# Chapter 10.
Lee Hwan was silent for a moment as he slowly tried to comprehend what had just happened to him. In this incomprehensible situation, he closed his mouth once and opened it again, then tried to speak.
“—. —-. -. –.”
His thoughts neither became words nor arranged themselves as letters in his head. The moment he tried to speak, they pooled inside, becoming something unintelligible even to himself.
Though he still couldn’t understand the situation, he could tell that something was wrong.
Lee Hwan stood blankly, unable to utter anything, staring at Taesung. Taesung’s eyes, which had been wary of some kind of trick, widened.
Hot liquid dripped down below his nose.
[Adjusting causality.]
And with the sudden system message that appeared, Lee Hwan’s vision went dark.
* * *
Disappointment, sadness, resentment, anger.
Lee Hwan fled just like on the first day. He was too shocked to use his abilities properly. He ran away in utter panic.
Flames that engulfed him from behind grazed his arm, but he couldn’t tell whether it was his arm burning or his insides that had already turned black.
Taesung didn’t follow. He must have felt like he was being lured to the first floor, and then to another disadvantageous location.
Lee Hwan found this choice both welcome and uncomfortable. Thanks to that, he avoided being chased and caught, but he also confirmed that the guy didn’t trust him.
The cool evening air chilled the burning burn site. Lee Hwan, dazed, couldn’t take a bus or taxi and just walked the long distance. His mind was in chaos.
[Adjusting causality.]
What did that mean? Was there such a restriction on the skill?
* EX Broken Clockwork (0 uses)
– Regresses to a point desired by the user.
– The user designates a target for 2 people □□ □□□□.
– ! □□ □□□□ □□□□ □□.
– ! □□□□ □□ □□□ □□□□.
But there was no change in the skill. Not even a single hidden letter had been newly revealed.
However, it was clearly a system message. Then what blocked him wasn’t the skill.
The system blocked him.
His heart sank with a thud, and a searing pain dug into Lee Hwan’s forearm. When he finally looked at his arm, it hadn’t blistered but was swollen red.
When one becomes an awakened one, physical durability increases. Of course, being human, you still burn to death if burned, freeze to death if frozen, and get cut to death if sliced, but you get injured less than ordinary people and die later.
Nevertheless, if a mere graze from flames caused this much damage, it meant the ability that came at him was really potent. He had used fire with the intention of burning him to death.
Lee Hwan felt a chill in his chest. Those eyes looking at him like he was crazy, and that deeply furrowed brow. His hopeful heart until noon seemed to be thickly covered with black tar.
Why did he go see that guy? Lee Hwan rubbed his eyes.
Even though he regressed to a younger body, Lee Hwan was still a 7-year industry veteran and a famous hunter of 3 years. He should have acted more wisely. The stakes were too high to run around according to his feelings—nothing less than the monster wave hung at the end of that scale.
‘I’m screwed.’
As the price for visiting Taesung without clear direction, Lee Hwan felt intense self-doubt.
He had suddenly become a mental patient who not only trespassed into someone else’s house and caressed photos but couldn’t forget the taste and came back to cling again, then abruptly claimed to have come from the future.
His vision darkened. Along with deep embarrassment, the overwhelming uncertainty of how to resolve this came crashing like a tsunami.
But even more despair-inducing was the fact that he couldn’t tell the story of before the regression.
The crazy statement that he came from the future flowed smoothly. Then what was the problem that blocked his mouth? Had he told the story that he was a friend on the first day of regression?
He couldn’t remember clearly. At that time, Lee Hwan was in as much chaos as he was now.
“I am Kang Taesung’s friend.”
Lee Hwan spoke aloud as if someone might hear him. His normal voice passed smoothly through his lips. The empty night road resonated with a hum, and despite the cold weather, sweat slowly formed on his forehead.
“I came back from the future.”
That’s what he had said earlier. This too posed no problem in saying. But the next attempt wasn’t the same.
“—. —-. —. —. —-.”
A monster wave will occur and the world will be overturned.
The moment he tried to say those words, the same thing happened as before. Feeling his head grow distant again, Lee Hwan struggled to open his mouth.
“—. -. —.”
Something terrible will happen.
Even a simple sentence, if intended to hint at the monster wave, stopped immediately. Bright red blood formed at the tip of Lee Hwan’s nose and dropped as he dazedly touched his forehead.
It wasn’t dizzy like when he used his ability for too long. It didn’t strain his body either. It just seemed like a weak blood vessel had burst as some kind of reflex action.
Lee Hwan wiped his nose and looked at his sleeve stained red.
‘No system message appears.’
That was a keen observation. When Taesung saw the same situation, it said “causality” was being adjusted. He didn’t know what that meant, but it was a message that made his heart sink.
Then if he were to reveal that story to someone, would some change occur? Even though it wouldn’t even come out of his mouth.
Or was it that Taesung shouldn’t come into contact with anything related to it?
