Chapter 64

Chapter 64. Reversal (4)

Fucking terrifying.

My hands and feet were shaking like crazy.

Standing among hundreds of thousands of Chinese troops, it felt like my heart was going to burst.

The Patriot was afraid.

'God, I'm shaking.'

What was the source of this fear?

Being surrounded by hundreds of thousands of Chinese soldiers?

'These bastards, there's so fucking many of them.'

He was the Patriot who'd annihilated China countless times in his trials.

Hadn't he gone toe-to-toe with hundreds of millions of Chinese troops?

A mere few hundred thousand was nothing to be afraid of.

'Ugh......'

Well, he was a little overwhelmed by the sheer numbers, sure.

But that wasn't the real reason.

'Why the hell are they so normal?'

North Korea had been hell.

A Demonic Territory devoid of a single living person, packed with death and Polluted Beasts.

Yet the Chinese bastards who'd created that living hell looked so peaceful, so intact.

That dissonance was what terrified him.

'What kind of pattern is this supposed to be?'

A Chinese anomaly he'd never seen before.

The Patriot shoved his trembling hands into his pockets and shouted.

First, he'd talk.

"Hey, Ching. Send out a representative!"

A Chinese representative with a star pinned to her chest stepped forward.

A Transcendent radiating powerful energy.

But she was unmistakably a pure human being.

"We are China's National Border Defense Corps. We merely eliminated Polluted Beasts and defended our sovereign territory. Why are you launching a surprise attack on us without a declaration of war?"

That bargain-bin translated speech confirmed she was Chinese.

A bunch full of defective goods.

The meaning behind her words was no different.

'They claim they're defending their country from Polluted Beasts they created themselves?'

Insane bullshit!

It was nothing more than a pretext to invade Korea.

"The patriotic human—I have heard you are a psychopath who publicly executed tens of thousands of your own citizens. You have truly lost your mind."

Above all, she knew who he was.

That alone was reason enough for alarm.

'Th-they even investigated me.'

Tremble, tremble—.

His fingertips shook.

No matter how he looked at it, she seemed like an ordinary person, but.......

'Ching.'

He must never compromise.

How many times had compromise led to annihilation?

Hadn't he been assassinated hundreds of times by Chinese bastards who played the magnanimous hero?

'They'll obviously ambush me while pretending to talk.'

The Patriot smiled, thin and bitter.

Certain that they would never change.

The Patriot swung his hand.

Kill.

The Patriot hurled a Kill.

The Chinese officer's head burst open before his eyes.

SPLAT—.

The Patriot's hand trembled.

Then, before long, he smiled with elation.

CRACK—.

The annihilated head.

But above the neck, a head grew back.

Only the jaw had regenerated so far, yet the Chinese officer was already flapping her mouth.

"We are correcting it. This is unjust."

So humans could talk without a brain.

The Patriot nodded, but his focus was fixed on that grotesque regeneration.

'The root cause that mass-slaughtered all of North Korea.'

The bastards who'd trampled his nation tens of thousands of times.

The bastards who made nameless kings of the past bow their heads and hand over their citizens as slaves.

Die!!!

The Patriot hurled his Kill even harder.

He clenched his fists and hammered down, crushed with his heels and stomped.

He killed, and killed again.

They were war criminals who'd massacred tens of millions of potential Republic of Korea citizens.

He couldn't let a single one live.

'Protect the Republic of Korea, no matter what!'

The Patriot's power grew stronger and stronger.

[Patriotic spirit has reached its zenith.]

The Patriot, standing in the heart of the Chinese army.

His Epithet and the Authority he wielded granted him overwhelming power.

Even so, his hands kept trembling.

"Stop the self-destruct immediately and withdraw. It would be better for you."

Terrifying shit was still terrifying.

Every time he blew her apart, she regenerated and kept running her mouth.

A Chinese woman talking with nothing but a jawbone was every bit as unnerving as a Polluted Beast.

"That ship cannot detonate anyway."

And yet she kept striking at Yi Sun-sin's carrier.

'You dare insult Yi Sun-sin's aircraft carrier?'

There was no longer any need for conversation.

"Halt? You think flapping your jaw is enough to stop the great Chungmugong Yi Sun-sin's self-destruct carrier?"

The self-destruct carrier, frozen in midair.

