Ranker Who Shatters Myths - Chapter 309

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

The Broken Ranker

Devours Myths

Chapter 309

The Other Side of the Sun (6)

“The moment those children learn the truth, divine punishment will strike your heart.”

“That’s right. Revealing heavenly secrets is the worst thing one can do regarding causality.”

The reason why Lee Gun-san, who had been so healthy in his youth, suddenly became terminally ill.

It was he who had actively worked to create the Sons of Zeus in the shadows and the Thunder Unit in the light.

But the price for scheming against causality had all come back as divine punishment.

The reason his dignity had been so easily shattered by mere attacks from Heracles was precisely because of this.

But now there would be more people who knew his truth?

It could potentially be fatal.

So she secretly wanted to hide the truth from those children,

but conversely, knowing how much those two boys meant to Lee Gun-san like sons, she couldn’t stop him.

“What’s killing you now isn’t the Outer Sea or Dionysus. What killed you was… that foolish love for those children.”

“Haha. Isn’t it fortunate that I can do so in ‘this’ life at least? I couldn’t do that at all before.”

“…”

“Thank you for understanding such a pathetic me. My dear.”

Choi Hye-jin didn’t avoid Lee Gun-san’s gaze as he looked at her deeply.

She bit her teeth tightly.

Hadn’t she decided to spend her life with him knowing he was this kind of person from the beginning?

Then she had to respect his will until the very end.

She stood up from her seat.

“No. I don’t understand.”

“…My dear.”

“However you lived in your previous life has nothing to do with the ‘present’ me. So.”

Choi Hye-jin cut off her words and continued clearly.

“I won’t let you go so meaninglessly. Whatever happens outside, whether those bastards turn the world upside down or not… don’t look anymore.”

“…”

“I’ll share the punishment with you. You just… rest as my husband.”

“My dear.”

“I’ll keep you alive. I’m a doctor. Healer Choi Hye-jin.”

Strength entered Choi Hye-jin’s wrinkled eyes.

* * *

“Pathetic bastards.”

“…Jin-woo hyung.”

The path Lee Hyeon and Moon Su-chan had taken.

Go Jin-woo stood in the corridor leading to the study room, leaning against the wall with a displeased expression.

“You.”

“Feel better now? After shooting off like that?”

“…”

Go Jin-woo glared at Moon Su-chan intensely.

A face he hadn’t seen in a long time.

It was the return of a friend he had thought was dead all this time.

So he should have held a welcome ceremony, but it wasn’t the time for that at all.

Go Jin-woo forcibly shoved the documents he was holding into Moon Su-chan’s arms.

Thud!

“If you had something frustrating, you should have contacted me first to ask.”

“…”

“Do you think I wouldn’t have found the General suspicious all this time? I can see things even more clearly, can’t I?”

Go Jin-woo was in the process of inheriting Lee Gun-san’s network and connecting it with Homeros Holdings.

The nameless talents that appeared within it, funds of unclear origin, things with complicated relationships to Lee Gun-san.

He had almost completely grasped that flow now.

And in that process, Go Jin-woo seemed to have noticed and learned many things as well.

But his reaction was different from Moon Su-chan’s.

He didn’t fear, but rather trusted and followed his arrangements even more deeply because of that trust.

Without any doubt.

Silently.

“These are things I organized separately. Originally I prepared them as a welcome gift… look at them properly.”

Go Jin-woo’s eyes turned bright red.

“Pathetic bastard.”

Whoosh.

Go Jin-woo left those words and walked away coldly.

Moon Su-chan stared blankly down at the documents in his hands for a moment.

―List of retired rankers belonging to the Lee Network and their command details.

―Secret accounts of investment companies.

―Special management list. Sons of Zeus members.

…

Moon Su-chan quickly examined the contents.

Records mainly organizing measures taken in secret to protect the former Thunder Unit.

And how all those many measures had scattered and merged again over four years to support today’s Z Team, arranged chronologically.

And among them,

―【Tiamat’s Nest】 Protection Plan.

“…”

Moon Su-chan’s eyes couldn’t easily leave the last document.

“The General already knew hyung was at the 【Nest】. Yet he waited all this time until hyung came looking on his own feet.”

“…”

“Why didn’t he tell us from the beginning?”

Lee Hyeon sighed and opened the door to the study room.

Then, instead of the antique study room their brothers had frequently visited, a party venue filled with various balloons and banners appeared.

―Congratulations) Moon Su-chan’s Safe Return (Celebration

“When did he even prepare something like this?”

It was clearly a welcome party venue that Go Jin-woo had prepared together with Lee Gun-san.

Lee Hyeon stepped into the study room, passing Moon Su-chan.

