Episode 11: The Grand Scheme / Chapter 183: Fate (2)

TL: emptycube / ED: Obelisk

‘Victory.’

For some reason, this word nailed into his heart.

Choi Hyuk’s mother, Choi Miyeon, had taught him.

‘Just get hit.’

Lose. That was winning.

However, his inborn talent whispered,

‘You can win. They are nothing.’

It was the truth.

Choi Hyuk had always won in fights against many people who were physically superior to him at once.

Only, as he was physically inferior, his fights always ended with extreme results and he had even killed someone during a fight before.

‘See? You won. Why are they picking a fight?’

What halted young Choi Hyuk’s immature thoughts was his mother’s sobs.

Choi Hyuk wasn’t a psychopath who lost his sense of sympathy, but was simply a genius whose skill was higher than his already sky-high pride. He felt bored with the weak and was interested in defeating those who looked like they were proud of their strength.

The reason why someone like him decided to live his entire life while losing was because of his mother’s desperate plea.

Though bullying irritated him, it was fine because it didn’t hurt much when they hit him. He would graduate from school eventually.

This was also part of Choi Hyuk’s pride. Since he promised his mother he wouldn’t fight, he didn’t. This was his pride.

However, when the moment of awakening arrived, his mother died, and nothing remained to bind him.  What gripped Choi Hyuk wasn’t simply his endless thirst for revenge and rage but also his true nature, which burned for victory and to prove himself.

“Victory…”

Choi Hyuk mulled over this word. The more he did, the more the word filled his mind.

Why was it that Choi Hyuk decided to kill all 13 of the Exalted Wings without distinguishing between friend or foe?

Of course, this was how he calculated his revenge since revenge wasn’t a one-to-one trade.

However, what Choi Hyuk wasn’t aware of was the competitive spirit budding from his heart. The Exalted Wings prided themselves as the strongest in the universe. To them, who believed that they could use the fates of other species however they liked because they were strong, he wanted to ask, ‘Are you really that strong?’ His competitive spirit budded beneath his thirst for revenge.

That was why his fate wasn’t simply ‘revenge’ or ‘destruction’ but ‘never losing’ and ‘denial’.

At this moment, Choi Hyuk felt his competitive spirit rising as he could participate in a fight that everyone predicted would end in defeat and one where they had ordered them to retreat. This was his fate. He liked Dragonic, and this made him want to test if they really had to hand over Dragonic to the monsters.

Perhaps his reasoning that he didn’t want his fate to weaken was simply a justification his mind had come up with.

Even though this wasn’t the time to offend Flame-Hell, what if he did?

Since earthlings were sacrificed because ‘there was nothing they could do’, he planned on smashing everything because ‘there was nothing they could do’ as well. This was the case now and also applied to the alliance’s order which orbited around the 13 Exalted Wings.

The word ‘victory’ had now engulfed his body. They had to retreat?

He rejected this.

“Baek hyung, I’m sorry. Plan out a strategy. We will protect Dragonic.”

“Eeehhh?!”

Baek Seoin’s eyes, which looked into Choi Hyuk’s unwavering ones, trembled greatly.

In his heart, Baek Seoin had vowed that he would devote his remaining life to Choi Hyuk, to become Choi Hyuk’s hands and feet, after he had rescued him and killed the Wyvern of Destruction that had killed his parents.

If Choi Hyuk came to a decision, that was it. Baek Seoin gulped.

“Ah, understood.”

Fighting with his instincts which told him to flee, he began thinking about how they should fight.

“First… Please check the Net of Fate.”

At Baek Seoin’s request, Choi Hyuk waved his hand and changed the battlefield map in the headquarters.

The surrounding red dots disappeared and were replaced with thin lines covering the universe.

“Ermm….”

Everyone groaned.

The Net of Fate had turned black. It looked like over 80% was occupied by the monsters.

Seeing this and looking like he was about to cry, Baek Seoin told Choi Hyuk,

“Err… Do we really have to fight?”

**

{Just what are you doing right now?! We should be gathering our strength to break through the encirclement! Are you saying that you’re going to survive by yourself?! Did Flame-Hell order this?!}

Armor-Phantom shouted.

After overcoming his shock, he summoned everyone within the galaxy and was preparing to retreat. Choi Hyuk defied his order, and Armor-Phantom believed that the Flame Army was acting in order to survive by themselves.

{Do you not know how severe the current situation is? It’s so bad it won’t be enough even if we gather everyone. Even if you prioritize the Flame Army’s safety, we still should gather first! If not-!}

Armor-Phantom was shouting and coaxing Choi Hyuk simultaneously.

“Naro. End the communication.”

Choi Hyuk ended the call and stood up. ‘Choi Hyuk’s Denial’, which hung at his waist, rang out.

“Baek hyung, do what you’re doing. I’ll go greet them.”

Baek Seoin, who was constantly contacting people, still didn’t seem to have calmed down. Soaked in cold sweat after fighting his instincts to flee, Baek Seoin told him,

“You need to fight well. Only then will warriors gather.”

