The Hero Returns

Act 1

After finishing his sparring session with Sun Wukong, Su-hyeun took a short nap. He needed to refill his drained stamina and magical energy reserve, what with the war against the Heavenly World scheduled to take place in only a matter of days.

A while later, he woke up, and while using his still drowsy eyes, he confirmed that the room was completely empty. He then exited from the residence. The Bull Demon King and Sun Wukong, who were chatting away outside, briefly checked his mood and waved their hands.

"You've woken up?"

"Oh hey, you're here?"

It kind of felt like they were hiding something from him.

Su-hyeun studied them with a suspicious glint in his eyes. Unsurprisingly, the Bull Demon King showed no change in his expression, while Sun Wukong, a poor liar to begin with, did his best to avoid meeting his eyes and whistled as nonchalantly as possible.

The contrast here was truly stark, as perhaps the world's most straight-faced liar was standing right next to someone incapable of lying.

"Did you sleep well, big brother?"

"I, uh, I woke up just now, too."

"…Is that so?"

Su-hyeun studied Sun Wukong's face for a little while before turning around.

If they wanted to keep secrets from him, then he wasn't going to dig any deeper. If this had been in the beginning, then sure, he might have asked, but now, he trusted them implicitly and had no reason to doubt them.

"Where are you headed off to?" the Bull Demon King asked after noticing that Su-hyeun was walking toward the rear of the residence.

The latter glanced at Sun Wukong, who was still seemingly minding the atmosphere, and replied, "There was something I wanted to confirm, actually."

"Could it be the Somersault cloud?"

"Yes."

"Do take care, then. Ah, and on your way back, please get some firewood as well. The rooms were cold last night."

"I will."

That was a request for a simple errand.

Su-hyeun tried to eavesdrop on their conversation as he slowly walked away, but he couldn't hear what the two of them were saying. It seemed that they blocked off all sound to ensure that he would not hear anything.

"Which means they have something private to discuss."

Su-hyeun left them behind and climbed the mountain. Although the route to the summit was steep, he didn't take long to reach it. He stood at the point closest to the clouds and was greeted by the wide-open vista and the refreshingly cool air that entered deep into his lungs.

The mountain's summit was home to a wide flat plain where all the trees had been cut down. Su-hyeun stood in the middle and slowly closed his eyes.

Then, he spoke inwardly.

"Come."

He automatically came to know the command word without anyone telling him. Although he couldn't tell whether that was one of the effects of the Somersault cloud belonging to him or the system doing its thing again, not knowing the truth didn't stop him from unhesitatingly calling out in his mind again.

"Somersault cloud!"

Shu— Shushushu—

Pure white air currents suddenly generated all around Su-hyeun. They then enveloped his body like some kind of armor. No, they actually were no different from real armor now.

"Okay, so I've managed to materialize it to this point…"

While he was resting on his back, Su-hyeun hadn't been completely idle. He was picturing how he would go about using the Somersault cloud.

This divine artifact's utilization wasn't fixed to one method, and how it should be deployed was wholly dependent on the user.

Sun Wukong primarily used the Somersault cloud to fly around, as well as to summon storms to rain down lightning bolts. There must have been other ways to use it, but those two were the most famous techniques that symbolized the Great Sage Heaven's Equal, Sun Wukong.

Of the two, Su-hyeun didn't require an ability related to long-distance travel. Although not as fast as the Somersault cloud, Miru would still be by his side. Considering the red dragon's raw pace, it would be possible to reach the other side of Earth in only a few hours.

So, the other way Su-hyeun came up with to use the Somersault cloud was to materialize it like a set of armor.

As for the second one…

"Attack." Su-hyeun raised his hand toward the sky and murmured, "Thunderbolt."

Flash—

Rumbleeee—

Blinding streaks of white light flashed above the darkened clouds in the sky.

However, they couldn't descend to the ground. His control over the Somersault cloud wasn't quite good enough for that yet.

"This is harder than it looks."

He had been thinking that it would be easy to pull off while picturing it in his mind.

The Somersault cloud that now belonged to Su-hyeun allowed him to use several new abilities like regular skills. One of them let him call forth lightning and create storm clouds.

"Controlling nature is originally the domain of a Taoist god, right?"

