By Zephyria 
The swarm of magical beasts, which had ignored everything and simply repeated a cycle of killing one another until he approached, suddenly changed the moment he stepped onto the grand stadium they had occupied. The murderous intent of the magical beasts converged on one spot, and there stood Kim Si-baek.
Kim Si-baek carefully tucked Biyendwe into his coat.
“Please be careful.”
[Death and Beauty tells you not to worry, for they shall cling to you like a cicada.]
This would likely be the final battle of this hunt. Regripping the sabre in his right hand, Kim Si-baek sprinted through the magical beasts like a single streak of wind.
Whenever the blood-red sunlight hanging in the mid-west reflected off his blade, the body of a magical beast fell; whenever his feet touched the ground, the fluids of a magical beast sprayed like a fountain. Unfortunately, divine power was not being recovered. It seemed that although they were a swarm, they were being treated as a single entity—a Portal Keeper.
It would have been slightly easier if he had plenty of divine power, but it made no difference whether he used it or not. Even when Biyendwe was an extremely powerless god, Kim Si-baek had been his apostle and a grand warrior.
A magical beast with severed limbs thrashed its entire body, trying to obstruct his path and bite his feet. A beast whose ankle had been eaten crawled toward him with both arms, attempting to crush his waist. A beast with a sword embedded in its back tried to break the blade protruding from its chest to stab him. In an instant, the blade split them in half.
Magical beasts reflecting Awakened individuals used abilities by mimicking humans. Flames flew, writhing like snakes, and rocks surged from the ground as beasts attacked. He lightly twisted his body to avoid the flames, stepped on a rising rock to leap high, and stabbed the beast in the neck.
These were magical beasts, but they were recreations of a gruesome past. They were harsh remnants of old times, forcibly summoned from the memories of the living even after a miserable death, endlessly replaying the moment of their demise.
At the same time, they were already dead. Their bodies had rotted and their souls had cycled into the afterlife. What was recreated here was merely a lingering shadow of their living days, originating from fragments of gray matter in the brain. Thus, knowing it was meaningless, the apostle of death and beauty prayed every time he took the life of a magical beast.
That they might find peace in the embrace of death.
[Death and Beauty gazes steadily at you.]
While the young god of the netherworld gazed at the death he prayed for, Kim Si-baek reached the center of the grand stadium. It was a place no different from what he had seen before.
“It doesn’t seem like the core is in the center.”
[Death and Beauty asks what you plan to do.]
“I’ll have to find them all.”
Before rushing toward the magical beasts surging like waves, he turned his gaze toward the apartments, worried about Tae-un. The sky suddenly grew dark.
“Screeeech!”
A giant flying magical beast appeared, covering the sky in black. Kim Si-baek let out a low groan. According to Tae-un, it was huge, but not to the point where it couldn’t be hunted; however, the magical beast manifested in the Id Portal was large enough to cover the entire Dongdaemun Stadium and then some. It was evidence of how terrifyingly the host had perceived the magical beast.
Compared to that, Tae-un, standing on the rooftop of the apartment, looked like a small sapling shaking precariously before the giant typhoon of the magical beast. No matter how capable Tae-un was, he currently possessed the body of a 14-year-old. He hadn’t even had time to adapt to the changed body; wouldn’t it be difficult to face such a magical beast alone?
Clang! Kang!
While he was debating whether to go help while defending against the attacks of the magical beasts, Tae-un raised an arm. Just as it seemed he was aiming at the beast with some tool, his body floated into the air and flew rapidly toward the beast. He must have had a magical tool that allowed him to approach the beast.
Only after seeing Tae-un land safely on the beast’s back did Kim Si-baek feel a sense of relief. He couldn’t afford to look worse than a child, so these magical beasts were entirely his responsibility.
He slid the blade that had been blocking the arm of a beast mutated like a dinosaur’s forepaw. The blade flowed smoothly downward, splitting the beast’s lower back. Before the two halves of the beast’s corpse could even hit the ground, Kim Si-baek’s blade was piercing through the glabella of another beast.
