“Your affiliation?”
“Lee So-hee, squad leader of the Monster Suppression Unit’s 6th Squad.”
“Not that. I mean your real affiliation.”
“Lee So-hee, squad leader of the Monster Suppression Unit’s 6th Squad.”
Lee So-hee’s answer never changed.
With her right lung punctured, even breathing should have been difficult, yet she repeated the same words without so much as a grimace.
Dohyeon let out a deep sigh and decided to try a different approach.
“Kirantal sent you, didn’t he?”
Lee So-hee’s pupils widened the moment Kirantal’s name left Dohyeon’s lips.
She had never imagined that a human might know that name.
“That’s not all I know. You’re preparing a trap in the canyon, aren’t you? You’ve even got giant harpoons and Raiphants waiting there.”
As Dohyeon rattled off everything the Dark Elves had prepared, Lee So-hee became visibly flustered.
“You worthless human bastard! Who do you work for?”
Lee So-hee glared fiercely at him as she asked, but Dohyeon merely smirked.
“I’m the one asking the questions. All you have to do is answer.”
As he spoke, Dohyeon lightly touched the tip of his sword to the spot between her eyebrows.
“Kill me.”
“If you want an easy death, answer my questions. Otherwise, I’ll send you to the research institute.”
Fear surfaced on Lee So-hee’s face at the mention of the research institute.
Dohyeon was referring to the Monster Research Institute.
Monsters dragged there were subjected to every manner of torture, including having their organs harvested. They were left neither dead nor truly alive, forced to endure a wretched existence in which all they could do was breathe.
To monsters, it was nothing short of hell.
Lee So-hee’s loyalty to Kirantal was high enough to pierce the heavens, but even that loyalty paled before her fear of the Monster Research Institute.
“If I answer your questions, will you simply kill me?”
She had no choice if she wanted to avoid being dragged there.
“Of course. I’m a man who keeps his promises.”
“Fine. For the first time, I will place my trust in a human.”
“That sounds completely ridiculous coming from someone wearing a human face.”
“Enough of your pointless remarks. Urgh......”
Blood trickled from the corner of Lee So-hee’s mouth.
She was forcibly enduring excruciating pain.
Her pride as a Dark Elf allowed her to withstand even that agony.
“All right. I’ll ask you again. You’re a spy sent by Kirantal... aren’t you?”
“Why ask when you already know?”
“What exactly does the Elven phrase ‘So it was you!’ mean?”
“It is something we say when we find an enemy we have been searching for.”
“Is that so?”
According to Song Ha-jun, it meant, ‘So it was you.’
Putting that together with Lee So-hee’s explanation meant that Kirantal had been searching for Dohyeon and shouted, ‘So it was you,’ upon finding him.
But Dohyeon had never seen Kirantal even once before today.
From Dohyeon’s perspective, he had encountered Kirantal more than two hundred times because of his infinite regressions. Kirantal, however, was meeting Dohyeon for the first time in every loop, so he should not have been able to recognize him.
‘Have I met him before?’
Dohyeon searched his memories just in case, but nothing came to mind.
This was definitely the first day he had ever met Kirantal.
“What does ‘Amuyami kwiturak toa’ mean?”
“You spouted Elven without even knowing what it meant?”
“I believe I told you that I’m the one asking the questions.”
PRESS—
Dohyeon applied more force through the knee pinning down her chest.
Lee So-hee’s face contorted as she gasped for breath.
“It... means, ‘Give me back my orb.’”
“An orb? What orb?”
Dohyeon did not have anything resembling an orb.
“How am I supposed to know what you do not, you bastard?! Lord Kirantal possesses the ability to see the future, so he must have seen you stealing the orb.”
“He can see the future? Kirantal can?”
A chill ran through Dohyeon’s entire body at those words.
In a way, Dohyeon could see the future just like Kirantal.
After all, it would have been stranger if he did not know what was going to happen today after repeating the same day over and over again.
‘Could Kirantal be regressing infinitely too?’
The thought flashed through his mind, but no matter how much he considered it, that could not be the case.
The day only repeated when he died, and Kirantal had never died before.
No. There had been exactly one time.
Just before the first regression began, Kirantal had died once to Dohyeon’s Infinite Path.
Dohyeon had killed Kirantal for the first and last time, and the infinite regressions had begun immediately afterward.
Come to think of it, Kirantal had not recognized Dohyeon the moment he saw him.
It happened when Dohyeon wounded him with Infinite Path.
That was precisely when Kirantal repeated the same words each time.
And when Dohyeon had come close to killing him in the previous loop, Kirantal had uttered something different.
‘Give me back my orb!’
Dohyeon had never seen any orb.
He had not taken anything from Kirantal.
‘Wait. Did I steal this infinite regression ability from him?’
