The End and the Beginning (13)

At my words, Yul folded his arms.

“Fine, I’ll admit you know more than I expected.”

Considering his first reaction, this was very toned down. Seemed he’d done some organizing in his head.

“But no matter how I think about it, I still don’t get it. Who I am—there’s really no one who could’ve told you about me.”

“That’s because you…”

“Yeah, yeah. Which is why I decided to hear you out for now. I promised, too.”

All that tailing him around in broad daylight and seeing things I didn’t need to see had paid off.

I sank back down onto the blanket and steadied my voice. I had a lot to say. I just hoped after hearing me out, Yul wouldn’t go into denial.

* * *

“So.”

Dawn must have broken already; the world outside the window was washed in cold morning light. My throat stung from talking nonstop until now, and I rubbed it.

“Humanity’s about to be wiped out, and I die too.”

“Yeah.”

“And it’s because of the toxin coming out of the Gates.”

“That’s right.”

Yul pressed his forehead.

“And on top of that, you say you were my friend…”

He sounded more shocked by that than by the story of humanity’s extinction.

“We were best friends.”

“With only two people left in the world, ‘best friends,’ really.”

Even now, there were things that needed saying.

“You do believe me, right?”

“How could I not. You knew the name of the dog I raised as a kid, down to the brand of the sports bag I used in school. I mean… did I really tell you stuff like that?”

“You saw a smashed signboard on the street and started talking about it.”

“Right…”

Answering like a man who’d given up on everything, Yul collapsed back into the sofa. He looked dead tired.

“And there’s something you said to me back then.”

I felt bad, since he looked drained, but this was where the real part started.

“You thought this might not be a natural phenomenon.”

“What?”

“That someone’s intent was involved.”

Yul looked like he was at a loss for words.

I calmly recited exactly what I’d heard from him.

“You said the social systems collapsed abnormally fast.”

Like a precisely lined-up row of dominoes. As if someone had been waiting for the toxin to spread from the Gates—things toppled from the top down, in order.

But in the heat of crisis there’d been no room to feel something was off. Even I had never considered it.

Only when everything was over and all we had left was time did Yul look back alone, trace the chain of causes, and raise doubts.

They were all little things anyone could dismiss as coincidence, but…

“Right before it all went down, the Association president suddenly died in an ‘accident,’ and relations among the rankers were at their worst. After the toxin spread, no matter how much we tried to control things, people kept dying all over.”

“Not having a leader could explain some of that…”

“Doesn’t it strike you as odd?”

Why would a president who normally never went into the field show up at a Gate entrance that day of all days?

And why, of all people, did the lover of Rank 3 get swept up and die during a raid led by Rank 2?

“I thought you were talking nonsense at the time, too.”

I mean, who would want to trample their own world?

On the ruined Earth, it wasn’t just humanity that perished. With the hunters who could close the Gates wiped out, monsters poured through endlessly and the ecosystem collapsed.

It was hell on earth.

“But after I came back, I kept thinking about what you said.”

I’d scolded him that it was a ridiculous what-if to talk about something already over, but once I actually had the chance to turn things back, it was hard to ignore the possibility.

Plus, ‘Even if purification skills are extremely rare, it’s not like no one had them. Yet the only one left standing at the end was little old B-Rank me.’

That was the strangest thing. I hadn’t been able to think deeply about it back then and let it slide.

“So, after I came back, I moved on the premise that I couldn’t trust anyone.”

“…It is strange. You said identical Gates opened simultaneously, right?”

“Yeah. We sealed them at first, but how it spread…”

“I can see why I might have thought that.”

The route straight to the worst case was too precise. Like disparate coincidences all pointing at one goal.

“So, you came for my cooperation to stop the destruction?”

Yul straightened from where he’d been slumped and asked, and I nodded.

“Since I know the future, if I change the past to avoid the worst paths…”

“Would that even matter? Let’s say your plans keep working—like how you saved Min Ha-jun. If someone orchestrated this, you think they’ll just sit and watch? They might try to stop us, and other kinds of butterfly effects could happen.”

His tone was cynical.

“Then at the very least, we can find the bastard.”

I answered with eyes gone cold. If there really was a culprit who made that hell, I wasn’t going to let things go their way. I’d stop them even  if it killed me, clinging on to the very end.

“Why go that far?”

Maybe he’d seen some kind of desperation in me; Yul asked with genuine puzzlement.

“People all die anyway. Maybe that’s humanity’s fate.”

“Because there’s someone I want to see live happily right up to the end, no matter what.”

I’d survived longer than anyone, through every hardship. Maybe because of that, I didn’t have much attachment left to this world—but there was someone I wanted to gift a different future to.

If I ran to her now and focused only on Mom, she and I could probably survive for a long time. But staying behind in a hell where everyone else is dead is worse than dying.