The Patriot possessed an Authority that could reshape the world.

It came with extremely demanding conditions, but—.

CLICK.

[For the Defense of the Nation—For Korea.]

Just now.

Those conditions had been met.

'It's going to hurt like a motherfucker, but......'

The Patriot squeezed his eyes shut and screamed.

"Let's see you regenerate after eating this!"

FLUTTER——!!

The Taegukgi billowed.

For my country, I offer myself!

And so, the world answered the Patriot's will.

[Do not inform the enemy of my death.]

'Getting blown up hurts the most, shit.'

A glowing carrier plummeted toward him.

Under normal circumstances, he wouldn't have resorted to this from the start, but—.

'Shin Si-woo.'

He believed.

In the new Transcendent who'd reclaimed half of the Republic of Korea alongside him.

'China may look fine, but it's absolutely anything but.'

The Patriot looked at Shin Si-woo.

Si-woo, eyes round with shock.

"Hey, Junior."

The Patriot flashed a magnificent smile.

"Never, ever trust China!"

With those words.

The carrier fell upon the Patriot.

***

BOOM————!!!

It was overwhelming destruction.

A force that pushed the earth aside, annihilated terrain, and returned everything in the world to nothing.

The carrier the Patriot detonated had harbored a tremendous power within it.

KRRRRUMBLE——.

The earth shook.

A massive sphere of light expanded in all directions from the spot where the Patriot had stood.

Even a nuclear blast detonated right before your eyes couldn't match this destructive force.

'He'll come back, right?'

Obviously, the Patriot himself had been caught in the explosion.

Wrapped in his Taegukgi, he was heroically annihilated alongside the blast.

My Eye perceived all of it with vivid clarity.

FLASH!

[Eye—Synchronization 5%]

Was it resonating with that overwhelming destruction?

I'd merely watched, yet the Eye's synchronization progressed.

I saw it.

SWOOOSH————.

The devastation the carrier's self-destruct had wrought.

The hundreds of thousands of Chinese troops had been annihilated without leaving so much as a shape behind.

Was this truly the right choice?

Whatever else may be said.......

'The Patriot's choice was correct.'

RUMBLE———.

The explosion had annihilated everything.

Not a single corpse remained, not even a scrap of clothing.

And despite projecting firepower on that scale, the Patriot's carrier self-destruct had never once crossed the border.

Not a scratch of damage had reached the North Korean side where I stood.

This, too, was surely part of his Authority.

And yet—.

SQUELCH. SQUELCH.

Parts of the Chinese military began regenerating.

Worse than Polluted Beasts.

Despite leaving no remains, flesh formed from thin air.

Right—not regeneration. Generation.

The first to be generated were—China's Transcendent unit.

'Hundreds of Transcendents sharing the same ability.'

The grotesque spectacle of a hundred Transcendents annihilating and then regenerating unfolded before me.

I was simply speechless.

Among those Transcendents was the Awakened who had frozen the carrier in place.

Which meant.......

'China possesses Transcendents with multiple Awakened abilities.'

And those Transcendents come right back even when killed.

How is that even possible?

They might look ordinary, but they're absolutely not the same kind of human as us.

The moment I grasped the gravity of it all—.

"Hey, Junior. That's what China is!"

Before my eyes.

On the flight deck of the carrier fleet's flagship, the Patriot's body materialized.

With a brilliant flash, just like that.

"I didn't know you could resurrect too, and you're not even Jesus."

I gazed at the Patriot steadily.

The power of the Eye observed him.

A mere five percent synchronization.

Yet what I could see had changed.

[Pain Reduction 99.999,999%]

First, information about the buff enveloping the Patriot appeared.

Then I learned the reason behind his resurrection.

FLASH!

[Patriotism has been proven.]

[Martyr—33,153,651 times.]

The Patriot's patriotism had been proven through me.

The number of times as a Martyr most likely meant.......

'What a madman.'

It had to represent how many times the Patriot had made this same choice.

That number was the count of times he'd sacrificed himself to prove to people like me the ambitions that China or Japan harbored.

'Over thirty million.'

If that wasn't the choice of an absolute madman among men, what was?

As I sat steeped in that sentiment.

"Junior, you get it now, right? What you see with those bastards is never the whole story. Keep that in mind, again and again. If I'm ever gone, you're the one who has to protect the country!"