One thought branched into another, and a seemingly impossible story began taking shape in Dohyeon’s mind.
What if this infinite regression ability had originally belonged to Kirantal?
Could Kirantal have possessed the ability to regress endlessly, only to lose it to Dohyeon when he happened to die by Dohyeon’s hand?
‘The orb he mentioned might refer to the infinite regression ability.’
For now, that seemed the most plausible hypothesis.
But one question remained.
Even if Dohyeon had stolen the ability, he had subsequently died at Lee So-hee’s hands.
If his hypothesis were correct, the infinite regression ability should then have passed to Lee So-hee.
Yet Dohyeon still possessed it.
‘That means this infinite regression ability can’t be taken simply by killing its owner......’
Now that he thought about it, something hard had seemed to catch against the tip of his sword when he first killed Kirantal.
Until now, he had assumed it was merely Kirantal’s neck bone or Adam’s apple, but he no longer thought so.
‘The orb must have been what blocked my sword back then.’
Perhaps Kirantal’s regression ability had disappeared when Dohyeon shattered that orb, causing the ability to pass to him instead.
If so, he could form another hypothesis.
Kirantal must have realized somehow that the infinite regression ability he possessed had suddenly vanished today.
Then, when Dohyeon wounded him during their battle, Kirantal realized that Dohyeon was the one who had taken his power.
That might have been why he shouted things like, ‘So it was you,’ and ‘Give me back my orb.’
In other words, until he fought Dohyeon, even Kirantal did not know who had stolen his regression ability.
‘Right. If he’d known, he would’ve ordered Lee So-hee to capture me.’
That raised yet another question.
Was there some way to reclaim the infinite regression ability after it had been taken?
If there was, Kirantal would undoubtedly do everything in his power to retrieve it once he discovered that Dohyeon had stolen the ability.
‘Maybe he never had the chance to take it because Lee So-hee always cut off my head.’
Thinking about it that way made Dohyeon almost grateful to her.
‘I need to prepare a way to stop him from taking the ability from me.’
Dohyeon was worried that Kirantal might capture him and take back the infinite regression ability.
To Dohyeon, this power was akin to being trapped inside a prison with no escape.
Viewed another way, however, it was also a blessing.
He had gained the immortal power to return even after death. Why would he ever want to let someone take it from him?
“If you have no more questions... keep your promise.”
When Dohyeon remained silent for a while, Lee So-hee assumed he was finished questioning her.
“I have one last question.”
“As long as you keep your promise.”
“How many other elven spies like you are hiding in the MSU?”
If there were any others, Dohyeon intended to use this opportunity to expose and kill every last one of them.
Lee So-hee gave him a mocking look in response.
“You seem to think transforming our bodies to assume human form is as easy as flipping a coin.”
“Cut the pointless remarks and answer me. Are there more or not?”
“Not as far as I know. But that will change if I die. Lord Kirantal needs a spy like me.”
Lee So-hee openly admitted that she was a spy.
The elves seemed to regard spies as some kind of heroes.
“Kill me now.”
With those words, Lee So-hee closed her mouth and even shut her eyes.
It was a bold display of someone calmly accepting death.
The sight made Dohyeon’s stomach twist.
After having his head cut off by this elven woman more than two hundred times, he could not help cursing at her composure.
“Fuck. I’ll never die by your hand again.”
SQUELCH
Dohyeon drove his upright sword deep into Lee So-hee’s heart.
No matter what Dohyeon said, Lee So-hee showed no reaction and quietly breathed her last.
At that moment—
FWOOSH—!
A dazzling light erupted from Lee So-hee’s body, and her flesh instantly transformed into a different form.
Black skin that looked as though it had been scorched by fire.
Long, pointed ears.
Strange hair in which blue and green intermingled.
Only after her death did Lee So-hee revert to her original appearance.
Dohyeon pulled the sword from her heart and carefully wiped away the blood.
After sheathing it, he turned and walked away.
He headed to a nearby guard post and reported that there was a Dark Elf corpse in the woods out back.
The MSU was thrown into another uproar, but Dohyeon proceeded to the clearing beside the incinerator as though nothing had happened.
There, he repeatedly practiced Infinite Path, the sword technique he had created for himself.
***
“So it was you!”
Kirantal shouted the same words as always when Dohyeon’s sword wounded him.
But once again, he did not die.
Kirantal covered the wound on his neck with his left hand, then began launching indiscriminate attacks at Dohyeon with the other.
CLANG—!
CLANG-CLANG-CLANG—!
Despite his grievous injury, Kirantal’s attacks were terrifyingly destructive.
Every time Dohyeon blocked a blow, his body staggered, and the powerful impacts split open the palm gripping his sword.
In the end—
CLANG—!
Dohyeon’s sword flew high into the air.
