I Awakened as a Dark History - Chapter 59

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 59
The Kraken’s body burst open as flames consumed it entirely.
“Phew.”
The massive creature’s corpse collapsed toward the sea.
Only then could I plant my feet back on the beach.
I took the opportunity to scold Choi Arin as well.
“Why didn’t you finish evacuating?”
“A tidal wave suddenly hit while I was escaping—what was I supposed to do? I thought I was going to die.”
“Are you hurt?”
“Doesn’t look like it.”
The lack of a definitive answer made me uneasy.
I set her down properly and checked her over.
Scrapes and bruises were visible in several places.
Fortunately, they were all shallow abrasions.
I exhaled in relief.
“Thank goodness. No serious wounds.”
The moment I released my grip on her—
A chill shot down my spine, and I spun around.
Bang.
A spear drove into the sand, sending it spraying across the beach.
“Ack!”
Choi Arin, covered in sand, shook her head frantically.
I tracked the trajectory of the flying spear.
Yoo Ho-yeon stood with his face twisted in fury, arm outstretched toward me.
The situation was clear.
He had thrown that spear.
“What in the hell are you doing?”
Did he just attack me? Want to try something?
‘This is interesting.’
If that was his intent, I had no intention of showing mercy to the man before me.
But Yoo Ho-yeon, the one who threw the spear, turned it around as if I were the one at fault.
“What did you do?! Didn’t you hear me tell you to wait?!”
I furrowed my brow in disbelief.
“I cleaned up the Kraken you couldn’t handle.”
“I didn’t say I couldn’t handle it! I told you to deal with the smaller Krakens first!”
As he said this, Yoo Ho-yeon lifted his spear.
More than a dozen spears rose menacingly into the air, and I raised my guard.
I was preparing for his attack.
But the spears wheeled around and flew toward the sea instead.
Thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk!
The Krakens fleeing into the water were skewered by the spears.
Still, the remaining Krakens continued crawling desperately toward the sea.
Watching this, Yoo Ho-yeon gnashed his teeth and shouted.
“When the mother dies, the offspring scatter! Are you trying to turn the waters in front of Downtown into a Kraken breeding ground?!”
I belatedly understood the situation and closed my mouth.
I had genuinely intended to follow Yoo Ho-yeon’s instructions, but I’d gotten ahead of myself.
I could barely scrape together an excuse.
“One of my acquaintances was captured. I had no choice.”
“So your acquaintance matters, but nobody else does?”
The scattered smaller Krakens seized people struggling in the water.
The Association’s Hunters barely had time to fish them out.
Association Hunters ran frantically between water and shore.
“Rescue the people in the water first!”
“Keep the Krakens from spreading!”
“Bring nets from the perimeter! Now!”
“Hunter Yoo Ho-yeon! Help us over here! Please!”
The situation that came into focus was worse than before.
It would have been better if I hadn’t interfered at all.
Yoo Ho-yeon seemed to see the chaos as well, his lower lip pressed firmly between his teeth.
His face was completely twisted.
Anger?
No—it was closer to heartbreak.
“I didn’t do it on purpose…….”
“Whether you intended it or not, your actions carried that meaning.”
Maybe he was right.
Even if the same situation arose again, I would move to save Choi Arin without hesitation.
I couldn’t put anyone else before my friend.
In the end, I stopped making excuses.
When I did, Yoo Ho-yeon seemed to lose the energy to argue further.
He muttered quietly.
“I wanted to tell myself it was just a delusion, nothing more. But it wasn’t.”
Yoo Ho-yeon looked at me with disappointed eyes.
“When someone close to you gets tangled up in things, you lose your altruism.”
Where could you find a person who cares for strangers before those near to them?
If this weren’t a situation where I was at fault, I’d want to snap back with exactly that.
But I couldn’t say anything while standing on the ground of my own mistake.
“If you’re going to move like that with that kind of heart, then you ……n’t have …….”
A word in the middle didn’t come through clearly.
Yoo Ho-yeon spun his body around roughly.
‘Can Yoo Ho-yeon handle all of that alone with his ability?’
I hesitated for a moment, wondering if I should help properly even now.
But that hesitation didn’t last long.
When Yoo Ho-yeon raised his hand, the sand of the beach was drawn up. Like when we first met, he seemed to be controlling the earth itself.
The sand wove itself tightly into a net, encircling the smaller Krakens.
“Uhhh!”
Yoo Ho-yeon’s neck was straining with veins as he pushed his power to its maximum.
Then the net slowly began lifting the small Krakens above the surface of the sea.
The loose net, which didn’t trap people, completely ensnared the Krakens.
