After the destruction of the second loop passed, Song Ji-hu began moving.
‘So this is Ollie Barclay’s mental imagery….’
The compass set the direction for him. The needle spun madly, then stopped toward what he guessed was the city center.
When he activated [Residual Thought], fragments of emotion dwelling throughout the entire city surged in like a tsunami.
Fear, guilt, terrible self-loathing. And the emotion lying beneath all of it: sorrowful grief.
The origin point of every emotion was in the direction the compass needle indicated.
“Let’s go for now.”
Song Ji-hu advanced, stepping over the ashes.
When he had passed about three blocks, the debris beneath his feet began to squirm.
GRRRR-
Concrete blocks from collapsed buildings, bent rebars, and shards of broken glass began clumping together into human shapes, as if drawn by magnets.
THUD, THUD, THUD.
Massive bodies reaching three meters in height. Dozens of golems rose simultaneously throughout the streets.
“So it won’t be easy, is that it?”
With heavy footsteps that shook the ground, the golems surrounded Song Ji-hu.
The golem at the very front slammed down a gigantic fist. Song Ji-hu dodged to the side, drew his dagger, and cut across the golem’s flank.
The moment the blade scraped across the concrete surface, he activated Mental Barrier.
CRUMBLE-
The attack did not have much effect with the dagger alone, but the magic power of Mental Barrier forcibly severed the golem’s bonding structure.
“Is this an attack skill or a defense skill?”
The golem’s flank collapsed, and debris poured down. When he stabbed the core revealed among the rubble, the golem crumbled on the spot.
‘They’re slow, and weak to Mental Barrier. The difficulty itself isn’t high.’
He dealt with the second golem, dodged the third, and advanced without hesitation.
He cut off the fourth golem’s arm, and directly collided Mental Barrier into the fifth, loosening its bonds and smashing its core.
But there was no end.
When he destroyed one, two rose. When he destroyed two, four rose up. In this city of ash, the debris that formed the golems was an infinite resource.
And there was one most decisive problem.
RUMBLE-!
After he entered this place, the third loop began.
The city was reconstructed, the pillar of light rose, and the shockwave turned everything into ash.
And when the loop reset, every golem Song Ji-hu had destroyed had been regenerated, as if mocking him.
‘…There’s no end. Is every part of this mental imagery dungeon like this?’
Every time the destruction loop turned, the city was reconstructed, and the reconstructed debris became golems again. It was a structure where the more time dragged on, the more disadvantageous it became.
Song Ji-hu sheathed his sword.
‘If it’s the same as the Courtroom of Ice….’
Just as there had been no use trying to prove innocence in a courtroom meant to confirm guilt.
‘I’ll have to make Ollie Barclay stop this loop himself.’
Song Ji-hu changed his combat method.
Instead of fighting the golems, he spread Mental Barrier in every direction and broke through with only the minimum necessary response.
A golem’s fist struck the barrier and collapsed, he pushed through that opening and advanced, then raised the barrier again.
Like that, he advanced little by little, following the compass.
***
After advancing bit by bit, Song Ji-hu reached the edge of the crater in the center of the city and stopped.
It was enormous. A gigantic pit several hundred meters in diameter. The traces were clear, as if multiple buildings had evaporated whole.
The slope had melted under the extreme heat of the explosion, gleaming smooth like glass.
‘That means the heat was tremendous enough to melt concrete….’
Song Ji-hu slid down along the slope. Vitrified concrete ground beneath his feet.
The closer he came to the center of the crater, the stronger the emotional waves became.
And finally, when he arrived at the very center of the crater floor.
“……?”
Song Ji-hu’s steps stopped. There was a boy there.
A young child who looked about ten years old.
His golden-brown hair drooped over his face, and he knelt with his head lowered.
An old leather jacket hung over the boy’s body.
It was a size that would have fit an adult perfectly, but it was far too large for the boy. The sleeves swallowed his hands, and the back hem dragged across the ground.
The holster at his waist was empty. And the boy was constantly muttering something.
“I broke it.”
His voice was small, fragile, and trembling.
“I broke everything.”
“Ollie Barclay.”
Judging by the traces of the appearance Song Ji-hu had seen before Mental Dive, this was definitely Ollie Barclay.
‘Should I call him the child version of adult Ollie Barclay…?’
The S-rank Hunter, America’s strongest Hunter, had shrunk into the form of a ten-year-old boy.
‘Ego regression…?’
Song Ji-hu immediately grasped the situation and raised Residual Thought and Mental Detection to their limits. All kinds of emotional fragments rushed toward him.
‘With Eun Seo-jin, I at least had information….’
Aside from rumors, there was practically no information on Ollie Barclay.
“Regression like that usually… occurs when the unconscious tries to escape extreme stress.”
The core emotion that had dug into Eun Seo-jin had been deep guilt toward his comrades and the terrible self-loathing based on it.
“Then… it means some guilt adult Ollie Barclay feels was stimulated.”
Adult Ollie Barclay was an S-rank Hunter and an existence with power. The city’s repeated destruction and reconstruction was endlessly stimulating his trauma.
And Ollie Barclay must have regressed into the form of a child to escape that.
Back to the safe days when he had not awakened, when he could not break anything.