SLASH
Kirantal’s sword severed Dohyeon’s right hand, then slashed his leg and forced him to his knees.
“Daaamn it!”
Still on his knees, Dohyeon let out the words like a scream.
He had failed again.
He thought he was almost there, yet defeating Kirantal remained impossible.
Kirantal stepped close and glared fiercely down at him.
“Amuyami kwiturak toa!”
Dohyeon knew what those words meant.
It was a demand for him to hand over the orb.
He knew all too well what would happen next.
This exact situation had repeated twenty-three times since he first killed Lee So-hee.
Whenever the day repeated, Dohyeon saved Park Gyu-ho at the guard post and killed Lee So-hee in the woods behind the base.
Then he faced Kirantal again and tried everything he could to kill him.
But he failed every time to pierce Kirantal’s neck cleanly.
No matter how much he practiced his swordsmanship, he could not easily penetrate Kirantal’s armor.
When Infinite Path failed, a horrific ordeal followed.
Before Kirantal’s extraordinary swordsmanship, Dohyeon lost an arm every time and dropped to his knees after having his leg slashed.
Kirantal did not grant him a swift death.
As if searching for something, he examined Dohyeon’s body from every angle while carving away his flesh.
Sometimes his shoulder. Sometimes his side. Sometimes his thigh.
Kirantal was not some pervert who enjoyed watching humans suffer.
‘He’s trying to find the orb inside my body.’
Dohyeon knew perfectly well that Kirantal’s insane actions were meant to locate it.
That was why he always chose to die the same way.
“You’ll never get the orb, you bastard!”
With that shout, Dohyeon bit down hard on the pressure-activated button wedged between his teeth.
In that instant—
KABOOOOOM—!
The grenades dangling all over his tactical vest detonated simultaneously.
SNAP!
His vision went dark, and the morning bugle jolted Dohyeon back to his senses.
“Monsters are attacking! There’s a massive army!”
Bae Man-deuk shouted another of his pranks.
BANG—!
Startled by the cry, Kang Uk kicked his locker, sending the helmet tumbling down.
Wearing a serious expression as though lost in thought, Dohyeon lightly nudged Yun Du-sik’s head aside with his foot.
The helmet narrowly missed Yun Du-sik’s head and landed right beside him.
“What the f...... But Squad Leader, no matter how you look at it, pushing my head with your foot is a bit much, isn’t it?”
“Then I’ll just leave you alone next time.”
Dohyeon genuinely meant it.
“Honestly, you say the coldest things so casually. Anyway, Bae Man-deuk, you bastard! Did I or did I not tell you that I’d kill you with my own hands if you pulled that prank again?”
Just as he always did, Yun Du-sik charged at Bae Man-deuk and gave him a thorough beating.
And so the 367th iteration of the same day began.
After saving Sword Ghost Park Gyu-ho and killing the spy Lee So-hee, Dohyeon trained in Infinite Path at the clearing beside the incinerator.
He no longer trained by simply repeating the movements. He had fashioned a sturdy target and was focusing on practicing how to pierce it with his sword.
THUD!
THUNK!
CRACK!
Every time he thrust his sword with Infinite Path, holes riddled the cushion-shaped target made from thick leather.
‘It’s not enough.’
He still lacked power.
No matter how perfectly he executed Infinite Path, he could not easily penetrate Kirantal’s armor.
Come to think of it, it was both incredible and astonishing that he had pierced that armor when he first used Infinite Path through Equivalent Exchange.
‘Why can I succeed with the skill but not when I perform it using my own strength?’
No matter how much he thought about it, he could not find an answer.
‘What am I supposed to do when even Equivalent Exchange is useless?’
Dohyeon had already tried borrowing the skill’s power several times to kill Kirantal.
Every attempt had ended in failure.
Recently, some fairly meaningful choices had appeared when he used Equivalent Exchange against Kirantal.
If he used the skill at the cost of his life, his chance of killing Kirantal was 57.4%.
Even the option requiring five seconds of paralysis as its price offered an astonishing success rate of 22.1%.
The problem was that choosing the option with the highest probability was completely useless.
Even if he killed Kirantal with a 57.4% chance of success, Dohyeon would die as well and simply fall back into the infinite loop.
He had already used the other two options several times, and not one attempt had succeeded.
The strange part was that a probability of 22.1% should have succeeded roughly once in every five attempts, yet he had already tried it eight times without a single success.
It seemed this damned infinite regression reset even that probability completely whenever the day started over.
“What are you thinking about so hard?”
Dohyeon turned at the sudden voice.
Yun Du-sik stood behind him with a spear resting across his shoulder.
‘This has never happened before.’
Today was the first time in 367 regressions that Yun Du-sik had appeared at the incinerator clearing.