The trapped Krakens thrashed and tried to escape.
Yoo Ho-yeon, knowing he couldn’t maintain his skill for long, brought his hands together.
The net bunched itself into a sphere, completely sealing the Kraken inside.
The net then began to compress.
Crack—squelch, sizzle.
The Kraken was crushed, shrinking bit by bit.
Eventually, a massive ball of sand and compacted Kraken dropped to the ground.
“Huff, huff…….”
Yoo Ho-yeon’s shoulders heaved with obvious exhaustion.
He turned to look at me slowly.
His eyes gleamed with a yellow light.
What he saw through that light was beyond my knowing.
But one thing was certain—he was not in a state of delusion now.
His expression looked as though he might cry at any moment as he gazed at me.
“Go now. Your help isn’t needed.”
When I hesitated, Choi Arin grabbed my arm from beside me.
“Let’s just go. Both of us.”
There was no reason to hesitate any longer.
I swept up Choi Arin and flew high into the air.
It felt like fleeing, and it was fleeing.
I didn’t want to see my mistake with my own eyes.
* * *
Tap.
I landed at a position not far from the beach.
The Dungeon Wave that had erupted on the beach had evacuated everyone; there were no eyes to see.
“Synchronization released.”
As I released the Synchronization without worry, exhaustion washed over me first.
“Sigh.”
At least a sigh escaped as I lifted my head.
“Arin, you don’t need to go to the hospital, right?”
“Nope, nothing really hurts. I’m fine.”
Despite her putting on the brightest expression she could manage, Choi Arin’s face remained dark.
Her expression held even greater concern than mine.
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Me? Well… you saw earlier, didn’t you? I awakened and I fight incredibly well.”
“Yeah, I saw.”
Choi Arin’s eyes darted around strangely.
She seemed to be gauging my reaction, so I offered her a smile.
I wasn’t sure if it came across right, but it was my best attempt.
“I haven’t told anyone else yet. I’m only telling you.”
“Um, yes, well… that is, I won’t say anything, obviously. But that’s not what I meant—see, there’s something else…”
Why was she hesitating so much?
When I looked at her questioningly, Choi Arin finally found her voice.
“Do you not know him?”
“Know who? Yoo Ho-yeon the Hunter, of course.”
“No!”
Choi Arin drummed her chest in exasperation.
“That person! We saw him before, ages ago. At first I couldn’t quite place him, remember?”
The way she said “ages ago” suggested she meant before Yoo Ho-yeon had been announced as an S-rank Hunter.
What reason would I have had to meet him back then?
I searched my memory carefully, but I’d never encountered Yoo Ho-yeon at school or on the street.
Choi Arin rambled on, oblivious to my confusion.
“The way his eyes gleam yellow, the way he moves sand around so casually—that’s him, that’s definitely him!”
“Who? When did we see Yoo Ho-yeon together?”
At my flat response, Choi Arin’s voice grew louder.
“Hello! You remember the Hunter with the yellow eyes, don’t you?”
There was only one person who ever called him that.
The Hunter who’d saved us from the Absorption-type Dungeon we’d gotten caught in not long after the college entrance exam results came out.
To me, he remained a memory defined only by those luminous yellow eyes.
“That Hunter was Yoo Ho-yeon?”
I’d hoped Choi Arin would deny it, but she nodded immediately.
“Yes! Absolutely! You can’t mistake those eyes. They sparkle so brightly!”
“But… that Hunter’s eyes were completely yellow. Yoo Ho-yeon’s aren’t…”
“They are!”
Choi Arin raised her voice, flatly contradicting me.
Her tone was so decisive that I faltered.
“His eyes weren’t completely yellow even then. He had more yellow in them back then, true, but they were constantly flickering like electricity crackling through them.”
Choi Arin’s memory would certainly be more reliable than mine—I’d been unconscious, after all.
If she said it was so, then it must have been.
But I didn’t want to accept her memory.
“So that person really was Yoo Ho-yeon, and Yoo Ho-yeon really was that person?”
If that was true, everything became impossibly complicated.
I hadn’t recognized the person who’d saved me, and I’d felt an instinctive rejection of him from our first meeting.
And today, I’d made a mistake right in front of that same person.
No—mistake wasn’t the right word. What I’d done today was clearly my own fault.
It was serious enough to disappoint Yoo Ho-yeon beyond compare.
I’d shown myself in a disappointing light to the person who’d saved me.
Especially now, right when he’d started to think well of me.
My head dropped forward of its own accord.
“Wow… really, I can’t believe this.”
A hollow laugh escaped me unbidden.

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