more than two hundred hours.
The one fortunate thing was that dying and waking up again did not reset the results of his previous swordsmanship training.
Perhaps the fruits of his swordsmanship training were being engraved not into his body but into his soul, because his skill with the sword was clearly growing stronger with every repetition of the day.
‘But what the hell does Kirantal keep babbling at me every time I die?’
As Dohyeon grew accustomed to regressing, he began taking an interest in other things as well.
Whenever he drove his sword into Kirantal’s body, the chieftain invariably said the same thing.
Kamtokpuranmang twi.
Dohyeon became intensely curious about what those words meant.
‘Should I ask Song Ha-jun?’
Among the members of the 17th Squad, Song Ha-jun was the only one who knew a little of the Croat Continent’s common language.
Since the thought had occurred to him, Dohyeon decided to find Song Ha-jun and ask what the phrase meant.
He temporarily stopped training and returned to the barracks, but Song Ha-jun was not inside.
“Has anyone seen Ha-jun?”
When Dohyeon asked the squad members, every one of them pointed at the ceiling.
“He went up to the roof again?”
“That bastard’s so high and mighty that he won’t even spend personal maintenance time with the rest of us.”
As Yun Du-sik spoke while noisily chewing gum, Dohyeon abruptly held out his hand.
“Give me a piece too.”
“Well, what’s gotten into you, Squad Leader, asking me for gum?”
Yun Du-sik tossed him a piece. Dohyeon popped it into his mouth and headed straight for the roof.
When he arrived, Song Ha-jun was sitting on the railing and maintaining his bow.
Dohyeon walked over, dropped down beside him, and sat.
Then, without warning, he tossed out the words Kirantal had spoken.
“Kamtokpuranmang twi!”
The instant he uttered them, Song Ha-jun flinched violently and glared fiercely at Dohyeon with widened eyes.
“How did you know?”
The question was somewhat ambiguous, but Dohyeon understood it to mean how he knew the continental common language.
“I happened to hear it during a previous battle. Someone said it to me.”
For some reason, Song Ha-jun breathed a sigh of relief at Dohyeon’s answer.
“Whew...... So that was it. Do you want to know what it means?”
“It’s the Croat Continent’s common language, right?”
“No, it isn’t.”
Song Ha-jun shook his head.
“Then what language is it?”
“It’s Elven.”
“Elves have their own language?”
Seventeen years had already passed since the Gates opened and humanity began its war against the monsters, yet this was the first Dohyeon had heard of an Elven language.
“As a rule, elves don’t use Elven in front of other races.”
“Oh, really?”
Something was strange.
If elves did not use Elven in front of other races, how did Song Ha-jun know it? And why had Kirantal spoken Elven to Dohyeon?
When Dohyeon’s expression changed, Song Ha-jun hurriedly tried to smooth over the situation.
“Before entering the MSU, I worked for the Intelligence Bureau. That’s why I learned several languages from other worlds.”
“......Well, that’s certainly possible. So what does it mean?”
When Dohyeon let the matter pass without issue, Song Ha-jun spoke with inward relief.
“It probably means...... ‘So it was you!’”
“So it was you? What’s that supposed to mean?”
Dohyeon tilted his head.
He could not understand why Kirantal would look at him and say, ‘So it was you!’
“Do you think it’s possible that an elf is hiding in the MSU?”
Dohyeon wanted to learn more about the spy who appeared during every battle with Kirantal and struck his neck.
Oddly, however, Song Ha-jun looked startled by the question.
“Why......? Is there someone you suspect?”
“Not yet...... But why are you sweating so much?”
Beads of sweat had formed across Song Ha-jun’s forehead.
“N-no. It’s just because it’s hot.”
“Well, anyway. It’s entirely possible that some dark elves have infiltrated our MSU, right?”
“Of course. As you know, quite a few mages on the Croat Continent can use Shapeshifting Magic.”
“And the same goes for monsters......”
Dohyeon seemed to ponder something deeply, then slowly rose to his feet.
“But where did you really hear Elven? It’s extremely rare for a human to hear it.”
“I wonder. Which is stranger: that I heard Elven, or that you understand it? I’m more curious about the latter.”
Dohyeon smirked and stared intently at Song Ha-jun.
Under that gaze, Song Ha-jun swallowed hard and smiled awkwardly.
“I have some talent for languages, so I tend to learn them easily. Ha ha ha.”
“Sure, I suppose you do. Anyway, I got what I needed. I’ll see you later.”
Dohyeon ended his conversation with Song Ha-jun and returned to the incinerator.
As Dohyeon practiced his swordsmanship beside the incinerator, one corner of his mouth curled upward while he recalled Song Ha-jun’s reaction.
‘Song Ha-jun. I’ve got you now.’
Dohyeon was convinced that Song Ha-jun was an elven spy.
Of course, he did not know whether Ha-jun belonged to the dark elves or the ordinary elves.
He was not the owner of the voice that cried out every time Dohyeon died either.
He was a completely unrelated third party.
Song Ha-jun was not the dark elf spy Dohyeon sought, but it seemed certain that he was nevertheless an elf hiding among humans.
‘I can take my time learning more about him.’
Dohyeon was now fully adapting to his life of endless regression.