I can’t beat the Fire Emperor with an ordinary method.
My heart pounded. I tried hard to be calm, but it wasn’t easy. Maybe it was only natural—it hadn’t been long since I’d died from the fire that he started in my head. On top of that, I had still been alive while my flesh and bones were sizzling… The pain I had experienced… was horrible.
“Fuck you, son of a bitch.” I glared at the newspaper and magazine clippings covering the walls.
All of them were from interviews he had been in from when he was an obscure, rookie Hunter until he became the number one Hunter in the world. Of course, I also had the Fire Emperor’s photos on the walls—I now wanted to rip down those photos of his smug face.
“ Tsk. But this fucker will also return to twenty-four hours ago if he dies.”
The biggest problem was that the Fire Emperor wouldn’t stay dead even if he was killed.
It’s the ultimate cheat.
The difference between the Fire Emperor and I was like that of the sun and a firefly. My opponent was the Rank 1 Hunter while I wasn’t even in the ranking.
Even though the Tower had acknowledged my jealousy… it didn’t mean I was strong. Even if I relied on every possible coincidence and miracle in the world, it was unlikely that I could kill the Fire Emperor.
Even if I manage to kill him, I still have problems.
When he died, the Fire Emperor would simply return to twenty-four hours before and try to kill me using any means possible. Once he realized he couldn’t kill me, he would create a dungeon in his basement and lock me up forever. With the Fire Emperor’s abilities, it would be a piece of cake to subdue me, so Kim Gong-Ja’s second attempt at life would end with fabulous eternal incarceration.
“Ah, fuck. Fuck, fuck…”
The chances of me killing him were close to zero, and killing him wouldn’t even be the end of my problems.
How am I supposed to get revenge on this psychopath? How should I do it? How can I screw over the number one Hunter in the ranking?
I cooped up myself in my studio for over a day, glaring at the newspaper clippings on the walls. They had all the information and history about the Fire Emperor, so they might give me an idea.
“The Fire Emperor has cleared the thirty-ninth floor on his own!”
“The Fire Emperor has created another legend by singlehandedly clearing the thirty-eighth floor!”
“Yoo Soo-Ha, the Fire Emperor, has officially become the first Korean to earn the highest place in the Hunter Ranking.”
...
“With the disappearance of the Sword Star, the seat of the world’s Rank 1 Hunter is empty. Who shall inherit his seat?”
“All foreign experts unanimously agree that the most likely candidate is Yoo Soo-Ha from Korea.”
“The unassailable tenth floor has been cleared. Who is this mysterious hero?”
“It has been twenty-two days since the Sword Star went missing. Could this be the start of the greatest chaos the Hunter industry has ever seen?”
Just then, a tingle ran down my spine.
“Huh? Wait… This is…” I mumbled as I touched one of the newspaper clippings.
The clipping was from the Fire Emperor’s magazine interview. The article was online, but I had printed it myself to put it on the wall.
“Mr. Yoo Soo-Ha, how old were you when you Awakened?”
“I was twenty-one years old. It’s already been eleven years since that summer.”
“You must have very good memory to remember the season.”
“I never really thought I had a good memory, but the day I Awakened just happened to be my birthday, June 7th. That’s why I remember it.”
It was an ordinary interview, but… it was an invaluable piece of information for me.
“Whoa, wait a minute. Seriously? It’s…really going to work.”
There was a way to kill the world’s Rank 1 Hunter. It was far from easy, and people would call me crazy if they heard about it. But it was the only way to kill the Fire Emperor as a lowly Class F Hunter.
I really can get revenge on him!
Just then, I heard shouts from outside the window.
“Fire!”
I opened the window, wondering what was going on. The nearby residents were buzzing about smoke rising from the side of the neighborhood.
“Oh, no!”
“This isn’t the time to stand around here. Let’s go help extinguish the fire!”
“Okay!”
The residents went running toward the fire.
The place I lived was different from the outside world; this was the city made by the people who had entered the Tower to become Hunters. The city on the Tower’s first floor had various names, because it was populated by people from around the globe. Some people called it Babylon or Abaddon. It was sometimes just “Floor 1 City”, but some even referred to it by an elegant name: “Ascending City.”
Most people living here were Hunters. Whether they liked it or not, they had all looked death in the eyes, so they moved faster in an emergency than people from the outside world.
As I quickly left my studio and joined the others, I checked the time on my smartphone.
What the fuck.
It had already been around twenty-four hours since I had been killed by the Fire Emperor and regressed in time. It was also around the time that the Fire Emperor was going to kill the Saintess. In other words…
…it’s the Fucker! The Fucker set the fire to erase the evidence!
Yoo Soo-Ha, the Fire Emperor, was truly an evil son of a bitch.