Chapter 2

Chapter 02:The Ego Sword Picked Me Up (2)

Necronomicon

There were people outside the door. I recognized a few of their faces. They were failures who had been selected from the orphanage and raised alongside me, only to fall behind in the competition. All of them had been test subjects for the new drug, and their physical abilities were on the excellent side.

I thought they had been discarded for failing to meet the standards as test subjects, but apparently there were still things they could be made to do.

When I dropped the stainless steel tray, the failures opened the door and came in. I waited until they had all entered, then closed the door and knocked them down one by one.

I stripped the fallen man’s clothes off, changed into them, and climbed up the outer wall to the seventh floor. It was to meet the vice chairman, who was hospitalized in a VVIP room.

After entering through the shared restroom and stepping into the corridor, security personnel rushed at me. They were all skilled enough to boast about, but I had kept training endlessly even after the National Sports Festival. It was for the sake of protecting the vice chairman.

They were movements that would have made people suspect drug use if I had entered a match. Men who had trained in martial arts all their lives and carried out bodyguard duties dropped one after another, their faces filled with shock.

―What marvelous movement! If you and I are together, we will be more than enough to turn the world upside down!

The voice buzzing through my head nearly distracted me. However, I had trained myself to concentrate in any situation.

After taking down four agents, I entered the hospital room. When I locked the door and approached, the vice chairman, whose face was wrapped in bandages, glared at me with cold eyes.

“Why is this son of a bitch still alive? Get rid of this thing right now!”

The vice chairman had never once called me by my name.

Now, I was not his shadow. Nor was I his light.

“Did you send people to kill me?”

“You should know how to be grateful when we picked up an abandoned son of a bitch, fed you, housed you, and taught you! What the hell is this?! This is why I can’t trust you! I don’t know how you managed to sweet-talk my grandfather, but I never trusted you even once!”

Jae-guk was foolish. I was the strongest and most obedient tool the chairman had raised. Yet that reckless brat treated me like some common tool. He had even tried to dispose of me.

My question had been answered, so I had no regrets.

The sole mission of my entire life had failed. Since I had received a death sentence from the very existence I was supposed to protect, my relationship with him ended here.

The vice chairman was holding a short paring knife in his hand, but I paid it no mind. I had decided his fate.

“I was truly grateful that you took in an abandoned person like me. If you had not cast me aside first, I would have devoted myself to you for the rest of my life, Vice Chairman.”

Even if I had been worked like a dog, the vice chairman had been my benefactor. Because he had chosen me in childhood, I was able to live the life of an elite, however briefly.

I turned to the blond man and asked.

“……You said my talent was the greatest across both worlds, didn’t you?”

―That is right!

The vice chairman looked at me as if I were insane. The window behind him glinted. It was the reflection of a smartphone’s light. He had probably called for outside help.

It did not matter.

I decided to go half-mad. I decided to entrust my warped reason to a world of fantasy.

“If I just change my way of thinking, can I leave for the world you lived in?”

―That is right! Your qualities are more than sufficient! Your compatibility with me is also the highest! However, that submissive attitude of yours! With a personality like that, you cannot advance even a single step. I am ready to choose you as my master. Now it is your turn to prove that you are qualified to become my master!

That was fortunate.

There was an easy solution to the problem the voice in my head had presented.

I took one step toward the vice chairman. It was a provocation. I exposed an opening so that a cornered rat would lunge first.

“Dieeeee!”

The vice chairman charged at me, and I stepped aside like a bullfighter handling a bull, sticking out my foot. Before the vice chairman, tripped by my foot, could fall, I grabbed his hair.

The vice chairman tried to kill me. His knife cut through empty air.

SQUELCH!

I drove the syringe into the vice chairman’s neck. I did not know what kind of drug it was, but even if it was a supplement, it would not be an ordinary one, so surviving cleanly would be difficult.

“Ghhrrr…….”

The vice chairman collapsed.

A commotion rose outside. They pounded on the locked door, and I could also hear someone shouting to bring the master key and force it open.

But the commotion soon stopped. No, everything had stopped.

Even amid that, there was something revealing its presence.

“What is that? It’s been rustling around since earlier, and it’s irritating.”

At the point I indicated lay something presumed to be a book.

―Oooh! You can see it? I heard a restriction had been placed on it to avoid people’s gazes.

“It’s blurry, but how am I supposed to pretend I don’t notice when it’s giving off such a gloomy haze?”

―The Necronomicon! It is the grimoire that helped me find you in this unfamiliar world. It is the greatest contributor that found a master befitting the conditions I set forth. In exchange for finding my master, it agreed to leave with us.

“A grimoire……. Have I really gone insane?”

The vice chairman, who had been spewing bloody foam from his mouth and nose, froze. His heart had stopped. Not only that, but the vehicles passing outside the window had stopped, and so had the ambulance entering the hospital with its emergency lights flashing.

It was as if time had stopped.

―The Necronomicon has found a master, so now it is my turn to choose one. Let us all cross dimensions together!

