Chapter 71

Yet no matter how much he rubbed, the eye remained pristine. As if etched permanently into the bedrock, it maintained its sharp contours without smearing or blurring in the slightest.

Just like the tattoo engraved into the healer’s thumb…

“…”

Like the healer’s tattoo?

“What is it?” Hae-gun asked, noticing his sudden stillness.

As Eui-rim stared down at the floor, forgetting even to breathe, Seo Hae-gun addressed him with a tense expression. Eui-rim voiced the thought that had just flashed through his mind.

“I think I might know how,” Eui-rim said.

“You do?” Hae-gun asked.

“Yes,” Eui-rim confirmed.

Casting the skill took only an instant. A yellow glow rose like a mirage from beneath his feet, and atop a perfectly wound clockwork mainspring, an immense clock hand materialized.

As a familiar stillness enveloped the surroundings, Seo Hae-gun’s eyes widened in surprise, taken aback by the unannounced Rewinding Hand.

“Hold on, Eui-rim-ssi,” Hae-gun said, grabbing his arm.

As Eui-rim adjusted his grip on the hunting knife, Hae-gun held his arm in urgency. Eui-rim offered a reassuring look at the deep concern etching Hae-gun’s face.

“Don’t worry. Nothing will happen,” Eui-rim assured him. “Time is frozen, after all.”

“Should I do it?” Hae-gun offered.

“No. Just as you said, it’s better if I do it,” Eui-rim replied. “It’s a directive given only to me.”

When Eui-rim added that if this method proved correct, he would leave the next Sigil to Hae-gun, Hae-gun pressed no further. He, too, seemed to instinctively sense that Eui-rim was right.

Stepping slowly toward the pupil of the single eye, a chill crept up Eui-rim’s spine. After taking several deep breaths, he wrapped both hands around the hilt of the hunting knife and plunged the blade down with all his strength.

Crunch!

“Ugh!” Eui-rim cried out.

“Eui-rim-ssi!” Hae-gun shouted.

The instant the blade struck the floor, the metal shattered, and dark blood geysered from the ‘pupil.’ Startled by the fountain of gore, Eui-rim stumbled backward as the previously motionless drawing convulsed, its shape collapsing into a writhing sludge.

“Release the skill!” Seo Hae-gun shouted, clutching Eui-rim’s shoulder.

Seeing the blood surge toward where Ahn Moonhyuk and Son Chaeyoon stood frozen, Hae-gun pulled him back. Reflexively canceling the skill, Eui-rim hurled the broken knife hilt away.

“Wh-what is that? What’s going on without warning?!” Kim Si-hoon shrieked.

“Both of you, fall back!” Hae-gun barked.

Rumble!

As if an earthquake had struck, the entire dungeon shook violently, and the surging blood began to get sucked into the corpse lying at Ahn Moonhyuk’s feet.

Just as the Fragment had migrated from the healer’s thumb to his eye in the past, the one-eyed drawing vanished completely into the empty husk of the upper torso.

Oooohhhh

With that, the howling of the zombies, once heard only as distant echoes, drew terrifyingly close. Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud Amid vibrations so violent it was difficult even to stay upright, a massive crack split the wall right where Kim Si-hoon had been standing.

“Wh-what the fuck, what is this…!” Kim Si-hoon screamed.

Crash!

The stressed wall gave way and crumbled inward with a thunderous crash.

In the split second Kim Si-hoon threw himself out of harm’s way alongside the tethered Divine Steed, an endless horde of zombies flooded through the collapsed rubble like a deluge.

Casting the skill was a pure conditioned reflex. Amid the stillness that descended again, Eui-rim exchanged looks with Seo Hae-gun, who turned to face him.

“The duration? Still three minutes?” Hae-gun asked.

“Yes,” Eui-rim answered. “Even if my condition improved, the skill’s rank itself hasn’t increased.”

Only his endurance threshold had risen slightly; the time limit itself remained unchanged.

“And repeating it continuously will overload your body, especially since Rewind is currently active as well,” Hae-gun added.

Furrowing his brows, Seo Hae-gun glared at the horde of zombies that had surged right up to the entrance.

“What about freezing only a specific area, like you did in Utopia?” Hae-gun asked.

“I’m not certain,” Eui-rim admitted. “Designating a specific target like a falling meteorite might be possible, but…”

Freezing only the entities entering a designated zone was still extremely difficult. Fundamentally, halting everything in its entirety was simpler than picking out selective targets. Without a higher skill rank or thorough control practice, he could guarantee nothing in their current state.

Seo Hae-gun gave an understanding nod, grasping the unsaid words without need for elaboration.

Brushing his bangs back with a sigh, Hae-gun massaged the nape of his neck and said, “Guess we’ll have to settle this within three minutes.”

Grasping Hae-gun’s intention took only a split second. Perhaps because they were linked by Resonance, Eui-rim could instinctively sense how Hae-gun intended to deploy his skill and what he would target.

