What a damn mess.
The situation the Heavenly Demon had found himself in could be described with that one phrase… no, with only that one phrase.
After dozens of deaths and brief regressions, he had barely managed to take down one of his enemies, only for the event that had forced his family to die to come crashing down on him once again.
The Heavenly Demon was powerless now. It was true that he no longer froze up with fear and pain, and that he had even become capable of the bizarre feat of using his own life as a bargaining chip in battle.
But his martial power itself was not much different from what it had been before the regression.
If anything, one could say that, unlike before when he had passed out and woken up mid-battle, his body was in slightly better shape now that he had eaten well and slept soundly.
Truly, there was nothing else that had changed.
But the people he had to protect had grown in number, and the enemies he had to face were too many to take in at a single glance.
It was impossible. And yet.
"If I were the kind of person who could give up just because something was impossible, I would never have become the Heavenly Demon."
"…So it's the same this time too?"
"Yes. The Heavenly Demon will likely fight to the very end. When that end will come… I don't know either."
Unexpectedly, the Heavenly Demon had no Martial Talent. But he also had no give-up.
And so the full-scale war began.
Large and small Spirit Beasts began attacking people indiscriminately, and one by one, Martial Artists emerged from among the common folk who were dying without even being able to flee properly.
Swords clashed with fangs, and from all directions came screams that were hard to tell whether they came from humans or beasts.
The street that had been peaceful just moments ago had transformed in an instant into a space where fear and death surged.
All the Heavenly Demon could do was urge his trembling family onward, doing whatever it took to escape this place.
Swept along in a crowd of people just as powerless and frightened as himself, the Heavenly Demon refused to let go of the hands he held tightly. It was at that moment, when they had made it about halfway out of the city.
Kuuung!
An overwhelming Loud Noise came from behind.
What met the Heavenly Demon's eyes as he reflexively turned around was…
A water buffalo whose body towered higher than any pavilion in the city.
"A Spirit Beast."
Its Qi Sense was not as clear as it was in my memories, but merely by existing, it dried out the entire surrounding area, and the yellow smoke that mixed with its breath…
To put it more simply, that presence—one that tore apart nature itself simply by existing—was a Harmony Realm Spirit Beast. It was impossible unless it was a creature the Beast Palace of the Southern Barbarians called a Divine Beast.
If the Azure-White Flood Dragon had summoned a blizzard merely by existing, then what this water buffalo brought was heat and dryness. And the foul stench of sulfur.
It was bringing drought and flames.
"That… is that possible? A water buffalo is an animal that lives by the river. And yet it causes drought?"
"If you're going to argue it that way, snakes are creatures that hibernate in winter—so how would one summon a blizzard?"
"…Hah."
Spirit Beasts cannot be placed on the same level as ordinary animals. Seol Ri-hyang, perhaps because of what she had experienced at the North Sea Ice Palace, quickly came to accept this.
And so, while she and I were conversing, the water buffalo divine beast spoke once more.
KOO-OONG!
It seemed that the loud noise we had felt earlier was simply the sound of it stomping its foot.
The Heavenly Demon and the others, who had been too busy fleeing to pay attention, also took notice of this.
At the first stomp, they felt a sense of foreboding and looked back. At the second stomp, they realized what it was and forced their frozen bodies to move. But at the third stomp—
KOO-OONG!
The water buffalo charged, kicking off the ground with such force as if to say there would be no further warning.
With a single kick, the ground was torn up, and the sulfur smoke streaming from the beast's breath caught fire.
Charging forward, it ruthlessly smashed and burned everything in its path, trampling most of the fleeing people in an instant.
"Ah…"
I had prided myself on having experienced every trial and tribulation through the war with the Demonic Cult, but this was the first time I had seen hundreds of people trampled to death so easily.
The Heavenly Demon was fortunate enough to only have his legs crushed, but his body was being consumed by the flames left in the water buffalo Spirit Beast's wake.
His wife and children had died long ago, and the Heavenly Demon himself would soon draw his last breath.
Yet even amid the searing pain, he forced his eyes open and stared at the root cause of it all.
The water buffalo Spirit Beast. Likely the leader of this pack of Spirit Beasts.
He watched the beast trample the dead and spit curses at them, and watched the Jegal Clan head, arriving too late, unleash a Technique at the creature with the resolve of one who had nothing left to lose.
Only after taking all of that in did the Heavenly Demon finally draw his last breath.
And then, without fail, the regression activated.
It seemed a slight margin of error was unavoidable, for he returned to the moment when the Spirit Beasts were just beginning their full-scale assault and he was fleeing amid the crowd.
Long accustomed to such unkind regressions, the Heavenly Demon quickly grasped the situation, tightened his grip on his family's hands, and slipped to the edge of the crowd.
His bewildered wife and children said something, but he let it go in one ear and out the other, focusing solely on putting distance between himself and the mob. And then.
Kuuung!
The first tremor of the earth began.
The moment the Heavenly Demon was far enough away, the Water Buffalo Divine Beast charged, having built up momentum through three stomps of its hooves.
The Heavenly Demon's family trembled as they realized that where they had stood just moments before, nothing remained but blood, flesh, and the flames scorching both.
The Heavenly Demon forced himself to calm the two of them, then began slipping out of the city by moving in secret, staying hidden.
Seol Ri-hyang watched this, then casually lifted her head to look toward the main avenue.
At the fight of the Jegal Clan head, who had arrived late but had not fled, and his martial artists.
I, too, had been watching for a moment as he poured out his techniques against the water buffalo wreathed in sulfurous stench and flames.
