The 100th Regression of the Max-Level Player - Chapter 385

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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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The Maxed-Out Player’s 100th Return – Side Story Episode 9
9. Reunion
My older brother’s return left me in a state of confusion.
‘W-wait… my brother… wasn’t a hallucination?’
Unable to believe it, I reached out and touched my brother’s body without thinking.
At the sensation beneath my fingertips, my eyes widened in disbelief.
“Y-you’re really here… you’re actually alive…”
Ryu Min steadied my trembling shoulders.
“Calm down and sit. We have a lot to talk about.”
Ryu Min smiled gently and headed toward the sofa, and the moment I sat beside him, I couldn’t help but ask.
“What happened? Brother? I’m certain we held your funeral, so how…”
“I didn’t resurrect from ashes or anything like that.”
“Then…?”
“I’ll be honest with you. I don’t want to lie to you.”
After a somewhat tense sigh, Ryu Min began to speak.
“I came from a different world line.”
“A different world line…?”
“It’s a long story, but since we have time, I’ll explain it step by step.”
Ryu Min continued in a quiet tone.
“First, I didn’t fail at the Final Round.”
“Then?”
“I actually cleared the Round and was able to enter the Wish Room. There, I made a wish to turn back time.”
Starting fresh in my 101st iteration, I cleared the Round far more perfectly.
As a result, I managed to bring 97 people to the Final Round.
“After that, various things happened, but to summarize: I eliminated everyone involved in creating the Survival Game and gained their power—the ability to freely manipulate time.”
“Time…?”
“With that power, I was able to return to the era when our parents were alive.”
Our parents.
That word was something I had longed for deeply as well.
“You met… Mom and Dad…?”
“Yes. I met them and I’m living with them. In a new world line.”
“World line? You’ve been mentioning it… what exactly is a world line?”
“Well, you see…”
Ryu Min explained world lines as simply as possible.
That turning back time is impossible, and instead, a copied parallel world is created each time.
That the more one uses the power of time, the more countless parallel worlds are created, and each one is called a world line.
My eyes widened like a deer’s as I grasped the explanation.
“Then… which world line is this one?”
“This is the 100th World Line. And the place where I live with our parents is the 102nd World Line.”
“Then, the reason you didn’t come back was…”
“Right. That’s because I was in a different world line. It seems my body here stopped breathing because I had left this world line.”
I thought I had died after failing the Final Round, but that wasn’t the case.
My older brother was facing far greater enemies in another world line.
To escape the shackles of the Survival Game.
“I didn’t know any of that… I thought you died in the Final Round….”
“I’m sorry. For leaving you behind and going.”
Ryu Min hadn’t expected things to unfold this way either.
He only learned later that traveling to the past created different world lines.
Of course, after obtaining the power of time, he could have returned.
But the fact remained that he hadn’t come back, intoxicated by happiness with family.
Ryu Min’s silence was also born from that remorse.
Any explanation would have been nothing but a cowardly excuse.
“Transcending world lines and traveling between dimensions… that sounds like something straight out of science fiction.”
“I understand it’s hard to believe. But it’s the truth.”
“There are our parents in another world line? Then there’s another me too…?”
“Yes. Every world line has another version of yourself with the same consciousness.”
“Another me exists in a different dimension… it’s fascinating yet strange.”
The more I heard, the harder it was to believe.
Yet as if trying to comprehend it, Ryu Won continued asking questions.
“Then, the older brother I’m seeing now is really the one I know, right?”
“That’s right. I survived alone in this 100th World Line and went to the Wish Room… so I’m the one you know. Of course, this body is one I brought from the 102nd World Line.”
“I see….”
Ryu Won nodded while trying to organize the complicated thoughts in his head.
World lines and all that—having heard such nonsense all at once, it would naturally take time to accept it.
“Honestly, it’s hard to believe… but I don’t think it’s entirely impossible. In a world where Angels appeared, traveling between world lines is nothing.”
“You believe what I’m saying?”
“Yes. I believe everything you say. By the way, you must be happy. Living well with Mom and Dad in the 102nd World Line….”
Ryu Won spoke with envy, his eyes gleaming with curiosity.
About the other world.
“What’s the other me like? Does he seem happy?”
“Of course. That world has no Survival Game, no Angels, no Demons. I even finished my Graduation Ceremony recently. It was my graduation, after all.”
“Your graduation ceremony… I wish I could go too.”
Ryu Won’s voice carried a note of loneliness.
This world was so starkly different from that other one, which seemed to hold only happiness.
Of course, Ryu Min, who could read hearts, understood his younger brother’s feelings well.
‘Our parents are gone, and 1.8 billion people disappeared because of the Survival Game. And when I didn’t return, he even contemplated suicide.’
His younger brother now was closer to misery than happiness.
Ryu Min, who knew this better than anyone, felt his heart being torn apart.
Especially at the question his younger brother had just asked.
“Hyung. There’s no way I can go to that 102nd World Line either, is there…?”
“I can’t go there. Ryu Won is already there.”
“I see… So I can’t turn back time in this world line either?”
“Right. Even if I tried, it would only create a new world line.”
“I understand…”
My younger brother wanted the same thing—to live together with family.
But I couldn’t make it happen.
Only I, who possessed the power, could traverse world lines.
“Any other questions?”
“You said you spent several years in the 102nd World Line earlier, right? How does that work? Only a few days have passed here…”
“Time flows differently in each world line. It’s like how water flows differently even in the same channel.”
