Eraser, that damn name, Eraser.
The name that came about because of Oh Jong-yeop really lasted a long time.
I should charge him a high price later.
Anyway, no matter what answer I gave, that Berserker already had a firm conviction.
“Maybe it’s me, maybe it’s not.”
“Are you telling me to believe whatever suits me?”
“Hasn’t it always been the case for you?”
“......”
Berserker, who was staring at me intently, asked a question.
“Which is stronger, Eraser or Head Breaker?”
Was it real or was it garbage?
He seemed determined not to give up.
“You can think about that after your head is crushed.”
“I still remember. The moment you erased Big Ten.”
Berserker’s eyes flashed.
“There was nothing but murderous intent to annihilate the enemy. The purity of death, and there I saw a glimpse of a ‘moment of the stars’.”
Was a ‘moment of the stars’ just a hallucination seen by the insane?
I couldn’t see it, so I must not be crazy.
“Send me a picture when you see it later.”
Could on use a smartphone in the afterlife?
Berserker, originally known as the leading swordsman, was a person who showed unique actions even during the Hunter era.
Why he became a villain was still a matter of debate.
There was a saying that he went mad from excessive training in order to complete his own sword, and there was also a theory that he veered off-course to some extent. It was said that the pursuit to unlock a Gift had twisted in a different direction.
The last statement was false. In my previous life, I personally killed Berserker, and I knew what Gift he possessed.
Regardless, the Berserker spoke about the ‘moment of the stars’ as he defined it.
[The ‘moment of the stars’ is the moment I become all-powerful. Everything I have seen makes me complete. As the pieces come together, the ultimate pursuit I seek is fulfilled. It is the moment when my will reaches perfection.]
Upon hearing those words, I realized.
It was just the ramblings of a madman.
I regretted even sparing a moment to interpret this. A lunatic didn’t deserve attention.
“Let me ask you one thing. Why did you join the League?”
“I heard you were a League member.”
“Who said that?”
“The Puppeteer.”
“Did you believe it?”
“No, I thought of getting out once you appeared.”
Did he think the League was an automatic door that would let him in and out at will?
“If we continue talking, I’ll be the only one exhausted. Let’s end it now.”
As I lifted my sword, the eyes that had been tainted with madness returned to normal. Even if the lunatic returned to his normal state, he would still be a lunatic in the end.
“Come, Eraser.”
***
The Berserker asked me which was stronger, the Head Breaker or the Eraser, but I didn’t have any special thoughts on that matter.
Whether it’s the bare-handed Heads Breaker or the Eraser wielding a sword, it’s all me, Choi Jun-ho. It’s just a difference in preference based on how I felt on a certain day, whether I smash the enemy’s head with my bare hands or cut them with a sword. There was no fundamental difference in strength.
“Do you think madness could harden one’s head?”
A body hardened like steel, a Force as tough as his personality. Even if he had allowed the Force of my landmine to enter, his body would have weakened its power and softened its impact, making it difficult to do much damage.
Continuing to accumulate damage might eventually render him incapacitated, but doing so might result in fighting with the guy for three days straight.
To spend three days with a crazy bastard. It’s a dreadful situation.
The Berserker allowed me to land several attacks, but he endured without suffering any major blows. Strangely, the look in his eyes intensified, as if my landmine had made him more astute.
Did the landmine have such an effect?
I suddenly became curious about what the result would be if Berserker and Franz, the original owner of the landmine, were to face each other. Just when Berserker asked if he wasn’t Austrian, Franz would immediately throw a landmine at the other. (T/N: It’s because Franz here is German.)
“Argh!”
It was Berserker who was outmatched in the hand-to-hand combat. He’s forced to swing his sword to push me away, and I, familiar with his combat moves in my last life, managed to dodge the sword blows and land a mine instead.
I approached Berserker once again, extending my hand and forming a fist with my fingers. Even though it seemed impossible to grasp even a single blade of grass, the existence of a fleeting opportunity allowed me to unleash the Gift, Slash.
“......!”
Berserker, who was prepared for the landmine, was thrown into confusion for the first time and jerked his head back. The forceful blade narrowly passed by, slicing through his hair and causing some of it to fall to the ground.
As Berserker raised his head again, a red line appeared on his forehead, and blood dripped down.
“Hehe! Pain reminds people that they’re alive. By the way, Dual Gift. That attack just now could have led me to a ‘moment of the stars’...!”
“You’re crazy.”
However, Berserker’s expression changed for the first time.
“Let’s get one thing straight before this fight ends. I’m not crazy.”
“You’re insane.”
“Does that mean you’re not sane either?”
“I’m sane.”
“I’m sane, too. Eraser, you’re not crazy, and neither am I. We just look at the world in a different way. Or rather, the world doesn’t understand us.”
“... ... ...”
“You must have felt that too.”
How was it possible that the impressions I felt while hunting as a government hunter were coming out of his mouth?
“What we needed was the presence of someone who could empathize with us. We were misunderstood, and they didn’t even try to understand us. They simply labeled me a Berserker.”
“It sounds stupid, but it seems true.”
Honestly, I didn’t really like the names Eraser or Head Breaker.
Didn’t they sound like villain names? Why did they give me a name that sounded like a villain when I was the one catching villains? There could have been something cooler.
