This World is too Cruel to Men – Chapter 159

A terrible pain raced up my arm.

It felt as if someone had meticulously sliced my left arm down to the cellular level and then was roasting each piece over a fire.

Crack—

The overwhelming pain was so intense that it wouldn’t allow me to close my eyes or scream.

Crackle—

Was I biting my lips without realizing it?

With a sensation as if my mind was burning away, a metallic taste hung in my mouth.

And how long had it been?

I faintly felt something, whether blood or spit, trickling down my chin.

It hurt.

Such pain was unprecedented in my two lives.

Not even in my last moments in my previous life, as I slowly died on the ice, was it this painful.

If only I could just faint, then this pain would surely cease.

I desperately wished for that, yet my consciousness only grew sharper.

That fact was so unbearably frustrating that I had no choice but to keep my eyes wide open.

Tears began to spill from those wide-open eyes, blurring my vision.

And with a sensation that something had snapped, my blurry vision was engulfed in a bright red hue.

Had a blood vessel burst?

“Hu… hu-huh…”

Suddenly, I laughed.

At that moment, I realized something.

When the pain is too much, laughter can sometimes escape you.

Like a mad person, laughter kept bubbling out of me.

Yet even amidst that, the pain racing through my arm remained vivid… I wanted to cut off my left arm.

Was it because of the pain?

The tension in my left arm only increased.

Crisp—

In that moment, I felt something shatter within my left hand.

Was that some sort of signal?

Right after that, my previously blurred or bright red vision returned slightly to normal.

And just then, in that moment of clarity, something plunged into my vastly narrower and hazy field of vision—

It was the arm of a monster.

The moment I realized that, a sensation like the world collapsing around me enveloped my body.

No, it wasn’t just a feeling.

The flesh encroaching around me was writhing and thrashing violently.

As if trying to block something.

Yet despite that, I couldn’t tear my eyes away from what I was witnessing.

It was unbelievable.

I couldn’t believe it, but there was no denying it.

That grotesque thing was my left arm.

“Hah, haha… hahaha…”

Laughter came out again, but this time with a different meaning.

Pain?

In this moment, it couldn’t even overpower the emotions consuming my body.

I just wanted to live.

Instead of being reduced to prey for those monsters, I was simply trying to return to my original world.

“Why…”

Why do I have to go through this?

Why was I born into this world?

If I were to be reborn anyway… couldn’t I have been born in a more ordinary world?

No matter how much I tried to display my abilities, the reality that I would never be treated well was pitiful in itself, but now I had to live with this arm.

No, could I even live with something like this attached to me?

When people, or heroes affiliated with the Association, see this arm, they might think it’s a variant of Another and try to kill me!

No, they would definitely try to kill me.

Because this… this arm…

It was the very definition of a monster.

And rather than live the rest of my life in such circumstances, I would rather—

—Yes, you have now become the same ‘monster’ as us. So come here and join us.

That ‘whisper’ echoed through my mind at that moment.

—You know? You’re different from them now. No matter how hard you try, they will never accept you back.

As if it knew what I was thinking, the whisper began to resonate in my head at a perfectly timed moment, shaking my mind.

—So come to me. Come to me, and let’s be friends.

A sly and cunning voice kept flowing into my mind.

I knew it was trying to lure me in.

But I couldn’t help but waver.

I had no choice but to waver.

Because that was exactly what I was thinking.

Human beings are incredibly exclusive.

That’s why they find it so difficult to accept anything that is different from themselves.

Let alone a monster with a few mouths attached to an arm?

There’s no need for me to say anything.

So I began to lift my upper body slowly.

And I forced my arm, still engulfed in burning pain, forward.

I tried to extend it.

“Don’t!”

Just then, something wrapped around my waist and pulled me back, preventing me from moving my arm.

—Noooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I thought I had finally succeeded, but was it that heartbreaking to have things go awry at the last moment?

A voice filled with despair echoed in my mind.

And as I desperately wished to be pulled into somewhere—anywhere, the consciousness that had been so clear and vivid finally snapped.

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Time rewound slightly, and when Chae-rim and Dogun were about to infiltrate the joint, Baeksulhwa was organizing her belongings in the hospital room, alone.

Her movements were sluggish.

It couldn’t be helped.

Having spent so long trapped here, I had reflected on so much, yet accepting reality remained difficult even now.

But if I were to escape this place, that hard-to-accept reality would become, quite literally, reality.

So her hands moving to pack her belongings grew slower and slower… yet she did not stop moving them.

After all, she had made a decision.

For the sake of Dogun… she had resolved to do this.

Of course, it was not an easy decision.

Building something back up from where it had crumbled was incredibly difficult.

Though it was hard and exhausting… she never ultimately gave up because of Dogun.

Whenever she felt like giving up and just sitting down, the image of Dogun helping her train, as if it were his own situation, flashed before her eyes.

Maybe that was why.

If she just stopped here… if she gave up here… would she be ruining all the time and effort Dogun had invested for her sake?

That thought kept creeping into her mind.

And more than anything… she had to take revenge.

Against those who had done that to her parents and to Dogun.

For that, she could not simply give up.

That was why she had accepted the Association’s proposal delivered through the hospital.

Thanks to that, she would take the qualification exam several months ahead of schedule, but she didn’t regret that choice.

After all, she believed in Dogun.

She believed in the time they had spent together.

So for now… just like Dogun had assured her countless times, she would pass the qualification exam with overwhelming results to prove that he wasn’t wrong.

Once she obtained the hero qualification, if she could hunt down and kill all those monsters that came out one after another, she might soothingly assuage Dogun’s spirit.

And in the process, she could also elevate her hero rank.

And then after that… if she could find those who had done that to her parents and make them suffer the same fate… yes, that would be enough.

That would suffice.

‘And then what?’

The moment that question naturally followed as soon as she thought that far, she decided not to contemplate beyond that.

The road ahead was far too long to think about what came next.

It was unclear how long it would take to reach the end of that road, obscured as it was.

So there was no need to think about it right now.

She felt that nothing would come up even if she did think.

“Um… Baeksulhwa? Do you need more time?”

“Oh, I’m all set.”

So the next step was to embark on the road ahead.

That’s why she willingly followed the Association’s representative who had just entered the hospital room.

And just as she arrived at the elevator and was about to step in…

Suddenly, one person’s face came to mind.

So she couldn’t help but halt.

Thanks to that, she received a bewildered look from the Association representative who had entered the elevator first, but she disregarded it and surrendered herself to her impulse.

“Before we leave, can I drop by somewhere for a moment?”

Naturally, the Association representative looked quite troubled.

“Excuse me? There’s not really enough time for that…”

“It’ll just take a moment.”

Though she hadn’t planned on being pushy.

“…Very well.”

Having convinced the representative that way, she retraced the numbers on the wall, heading toward a hospital room she had accidentally learned of previously.

And when she arrived at the door of that room, the nameplate read—

‘Yoonseo’

It was a name she had repeated countless times, making it impossible to forget.