By Zephyria 
Death by burning, freezing, blood loss, shock, accident, starvation… through the repetition of endless deaths, the child’s soul gradually wore away. The child could no longer tell if he was dead or alive, dreaming or hallucinating. Drifting through hazy fragments, he would die—whether by an old method or a new one—and wake up once again that night beside his parents.
Home. A train. A semi-basement room. A small back room. An attic. A truck. A container. The days raced forward at a constant speed, shifting as often as the locations did. And then, they would soon rewind again. The child did not perceive the time that flowed past him, rewound, and surged forward. Time that goes unperceived is no different from time that has stopped. The child was taxidermied within a permanent rift of time.
The taxidermied child did not consider himself human. He was a monster that died, and died, and died, and died.
That day was just another one of those days.
〈Little one, what is your name?〉
Through the small window of the semi-basement room, a boy captured the child within his own life. The stopped time began to flow. The boy allowed the child to overcome a fate that had always culminated in death—unaware that he had offered his own future as the price.
Chaos roared with laughter.
「What could be more precious than the future of a human who yearns and desires? I have been offered the finest of delicacies.」
In the year he turned fourteen, Tae-un returned to the repeating deaths he thought he had forgotten.
「Therefore, I declare: on the 7,777th day, I shall surely bring that man back.」
Clinging to that single covenant of Chaos, Tae-un crawled desperately through the dirt to survive until the 7,777th day. Trying to escape the dangerous Seoul, he died nine times by the hands of kun alone. Trying to detour through Gangwon-do, he died after getting lost in the mountains. Heading north, where the influence of kun did not reach, he died after stepping on a landmine. There were even a few times he crossed over into North Korea. He didn’t bother counting how many times he died fighting magical beasts.
「A priest is naturally unable to awaken and realize magical power, but you are not yet our complete apostle.」
If he hadn’t awakened his abilities, he likely would have repeated his deaths far more frequently.
He barely managed to bypass the Han River and escape Seoul, but there was no paradise in the south either. The chaos of Korea, where the government had collapsed overnight, remained unresolved. Guilds seized and divided regions like warlords, and murder and looting were rampant.
Tae-un endured, dying over and over in the city of outlaws. For the first time, he surpassed 7,000 days, and the night of the 7,776th day arrived.
‘….’
On the final night, Tae-un looked around him. The situation was better than when he had first escaped Seoul, but there was no trace of the hometown Kim Si-baek once knew. Most of Gyeonggi-do, including Seoul, and the Gyeongsangnam-do area, including Busan, as well as Gangwon-do, had long been occupied by magical beasts.
Not only that. He had not heard a single word about the people from the orphanage who had scattered across Seoul for the past 21 years. They had probably all died.
No traces of home remained, and the younger children who were like family were dead. There was no one left who remembered him.
What meaning is there in Si-baek hyung returning to a place like this?
The value of everything Kim Si-baek had lost could never be compensated by his existence alone. Tae-un shot himself in the head. Because it was a small-caliber gun, the aim was slightly off, and he had to endure considerable pain until his breath stopped.
Even when regressing to the past, the phantom pain caused by the shock of death remains in the body. Though he had become accustomed to phantom pain through countless deaths, the first death he chose for himself dealt a great shock to his soul.
Tae-un lay prone on the rooftop, retching for a long time, before barely managing to head down the stairs. He had to save everyone from the orphanage. The oldest resident, Yang Yura, was only 16. He had to save these children and escape Seoul.
Fortunately, there were five more Awakened. Since these were Awakened who hadn’t existed in the early stages of regression, Tae-un was puzzled at first, then became cynical. I suppose the thing called a god felt some pity seeing me die over and over.
Tae-un, who had previously escaped Seoul alone, now had to agonize over a way to save everyone. It was his first attempt at survival, not just escape. Naturally, it was far more arduous than in the past when he only had to look after himself. If he tried to escape Seoul immediately with abilities he hadn’t even adapted to, they wouldn’t make it intact; therefore, they had to cultivate the strength to protect themselves.
