Lee Aseok narrowed his eyes and spat out with all the venom he could muster, “Get lost.”

  The holy sword, as if offended by such insolence, drifted even closer, shining brighter, as if to say, Not a chance.

  Though it couldn’t speak, Lee Aseok somehow understood its silent message perfectly: “You’re the most brilliant hero, Aseok. You must accept your destiny .

  This only made Lee Aseok’s scowl deepen. How dare some oversized hunk of metal lecture him?

  Aseok’s anger flared up, but then, an image of a golden haired man flashes his eyes and as if someone had just flicked a switch, the rage slowly ebbed away.

  The thick fog of despair and fury that had clouded his mind retreated, slamming the mental door shut behind it.

  Lee Aseok suddenly remembers the final boss of the “Hell Gate” and decides to hold his anger a bit longer, after all he still needs to answer many questions.

  He still had many questions . Still needed to confront the golden-haired man.

  He then looked at the Holy sword.

  He smirked, half sneer, and said, loud enough for the hovering sword to hear, “I’ll never touch you again. Never form a bond with you.”

  He glanced sideways with mock menace. “And next time? Even you won’t stop me from destroying the world.”

  The sword shimmered indignantly, like a child scolded for the first time. Aseok clicked his tongue and looked at the others for a few seconds and said " You all look wonderful."

  The usual sarcastic words made others sighed in relief, even though they had just been insulted.

  It wasn’t that they trusted him. It was simply easier to pretend that they did.

  From the rubble nearby, Mu Yichen sighed deeply, a breath of pure relief. “Finally,” he muttered, wiping blood from his mouth with the back of his hand. “The storm’s passing.”

  With cautious steps, Mu Yichen approached Lee Aseok, keeping his distance but close enough to offer support.

  Park Taegun, Seo MinHyun, and Kang Juwon were quick to follow, regrouping as if they’d just escaped a particularly brutal wrestling match.

  Seo MinHyun took a long look at the devastation, the collapsed buildings, shattered streets, and then turned to Lee Aseok, who looked less like a hero and more like a badger caught in a garbage can: clothes ripped to shreds, dirt smeared across his face, and his long hair a complete mess.

  “Looks like you went twelve rounds with a tornado and lost,” Seo MinHyun joked, shaking his head with a smirk.

  Mu Yichen, ever the stoic, could only offer a tired smile as he wiped yet more blood off his chin and adjusted his already battered armor.

  The battlefield was quiet now.

  Cracked pavement, smoke curling from broken windows, debris scattered like a war-torn postcard, it was hard to tell if they’d just fought a boss monster, a war, or each other.

  Maybe all three. Standing among the wreckage was a group of five hunters, all equally wrecked.

  Mu Yichen was wiping blood from both his mouth and his shirt with the delicate composure of a man used to being stabbed in the name of duty.

  Kang Juwon leaned against a crooked traffic light like his bones had given up entirely.

  Park Taegun was suspiciously quiet, possibly calculating the damage costs in his head.

  And Seo MinHyun, with one sleeve torn and his expensive boots covered in ash, gave the glowing holy sword a dramatic thumbs up.

  “Well done,” he muttered, eyes squinting against the sword’s holy glow. “Ten out of ten. Great lighting. Excellent dramatic timing. Very heroic.”

  The sword, still floating innocently in midair, pulsed with light as if proud of itself.

  Seo MinHyun turned to Lee Aseok, squinting with suspicion. “So… you going to explain what that little meltdown was? Did the boss monster whisper sweet nothings in your ear, or did you just decide, ‘Hey, today seems like a good day to annihilate the world’?”

  Lee Aseok, standing there like he’d walked out of a gothic opera—hair wild, shirt half-burned, still holding his iron rod like it was an ancient relic—gave Seo MinHyun a blank stare.

  “I was going to destroy the world,” he replied flatly. “But I failed.”

  His eyes shifted to the holy sword as he said that, like he was personally offended by its interference.

  Seo MinHyun blinked. Then again. He slowly took one full step back and ducked behind Park Taegun with all the grace of a startled cat. “Okay, yep. I’ve officially met a psychopath,” he said, eyes wide. “Yichen. This guy’s actually insane.”

  Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

  Park Taegun raised a brow but didn’t disagree. Kang Juwon snorted and immediately regretted it, clutching his side with a wince.

  The battlefield had finally gone quiet.

  Smoke curled lazily into the dusk sky, rising from what was left of crumbled buildings and torn asphalt.

  Corpses of monsters, scaled, twisted, and already starting to rot, littered the streets like some grotesque mural of victory. A busted streetlamp flickered weakly in the background.

  And in the center of it all stood Lee Aseok.

  Blood dried against the side of his cheek, and his shirt was ripped halfway across the chest, clinging to him in torn ribbons.

  One sleeve was gone. His pants weren’t much better. Dust caked the knees. There was a visible gash on his collarbone that still hadn’t stopped bleeding properly.

  Despite all this, his expression was the same as ever.

  Bored. Tired. Vaguely annoyed at the sun for still existing.

  He tilted his head.

  Around him, the others stared.

  Seo MinHyun slumped against a broken bench with his arms dangling uselessly at his sides, hair singed, clothes scorched.

  His flashy red coat looked like it had lost a battle with a washing machine and several small explosives.

  Park Taegun stood a few feet away, still upright somehow, though his jaw was clenched hard enough to crack something. One eye was twitching slightly. There was a lizard claw embedded in the shoulder of his armor.

  Mu Yichen had just finished wiping down his blade, moving with the practiced grace of someone who knew how to stay composed even while standing in the center of a crater.

  And He Ziqin, who had shown up near the end of the fight, his face still pale from whatever disaster he’d had to deal with earlier, took one look around at the scene and frowned.