Though he had returned to a 14-year-old’s body, he truly didn’t need to hide his strength as he had when he was actually 14. He was not an inexperienced boy who had recently awakened, but a hunter who had proven himself by hunting magical beasts for over 20 years.
The flying magical beast that attacked Dongdaemun Stadium had feathers as sharp as blades. Twenty-one years ago, he had crawled up desperately while sustaining wounds all over his body, but the current Tae-un walked up the body leisurely, as if taking a stroll.
However, he didn’t intend to snap the beast’s neck immediately. Because Kim Si-baek was below. Kim Si-baek, who had promised to protect him.
Tae-un drove a spear drawn from the darkness into the beast’s back. Only then did the beast realize that something bothersome had climbed onto its body. The beast, intending to attack below, let out a sharp shriek and glided violently to shake him off, but Tae-un calmly perched near the wing joint.
He closed his eyes. The magical energy inside the portal, churning and distorting like a vortex, poked at his senses in a confusing manner. And then, a radiance that pushed back and illuminated the area, purifying this chaos with gentleness. The only light. Divine power. Kim Si-baek.
Ah.
As he sensed Kim Si-baek’s divine power, a joy bordering on ecstasy surged over him like a wave, invading his being. Even though it wasn’t the first time he had sensed his divine power, it felt as new as the first time—no, even newer.
The divine power of Kim Si-baek, which he had only imagined while obsessively overworking his brain cells, was so brilliant and beautiful that his previous meager imaginations felt sinful. Especially now, in a situation where he clashed with magical energy while hunting a polar opposite magical beast.
As Tae-un melted into the wave of self-destructive, ecstatic pleasure, he slowly recognized that the divine power was drawing closer. It seemed the flying magical beast had decided to ignore the something on its back that it couldn’t shake off and attack Kim Si-baek directly.
“Tsk.”
Feeling dissatisfied at being lukewarmly bounced out of the soaring peak of climax, Tae-un clicked his tongue lowly and snapped the beast’s wing joint.
The twisted wing instantly diverted the path the beast had intended. Adjusting the beast’s desperate struggles as it surged sharply upward, he scanned the ground. The magical beasts on the surface were already being cleared away.
Tae-un stood up from where he sat and moved past the beast’s thick, short neck to reach its head. The beast was now charging toward the tilting apartment, intending to slam its head into it to knock Tae-un off.
“I’m sick and tired of that trick.”
The core of this flying magical beast is in the brain.
Twenty-one years ago, he had attacked by passing through the lens and vitreous body rather than the beast’s skull, which was as hard as steel, but now there was no need for such a cumbersome process. Plucking a sharp feather and intentionally wounding himself in a few places, Tae-un lowered his body in a kneeling position and gripped the beast’s head.
The flowing darkness clumped in his hand, and a gruesome sound of bones twisting echoed with a crack and snap. The beast let out a long howl due to the pain of its skull splitting and instinctive terror. It took less than ten seconds to rummage through the mushy brain inside the skull, which had been smashed to pieces by his grip, and destroy the core.
The magical beast, which had appeared several times more powerful than when it had driven Dongdaemun Stadium to massacre, died futilely without having any impact on the ground.
At the same time the head-shattered flying magical beast crashed with a thunderous roar, Kim Si-baek, who had killed all the magical beasts in Dongdaemun Stadium, found where the core was located.
It took the form of a one-armed man. Unlike the other magical beasts in the swarm, this one showed no hostility toward Kim Si-baek and was focused on only one action.
“…….”
[Death and Beauty is extremely displeased.]
The core, borrowing the appearance of a one-armed man, was repeatedly tearing and eating the corpses of an elderly man and woman. It chewed the flesh and swallowed the bones whole. As if it were trying to preserve the two people, believing its stomach was the safest place in the world.
The appearance of the man and woman, which was vaguely recognizable and similar to the man, led to even more unpleasant imaginations, but Kim Si-baek scattered those thoughts with a sigh. Whether it was the host’s reality, past, or delusion, it was a place his hand could not reach.
The blade imbued with divine power held a gentle light. Sensing the power that was the polar opposite of what composed it, the creature snapped its head up.