〈Hey, Tae. Isn’t it amazing how I suddenly vanish?〉
〈Oppa, this healed really fast. Isn’t it amazing?〉
〈The gun is so heavy… and scary… but I don’t hate it…〉
〈M-magic study is fun!〉
〈I never thought my experience with rural volunteer work would actually be useful.〉
However, the life of comforting and encouraging one another to survive together, rather than alone, wasn’t half bad. When they went outside, many looked down on them as mere children despite being Awakened, and they suffered losses in various ways, but when they returned, they had a reliable family. For the first time in a very long while, Tae-un was able to give a sincere smile.
Hope had emerged. The hope that they could live together.
〈Ga, Ga-eun and the others are all…〉
And yet, Seoul was a ruin of despair and slaughter that existed solely to crush hope. He had been gone for barely three hours to procure daily necessities, but the orphanage was soaked in blood.
Other survivor groups, coveting Sister Benedicta’s trait, had conspired. The children and the priest who stood against them were dead, and Benedicta had been kidnapped, leaving no trace. No, he could probably find her if he looked. But what was the point? She was dead.
Ah.
Looking at the fragments of corpses strewn miserably about, Tae-un realized. It was because he had grown weak. Because his heart had been dulled by the momentary comfort of encouraging one another. It was all his fault.
To prepare the ground for Kim Si-baek’s return, he must stain his hands with human blood. Even if he has to kill every other human, he only needs to save the people of the orphanage.
This time, he made no mistake and drove the knife precisely into his throat.
Death repeated once more. At the end of death, Tae-un became able to look down upon the vast expanse of Seoul as if it were in the palm of his hand.
The people he needed to join quickly were a young couple on their way back from a nearby OB-GYN clinic. The husband, Jo Byeong-seok, possessed the tanker trait that the orphanage lacked.
The situation at the Dongdaemun Stadium shelter varied wildly depending on who the shelter leader was; 70 percent of the time, they only looked for a chance to betray him even if he cooperated. They weren’t worth associating with.
The Jaewoo University shelter was useful. Perhaps because it was centered around young adults, they were less inclined to ignore them for being children. Among them, Moon Seong-hee especially respected Tae-un’s value and led the shelter’s consensus.
Joining Justina’s shelter was a rational choice, but the distance was far. Even after joining, they wouldn’t let go of the struggle for dominance with Tae-un, making it cumbersome in many ways. Maintaining a moderate cooperative relationship was sufficient.
Beyond that, by collecting and analyzing information on various shelters and Awakened that appeared or vanished depending on the regression, Tae-un obsessed over a plan for everyone to survive safely.
Every time an orphanage child suffered a critical injury that couldn’t be healed or died, Tae-un continued his regression. As suicide became repetitive, the pain of the soul also became bearable.
He finally managed to save everyone from the orphanage safely. They escaped Seoul. Korea was still in chaos, but because they were exceptional Awakened, they were able to safely enter the fold of a fairly large guild.
Tae-un felt relieved. He thought he only had to hold out until Kim Si-baek returned. Until he heard the news that Pi Min-hyeong had committed suicide.
〈Y-yesterday, while hyung was away on a business trip, Seo-yeon and Seo-jun were hit by a hit-and-run… and Min-hyung hyung… he followed them…〉
The only ones Tae-un had strived to save were ‘the people of the orphanage.’ But just because one grew up in an orphanage, did that mean they had no acquaintances made outside?
Pi Min-hyeong, who had suffered numerous partings in Seoul, could no longer endure it after his colleagues died and even the children he had taken in left him.
Tae-un looked around him once more. He saw the people of the orphanage who had shared life’s joys and sorrows. When had their expressions begun to change? When had the color of their smiles shifted? When had their eyes become so hollow?
Tae-un was able to endure until the day Kim Si-baek returned. But he finally realized that others, besides himself, would not be able to do the same.
〈Damn it.〉
Leaving behind a single curse, Tae-un took his own head. Based on his experience, it was the most effective way to die instantly.