novelraw Chapter 3
Chapter 3
“...Hoo.”
Jin Crow grabbed the towel he had tossed beside the sofa and wiped the back of his neck.
The dry towel was instantly soaked.
It was no exaggeration; the sudden encounter with Idealle was nothing short of a disaster for him.
‘Damn you, Jin Crow.’
It was clear that his personality, constitution, and even his various illnesses had not disappeared.
He knew this because when Idealle had left her final warning, it had been incredibly difficult to suppress the surge of irritation and force out a reply.
‘When under the effects of the awakening, the original Jin Crow's personality becomes more severe. No, in this case, should I say it returns?’
The reason he dared to call it an ‘awakening’ was thanks to his mind becoming even slightly clearer.
But it wasn't an unconditionally welcome event.
Especially not in front of a powerful individual like Idealle.
‘Idealle Kukenhausen.’
It was a name no reader of ‘Galactic Chronicles’ could possibly not know.
She was listed among the top-tier powerhouses of the world until the latter half of the story, and at the same time, she was the protagonist Baek Hwi-young’s supporter and heroine. And…
‘A Penta-class Special Mission Officer of the United Human Star Nation.’
It wasn't that there was no one stronger than her, but it was an undeniable truth that she was a powerhouse who could hold a front line all by herself if she so chose.
“Hoo.”
In any case, having overcome one crisis, Jin Crow pressed his weary eyes with his hand and looked down.
Idealle wasn't what was important.
He continued his thoughts as he stared at the black cigarette and the glass on the table.
‘First off, it's not the cigarettes.’
He had originally been an avid smoker.
That's why he had smoked one to forcibly get a grip on his sanity when he first realized he’d been possessed, but there had been no change.
‘In that case…’
He slowly lifted the glass and took a sip.
*Gulp-.*
The moment the sharp alcohol flowed down his esophagus.
■User_Jin Crow
□Rank: Major
□Military Serial Number (S.N): SMCO55-1113027
□Gear: Dual (Error)
□Health Status: PTSD, Chronic Fatigue, Chronic Headaches, Drug Addiction (30min), Paranoia, Anger Management Issues
“That's the one.”
The time, which had been ticking down after his meeting with Idealle, increased back to 30 minutes.
‘Then, the reason Jin Crow was able to be strong was…’
He must have been drinking alcohol that contained an Awakening Agent.
No wonder he drank so often.
Now that he understood the other side of the character he had become, a dry laugh escaped him.
It wasn't just a simple alcoholic concept.
It must have been his own best effort.
“This has become a headache.”
Frowning, he opened a drawer and looked at the bottles of liquor, which seemed to number well over thirty.
In principle, instructors were allowed to smoke and drink, but Idealle, the Academy Commandant, had come and given him a warning.
This meant there was a limit to how openly he could ignore her.
But he couldn't just hand over the bottles of alcohol that had become his lifeline, could he?
He blinked his characteristically murky, dark eyes for a moment before letting out a sigh and starting to uncap all the bottles containing various kinds of liquor.
“Drinking alone, of all things. Tsk.”
It seemed it wouldn't be easy to drink it all by midnight.
Since he couldn't ‘not’ surrender the alcohol, he figured he would drink each one, test its effects, and keep only the good ones.
Gulp-.
“Cough, keuh.”
One bottle, two bottles, three bottles…
Downing nearly thirty bottles on an empty stomach was no small burden, but it wasn't entirely without results.
Among the more than thirty bottles of whiskey, he had found four Awakening Agents that were marked as lasting 30 minutes.
‘Is this all I can salvage?’
This amount should be enough to satisfy Idealle.
Honestly, he wanted to keep all of them, but it couldn't be helped.
However, separate from finding a solution for his lack of power, another obstacle had arisen.
“The lecture…”
A military academy instructor has to give lectures to the cadets.
It was an extremely obvious piece of ‘common sense’.
The problem was that he had never in his life taught anyone.
Was it fortunate that he had at least gone through some tough military service?
…Somehow, nothing was going smoothly.
Just as he was feeling that frustration, a thought suddenly crossed his mind, and he shot up from his seat.
“Curriculum.”
The instructor-exclusive quarters were quite spacious, but aside from the liquor bottles and cigarettes, it only contained the standard-issue furniture.
