Chapter 239. To Advance Pt. 6

“Hehehe…”

A strange laughter echoed through the room that had once been used by Odin, one of the strongest Hunters in the world. Moreover, this room was the office of the president, the symbol of the Korean Association.

“Hehehe…”

Now, it was nothing more than a ruin that gave off an old-fashioned feel. The furniture was covered in dust, and the room was a complete mess. However, the new owner of the room didn’t seem to care about such things.

“Hehehe…”

He just held his face and let out a strange laugh.

“How…”

He wondered how he had become like this.

Finally, he tore his hand away from his face. He looked up at this sky, mumbling emptily to himself as his sculpted face sparkled, reflecting in the pale light.

The man was Baldur, a Hero who had been the hidden son of Odin and one of the symbols of the Korean Hunters. Moreover, although he belonged to Asgard, at this very moment, he had become the Ruler of Seoul.

“Why…”

Although his sculpted face remained unchanged, there was one thing missing from his face: vigor. His face was so pale that one couldn't believe he was alive. His face had used to shine, but now was no longer glowing and rather gave off a dark feeling.

"Father, you...”

Baldur cupped his face again. Even at this moment, his mind was dizzy.

-Kill.

-Destroy.

-Exterminate.

Something like an auditory hallucination was taking over his mind. Voices that kept coming into his head after he had gained strength.

Crash!

Baldur stretched out his hands and overturned the desk, but nevertheless, the voice in his head didn’t go away.

-Kill.

-Destroy.

-Exterminate.

It just continued like this, repeating itself over and over. To gain the power of a Ruler meant that one would no longer be human. Moreover, it also meant becoming an enemy of humanity.

-Kill the humans.

Clench.

Baldur clenched his fist so hard that his nails dug into his palm, the blood flowing down his knuckles.

Drip. Drip.

“No! NO!”

Baldur was sure that he was a human. He couldn’t follow the will of the voice. No, he would endure it. However, there wasn’t much time left.

Thud.

It wouldn’t be long before the last of his remaining reasons disappeared. Baldur already had the blood of countless people on his hands.

Not Hunters, but ordinary people.

All of those memories…

-Aren’t they so sweet?

Now, things were starting to no longer feel painful.

"Why…”

Baldur covered his face again and bemoaned as the blood on his palm ran down his face and dripped down his chin.

"Father…”

He had just wanted to be recognized. He just…he had just wanted to have a relationship with Odin like other sons had with their fathers.

But, but why…

“This thing that I am now…”

Had Odin done this to him?

Odin, who had given this sort of power to him and then never showed his face again, returned not long ago. However, Baldur still wasn’t allowed to see him, as Odin was busy having a conversation with someone who resembled that Underdog.

“Hehehe…if I can no longer remain as a human…” Baldur lowered his hand again, his sparkling eyes shining splendidly. “Then I’ll just start with my father… Ahahaha…!”

***

“Don’t push! Don’t push me!”

People were screaming, but the wishes they so desperately prayed for couldn’t come true.

“Snort.”

The monsters enslaved them and forced them to move. Regardless of their complaints, not only was it impossible for the monsters to understand the human tongue, but they would also devour some of them at certain points.

“Agh!!!”

In the end, the people ended up closing their mouths and moving in the direction ordered by the monsters.

“Mommy…”

“Just hold on just a little longer… we’re okay…” a mother said, comforting her crying children.

However, some of the other children didn’t even have that to hold onto.

Sob, sob.

These children just cried as they were orphaned and alone in the world. They were taken care of by the fathers who had lost their entire families, finding kinship in their loss.

The place where they were was hell. Not long ago, it had been a brilliant civilization and the safest city in the world.

This current hell was the new Seoul.

“I never thought that Seoul would become like this...”

Someone laughed in vain with empty eyes as the hellish days repeated themselves over and over.

They were all livestock.

Their fate was boiled down to moving under the control of the monsters and the high-ranking Hunters, barely surviving day by day on the slop that they were provided. Any form of resistance was meaningless, and trying to do so in any way always proved fatal.

“Agh!!”

Someone who couldn’t stand it any longer tried to push the monsters away and flee, but soon ended up becoming food for the hungry monsters.

“Heroes, my a…”

“All Hunters are bastards.”

The people before them were those that they had once praised and looked up to. But now, the Hunters were no different to them than the devil. They were all infuriated. The Hunters were just watching the monsters enslave the people.

Crunch.

In their enraged eyes, the people could see the sight of a Hunter just nonchalantly biting into a cookie. Nowhere in his eyes could they sense that he looked at them as humans, the same as he was. In the past, these Hunters were people that they had trusted and praised.

“Hehehe.”

But now, he was just a being that had created this hell of sorrow.

"Mister."

A man felt the child he had under his ward take hold of his hand and call out to him.

He looked upon the child. The child’s bones could be seen through his skin because of the incessant malnutrition, and his face was covered in blood.

“Yes, dear.”

There was only one thing that the man could do for the child—words of kindness.