I was half in doubt. I could not erase the possibility that everything was a hallucination. I also considered the possibility that while I was asleep, a drug that induced hallucinations had been injected into me.

Just in case, I mapped out an escape route in my head so I could take down the things that would barge in from outside and escape the hospital.

Though I had made a choice beyond reason after being driven into a corner, even amid that, I could not let go of reality completely.

―I am the sacred object of the beginning and the first sword! I will be remembered as an existence worthy of that status! Take hold of me, my master!

There was no other way. Even to get out of here safely, I needed to take that sword with me.

It was when I gripped Flambeju.

The sword, which had only been long without any distinctive traits, grew even longer, and its blade broadened. The hilt also grew longer, and a guard formed over my hand.

It was a massive two-handed sword.

―I am a sword without form! My true appearance changes according to my master’s capacity. And this is the compatibility between you and me!

If appearance alone could show how well we matched, then Flambeju and I were undoubtedly top-grade.

“……This stands out too much.”

It was a two-handed sword with an appearance as enchanting as that of the blond young man, whose looks were as perfect as a statue’s. If I walked around carrying this, it felt as though all kinds of trouble would gather around me.

―How splendid it is! It means that across the thousands of years of human history in the world I crossed from, you are my most outstanding master! You may take pride in that, O master of this great self!

The blond young man was so moved that tears even welled in his eyes.

The two-handed sword radiated a faint light in my hand and vibrated.

It was the “resonance” Flambeju had mentioned. When I put a little more strength into my grip on the sword, the shaking stopped.

That was when it happened.

FLIP, FLIP, FLIP, FLIP!

The grimoire floating in the air turned its pages on its own. Then it stopped at one point, and the page was filled with geometric patterns.

When I looked closely, it was a fractal form, a single enormous shape made of countless tiny pieces.

Ironically, another name for it was the “Dimensional Fragmentation Diagram.”

The next moment, something truly magical occurred.

Space split open. Beyond it spread an infinite world, black as the cosmos.

―Concentrate! Look only ahead! Move forward toward the path you have chosen!

I felt like I understood why Flambeju had tried to verify my qualifications. Without a firm will, no one would dare set foot into that world.

When I took one step forward, the world that had surrounded me until just now vanished.

And pitch-black space swallowed me whole.

‘Where should I go?’

―Yog-Sothoth.

That was not Flambeju’s voice. It felt as though this entire space was repeatedly uttering words whose meaning I could not understand.

I tried to turn my head toward the direction the sound came from, but the sound came from everywhere.

Flambeju did not seem to hear that existence’s voice.

―Master, concentrate! If you are a master compatible with me, you should be able to see the red line. Master already knows! You must go there!

The “red line” Flambeju spoke of truly existed. A solid red thread that started from the sword extended somewhere.

Using that solid line as my guide, I slowly walked. Just thinking that I was walking made my body move forward.

―Yog-Sothoth.

That was not speech. It was someone’s will. I also felt an intense gaze.

Fear swept over me, but I wanted to see that existence. I had always walked a path someone else had decided. It had been a safe path, and a path where success was guaranteed.

A deviation.

Because I had already started once, the choices that followed were instead easy.

Despite fear that felt like it would kill me, I turned my head. I gazed into a pair of eyes glittering in the pitch-black darkness.

At that moment, my thoughts stopped. No, I was tormented by agony as if my soul were being split apart. Not even a scream leaked out, and I could not move so much as a finger.

The next moment, I drew in a deep breath.

“Haaaaaah!”

The pain that had been constricting me until just now vanished as if it had been a lie.

―Wahahahaha! Success! We have crossed dimensions. I have succeeded in the challenge of a lifetime, for which I abandoned all of my achievements!

At Flambeju’s pride-filled shout, cold sweat ran down my back. He had clearly brought me along while keeping the possibility of failure in mind. If one wrong thing had happened, he and I might have vanished completely or become trapped between infinite dimensions.

I checked the condition of my body. My pulse was fast, but it was regaining stability. Every joint, as well as my sight, hearing, touch, and other senses, was perfectly fine.

My head was clearer instead. As if a computer’s performance had been upgraded, the countless thoughts inside my head were processed swiftly and accurately.

‘Did I really cross into another world? Without being annihilated?’

It was a situation I had no choice but to accept. No, I wanted all of this to be reality. If it was a dream, I did not want to wake.

My life, which had been bound to Sunhang Group, had been reset.

I had come to live a new life in a strange world where no one knew me.

‘Don’t get excited. This is only the beginning. Adapting and surviving comes first.’

I gathered myself. That was a habit I had formed over long years of surviving extreme competition.

―Achievement! It is an Achievement!

“Achievement?”

―Yes, an Achievement! An Achievement! It is an Achievement! To be recognized for an Achievement as soon as you became my master! As expected of the master I chose! And not just one, but two!

It felt as if the space between my eyes were itching. Just as I was about to furrow my brow, a majestic voice rang inside my head.

―O one who crossed dimensions by staking your existence, your Achievement shall be engraved upon the world and your soul.

It was a voice similar to the one I had heard while crossing over to this place.

‘Staking my existence?’