I Became a National ‘Disaster’ Level Monster

Chapter 129 The Events So Far

It felt like a massive stone was crushing my body.

Even if I wanted to open my eyes, it was as if needles were pinning down my eyelids, leaving me in darkness where the nightmares replayed over and over.

It was my first defeat after undergoing monsterization.

The moment I lost to none other than myself.

Sophia…

She’s being taken away…

I could barely remember anything after taking that punch on the moon.

However, one scene remained clear in my memory: Sophia disappearing from my sight, as if being dragged away right before me.

That was all there was to it.

Yes, just that…

“!!”

“Huh? You’re awake?”

“…Katarina?”

I woke up, feeling like I had just escaped a horrible nightmare.

But as soon as my eyes met Katarina’s, who was lying on the hospital bed right next to mine.

“Gah?!”

A wave of indescribable pain coursed through my entire body, which was wrapped in bandages, forcing me to stifle my breath and endure the agony.

“Don’t move. If you do, your patched-up body will tear apart again.”

“Tear apart…?”

“It’s just a metaphor. Well, when we first found you, you were literally split in half, so it took quite some effort to put you back together…”

I had been defeated that badly?

Well, considering I was dragged into space and put through all that hell, it seemed almost inevitable.

“…I’m sorry.”

“Katarina?”

“Damn it, I know joining in wouldn’t have made much of a difference, but… I’m sorry I couldn’t fight alongside you.”

Katarina apologized repeatedly as she wrung out a towel and placed it on my forehead.

But I didn’t blame her in the slightest.

In fact, I was just relieved that she and the other Monster Group members weren’t there.

“No, Katarina.”

“Shin-woo…”

“Our defeat was certain from the moment I couldn’t overpower that guy. In the end, it’s because I wasn’t strong enough.”

I quietly admitted.

But I couldn’t smile back at Katarina, who sighed heavily.

I just wasn’t in the mood to do so.

‘I could really use a drink…’

I never thought there’d come a day when I’d want to drink the same liquid that my cursed father consumed daily.

But I couldn’t afford to wallow in self-pity.

“Urgh…!”

“I told you to stay down!”

“No… I can’t just lie here.”

Kyokushin doesn’t break from a single defeat.

At least my Kyokushin didn’t, so I somehow forced myself to stand, determined to chase after Sophia.

Though I quickly lost my balance and nearly fell.

“Oh, fine. Get in the wheelchair. Let’s go outside.”

“Thank you, Katarina.”

With her help, I managed to sit in the wheelchair.

Thanks to her, I was able to navigate the hospital corridors, where I noticed people giving me strange looks, and finally stepped outside.

And then I saw it…

“What…”

A sight so bizarre I could hardly believe it.

“What is that?”

“Jeez, I wanted to wait until you’d calmed down before showing you this.”

The sky was bright and clear, yet there was water—an enormous sea floating above the clouds, filling the sky above us.

‘But this is Seoul…’

The sky over Seoul had turned into an ocean?

It was a phenomenon that couldn’t be seen any other way.

When I looked back at Katarina.

“…Shin-woo!”

“Uncle…”

“Shin-woo!”

“Auntie…”

My parents ran out of the hospital and immediately hugged me tightly.

Though they should have despised me for being the one who took their daughter in the future, they still embraced me warmly, and for the first time, I felt tears well up in my eyes.

“Thank goodness. You’re safe.”

“Uncle, I’m so sorry…!”

“Shin-woo. Don’t say a word. You’re different from him. You fought to the very end for Sophia.”

“B-But… But!”

What did that matter?

In the end, because of me, Sophia was dragged to the future.

And because of that, I couldn’t help but shed tears endlessly.

“Oppa…”

“Ria.”

“You’ve been through so much.”

And then, others started approaching me.

Ria, then Yoo Che-ran.

“Shin-woo.”

“Che-ran…”

“Don’t cry.”

Next came Princess Kurumi, who had rushed over from Japan upon hearing the news.

“Shin-woo!”

“Princess Kurumi…”

“Oh my! Your body… You must be in so much pain, aren’t you? I won’t tell you not to cry. Just please don’t blame yourself.”

“Thank you…”

And after that, one by one, everyone who had crossed paths with me—people like Riverine and others I had briefly met—came to hug me, trying to offer some comfort.

Among them were even some unfamiliar faces.

“Everyone here is alive because of you, Shin-woo.”

“Because of me…?”

“When you transformed into that black monster, there were people who were saved by accident.”

“Oh… yes, yes?!”

The truth about my monsterized identity.

When Uncle Seok-gyu mentioned it, I was startled, breaking out into a cold sweat.

However, those around me just smiled as if to say it didn’t matter anymore.

“Don’t worry, no one thinks of you as just another monster.”

“Everyone’s been waiting in front of the hospital, hoping to thank you.”

“To thank me…?”

As I looked around, I began to understand what those words meant.

“It’s been a while, Monster of Jamsil. Do you remember that Straight Punch greeting?”

“Oh?! Are you by any chance the commander from that aircraft carrier?”

“Haha. Back then, I didn’t introduce myself properly because I didn’t think we could communicate. I’m Lieutenant General Talisman, currently the Commander of U.S. Forces Korea.”