He recalled how even his thoughts in his head were crushed for a moment. Lee Hwan sat down with a thud, picked up a pebble, and scratched it hard on the ground. Midway through engraving letters, his hand abruptly stopped.
“I am… I am.”
It couldn’t be written. Words wouldn’t come out either. His voice gradually faded, and Lee Hwan could no longer continue speaking and panted.
His arm began to sting more and more. Lee Hwan barely got up and walked endlessly, sweating cold sweat. Until the black sky became faintly bright, for the first time since his regression, he was lost in thought for a long, long time.
‘Even if I had said it, he wouldn’t have believed it anyway.’
His threadlike reason faintly whispered. It was true. Lee Hwan was suddenly finding comfort in the inner voice he had found so unpleasant earlier.
By the time he woke up after sleeping heavily, half of Saturday had already passed. Nightmare after nightmare, nightmare, nightmare…
After confirming the intact world with his own eyes and feeling his churning insides settle, Lee Hwan was finally able to judge the situation coldly.
‘I’m really screwed.’
Even with a cold head, being screwed remained the same. Rather, now that he’d come to his senses, the gravity of the situation hit him harder.
Following the first meeting, the second meeting was also a disaster. From Taesung’s perspective, he had been attacked by a madman twice. But just as he couldn’t explain then, he wouldn’t be able to explain even if they met in the future.
Visiting Taesung was indeed too impulsive a decision. Yesterday’s Lee Hwan was like an ex-boyfriend who got drunk and lost it two days after a breakup. It was like texting “You up…?” and then leaving a voice message when there was no reply.
‘Damn it…’
Thanks to that, it was fair to say that things were now completely ruined with Taesung. It seemed best for his personal well-being to stay away from that house for a while.
Dying heroically while fighting monsters at least sounds good, but being burned at the stake by a close friend who doesn’t remember him and becoming a memory stone is just sad and ridiculous.
But there was no time to indulge in self-pity. He needed to verify yesterday’s chilling realization.
Lee Hwan took his freshly charged phone and tried recording a video.
“Actually, I’ve regressed from the future…”
‘…’
A long silence. Fortunately, Lee Hwan in the video didn’t look crazy or stupid. He just looked confused, rolling his eyes after abruptly stopping mid-sentence.
If it’s like this, he can never explain to Taesung. Lee Hwan bit his lip. The moment his words stopped, even his molars would be pulled out like Kang Dongha’s.
He didn’t know why the system was blocking him. Unless the system had a consciousness, it wouldn’t display messages with personal objectives.
Lee Hwan placed a wet towel on his painful wound and started searching on his phone, which was so outdated that he couldn’t adapt to it.
Causality (因果律).
The principle that all events arise from causes, and nothing happens without a cause.
What does that mean? Lee Hwan felt irritated inside. The more he searched, the more complex explanations poured out haphazardly. Even texts that claimed to simplify for better understanding weren’t readable from the first paragraph.
After staring at the small screen for a long time, what he barely understood was that causality was just like the law of cause and effect.
Starving, so you’re hungry. Sleeping at dawn, so you oversleep. Kang Dongha doing stupid things, so the monster wave occurred.
But what on earth did causality have to do with mentioning the monster wave?
Lee Hwan scratched his head vigorously. Now that he had regressed, his life was flowing completely differently from the past. Then shouldn’t that causal relationship be broken or unraveled somehow to be normal?
‘System or whatever, I really want to punch it once.’
Wasn’t it against causality from the beginning for a dying human to return to the past like this? Yet Lee Hwan had safely returned and was pouring water into cup noodles.
*Snap*. Breaking apart wooden chopsticks, Lee Hwan thought: the system was still, fucking unfriendly.
*Buzz*-.
[Are you deliberately not answering the phone? I’ll keep calling until you pick up.]
Well, the system wasn’t the only unfriendly thing. Lee Hwan, who had changed the ringtone for Kang Dongha to white noise because it seemed he wouldn’t get a gate for a while, admired his own unfriendliness and clicked on the unconfirmed messages.
Five messages from the contact saved as “Money Source.” Come to think of it, four days had already passed.
After pondering briefly, Lee Hwan scratched his head and firmly pressed the screen.
“Hello?”
—Why aren’t you answering the phone? Do you know who’s in need here?
“You.”
—That’s right.
Lee Hwan smiled contentedly at the quick acknowledgment.
It was easy to guess why Kang Dongha was impatient. Just four days ago, Lee Hwan had informed him about a gate where magical stones were buried, right before a gate auction.
This was because Kang Dongha’s wariness was gradually intensifying despite being consistently given money. Lee Hwan had thought he looked sensitive from the first impression, but it seemed he was genuinely that sharp and picky while pretending not to be.
‘Before the regression, I just thought he was an idiot…’
Indeed, circulating rumors couldn’t be trusted. Even before the regression, there had been personality controversies surrounding the perfectly fine Taesung for a while, which had been quite annoying. Lee Hwan shook his head as if disgusted.
Translators Notes:
The skill name EX Broken Wind-up Clock will be changed into EX Broken Clockwork for accuracy.
