# Chapter 99
The monster rampages madly, harming every living thing it encounters. Lee Hwan painfully faces the monster’s memories while feeling a splitting headache.
[N%w! You @&ve acqu#&@□ a new s#ll.]
* EX Clock———
——$ork
A crackling system window appears before his eyes. Lee Hwan flinches in surprise before realizing this isn’t his own vision.
The skill stone swallowed by the monster is activating. Despite it not being human… why?
Lee Hwan momentarily thinks that just as researchers mixed monster factors into human bodies, this monster might have something mixed in from humans.
[—acquired——acqu△%]
The notification window shakes more violently. Letters break and flicker repeatedly. The monster stops running and swings its front legs a few times as if annoyed.
After its thick legs pass through the window five or six times, another system message suddenly appears.
[Due to abnor#& access※, some p7ts of the syst## have been permanently l—st.]
This is the first time he’s seen such an unstable message. The mention of “abnormal access” also feels ominous. Lee Hwan patiently observes the distorted system window.
The skill name that had been appearing and disappearing begins to undergo another transformation.
[%%w! You hO$e $cquired a new s$#———]
* EX Broken—— Clo& Work (1 use)
[$arching for parts needed for s%ill opera%%%%%tion——]
.
.
.
Ding!
[Using the user as parts to repair the damaged skill.]
[New! You have acquired a new skill.]
* EX Broken Clockwork
How long has it been since the monster swallowed it? The constantly breaking text suddenly goes through a self-repair process and becomes clean, changing into familiar content.
‘That’s… the skill I swallowed.’
Only then does Lee Hwan realize that what he possesses is a skill that has undergone transformation.
Taesung losing his memory, and beyond that, Lee Hwan’s own energy being drained—while there’s a possibility that the original penalty was already heavy for such an ominous skill…
‘Because it’s ‘broken’.’
That seems to have doubled its harshness.
The corrected skill description begins to appear line by line before Lee Hwan’s eyes.
* EX Broken Clockwork (0 uses)
– Returns the user to a desired point in time.
– The user designates a target for dual regression.
– ! Operates using the target’s memories as parts.
☞ Will be returned after completing the missing causality.
So far, this is content he already knew. Only now did he realize what it meant for the target’s memories to be used as parts.
Lee Hwan calmly waits for the last explanation that had always been hidden to appear.
And finally…
* EX Broken Clockwork (0 uses)
– Returns the user to a desired point in time.
– The user designates a target for dual regression.
– ! Operates using the target’s memories as parts.
☞ Will be returned after completing the missing causality.
– ! Transferred through the user’s death.
‘The user’s death…’
What does that mean? Skill stones originally have a perfect attribution property. Once consumed, that’s it.
If they could be obtained by killing someone, skill stones would have become deadlier objects than 2,000-carat diamonds. The reason there weren’t as many victims as one might expect for such rare items was because there had already been a bloodbath during the early days of gates.
‘They implanted the lesson across the world that if you eat one and die, that’s the end…’
While Lee Hwan contemplates, the scene before him gradually changes to show a ruined city and a plaza filled with corpses. Then, blink.
As if the middle of the video was cut off, it switches to another scene.
The monster sits down, having lost one leg and its body in tatters. Before it are two hunters, equally mangled, finishing the battle by unleashing their abilities.
A man with his stomach stained red, and another with scratches all over his face…
‘…me.’
Lee Hwan’s heart sinks for the umpteenth time. It’s the first time he’s seen himself and Taesung in that final moment before regression from someone else’s perspective.
Gruk- kreooo…
As soon as the monster collapses with its massive body, the brown-haired man rushes forward holding an awl-like sword. The monster flails its front legs but fails to land a hit, blocked by Shield.
Even while coughing up blood, he doesn’t withdraw his ability, raising his sword to stab down at the monster’s throat. With its artery severed, the monster spews blood like a fountain, rolling its eyes and thrashing.
Yes. This is exactly the scene from his memory. He thought he was going to die killing that thing. But that raises even more questions.
He never cut open the monster’s stomach. Back then, he just…
A swirl of light gathers above the dead monster, becomes a red skill stone, and drops to the ground with a thud.
The brown-haired man picks it up with a puzzled expression and freezes like a statue for a moment. Probably seeing the skill stone information appearing in his mind.
Lee Hwan feels a strange emotion watching the scene, as if he’s returned to the time before regression.