Moon Su-chan bit his lower lip tightly several times before following behind him again.

* * *

‘Sha Wujing.’

「What is it, Chosen One?」

As Moon Su-chan pushed the mobile bookshelf aside with all his strength, a hidden door was revealed inside.

At Lee Hyeon’s call, Sha Wujing climbed up onto Lee Hyeon’s head.

‘A returner… is that actually possible?’

“I don’t know much about it either.”

Sha Wujing stroked his chin with his hand.

“Being able to start over is a tremendous privilege. It means you can make different choices from the ones you regretted before.”

‘That would be true.’

“It’s equally tempting for us too, so if regression were possible, wouldn’t my senior brother and I have done it long ago?”

Come to think of it, being unable to escape the prophecies of oracles was the same for various mythological heroes and gods.

That’s why beings who could foresee fate were treated so preciously.

‘Then…’

“But it’s not theoretically impossible.”

Sha Wujing said decisively.

“Reincarnation does exist. So does possession. There’s no law saying regression couldn’t exist either.”

‘…’

“There are countless mysteries in the world. So many that even we Logoi don’t know them all. Causality is that intricate, so it wouldn’t be strange if someone was born with such a [talent] somewhere. Hah.”

Then suddenly Sha Wujing’s voice became sharp.

“But if such a [talent] actually existed and reached the ears of the Logoi… I don’t know what would happen after that.”

‘They’d try to use it somehow.’

“Would they just use it? They’d try to steal it outright.”

‘…!’

“I told you. We have regrets too. So if we could go back in time, there would be so many things we’d want to do?”

Lee Hyeon read deep regret and sadness in Sha Wujing’s voice.

He too had experienced losing family to the 【Heavenly Sect】.

“But worldly affairs don’t work out so easily. ■■■ That person ■■ but ■■■■… Ah, the filtering is kicking in.”

The baby turtle scratched his head vigorously with his hand.

“Anyway, even if regression exists, it wouldn’t be that easy. Usually big events come with a price. There would probably be major penalties.”

Even Logoi cannot avoid the penalties imposed by causality.

“Besides, there would be absolutely ‘unavoidable’ fixed events… I don’t know what would happen with those. Hah.”

It was essentially a time paradox.

“Opening it.”

Just then, Moon Su-chan barely fitted the wind-up key and turned the door handle to the side.

Lee Hyeon also returned to reality from his conversation with Sha Wujing.

Click!

Creeeeak-

The moment the iron door opened with a sound, Lee Hyeon and Moon Su-chan held their breath.

Tick-tock tick-tock-

Cuckoo. Cuckoo. Cuckoo. Cuckoo.

Dong, dong, dong, dong-

That place was more like a tomb than a room.

Time’s Tomb.

“…”

“…”

What filled the walls were thousands of pocket watches.

The sound of hour hands turning, cuckoos calling, grandfather clocks chiming.

Though various sounds filled the air, strangely not a single clock hand was actually moving.

All the clock hands were stopped at different times.

Below them were numbers attached like tags.

[1st cycle], [14th cycle], [132nd cycle]… [9,982nd cycle].

“All of this…”

Moon Su-chan barely stepped inside and picked up the nearest clock with trembling hands.

An old notebook placed under the clock was filled with Lee Gun-san’s handwriting.

[42nd Cycle Record]

Su-chan successfully avoided the Jade Emperor’s persistent offensive and passed the Great Sage Equal to Heaven’s test.

Apostle of the Great Sage Equal to Heaven. That child was a splendid hero.

But he was insufficient to stop the ‘tsunami’ of the Outer Sea. When Su-chan died, everything collapsed like dominoes. The foundation, the preparations.

Moon Su-chan’s eyes wavered.

He hurriedly opened another notebook.

[193rd Cycle Record]

Lee Hyeon died again this time. I tried my best to prevent it somehow, but the firmly fixed convergence point is not easy to pass through.

Su-chan experienced frustration again, and after the 【Ice Palace】 break, the waves of the Outer Sea began. The end times once more.

[312th Cycle Record]

Finally succeeded in passing the second convergence point! But Su-chan is still exhausted.

The sudden collapse of the Heavens… My head aches from these unexpected consecutive emergencies. I’m turning back the clock hands again.

“…!!”

“…So when you said returner, this is what you meant.”

Next to Moon Su-chan who had frozen stiff, Lee Hyeon also had a greatly shocked expression.

Hundreds, or perhaps thousands of regressions.

He couldn’t even imagine how terrible that time must have been.

Lee Hyeon showed him the old notebook in his hand.

A military notebook marked as the 491st cycle.

“Do you remember this notebook?”

Moon Su-chan swallowed dry saliva and nodded.