He immediately searched the room and found a device linked to the watch on his wrist, and thankfully, it was the right move.
‘Yang Jin-lei, Thomas Ed, Loki Lutz…’
After opening the device with biometric recognition and rummaging through the files, he found a file that organized the curriculum of all the instructors.
After scrolling for a while, he saw Jin Crow’s subject.
「Understanding Modern Warfare - Instructor Jin Crow」
Fortunately, nothing had changed; it was a theory lecture.
‘A combat department would be out of the question in this body. And I can't go in drunk every time, either.’
It would have been much easier if he had an Awakening Agent in pill form, but bringing an Awakening Agent effective on a Superhuman, not just an ordinary person, into the military academy was next to impossible.
Moreover, if it was revealed that an instructor at the Central Special Mission Military Academy, of all places, couldn't even operate his Gear properly without an Awakening Agent, it would be the worst-case scenario for him, who already had many enemies.
That was probably why the original Jin Crow had brought in alcohol with an awakening effect and kept it in a hip flask to drink.
“Hoo.”
Still, he felt a sense of relief.
Perhaps because of that.
Feeling slightly buzzed, he sank back into the sofa, put the half-smoked black cigarette back in his mouth, and tapped his fingers on the table.
‘Jin Crow.’
He felt the need to review everything he knew about the character he had now become.
This was both a natural course of action and one prompted by Idealle's reaction just a moment ago.
‘Come to think of it, even in the story, Idealle could never bring herself to be too harsh with Jin Crow.’
Idealle Kukenhausen.
She clearly belonged to the category of ‘good characters’.
For such a person to treat Jin Crow, who was closer to a villain based on his actions in the story, in that manner, it was highly likely that the reason lay in his past and his hidden secrets.
‘A member of Rosen, one of the largest factions in the military. And he was conscripted as a boy soldier at the beginning of the 3rd Galactic War and spent 20 years on the battlefield. As a result, he became broken like this.’
That was everything revealed about Jin Crow in the story.
As his thoughts reached that point, he suddenly felt glad that while he might have inherited Jin Crow's personality and way of speaking, he hadn't inherited his memories.
The mock battles and training from his own military service sometimes appeared in his nightmares; the things Jin Crow must have experienced in a world where planets could be bombarded would not be memories a 21st-century citizen could handle.
‘I don't really know anything about Rosen, either.’
All he knew was that they were not a benevolent group and that they were plotting something.
…And also that they would never let disloyal or incompetent members go unpunished.
‘Competent bastards with unknown motives. That should be a fair assessment.’
In the end, it was clear that this wasn't something he could resolve with brief deliberation.
Therefore, what Jin Crow—what he—could do was set.
*Tssss-.*
He stubbed out the nearly-finished cigarette in an ashtray, filled a hip flask with one of the four carefully selected bottles of whiskey just in case, and then rose from his seat, muttering softly.
“She said by midnight, didn't she?”
It seemed he needed to hurry.
***
「That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.」
Space had long been a dream for humanity.
The people of the distant past looked at the constellations and created their respective myths, and when the age of myth ended and science and reason filled the void, space was no longer a dream but another new world to be conquered.
And finally, in 2063.
When they terraformed Mars, built a colony, and invented Hyperspace Jump technology, the emotion felt by all of humanity was ‘ecstasy’.
The excitement of a new world before their eyes.
The fear of the unknown.
A vague anticipation for the future.
A century passed.
Large-scale colonies were pioneered, intelligent life was discovered, and humanity could finally be certain of one thing.
‘We are the first pioneers.’
Just as the United States had done in the distant past when it opened the era of westward expansion, countless people, legally or illegally, stretched out into space.
In AD 2126, humanity declared the ‘United Human Star Nation’, which combined all existing governments, and simultaneously proclaimed a new Universal Century (UC).
Decades passed like that.
In the meantime, colonial rebellions, coups by other species unable to endure discrimination, the rise of ochlocracy, and various scandals, big and small, shook the United Human Star Nation, but their territory only continued to grow day by day.
〔Recently, many pioneer fleets have lost contact.〕
In UC 47, the United Human Star Nation, having expanded as much as it could, came face to face with another galactic empire that called itself the Holy Galactic Empire.
The result was the 3rd Galactic War.
The great war, which lasted from as short as 10 years to as long as 20, was accompanied by at least tens of billions of human casualties and astronomical material damage to both sides each time it broke out.