That’s right. That’s how he obtained the skill stone. Having never seen one before, he thought all skill stones appeared that way.
He never even considered Kang Dongha’s corpse. He couldn’t have guessed what might be inside his stomach. Though he was certain the byproduct would be valuable, he had no time to extract it with monsters swarming.
So that’s what “transferred through death” meant.
While the Lee Hwan in his memory stands dazed holding the skill stone, he sees Taesung behind him, slowly closing and opening his eyes with a pained expression.
Somehow, he looks worse than Lee Hwan had thought. It’s only anxious and pitiful to see him discreetly wiping away the blood flowing from his mouth, lest someone notice.
The past Lee Hwan swallows the skill stone. Everything brightens intensely, and with that, the hallucination ends.
* * *
“Huh, hak, hoo…”
Lee Hwan opened his eyes again in the Red Room. He still didn’t know how much time had passed. But his body was trembling finely in a way that didn’t seem easy to calm.
It was the darkest memory he had seen so far. Though he didn’t like Kang Dongha, he hadn’t wanted to see him die so miserably.
Moreover, to see Taesung broken down like that again. He had learned how the problematic regression skill stone had come into his hands, but he felt more frustrated than enlightened.
‘What an idiot.’
His feelings were so mixed that he didn’t know whether to pity Kang Dongha, find him pathetic, or be grateful because he had regressed thanks to him.
Furthermore…
* EX Broken Clockwork (0 uses)
– Returns the user to a desired point in time.
– The user designates a target for dual regression.
– ! Operates using the target’s memories as parts.
☞ Will be returned after completing the missing causality.
– ! Transferred through the user’s death.
“Haah…”
Finally, the last explanation that had been erased was revealed. It was exactly as glimpsed in the fragment’s memory.
He had wanted to know this so badly, but why did it suddenly feel ominous now that he’d uncovered it? Lee Hwan read and reread the same sentence, trying hard to calm his increasingly unsettled mind.
Perhaps because it was a skill that malfunctioned due to an incorrect user, this item was added during transformation to somehow find the right target.
Lee Hwan took a breath and raised his head. The monitor still clearly displayed the slightly transformed monsters.
Fortunately, it seemed the monster that would escape seven years later wasn’t here yet. Lee Hwan pressed down on his still-throbbing chest as he slowly stood up.
‘So now… has the fragment been completed?’
It felt like it should be, given that this was exactly the kind of memory a final fragment would show. Wasn’t it the scene of the skill stone making its way to him, and him swallowing it?
But so far, there had been no notification of completion or any system message at all.
‘What else is it trying to show me?’
Since he regressed immediately after swallowing the skill stone, there shouldn’t be any more memories to show.
Belatedly, drops of blood began falling to the floor. Only then did Lee Hwan come to his senses, hurriedly kneeling down and wiping it with his leg. When he brought his arm to his nose, his already red sleeve was getting wet again.
‘I now know how this skill stone came to me… and also what happened before. What else don’t I know?’
He understood how the monsters had changed like that. He understood that the gates had overflowed. Yet there was still something he had missed.
‘Ah. Come to think of it, what exactly did these bastards do with the gates?’
What did they do to the gates, why did they interfere with them, and what benefits did they gain? He didn’t properly understand their schemes.
Where should he look for this information that the fragments of causality hadn’t revealed?
‘…The records room.’
After confirming his nosebleed had stopped, Lee Hwan quietly stood up. Perhaps because he thought he would soon leave the basement laboratory he hated to look at, the exit path felt much easier than the entrance.
On his way back, he took photos one by one. When he passed through security and entered the data records room, he was fortunately able to confirm that the computer was still in a logged-in state.
[Server2: Records Room / ON]
Well, who would think someone would come to this basement on a weekend evening using their ID to search through records? And they probably wouldn’t want to keep logging in and out if they were going to use it again anyway.
The carelessness of the researcher who was probably in the next room had saved him. Lee Hwan recalled the TF meeting that hadn’t even had its second gathering yet, and entered appropriate search terms into the explorer.
[‘Immunity’ search results: 115 entries]
Too many. Even skimming through quickly would take at least 30 minutes.
[‘Immunity+Gate’ search results: 8 entries]
Still not few. But compared to 115 entries, it was a manageable amount to look through quickly.
Lee Hwan started reading through the partially redacted documents, clicking on each item in the list that appeared.