“When we were commissioned…”

“Right. The special notebook the Ministry of National Defense gave out then. But look how stained it is. It hasn’t even been 10 years, but it looks hundreds of years old.”

“…”

“It seems like he brings the records with him each time he repeats a cycle. So he won’t lose his memories.”

“…”

Lee Hyeon put the notebook back in its place and carefully picked up the 1st cycle notebook located at the very back.

An extremely old notebook that would have crumbled long ago if not for magical treatment.

“I see. Originally, you were the one who was supposed to become a hero?”

“…!!”

“Instead, it seems I died quite often.”

“…”

[‘Sacred Relic: Noeancheongjeong’ activates and reads the numerous thoughts embedded in the space!]

“This is a bit annoying… I wondered why the General favored me since childhood and raised you more strictly. There was a reason?”

Pfft.

Lee Hyeon smiled lightly and began to look at the thoughts attached to the notebook. His eyes glowed deep blue.

“You should see this too, right?”

Moon Su-chan nodded heavily.

At that moment,

Whoooosh!

Light leaking from the thoughts engulfed both of them.

Thousands of springs that had been stopped in the room of clocks all screamed in unison.

It was not a sound.

The memories of one man who had ground away thousands, tens of thousands of lifetimes became a wave of thoughts that crashed over the two brothers.

* * *

[1st Cycle Record]

…The world meets its end.

Divine beings from another ‘outer world’ that are not Logos, no, beings far stronger than that invade.

Who exactly are they?

[2nd Cycle Record]

I opened my eyes. Am I alive? Only then could I understand what the identity of the trait called ‘wheel’ that hadn’t been resolved until the very end in my previous life was.

It was amazing. Regression. That means I can start anew, doesn’t it?

A miracle that even gods don’t possess.

This time I’ll live a different life. That’s what I resolved.

Lee Hyeon and Moon Su-chan were standing in the middle of some world that had become ruins.

Collapsed concrete ruins. Corpses fallen everywhere. A sky soaked in red.

From cracks split by earthquakes, countless amorphous monsters of unknown identity poured out, and from the red sky, space shattered as bizarre tentacles and such pierced down.

Some had giant ‘eyes’ like the sun, while others had mountain-sized tangled ‘hands’ of vines.

‘Outer Sea…!!’

They were things that gave off the same aura as the ‘Left Hand’ that Lee Hyeon had once seen when defeating the Jade Emperor.

Sinister.

Bizarre.

Monsters that brought only such thoughts.

“…This is.”

“It seems to be the ‘future’ that the General originally experienced.”

Moon Su-chan nodded at Lee Hyeon’s words.

Fortunately, they were separated from the previous Earth that was surely the 1st or 2nd cycle and suffered no harm.

And…

They could see Lee Gun-san, who had been frustrated and defeated before the ‘tsunami’ of the Outer Sea.

Lee Gun-san, who appeared to be around their age, was looking at the sky and screaming something at the top of his lungs.

But before the beings of the Outer Sea, it was nothing more than the buzzing of a gnat.

In a world that commonly comes to mind when thinking of apocalypse, Lee Gun-san, who was merely a mortal, could do nothing.

Eventually a gray tentacle flew this way,

Splat!

Lee Gun-san met his death with a terrible sound of flesh being torn.

At the spot where his corpse had been.

A clock fell with a thud and its hands began winding rapidly.

[13th Cycle Record]

After dying more than ten times, I had no choice but to admit my method was wrong.

Monopolizing opportunities, recruiting talent, unlocking special privileges… Despite trying everything I could, I kept repeating failures.

Should I look for a different method?

[21st Cycle Record]

After continuously rewinding time, I could no longer deny it. No, I actually realized it much earlier, but I seemed to have unconsciously avoided it because I didn’t want to admit it deep down.

The fact that I am not a hero.

I thought I was naturally a ‘hero’ since I was born with a special trait like regression… but I wasn’t.

But now I had to acknowledge it. Frustration washed over me.

[26th Cycle Record]

I’m looking for someone to become a hero. But it’s not easy.

What’s fortunate is that I found a way to delay the convergence point? I became able to postpone the Outer Sea’s tsunami as much as possible.

Thanks to that, I can drag time out until I’m over 60 years old. Time means a longer period to prepare. It was good news for me.

Let me just prepare well from now on. If I can just find a hero, I should be able to stop this damn apocalypse too.

[34th Cycle Record]

Finally… after long hardship, I found a hero.

I got information that Great Sage Equal to Heaven Son Wukong had perished two cycles ago, and wondered if there might be some arrangement prepared.

I finally found that arrangement in an orphanage.

An Apostle of the Great Sage.

It was a child named ‘Moon Su-chan’.

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————