No one knows better than me that merely breathing doesn’t mean you’re living.

So, I’m going to do everything I can so at least Mom can enjoy peaceful days like now for twenty, thirty years. So, she can live in a noisy society, not a quiet hell.

The sun was fully up by then, shining outside the window.

* * *

After hearing me out, Yul was silent for a while—then became more cooperative than before.

Only after a storm front had blown past us were we able to have a halfway productive conversation.

“You said the new skill you got is 「Absorption」, right? Can that absorb just anything?”

He must have been imagining some black-hole kind of ability, but after testing on all sorts of items, I found 「Absorption」 reacted only to a very limited set of things.

“No. I can’t absorb water or physical objects. Going by how I only pulled mana out of a Gate core before, I think it’s only ‘mana’ I can make mine.”

I recalled my past of trying the skill on every random thing.

I even tried to absorb the shower stream while bathing, and grabbed electronics to see if I could take in electricity. No effect. My conclusion: I can only absorb mana, pure and simple.

Even so, just being able to use far more than my baseline mana made it broken.

“Can you absorb it from people?”

Already tried that, too.

“I tested on Min Ha-jun before, but because I hit my absorption cap, I didn’t really see the result.”

I pulled up my status window, recalling how Hajun had innocently offered his hand. I hadn’t recorded my max back then, so I intended to check it now.

‘Huh?’

The number I saw was the last thing I expected, and it threw me. The mana that had been packed full to just short of overflowing beyond my base had vanished without a trace. It wasn’t even half my usual.

The last time I used a skill was…

Don’t tell me that 「Purification」 I used during the hallucination, then…?

I was dumbfounded.

Did I just discharge mana into thin air?

“You said I was already collapsed when you opened your eyes, right.”

“You were sweating cold sweat, too.”

Guess that’s it.

Then this chill and headache must be the side effects of overusing mana.

I felt like I’d showered a street with fat stacks of cash and been left with nothing in my hands.

Blowing all my assets in an instant and being left destitute, a hollow emptiness welled up.

“Yul, I think I used up all the mana I’d stockpiled.”

“What?”

That’s how it was.

Neither crying nor laughing, I tore my eyes from the status window. Fine, I’ll just build it back up… Even if getting that mana had been a brutal slog, if I say it was never really mine to begin with… I have to…

“Wow, are you a scammer or what? Suddenly I’m suspicious.”

“Save it and give me your hand. Let’s use this chance to test again.”

I thrust out my arm with brazen confidence, but unlike Min Ha-jun, Yul didn’t readily place his hand in mine.

“Why should I hand over my mana!”

“What else in here has mana besides you?”

When he tucked his own hand into his chest like he was hiding it, I went on the offensive. Did he think I could only absorb through hands?

There was no required body part, so I boldly grabbed him by the nape.

You cannot use the skill due to the mana owner’s refusal.

‘What kind of humanitarian skill is this.’

I clicked my tongue at the system window that popped up immediately. In this inhumane world, what, you’re going to preserve some shred of conscience?

“Hey, forget it. Says I can’t take it by force.”

“You were going to take it by force? I knew it—your eyes were blazing.”

Yul had already put three steps between us and relaxed his body. Honestly, how much could I even have taken.

“Can’t you cooperate? Show me the generosity of an S-rank.”

“I’m a small and precious S-rank.”

I stared up at the guy who was a full two heads taller than me and momentarily lost my words, then shook my head.

“Min Ha-jun listens really well, you know.”

“Him?”

“Like a puppy.”

“Well, I’ll be…”

Yul snorted several times like he truly couldn’t believe it.

“No wonder he looked the way he did back then…”

“Back then?”

“…Nothing.”

When I kept staring, thinking there was something I didn’t know, Yul turned his head and held out his hand.

“Here. Happy now?”

It was suspicious how blatantly he was changing the subject, but this was the more important matter, so I let it go. He could change his mind any second.

‘Guess they had some other kind of exchange.’

Not my business anyway.

“Don’t you dare let go midway.”

I gripped his knobby hand tight and cast the skill.

「Absorption」

The moment I used it, I felt mana whirl and flow between us.

It felt different from when I absorbed mana from a Gate core. It didn’t hurt, either.

‘Does mana change temperament depending on its owner?’

If I had to describe it, it felt like a cold wind wrapping around my body. I focused, closing my eyes so I could memorize the sensation.

The foreign mana that flowed down my hand grew more familiar by the moment, and soon the sensation vanished completely.

Looks like once I absorb it to one hundred percent, it takes on the characteristics of my own mana.

“Done…”

I opened my eyes and tried to pull my arm back to let go—but all I saw was my hand grasping at air.

“Where’d he go.”

Frozen in place mid-motion, I stared, bewildered.

Because the Yul who should have been right in front of me had vanished like a mirage.