  “…We’re going to the hospital now, right?” He asked cautiously.

  His voice cut through the silence like an ambulance siren. The tone carried more than just a question, it was a lifeline, a plea, a desperate attempt to hold onto something normal.

  Lee Aseok looked at him.

  Then smirked.

  “To the next gate,” he said simply.

  He Ziqin stared at him.

  Then he slowly turned his head, scanning the ruins around them.

  The half-collapsed bank. The overturned buses. The hole in the sky where the gate used to be. A burning hotdog stand.

  He looked back at Lee Aseok.

  Then at Seo MinHyun, who was trying to get a potion bottle open with shaking fingers.

  Then at Park Taegun, who hadn’t spoken in thirty minutes.

  Then at Mu Yichen, who was now calmly sipping a mana potion like he was enjoying afternoon tea in hell.

  “…You’re joking,” he said flatly.

  “I’m not,” Lee Aseok replied, tone bland as ever.

  The silence stretched.

  Seo MinHyun snapped.

  “You’re still going to clear another gate after everything that happened today?!”

  His voice cracked halfway through, like even his vocal cords were protesting.

  Lee Aseok turned his head slightly, his eyes half-lidded, his face unreadable.

  “Yes.”

  That was it.

  No drama. No explanation. Just a casual death sentence tossed into the air like it was someone else’s problem.

  Mu Yichen, without missing a beat, finished his potion and rolled his shoulder.

  “I’m ready,” he said calmly.

  Next to him, Kang Juwon, who had appeared at some point during the chaos like a cockroach that knew when to hide, nodded in agreement and adjusted his coat.

  His glasses had a crack in them, but he looked far too pleased for someone who had almost died.

  Seo MinHyun looked at them.

  Then back at Aseok.

  Then back at them.

  Then back at Aseok.

  His mouth dropped open in slow horror.

  “You’re all insane,” he said, voice shrill.

  No one disagreed.

  “You—” MinHyun pointed a shaking finger at Lee Aseok, voice rising. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you? You’re enjoying watching us suffer!”

  He meant it as an accusation. A dramatic, heat-of-the-moment outburst.

  Lee Aseok, unfortunately, took it as a prompt.

  He nodded.

  Then smirked.

  “I am,” he said. “Very much. After all, I like watching humans suffer.”

  MinHyun gaped.

  “I like seeing your faces when you realize we’re not done,” Aseok continued with his usual disinterest, even as the smirk tugged slightly at the corner of his mouth. “It’s therapeutic.”

  “You’re a psychopath,” MinHyun muttered.

  “I’ve been told.”

  “I didn’t mean it, You’re not supposed to agree..!”

  “You have five minutes,” Lee Aseok interrupted.

  His voice was louder now, projecting across the debris-strewn street like a commander announcing his will to troops too broken to stand.

  “Wrap up here. Heal up. We move on time.”

  Seo MinHyun made a sound like a dying bird.

  Even Park Taegun sighed, quietly. A long, deep breath of resignation and suppressed pain. He didn’t say anything. Just tapped the lizard claw off his armor with his sword and sat down to drink a potion like it was cheap beer.

  Kang Juwon, still smiling for reasons no one understood, clapped his hands once and said, “Great. Let’s not waste time.”

  Mu Yichen nodded slightly in agreement.

  Lee Aseok was already walking away.

  No one questioned where.

  There was a collapsed building in the distance, once a stylish clothing mall, now more rubble than structure, with its sign hanging by a single sparking wire.

  HQ officers checked the ruined street, took one look at Lee Aseok who was walking away and quietly decided not to approach.

  Part of the wall had caved in completely, but mannequins were still visible through the broken glass, their headless forms dressed in half-melted jackets and designer shoes.

  Lee Aseok headed straight for it.

  He didn’t say a word.

  But the reason was obvious.

  Half his shirt was missing. His pants were seconds away from structural failure.

  His boots had holes in them from monster acid. He looked like someone who’d fought in a war and got dressed blindfolded afterward.

  He was going to get new clothes.

  Or at least something that wasn’t currently held together by luck and dried blood.

  From behind him, He Ziqin whispered like he’d just seen a ghost.

  “He’s not even going to clean the blood off first?”

  “He’s not even going to rest,” MinHyun said, voice hollow.

  “He’s not going to stop until we all collapse,” Park Taegun muttered.

  From the wreckage, someone else coughed. “Or die.”

  The breeze blew softly through the ruined street.

  The wind carried with it the faint sound of Lee Aseok’s voice, muttering as he stepped over broken mannequins.

  “…Stupid sword tore my jacket again.”

  A small pause.

  “I liked that one.”

  Lee Aseok didn’t explain himself.

  He never did.

  With half of his shirt torn off, pants soaked in blood, and burn marks streaking up the side of his coat, he turned without a word and walked toward the ruined remains of the clothing mall.

  Not a glance back. Not a hint of urgency. Just the lazy saunter of a man who had all the time in the world and none of the energy to pretend he cared.

  There was no mistaking his destination.

  Even if he hadn’t said it, the half-collapsed mall had its glass doors shattered open, like it was inviting him in.

  Display mannequins lay scattered across the floor like corpses at a fashion show crime scene. One was wearing a parka. Another had its arm twisted around a pair of leopard-print pants.

  Aseok stepped over a toppled rack of jeans without so much as a blink.

  “...He’s really going to change his clothes,” He Ziqin said, dazed.

  “After telling us he likes watching us suffer,” Seo MinHyun added blankly.

  Author Note:

  Every “OH MY GOD ASEOK STOP” gives me the strength to write the next disaster.

  Mon ? Wed ? Fri

  (Yes, I too question my life choices.)

  https://www.patreon.com/c/LithutheBloom

  please leave a review or rating—it helps summon new victims readers. ??