“I have nowhere to go, but you do. That’s the only difference between us.”
“So, you want to tell me that I’m sane?”
“I just wanted to express my thoughts.”
Seeing how he had only been saying truthful things, I felt like I want to change and follow him.
But I quickly gave up because I had to take away his gift.
“We’ve said our piece, right? Let’s end it now.”
***
During several clashes, Berserker felt that he couldn’t reach Eraser.
It was truly a strength that fit the word “despair”. He was tossed around like a puppet dancing in front of the other before he allowed himself to be attacked.
The gift called landmine was the most malicious attack he had encountered so far, and the Slash was the sharpest.
Most surprising of all was the combat experience he had shown during the battle.
He showed perfect control, like he’d been fighting all his life.
From beginning to end, he moved exactly as the guy wanted.
'So it’s a wall. I must overcome it to see the higher ground.'
However, the wall in front of him was impossible to overcome.
What level had this guy reached? And what kind of scenery did he see from there? He felt pathetic that he couldn’t figure it out.
How inadequate it was, even though I pursue a state of nothingness.
Desperately struggling, I couldn’t even slightly diminish his composure.
“Gah!”
Attacks continued at a speed that couldn’t be compared to any previous assaults.
He gulped down his saliva and unleashed thirty breathless sword strikes in all directions, but the guy effortlessly avoided them all, like a fish swimming through water. And then the other grabbed the sword he was holding and tore it apart.
He swung the half-split sword and tried to push it away, but a hand that reached right up to his nose slid past his neck and grabbed his collarbone.
Crack!
“Kraaaa!”
Amid the pain of his collarbone shattering like a sandcastle, he shouted with fighting spirit and attempted a body blow, but the guy, like a ghost, evaded it and successively destroyed his right shoulder, forearm, and wrist.
In the blink of an eye, one arm was completely ruined.
He tried to push away the Force of the landmine inside his arm, but the stronger Force rampaged freely and shattered it to pieces.
“Kruhuhu!”
The Berserker, who switched the sword to his left hand, let out a sinister laugh in the midst of merciless pain. Although the world seemed to take on a yellow hue, the strength displayed by the Eraser revealed a whole new level of power.
He wanted to experience that power even a little more. Overwhelming strength that could annihilate everything in the world. He truly lived up to his title as a strong and sinister Hunter, known as the ‘Eraser’.
What did this person see the world as? Could he approach it himself? He wanted to see. If he could take out the eyes of this guy, he wanted to capture that world, even if it meant taking them out.
Berserker was undeterred. Even in the face of death, his desire to reach the gap that the Eraser would have reached grew stronger.
But the wrist of his left hand twisted, causing him to lose his grip on the sword, and his elbow broke and snapped in the opposite direction. As a landmine hit the leg kicked aside, the struck leg stopped, resulting in a loss of mobility.
He was like a scarecrow, defenseless and exposed to the other’s attacks. Eraser’s hand dug into his chest.
“Ugh!”
With the pain of his heart rupturing, the entire world turned red. Within a fleeting moment of willpower. The Berserker gathered his last remaining strength and manifested his Gift.
Full Recovery.
A Gift that no one else in the world had ever known.
His shattered heart was restored, and every wound on his body healed perfectly.
His physical condition was at its best.
Eraser would not have expected him to come back from the dead.
That was the moment to kill that guy. It was cowardly, but it was also fate.
He would kill the Eraser and seize the ‘moment of the stars’.
However, in front of himself, who had fully recovered, there was the expressionless face of the Eraser.
That guy didn’t let his guard down for a moment.
As if he had anticipated every situation.
“So you’ve completely recovered.”
“How...?”
For a moment, he was stunned into silence, his thoughts interrupted by a hand digging into his chest again.
“I wanted to say this, Berserker.”
“......”
“Yeah, that Gift is amazing.”
Thud!
***
“Tough bastard.”
After pushing away the crumbling corpse of the Berserker, I consumed the blood taken from the closest point to his heart.
Blood Absorption began interpreting the Full Recovery contained in the Berserker’s blood.
Gifts were like fingerprints engraved in the blood. Blood Absorption copied that and transferred it into my own blood.
As I sensed a new Gift being engraved, I deleted the Pain Relief Gift I had before. Pain Relief helped alleviate pain during combat and aid in sustained combat effectiveness, but it couldn’t compare to Full Recovery.
Zzzing!
Intense migraines struck. It’s a familiar pain. This pain made me realize that it is the process through which I gain strength.
The reason Blood Master became the strongest was because I carefully selected the best among countless Gifts.
I still didn’t know why I went crazy. One of the most plausible reasons was that I consumed too many Gifts.
I wondered if the abundance of Gifts in my bloodstream collided and ran wild, affecting my sanity.
Even the crazed Blood Master discarded unnecessary Gifts at some point, keeping only the essential ones. I saw it as an act driven by the instinct for survival.
Amidst my contemplation, the Full Recovery copying was finished. Now, even if my heart shattered or my throat was cut, as long as a shred of will remained, I could resurrect.
Full Recovery was an extra life. This was a good reason to kill that troublesome fellow called the Berserker.
Anyway...
“Hey, why are you still alive?”
“......”
“Open your eyes. Otherwise, I’ll kill you again.”
At my warning, the Berserker, who had been playing dead, opened his eyes.