"Hm?"
Something about the Jegal Clan head's appearance felt oddly familiar.
"Cheon Hwi… did you notice?"
"Yeah."
The face of the Jegal Clan head, who was fighting the water buffalo divine beast while leading the elders and the Martial Force Unit under his command, stalling for even a moment so the common folk could flee… was, surprisingly, the current Jegal Clan head.
"So this isn't something from the distant past, but something happening in the present era?"
"To be precise, it's a bit of the future. The Jegal Clan head's face looks older than when I saw him at the first meeting of the Orthodox-Unorthodox Alliance."
Something was wrong.
I understood that the Heavenly Demon's regression was different from mine. But how could something like this happen at a point in the future, not even the past?
At least in the future I had experienced, nothing even remotely like this had occurred.
Fortunately, these doubts were resolved not long after.
While fleeing, the Heavenly Demon encountered a relatively weak Spirit Beast in the form of a dog.
From the moment one becomes a Spirit Beast, they possess at least first-rate internal energy and physical abilities that surpass humans, so even a small Spirit Beast was stronger than the Heavenly Demon…
But hadn't the Heavenly Demon already experienced dozens of deaths fighting against a stone monkey that was even stronger, ultimately seizing victory?
He had to sacrifice one arm, but the Heavenly Demon calmly closed the distance and crushed the creature's head with a weighted knee strike, barely managing to win.
But this was a battlefield where countless people and Spirit Beasts fought and died against one another.
Perhaps it was a bit too soon to feel relieved just because he had taken down a single one.
A centipede with blue spots crawled quietly closer, then suddenly lunged from the corner, striking at the Heavenly Demon and his family.
The Heavenly Demon, having already lost one arm, was too slow to respond and ultimately became a centipede's meal along with his family, meeting his death.
And then, the moment he regressed once more.
"…I see. So that's how it is."
The Heavenly Demon's regression point had clearly gone further back into the past.
Even normally, his regression was unstable, with slight fluctuations in the timing—but that was always within the span of about one Da-kyung.
This time, however, he hadn't returned to the moment of walking down the middle of the street, but to the instant just before he was about to leave the house.
Judging by the position of the sun in the sky, he had apparently gone back about half a sijin further.
Seol Ri-hyang, who still hadn't caught on to what was happening, tugged at my sleeve.
"Cheon Hwi. Cheon Hwi. Did you find something?"
"Yeah. It's still just a guess, but… it seems that killing a Spirit Beast sends you back further into the past."
"Killing a Spirit Beast?"
"There's no other difference, is there? On the flip side, every time the regression point changed, it was right after we took down a Spirit Beast."
"Ah."
After we defeated the stone monkey, we returned to a point before the city was destroyed.
After we defeated the dog Spirit Beast, we returned to the moment right before we were about to leave with the family.
In none of the other cycles had the regression point shifted so clearly, so the only visible variable right now was the fact that we'd taken down a Spirit Beast.
The Heavenly Demon decided to test this.
He soothed his daughter, who was whining about the sudden change in their destination, and immediately left the city.
Although he had returned to a slightly earlier point in time, it wasn't enough to completely avoid the Spirit Beasts' attacks, and before long he was caught up in battle…
This time, even if it meant pushing himself, he took down a toad Spirit Beast of similar strength to the dog Spirit Beast, and then died.
When the Heavenly Demon came to his senses, he had regressed not to the moment he was about to leave, but to the moment he was just beginning his preparations to go out.
With this newfound certainty, the Heavenly Demon changed his approach.
He would escape as far as he possibly could, but if the situation turned unfavorable, he would push himself to take down at least one more Spirit Beast before dying.
Sometimes he couldn't even figure out the optimal escape route, and there were times he couldn't take down a single Spirit Beast… but still, he steadily began securing more and more time.
Above all, his martial power remained the same, but having fought while dying over and over again, his ability to utilize it began to develop by leaps and bounds.
However, there was one more rule he had learned in the process. It was that a Spirit Beast he had already killed once would not show any significant change even if he killed it again.
How many times had he repeated this—finding a weak Spirit Beast he could kill, killing it, and using the secured time to escape a little further?
The Heavenly Demon finally succeeded in escaping with his family before the city was properly besieged by the Spirit Beasts.
Instead, he encountered a fox Spirit Beast that had been separated from its pack.
Judging by its movements, it was a Spirit Beast that seemed similar to a Stone Monkey, or perhaps a bit stronger.
It was not letting its guard down, nor was it cowering in fear. It was in a state of actively revealing its hostility, burning with enmity toward the person before it.
No matter how much the Heavenly Demon had grown through countless deaths up until now, this was undeniably a formidable opponent.
If things continued as they were, he would regress carrying only the knowledge that he must not flee down this path.
But the Heavenly Demon's choice surpassed my expectations.
Thud.
He shoved his wife and daughter, whom he had been clutching tightly until now, toward the fox Spirit Beast.
The beast lunged reflexively. Using the family he had so desperately tried to protect as bait, the Heavenly Demon charged at the opening that had appeared.
He succeeded in bringing down the fox Spirit Beast after a desperate struggle, but… of course, his family had died with their bellies torn open, and the Heavenly Demon himself was dying, his neck bitten.
Seol Ri-hyang, who had been watching all of this alongside me, spoke in a trembling voice.
"Cheon Hwi. This is…"
"…Something is going wrong."
Was it because he had seen the deaths of too many of his family? Or was it because he had realized that every time he died, he came back to life?
The Heavenly Demon's way of thinking began to twist.