But this regression was a double-edged sword.
In the form of a boy, he could think of himself as safe, but if time passed like this, the existence called Ollie Barclay itself would vanish. He would disappear forever as a child.
The boy had no power. So he could not break anything. So he was safe.
Ironically, this regression was Ollie’s final means of self-protection.
If he maintained his adult form, the fragment of the abyss could use his power to make him go berserk. But in the form of a boy, the power itself was sealed.
“Tsk… How should I wake him…?”
The first step was waking Ollie Barclay.
***
Two years ago. Fallon, Nevada.
In a small city with a population of about ten thousand, an A-rank Gate mutated, causing a dungeon break on par with S-rank.
USAA deployed in an emergency, but the scale exceeded expectations, and monsters infiltrated the city before the evacuation of civilians had been completed.
Ollie Barclay had to choose.
Either raise his energy to the limit and unleash an omnidirectional explosion to annihilate the monsters.
The problem was that even Ollie himself could not perfectly control the range and power of the shockwave.
The other choice was to watch thousands of civilians be slaughtered by monsters.
In the trolley dilemma, Ollie Barclay pulled the trigger. The result was the annihilation of the monsters. Zero fatalities.
The moment everyone clenched their fists and cheered, the aftermath of the shockwave and the falling monsters caused dozens of buildings to collapse.
Dozens were severely injured, and hundreds suffered minor injuries. One district of the city was completely reduced to ruins.
Objectively speaking, Ollie Barclay was a hero who had saved thousands of lives. The media reported it that way as well, and the citizens expressed their gratitude.
But what Ollie Barclay saw was collapsed buildings. People bleeding as they waited for rescue teams. The face of a frightened, crying child.
‘A strong man protects the weak.’
In that moment, what rang through Ollie’s mind was his father’s voice from his childhood.
The ten-year-old Ollie Barclay, who had wanted to become a hero like his father, protecting everything without a single victim, appeared and whispered.
‘You aren’t a hero. You’re a monster. Your power brings destruction, not protection.’
His father’s teaching and the gap between it and reality.
The moment that gap opened, a fragment of the Abyssal Monarch seeped in.
The fragment took root in Ollie Barclay’s guilt and began distorting his memories.
After a year of relentless gaslighting, Ollie Barclay’s once-solid Ego finally failed to withstand the weight and collapsed.
“I broke everything….”
Ollie Barclay endlessly repeated those words and curled his body even tighter inside the crater.
And into Ollie Barclay’s mind as it slowly sank farther and farther down, someone’s mind was forcibly connected.
***
Song Ji-hu began approaching the boy Ollie.
One step, then two.
The moment he took the third step, the crater shuddered as if convulsing.
RUMBLE-!
Beyond the crater, the entire city reacted to Song Ji-hu’s approach.
Collapsed buildings rose like gigantic walls. Concrete, rebar, and glass tangled together, blocking Song Ji-hu from approaching Ollie Barclay.
Hundreds… no, thousands of burning shadows looked at Song Ji-hu all at once.
Empty eye sockets. Open mouths. Faces engulfed in flames. Then they began screaming.
Graaaaaaaaaah-!
The scream they let out all at once became a shockwave and poured in from every direction.
“I guess you’re afraid of me approaching?”
At the mental attack condensed from fear, pain, and resentment, Song Ji-hu’s body was pushed back.
Whether it was Ollie Barclay’s defense mechanism or the Abyssal Monarch’s trickery, he did not know.
THUD-!
The ground beneath his feet split, leaving a deep mark.
CRACK-!
Cracks formed in Mental Barrier. The intensity was incomparable to the attacks he had received inside Eun Seo-jin’s mental imagery world.
He clenched his teeth. Grinding down his mental power, he filled the cracks in the barrier.
Even as Song Ji-hu held out, he did not take his eyes off Ollie Barclay, who was repeating the same words beyond the debris.
“I broke everything. I couldn’t protect them.”
Meanwhile, the loop was about to begin again.
The city reconstructed itself and finished preparing to be destroyed again.
Even Thought Projection was blocked by the screaming shadows and could not reach Ollie Barclay.
“What a difficult bastard.”
He needed a new strategy. Instead, Song Ji-hu raised his sword and began dismantling the wall blocking Ollie Barclay.
If mental-type skills did not work, then he had to solve it physically.
THUD-! THUD-!
He broke glass with his sword and began loosening the connecting points with all kinds of skills.
Kiaaaaaaak-!
When Song Ji-hu tried to approach Ollie Barclay despite their obstruction, the shadows that had only been screaming began charging at him.
“A war of attrition? So you want to see who tires first?”
Even while breaking down the wall, Song Ji-hu raised Mental Barrier toward the charging shadows.
SCRAAAAPE-
As if saying he could never approach, the bastards raised their nails and began scratching at the barrier.
‘I only need a hole big enough to reach through.’
He did not need a hole wide enough for his entire body to pass. A size just large enough for him to reach out and touch Ollie Barclay would be enough.
THUD-! THUD-!
When a lump of concrete fell away and a hole of exactly that size formed.
“There.”
Song Ji-hu reached out, placed his hand on Ollie Barclay’s head, and shouted.
“Mental Link.”