The Patriot pointed to where the Chinese forces had been.

A barren wasteland where every trace of nature had been obliterated.

But.......

"You're absolutely right."

A truly staggering spectacle unfolded.

[G-good heavens, can those things truly be called human?]

A sight so shocking that even the swords watching through me recoiled in horror.

Too strange, too bizarre.

'I never imagined the entire army would be regenerating.'

I couldn't fathom how all of them could be whole, uncorrupted humans harboring not a trace of evil or demonic energy.

"Muratan."

So I confirmed it once more.

My sword, the foremost authority on the iron that is humanity, said this:

[One hundred percent pure human. Every single one of them has Awakened or carries the factor for it. I'd need to hammer a few to know more!]

Either way, the hundreds of thousands of Chinese troops annihilating and reviving were "human."

I'd never seen anything like it, even in Raise a Sword.

'They might only be human in form and composition......'

You know how it goes.

A monster wearing a human mask, pretending to be human.

And then.

BOOOM——.

That monster was closing in on me.

A being with only its lower half generated was hurtling at tremendous speed toward the carrier hovering over Mt. Baekdu.

SQUELCH—.

Even as she flew, her torso sprouted and a military uniform formed over it.

How could that possibly be human?

'A monster.'

I'll concede the point.

The Patriot's ideology was right.

If that wasn't a monster, then what in the world was it?

Having fully restored her form, the Chinese Transcendent spoke to me.

"Huh? H-how is this happening?"

She looked around, then gazed at the Chinese troops slowly regaining their human forms and tilted her head.

Had she not expected the Patriot to self-destruct a carrier so abruptly?

"The patriotic human is truly insane. He does not negotiate—he resorts to violence. Where has he disappeared to?"

The Patriot had ducked inside the carrier in the brief moment she'd leapt up.

At the very least, I was better suited to deal with a regenerating Chinese Transcendent than the Patriot, so I didn't bother holding him back.

Right—the infinitely regenerating Chinese army.

That was my opponent.

"What exactly are you?"

No matter how I looked, she was just a human being.

Yet that was absolutely not something you could call "human."

"I am Ling Ling, Transcendent of China. I am an immortal."

Could that meager introduction really be her true identity?

I wasn't sure.

What I did know was that prolonging this conversation felt like a bad idea.

I swung my sword on instinct.

SLASH———.

I severed the Chinese Transcendent's neck.

She regenerated immediately.

"The human in love with a sword. All of Korea's Transcendents are mentally broken. Ling Ling is an immortal. Kill me as much as you please."

Even at this very moment, the entire Chinese military was regenerating.

Flesh formed, uniforms materialized, and every piece of equipment they'd been wearing returned to its original state.

Their representative spoke.

"As long as you do not cross the border, we will not fight."

A Chinese Transcendent wielding powers identical to Polluted Beasts.

An unidentified army of hundreds of thousands that could annihilate and regenerate.

Could their words really be trusted?

"Are you satisfied with the power you gained from North Korea?"

I leveled my sword.

I asked the question with heavy gravity.

She tilted her head as if deliberating for a moment, then smiled at me.

A vivid, eerie smile stretching ear to ear.

"Thanks to their help. China, the nation of immortals, is nearing completion. We are in the process of correcting the mistakes that arose during that process."

Indeed, that was China for you.

Utter horseshit, but I understood the gist of it perfectly well.

The deranged claim that North Korea's experiments were completing China as a nation of immortals.

And the pathetic excuse that they were only now cleaning up after themselves.

"Ling Ling does not die. Our two billion Chinese will not die. Anyway, that is how it is."

Two billion Chinese.

Another unsettling number.

While every other nation's population was getting decimated, had China somehow bucked the trend and surged?

"Ling Ling does not want to fight. China does not bother weak nations. We are a generous great power."

After what they did to North Korea, what?

'They won't fight?'

That wasn't an option in my dictionary.

I aimed the Baby Sword at her and asked.

"Did you say immortal?"

Undying.

A word that describes beings that cannot die.

But for my swords, immortality was nothing more than a phenomenon that could be overcome.

I knew the easiest, fastest way to deal with an immortal.

Demons.

Let's see if you can revive after being devoured by a demon.