Choi Hyuk shrugged and left. Beside him were Lee Jinhee and Mack.

Baek Seoin called out to Choi Hyuk once more.

“Leader!”

When Choi Hyuk turned around, Baek Seoin winced one of his eyes as he grumbled,

“If we survive… Let’s start our plan quickly.”

They still weren’t fully prepared. While he was confident in a one-on-one fight against an Exalted Wing, he didn’t have the strength to defeat all 13 at once.

However, Choi Hyuk grinned as he understood what Baek Seoin meant.

With a tone that sounded like ‘I’m aging quickly because of you’, Baek Seoin added,

“If we survive this, the 13 Exalted Wings won’t be a big deal. Ah, if things go as planned, then it’ll be 12 instead of 13 since Chu Youngjin has to deal with one… This is, of course, if both of you survive.”

Baek Seoin said, exhausted. Choi Hyuk laughed as he replied,

“Yeah, I’ll return after a good job.”

Choi Hyuk walked out to greet the pouring monsters that seemingly covered the entire universe.

**

The frontlines were chaotic.

At the suddenly rushing monster army, the countless troops that stood on the frontlines retreated.

Then they received the order to retreat.

This was the start of a retreat, no, an escape, regardless of whether one was on the frontlines or at the back.

The blue dots on the battlefield map were retreating like a receding tide. The warriors soared past Dragonic like a meteor shower. The universe gradually became empty, and the monsters took their place.

Only a few blue dots were standing by in isolation, and those at the very front were already held down by the monsters and they were being smashed apart before they could even flee.

At this time, a blue dot that left Dragonic was shooting towards the frontlines.

“Huh… The monsters?”

Choi Hyuk exclaimed when he saw the monster army.

Rather than a ‘monster army’, this huge mass looked more like a ‘destroying machine’.

The monsters were connected with each other.

With metallic skin that looked cold and hard, limps as sharp of blades, and distorted eyes as bright as neon signs, they formed a long, thin, dark, pointy battle line like the one that appeared in the old Japanese animation with Sadola carrying living weapons on its back.{1}

While their exteriors looked similar, they varied in size, from ones that looked like they could eat spaceships to ones that were the size of fillet knives.

They were connected to each other through threads that came out from their backs.

No, they were like tactile tentacles. When one monster died, the tentacle would wriggle and connect with other nearby monsters. From a thick one of a large monster to a thin one, from a vicious one that looked like a hacksaw to a thinner one, they were densely connected to each other. Their charging appearance looked like an enormous net.

The net of monsters scattered the alliance warriors as they killed each one without fail.

“Euaaah!”

Even warriors who looked to be at the highest level were powerless.

Whether they launched a powerful attack, exploded, or used fire or ice, the connected monsters either absorbed the damage by uniting their strength or avoided the attack and continued to rush forward. Still, there were monsters that died, but facing the net of monsters that only rippled momentarily, all their struggles seemed meaningless.

The large, powerful monsters rushed first to hold the overall shape of the net, and the large and small monsters rushed after them in order. They killed warriors that were easy to kill, or they otherwise simply skipped them. Nonetheless, it was still a massacre. The spaceships that were destroyed by their thick, pointy tentacles broke apart into smaller fragments before disappearing. A warrior was mashed into paste while flailing in their net without being able to swing his sword even once. No matter how many tentacles they severed, there would always be another. No matter how powerful the attacks they launched, they were constantly nullified by the thick, tough tentacles at the back. The monsters acting as the net’s spindles were resilient and sharp.

The warriors’ fighting spirits were cut like straws.

Crush! Smash!

“No… No… I didn’t come all this way to…”

Those who were born as members of the alliance and devoted their entire lives to it were powerlessly met with their end.

This scene left a strong impression on Choi Hyuk. The monsters were clearly evolving.

Last time, they imitated karma weapons, and now they took it another step further and made an army into a slaughtering machine. Surely they weren’t the same monsters that barely began to use tactics to try to ‘cooperate’ with the Blue Manes, right?

“Leader, doesn’t that look like it?”

Lee Jinhee mumbled next to him. It seemed she was trying hard to calm down.

“What?”

“That. The chain-link strategy used by Cao Cao.”{2}

It appeared in the Battle of the Red Cliffs in Romance of the Three Kingdoms. It was a stratagem where they connected their battleships with iron chains to reduce the chances of seasickness.

While the difference between that and the current situation, where the linked chains themselves were powerful weapons, was large, they did look similar.

Choi Hyuk flatly said,

“Then will this also be similar?”

Blaaze.

Black flames sprouted from his back. They weren’t wings like the Flame Wing Tribe members’, but rather, the flames distorted on their own. Against the bright flames ignited by the Flame Army behind him, Choi Hyuk’s flames were like shadows.

“That the answer to the chain-link strategy is flames.”

As soon as he said this, Choi Hyuk disappeared.

Kwaooooh!!

A section of the monsters’ net exploded and collapsed.

{1} I am assuming this scene is from Ultraman. I have never seen Ultraman and am sorry if I messed up here.

{2} From Romance of the Three Kingdoms

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