The torrents of water that had scrubbed the floor earlier transformed into razor-sharp needles in the blink of an eye. Just like when he faced hundreds of monsters before the Abyssal Origin Cave in the past, he was prepared to pierce through their skulls in a single stroke.

[Found… you.]<

Suddenly, a familiar voice brushed against Eui-rim’s ears.

Accompanied by a metallic rasp like vocal cords scraped raw, a whisper that belonged to neither child nor adult, woman nor man, rippled through the air.

[Ah, ah, ah.]<

[Foundyoufoundyou, fo… und you, found… you.]<

Following the ecstatic voice, Eui-rim looked over to find the corpse concealed among the zombie horde, cackling gleefully. Now that the blood of the Sigil had filled its hollow interior, it appeared to have gained complete freedom of movement.

“What in the world is that now?” Eui-rim asked, horrified.

It was Seo Hae-gun’s dry, irritated laugh that snapped Eui-rim back to reality. Glaring at the corpse that was staring right back at him, Hae-gun redirected the water needles. It seemed he intended to eliminate the entity unaffected by Rewinding Hand first.

In that instant, the corpse snapped its neck toward Eui-rim and split its face into a grotesque, ear-to-ear grin. Expanding its rigid features into a manic laugh, the creature vanished over the collapsed rubble before anyone could catch it.

Splash!

Seo Hae-gun’s water needles darted after it, but in vain. The endless wall of frozen zombies formed a fleshy barrier, shielding the corpse from view.

Staring at the spot where the corpse had disappeared, Seo Hae-gun grimaced. “Why wasn’t it affected by your skill, Eui-rim-ssi? It clearly isn’t an ordinary monster.”

“…I wonder,” Eui-rim whispered.

It wasn’t that Eui-rim had no idea, but explaining the truth to the present Seo Hae-gun was impossible. Chewing his lower lip, he mulled over the corpse presumed to be one of the Fragments.

Just as Hae-gun was immune to his temporal manipulation, ‘those things’ might also be unaffected by Rewinding Hand. In the hospital room, while everyone else was frozen in time, the Shadow had erupted from the healer’s flesh to lunge at him. It was exceedingly likely that the entities known as Fragments shared a natural immunity to the skill.

Lumping Hae-gun into the same category as those grotesque Shadows left a bitter taste on his tongue… but without the means to confirm the truth right now, it remained the most logical deduction.

Then, just as in the hospital room, does Rewind affect both Seo Hae-gun and the Sigils in this dungeon?

Since he could not trigger another skill while one was already active, testing it was impossible for now, but the probability remained high. The real question was how to apply it.

“Why don’t we deal with the zombies first and discuss this afterward?” Eui-rim urged. “We only have about two minutes left.”

“Yeah, I was just about to wrap this up anyway,” Hae-gun replied.

With those words, the moisture suspended in the air condensed into elongated needles. The liquid projectiles drew back like arrows to Hae-gun’s sharp whistle, then shot forward at blistering speed as the pitch peaked.

Yet no matter how lethal the strikes were, the zombies remained entirely unscathed. Hae-gun’s water needles passed clean through their decaying flesh, dissipating into harmless mist. As though piercing phantoms, the attack produced neither kinetic impact nor physical shock.

Right on cue, a translucent warning window flared before his eyes. As if anticipating this exact failure, updated parameters materialized in pulsing crimson light.

Could this be a message from the Scales?

The thought swiftly solidified into conviction. Tensing his shoulders, Eui-rim focused on the pulsing notification.

When crisis strikes, use that very peril as a catalyst to awaken new authority. Such was the balance governed by the Scales, and Eui-rim trusted that a method to break the deadlock was inscribed within.

There was no need to question where the guidance originated. The force steering him away from dead ends was the legacy bequeathed by the 99th Fragment—the Seo Hae-gun of the previous timeline.

• PATHFINDER NOTICE

  Skill nullification occurs exclusively within the Fragment’s Domain (Impact Absorption Glitch)
  Clear the Isolation Ward, destroy the Fragment’s Domain, and sever the link with the host: Sigil Removal (1/5)

Eui-rim let out a dry breath as he parsed the revised parameters. Dismissing the window with a soft exhale, he steadied his racing thoughts.

My intuition was correct.

Just as he had driven the blade into the tattoo on the healer’s thumb in the hospital ward, destroying the Sigils one by one was their only recourse. The removal counter had already ticked up to one.

The real issue was the newly designated ‘Fragment’s Domain.’

Given the specification of an ‘Impact Absorption Glitch,’ while 〈Rewinding Hand〉 remained operative, it meant damaging monsters within this domain using offensive skills was fundamentally impossible.

Is it like the previous life, where unleashing skills inside a Shadow’s territory only fed nutrients to the seed?

The past-life Hae-gun had once explained that he couldn’t shake off the Shadows for that exact reason, making the hypothesis all too plausible.

Turning to Hae-gun, Eui-rim said, “You have to use purely physical attacks.”

“Physically?” Hae-gun asked.

“Yes. No skills—you have to crush their skulls directly,” Eui-rim said.

“Mmm,” Hae-gun hummed in thought.