He recalled what the Bull Demon King had told him during a theory lesson in the past.

Assimilation with Mother Nature itself. Such a thing was possible for the Bull Demon King who had reached the very pinnacle of the Sage Arts and was infinitely close to becoming a true Taoist god. Once one became a god, then one could easily call forth storms and make it rain, or even cause an earthquake to break out.

In a way, the Somersault cloud could be referred to as a divine artifact that possessed the powers of a Taoist god. Considering that Su-hyeun—a complete beginner in the Sage Arts compared to either Sun Wukong or the Bull Demon King—was able to manipulate the weather, even if only by a little, it could be said that such a feat was already pretty special.

[Basic Breathing Technique]

<ul>

Grade: -

Category: Active (activation type)

The Sage Arts' basic breathing method. Maintaining the "Basic Breathing Technique" reduces your magical energy consumption by 39%.

Proficiency: 61.91%

Your magical energy concentration will rise depending on your proficiency.

</ul>

[Sage's Eye]

<ul>

Grade: -

Category: Active (activation type)

Category: Sage Art

It is the "eye" that sees the world's truth. All objects and the surrounding world will slow down in your view and allow you to see what you wish to find. Additional abilities will be granted as your proficiency improves.

Proficiency: 25.22%

Granted ability: "Gyeol"

</ul>

[Sage's Eye: Gyeol]

<ul>

Grade: -

Category: Active (activation type)

Category: Sage Art, Sage's Eye

It can only be used when the "Sage's Eye" is active. It can analyze the weaknesses and characteristics of the designated target caught in your view.

Proficiency: 23.17%

</ul>

[Sage Art]

<ul>

Grade: -

Category: Passive

It is a type of meditation on combat arts created by the Taoist god. It will enhance the purity of your magical energy and allow you to acquire related skills. With higher proficiency, you can also awaken your own innate abilities.

Proficiency: 11.45%

</ul>

He checked the skill window, and the various skills he had acquired and learned so far floated up, namely, the breathing technique, the Sage Arts, and the others.

Rather than calling it a skill status report, however, this was more like arranging all of his abilities and displaying them in numerical values so that he could check them out easily.

After confirming the percentage of the Sage Arts' proficiency through the skill window, he immediately thought that it would have been truly wonderful if that figure could be raised by working in levels like in a game.

Half a year—that was the length of time Su-hyeun had spent to learn the Sage Arts and the skills related to it, as well as raise the proficiency percentage of each of them.

Out of them all, the one thing that showed the least amount of improvement was the field of study that encompassed everything else, the "Sage Arts."

"Honestly, it basically stopped increasing after reaching the 10 percent mark, didn't it?" he mulled inwardly.

He had acquired the Sage's Eye and then started perceiving the Gyeol. The Sage Arts' proficiency rose noticeably during that process, but raising it higher became extremely hard to do afterward.

"The first brother said this is already fast, but…"

Su-hyeun's situation was different from either that of the Bull Demon King or Sun Wukong.

Time—that was the difference between himself and his two sworn brothers.

Both the Bull Demon King and Sun Wukong enjoyed the benefit of near-infinite time. In other words, they had enough leeway to slowly master the Sage Arts over the course of hundreds, thousands, no, tens of thousands of years.

However, Su-hyeun held the knowledge of the fixed future, the destroyed world, and the predator that would create such a world and ultimately devour it.

To fight those creatures off, he needed to get so much stronger than he was now. The reason why he decided to learn the Sage Arts wasn't to become some god later but because he simply had to win against even more powerful foes.

"It's not all bad."

Controlling the Somersault cloud proved to be difficult. However, that only made him feel more satisfied, instead.

"If I can perfectly wield this cloud, then…"

By then, Su-hyeun would probably have reached a similar realm of the Sage Arts as Sun Wukong.

Squeeze—

He clenched his fists tightly at the thought of the new possibilities. At the same time, a wide grin spread on his lips.

"Four days remaining until our departure."

Shuwuwu—

Su-hyeun altered the shape of the Somersault cloud wrapped around his body and muttered to himself, "I guess things will be a bit busy for me from now on."

<hr />

A day before the war against the Heavenly World went underway.