Starting with Lieutenant General Talisman, the commander from the aircraft carrier I met when I defeated the entity known as the Angel in Busan Port ten years ago.

“U-Um, thank you both for what you did back then!”

“Who are they…?”

“Shin-woo, don’t you remember when that pterosaur monster appeared on Hongdae Street? We’re the people you sent to the shelter.”

“Oh! You’re those people!”

Just before I met Sophia after returning from America.

During the tutorial segment where Yoo Che-ran was supposed to die, I had accidentally saved some civilians.

And also…

“Oppa, thank you for taking me in when I was still a monster.”

“Ria…”

Ria, the monster cub born from the dead body of the Angel, who almost became a test subject for Lee Hee-jeong.

“Shin-woo. If it weren’t for you, I would’ve run out of life and been completely devoured by Amaterasu.”

“Princess Kurumi…”

A tragic heroine who didn’t even get her name mentioned in the official story.

Now the head of the Kitsune family, Kurumi.

“Our Monster Group… We haven’t received anything yet, but who knows, maybe we’ll get a reward like the others here.”

“Th-That would be nice!”

“Yeah, come to think of it, we were your enemies when we first met, weren’t we?”

The Monster Group members, who I had been so afraid of when they first appeared due to the fear of a bad ending.

“Han Shin-woo…”

“Jae-won!”

“No, instead of calling you Han Shin-woo… I’ve come to realize that you’re completely different from him, that you’ll create an entirely different future.”

And then Jae-won, who had already recovered, approached me.

“Father…”

“!!”

For the first time, my son Jae-won acknowledged me, calling me father.

“Are you going to rescue Mother, Sophia?”

“Of course. I’ll never give up, not after just this.”

And I immediately answered yes when my son asked about rescuing his mother.

“But do we have a way? A way to go to the future, I mean.”

“Yes. The reason I was able to come to the past in the first place was because of a ‘time machine.'”

“A time machine?”

“It’s in the basement of the current Monster Group hideout. Although it was originally a one-seater, Dorothy and I have been modifying it to carry multiple people, in case of situations like this.”

The reason Katarina and some of the Monster Group couldn’t participate in this battle.

It was all because of what they had here.

“It seems that Jae-won’s time machine was something I made in the future.”

“Future Katarina?”

“Yeah. The machine looks like an ordinary spaceship, but I could see traces of my abilities embedded in it. The ability to travel to parallel worlds. If we interpret parallel worlds broadly, past and future would also be included.”

“S-So, the machine parts replaced the leader’s current ability, allowing travel to the past and future!”

Dorothy, who had helped with the repairs, explained further.

“But can such a thing be covered with just machine parts?”

“No? Of course, that would be impossible.”

“Then how?”

“Those machine parts are nothing more than support devices for this divine artifact.”

“…!?!?!? T-This is!!”

Katarina then smiled and showed me the object in question.

It was a cup that had turned black due to overuse of its energy, but I recognized it from my time playing *Hunter’s Blood*, where I had gone through hell to obtain this equipment.

“The Holy Grail…! The treasure of the Vatican!”

“Yeah, it looks like the time machine’s energy came from this Holy Grail.”

“Indeed… if it’s the Holy Grail, it could produce the energy needed for time travel. But that means…”

“Yes, it seems that it can only be used one more time.”

The Holy Grail, a nearly infinite source of energy and the most powerful buff item in the original story.

Though it only ever got slightly singed even after multiple uses throughout a playthrough, the fact that it was this damaged now showed just how much energy time travel consumed.

“But only one more time…”

“……”

That meant we could go there, but it would be impossible to return.

Even if I managed to defeat my future self, it would be meaningless if I couldn’t return to the past.

Moreover, we still had one more problem left to address.

“Shin-woo, you’ve realized it too, haven’t you?”

“…Yes.”

“The moon has been shattered. Its destruction has disrupted Earth’s gravitational pull, causing all the ocean water to start spreading into the sky.”

Future Han Shin-woo.

That bastard’s final punch, aimed at killing me.

It had shattered our world’s moon into pieces, and now those fragments were drifting off into space.

“Hunters and powerful individuals from all over the world are trying to hold back the oceans, but it’s said that they won’t last for more than three years.”

“Even if I bring Sophia back safely, Earth will only have three years left?”

“Yeah, that’s right… But you know, they say there’s always a solution.”

“?”

“Humans are creatures that always find the answer.”

As Katarina said that, she tossed something into my lap.

It wasn’t the charred Holy Grail I had just seen, but a truly radiant, shining Holy Grail of the present age.

“This is…!”

“It’s a Holy Grail that hasn’t been used yet.”

“How did you get this, Katarina?”

“Well, I was able to receive it because the Vatican Saint told me to give it to you.”

“The Vatican Saint…?”

The Vatican Saint.

One of the main heroines in *Hunter’s Blood*, known for being a villainess who valued human life less than that of insects…

And she gave me the Holy Grail, which she cherished as much as her own life?

“The Saint asked me to pass on a message.”

“What did she say?”

“She’s praying at the church behind us and wants you to come see her.”

“!!”

Upon hearing that, I decided to borrow a bit of the Holy Grail’s power so I could move quickly.