Of course, even then, a few scholars who were watching the sporadically active space monsters, the Creatures, urged them to stop the unnecessary war of attrition and prepare for the space monsters, but their cries were thoroughly non-mainstream and became nothing more than empty shouts.
Yes, without even knowing what consequences that would bring.
“Urp!”
Baek Hwi-young rushed into the bathroom and grabbed the toilet bowl, and soon, yellow stomach acid and what little vomit there was came pouring out.
Fortunately, no one was in the dorm.
If he recalled correctly, his roommate around this time had quit the military academy for personal reasons.
“Uuurp! Uuuuuuurp!”
He must not have eaten much at this point.
That was a relief.
It meant he wouldn't have to hold onto the toilet for long.
Baek Hwi-young took a moment to compose his stomach, then straightened up and flushed the toilet.
“…How many times has it been?”
He couldn't even remember clearly anymore.
Was it over ten times?
Baek Hwi-young briefly retraced his memories, then recalled memories he'd rather not, his eyes scrunching up. A chilling smile spread across his lips as he muttered softly.
“Creature. Creature. Creature…”
The future always changes.
No, *he* had twisted it.
But the end was always the same: the march of countless Creatures and the collapse of the galaxy.
‘There's no end, no end in sight. Dammit.’
The regression he had thought was an opportunity was a living hell.
He had twisted, contorted, and even destroyed it.
The feeling of powerlessness, that nothing ever changed, constricted him as if to devour him at any moment.
Slap-!
But he immediately slapped his own cheek hard, his blurring eyes focusing as he muttered softly.
“…It's what must be done.”
Forcibly ignoring the agony of having to watch a foreseen doom and feeling a false sense of peace wouldn't change anything.
It would only add another death to his death.
In the prison of regression where not even a final scream was permitted, the only way for him to escape was to break this cycle.
Swoosh…
He turned on the tap to wash away the traces of his nausea, then walked out of the dorm.
The familiar grounds of the military academy came into view, and he could hear the bickering of upperclassmen passing by the dormitory just in time.
“Ugh, I'm really going to die at this rate.”
“Quit whining, you from the Special Ability Division. It's not like you guys spar with the instructors like we do…”
“What? Want a taste of electricity?”
“If you've got a problem, let's spar.”
After watching them for a moment, Baek Hwi-young slowly turned his gaze to the right, and soon, an endlessly familiar face came into view.
“Ah!”
Just then, a girl with light brown hair like a little squirrel spotted him and came running over with short steps.
“You said you were staying in the dorm, but you're out? Where are you going?”
“…Miel. Miel Angbereu.”
“Huh? What's wrong?”
He muttered her name, now a habit.
His childhood friend, and someone he had lost countless times.
Baek Hwi-young looked at her for a moment, then quickly composed his expression, feigning nonchalance as he parted his lips that wouldn't open easily.
“To the commissary… I was thinking of going.”
“Oh, I was just about to stop by. Good timing.”
Baek Hwi-young forced a smile onto his face.
“Yeah, let's go.”
Glancing at the grinning Miel right beside him, Baek Hwi-young reviewed the events to come.
‘Chance Marble picked a fight, and I broke his leg, I think.’
It hadn't been like that at first, but with each regression back in time, his hand had become heavier.
It couldn't be helped.
That guy was a piece of trash who, in the future, would be killed after causing an incident because he couldn't overcome his lust and jealousy.
And his target had been Miel, several times.
Grit-.
He unconsciously clenched his teeth and thought.
It seemed that this time, he would have to half-kill him.
“…What the.”
But his steps soon came to a halt.
Baek Hwi-young's dark pupils, looking at someone, trembled madly for a moment.
“Huh? What's wrong?”
Miel, standing beside him, sensed something was wrong and waved her hand in front of his eyes, but he just stood there, frozen like a statue, staring blankly at someone approaching.
‘Why is that person here now?’
At the end of his gaze was a man with a deeply distorted face, walking towards them carrying a box full of something.
…How could he not recognize him?
Baek Hwi-young muttered his name with vacant eyes.
“Jin Crow.”
A fearsome being whom everyone overlooked, an enemy he had to cut down with his own hands several times. And…
‘My benefactor.’
This was the moment he, for the first time in the countless times he had returned, acted as a variable.