Su-hyeun told the Bull Demon King and his two other sworn brothers that he would briefly stop by his hometown and returned to his original world.

The war against the Heavenly World would probably not end in a day or two, so he wanted to make sure that nothing strange was happening back home one last time.

"A blue-colored dungeon showed up near Taiwan a few days ago, but you don't have to worry about that one. No, you should be focusing on passing the 60th floor instead. I mean, it's already been half a year since you reached that floor, right?"

Su-hyeun showed up at the office, and Lee Ju-ho compared and analyzed the various data of the dungeons that had appeared in various parts of the globe, as well as the available awakener manpower to handle them, then stated his opinion on the matter.

A blue-colored dungeon. Although such a dungeon did present a fairly high level of difficulty, Lee Ju-ho determined that Su-hyeun didn't need to step in because of that lone dungeon.

"Will it really be alright?" Su-hyeun asked.

"The standards of the awakeners have risen quite a lot recently, so yeah. The number of S-Ranks has also doubled, you know. I mean, it's at the point that some people are saying we should create SS-Rank soon."

The "SS-Rank."

For sure, Su-hyeun had memories of such an opinion regarding the necessity of creating a rank higher than S-Rank that did the rounds, even back in the previous timeline.

The fact that discussion regarding another rank above "S" had cropped up could only mean that the growth rate of the ability users was a lot faster compared to in the past.

"If so, it should be alright," Su-hyeun thought.

Even if it wasn't him, there were several skilled people capable of raiding a blue-colored dungeon.

There was Gordon Rohan. Thomas and Hak-joon, too. Besides these three, he remembered several other very skilled people among the S-Rank awakeners.

Judging from Lee Ju-ho's confident-sounding voice, it seemed that some of them must've had enough time on their hands to take care of this event.

And as there hadn't been a single indigo-colored dungeon yet, Su-hyeun didn't have to worry too much about anything at the moment.

"In that case, it's a relief."

"Are you planning to finally reach the next floor?"

"Well… I think that's going to be likely," Su-hyeun muttered back ruefully. "Even though I don't really want to."

"Now, that's a surprise. Weren't you in a rush to get to the 100th floor as soon as possible? But you've already spent half a year on the current floor."

"That goes to show you how much I've managed to earn on this floor. For instance…"

Su-hyeun stopped his sentence there and raised his head to stare at the cloudy sky up above.

Lee Ju-ho was waiting for him to finish, so he couldn't help but tilt his head after no follow-up words came his way. He wondered what Su-hyeun wanted to say in the first place, but eventually, he chased after the younger man's gaze and looked up at the sky as well.

"Man, the weather is seriously gloomy today. I heard it's going to rain sometime later, too."

Drip—

The moment he finished his words, a drop of water fell on Lee Ju-ho's face.

"Ah, it's raining."

Drip, drop, drooop—

Shwaaaaaah—

The raindrops that fell one at a time suddenly poured down at a crazy rate, as if a hole was punched in the heavens.

Lee Ju-ho hurriedly shielded his head with his hand and pointed at the Jongno Tower building. "H-hey, let's finish our chat inside. I heard it's going to rain for a while!"

It was right then that Su-hyeun continued from where he had left off. "…Something like this."

"Uh? Did you say some—?"

Lee Ju-ho caught that small murmur and wondered what that was all about, but before he could ask about it…

He realized that the raindrops had stopped falling on his hand and hurriedly raised his head to look up again. And then, he was treated to a hard-to-believe spectacle.

"The clouds, they…" he thought.

The gloomy rain clouds that had completely filled the skies above his head until a second ago were rolling back on their own. Even more mysteriously, they were disappearing at a rate fast enough for his eyes to clearly see.

This was a truly unbelievable event. Lee Ju-ho urgently lowered his head and looked at Su-hyeun.

The latter had been staring at the sky as well. There was a hint of bluish light that flickered in his eyes before it disappeared without a trace.

He smiled in satisfaction and said, "Why don't we go inside? We're all soaked to the bone, after all."

"…"

Step, step—

Su-hyeun strode toward the interior of Jongno Tower. Lee Ju-ho muttered to himself as he alternated his gaze between Su-hyeun's back and the sky where the clouds had all rolled away and the sun was shining brightly once more.

"It can't be… There's no way, right?"