There wasn’t much else that could be done for this child who had lost his parents and had fallen into this hell.

“Someday…” The child opened his mouth with innocent eyes. “We can go back to the way it was before, right? That’s how it always is in fairy tales.”

Even in this difficult situation, the child hadn’t yet lost his innocence.

“The bad monsters and demon lords are defeated by the Hero!”

The man laughed, his voice filled with bitterness.

“...”

He was unable to give an answer. He just couldn’t.

The Heroes that the child spoke of were on the side. They had been the warriors that they had trusted.

‘The Heroes you speak of went so far as to subjugate the monsters to rule over us people.’

But how could he say that to the child? Now, there wasn’t much he could do for the child.

Clench.

All he could do was make sure that the child didn’t stray from this procession, holding onto his hand to make sure he didn’t become food for those monsters.

But that didn’t mean that the man didn’t also have hope.

"I really hope…”

He smiled bitterly again.

“I really hope things turn out that way,” he said, letting the child know that their wishes weren’t that different.

***

“Ugh,” Odin groaned as he clenched his thigh with his hands.

There was a dark burn lower down on the exposed portion of his thigh.

“It looks like this can’t be treated.”

It was the wound that he had suffered at the hands of the Underdog when he had fled from Gyeonggi-Do. It had been inflicted when he had been hit with the Underdog’s spear.

Odin smirked. That brat, he didn’t disappoint him.

“He’s even better than I had expected.”

Whether it was his growth, his disposition, or the goals he had wanted…everything about him satisfied him.

Odin removed his hands from his thigh and laid down. He could see a panoramic view of Seoul just outside his window. Not many people knew that he was in Seoul—so few, in fact, that he could count them on his hands.

Among those who knew he was in Seoul, most, like Baldur, didn’t actually know the specifics to where he was.

“Whew…” Odin sighed. “The end is not far away.”

It had just dawned on him that there were only a few steps left for him to reach that long-awaited goal. As a child, he had lacked nothing, and as he grew older, he had grown even more perfect.

He was one of the most wealthy people in Korea, and his destiny was to become the head of a corporate dynasty. From intelligence to morality, he had thought that he lacked nothing.

Thus, that made Odin lack desire. Odin never could know what others had wanted or how others felt.

He had tried many things and taken on many challenges. However, everything was easy for him, and he soon became bored with the world.

At that time, something completely new had occurred.

‘The gates appeared.’

He had been resting in a safe house when he saw the gates, but the next day, he secretly went out, choosing a gate and entering it. It had clearly been an act of insanity, something that anyone would most definitely consider suicidal.

However, Odin, for the first time, could feel it.

THUMP.

His heart was racing. However, that only lasted for a moment, as fighting against the monsters that attacked him was very different from how his easy life had passed. When he had finally come to his senses after fighting for his life, he had arrived there.

THUD!

Andlangr.

"Wait for me," Odin said to the sky.

While he had been in Andlangr, there had been two main feelings he had left. Those feelings had been how he had survived through it all.

Firstly, he had been filled with a curiosity of the unknown. Everything around him was amazing as everything around him was something he had never seen before.

Because he already had everything in the outside world, he hadn’t been interested in anything. Then, he finally understood what it felt like to have everything around him be something new.

Thus, he began to crave new knowledge.

The second thing he had felt was anger.

“I will pay you back for the past thirty years.”

It was the rage he had toward his Sponsors that had burned ever fiercer during the thirty years of solitude he had spent in Andlangr.

Those two feelings were the only things that Odin had, and for those two things, he…

“I’ll give anything. I’ll do anything.”

He was ready to risk it all, and he had already given up everything he had to do so, including his only son.

‘Baldur.’

Odin smiled, not a care on his face as the pain in his throbbing thigh felt infinitely more pleasant.

***

“Where on earth are you taking us?!” the people screamed as the monsters forced them to continue forward while the Hunters controlled those monsters.

“...”

Looking down upon it all, there was something sitting leisurely at the top of a tall building, watching over everything. Not a single person seemed to notice him, acting as if they couldn’t even see that he was there.

“...”

He just looked over at everything, quietly without care for anything else.

“...”

Because all of this before him was a situation he had created, and when he closed his eyes, he could feel everything.

“...”

That was true for everything in Seoul, even down to the movement of the ants. If he expanded his senses a little further, then he could even feel beyond the veil, even down to a place that drew his attention.

Gyeonggi-Do.

The man smirked.

“So now they’re moving.”

It had been a long wait.

He wondered what the others would consider long.

Months? Or years?

For the Hunters who entered Andlangr, would they measure a long time in decades?

It was just a random thought, as everyone was wrong.

His idea of a long wait was completely different from anyone else—a time so long that none of them could even dare to fathom it.

“It really has been such a long time.”

He got up from his seat, his strikingly tall form unfolding as his black robes fluttered in the breeze.

Then, he said, looking back, “Have you arrived?”

There, a man with a shiny bald head stood.