“Ah… So a few minutes here could be several hours there?”
“Simply put, yes. Anything else?”
“Hmm… Why did you cross over to this world line?”
Finally, it came.
The core question.
As if I’d been waiting for it all along, my mouth opened immediately.
“There’s an enemy trying to destroy world lines.”
“An enemy?”
“A dimensional god named Deorant. He’s a mad god who hates seeing world lines multiply and wants to collapse them all. That’s also why I’ve been traversing world lines.”
“Don’t tell me… That god is in our dimension?”
I shook my head.
“I haven’t found where he is yet. I don’t even know how to find him. But I did encounter a suspicious creature that looked like a small-time lackey a moment ago.”
I explained about the grotesque creature I’d met in front of the department store.
How I barely managed to stop it from killing countless people.
“It’s an alien lifeform wearing a human disguise. There’s probably more than one of them.”
“Y-You’re saying there are more of those things on Earth?”
“Yes.”
“How will you find them?”
“I have an ability called the Rune of Light Speed—it lets me move at the speed of light for three seconds. I’ll use that to search the entire Earth. The cooldown is about twenty minutes, so I’ll wait a bit longer before searching again.”
“I see…”
My brother was trying to protect humanity again, just as he had in the Survival Game.
‘This time, he’s protecting not just Earth, but the entire dimensional system.’
Realizing this, I felt pathetic.
‘I was actually going to kill myself over my brother’s death…’
Unlike my brother, I had no special abilities, but I wanted to be of some help, however small.
“Brother, is there anything I can do to help?”
“Just rest here. Oh, just in case, I’ll give you this too.”
Light emanated from my brother’s hand and was absorbed into my body.
“What did you do?”
“Hero’s Protection.”
“What is that?”
“Something I gave you before.”
“Oh, when those two Angels broke into our home?”
“Yeah.”
Ryu Won recalled the memory of nearly dying back then, but surviving thanks to the ten-second invincibility.
“It has an invincibility effect, so it can protect you from danger. I also get a notification, so I can instantly teleport to wherever you are.”
“You didn’t have to go this far… but thanks anyway, hyung.”
While grateful for his older brother’s protective measures, Ryu Won felt a pang of guilt at the same time.
‘Here I am, being protected instead of being able to help…’
He felt troubled that he was causing his brother concern, yet he also wanted to do something to help in return.
“So we need to find the location of that alien lifeform, right?”
“Huh? Well, yeah…”
“Let me search for it. There might be something about it in the news.”
“You’re going to search through news from all over the world?”
“How else can I be of help?”
Ryu Won smiled brightly and turned on his phone, deciding to start by searching Korean portal sites first.
“Huh? Hyung.”
“What?”
“That monster you saw was at the Uijeongbu Department Store?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“There’s an article about it here?”
At his younger brother’s words, Ryu Min leaned over to look at the phone.
Sure enough.
Numerous articles dominated the main page of the portal site, complete with photographs.
Among them, Ryu Won clicked on an article that showed CCTV footage.
【Title: Breaking News! Black Scythe, Thought to Be Dead, Appears Again?】
└Content: Around 7 PM today, an elderly man walks about completely naked in front of a department store in Uijeongbu.
Shortly after, two Security Guards who discover this move to restrain the elderly man.
But in the blink of an eye, the elderly man pulls out a weapon and stabs the guards.
The guards die on the spot, and citizens who witness this scream and flee in panic.
The elderly man begins inflating his body like a balloon with a leisurely expression.
At this point, one can deduce that this is no ordinary elderly man.
Then, as if refusing to allow any further casualties, someone appears.
The one and only Player, Black Scythe, makes his entrance.
Though not wearing his usual mask, the fleeing people calm down upon seeing the scythe—Black Scythe’s symbol.
Some even turn back to catch a glimpse of Black Scythe.
Then, a black sphere suddenly engulfs both the elderly man and Black Scythe like a curtain.
Moments later, the sphere dissipates, revealing Black Scythe and what appears to be the corpse of the elderly man.
It seems Black Scythe disposed of the monster in that brief moment.
Having eliminated the grotesque creature, Black Scythe unfolds his wings and gracefully disappears from the screen as police arrive.
The appearance of Black Scythe, whom everyone believed to be dead, sparked both delight and curiosity among countless netizens.
This has been Han Dong-chul reporting for GTBC.
[Total Comments: 376]
└Black Scythe showed up?
└Seriously? No way, right?
└I went somewhere and now I’m back, Black Scythe ㅠㅠ
└Wow, so you were alive the whole time and just pretended to be dead?
└Didn’t Black Scythe’s acquaintance announce it before? That Black Scythe had died.
└Right. I thought they even held a funeral.
└I have no idea what’s going on.
└Anyway, thanks to Black Scythe, so many people got their lives back.
└What’s that monster though?
└It’s not a monster, just an old man maybe?
└Its body was all swollen. Definitely a monster.
└I heard it didn’t carry a separate weapon—it transformed its hands into weapons instead.
└Thank goodness the Monster Response Team arrived in time!
└I love Black Scythe!!
Black Scythe’s appearance sent the media into a frenzy.
“Look, hyung. This is what you did, right?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
Ryu Min didn’t bother denying it.
He was a bit flustered by the sheer volume of comments, though.
“This is crazy… it’s all articles about you.”
This was the moment Black Scythe’s appearance became known to the world.

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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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