novelraw Chapter 332: Episode 332
Chapter 332: Episode 332
"S-Sister?"
Hong Yeon’s pupils trembled violently.
"...Sister... Sister! How is this possible?!"
Hong Yeon surged forward, desperate to close the distance, but Yusin threw his arm out to block her path.
"Calm down," he warned, his voice tight. "Doesn’t something feel wrong?"
Hong Yul wore a smile that went beyond mere relaxation—it was utterly, disturbingly leisurely.
The aura she exuded was completely different from before. The woman who had once possessed a rugged, feral, and overwhelming presence now radiated a mystical energy, as though she had transcended the mortal plane entirely.
She offered Yusin a casual wave. "Hey there, kiddo."
Yusin fell silent as his face drained of color.
"It’s been five years, Yusin. How have you been?"
"Stop." Yusin ground his teeth together. "Don’t you dare flap your gums using that body. Nemesis."
"You catch on fast."
With a faint, amused smirk, the entity uncrossed her legs and slowly rose to her feet.
Before anyone could react, her golden eyes shifted, bleeding into a brilliant, toxic scarlet.
"This is... a joke, right?" Hong Yeon choked out, her fingers gripping Yusin’s clothes like a lifeline. Her mental state was fracturing, her body shaking like a leaf in a storm.
"Want me to tell you a fun fact?" she asked, her gaze locking dead onto Hong Yeon’s face.
"Someone got here before you all did. Just one person. And she was faster than humanity’s entire raid team combined."
Hong Yul—no, Nemesis—basked in the horror radiating from the bewildered Hong Yeon and the surrounding hunters.
To her, a world teetering on the brink of annihilation, or this twisted, heartbreaking reunion between sisters... all of it was nothing more than cheap entertainment.
"She flew a fighter jet completely solo, throwing herself out from tens of thousands of feet above the New Continent. She shattered dozens of barrier layers with her bare hands and finally reached my domain."
Nemesis turned her back, taking a slow, dramatic stroll.
"She picked a fight with me using the body of a dying woman, her bones creaking and her flesh rotting away. I’ve been watching this planet for a very long time, and I truly believed there wasn’t a single human who could harm me besides the Guardian."
Her hand trailed out, gently stroking the fallen, bone-white husk of Nemesis’s original body.
"But I lost. To that frail human."
Hong Yeon and the hunters were completely dumbstruck.
"She injected herself with dozens of mana-overload stims, roaring as she charged at me, completely drunk on pain and madness. She became something beyond human. I’ve destroyed countless worlds up until now, but I’ve never met a creature quite like her."
She lightly tugged at the bandages wrapped tightly around her chest.
Thick blood seeped from the already crimson wrappings, dying them an even darker shade of maroon. It was a wound so severe that merely standing should have been biologically impossible.
"That’s right. With barely a flicker of her lifespan left, that human tried to drag me down to hell with her."
"Stop...! Stop it!" Hong Yeon screamed, her entire body convulsing with grief, but Nemesis merely smiled.
"She actually killed me. I’ll admit that. But unfortunately, she didn’t seem to think about what would happen after I died."
Yusin felt the blood in his veins turn to ice.
It was the absolute worst-case scenario.
"But who cares?" Nemesis flashed her teeth in a feral grin. "In the end, I obtained the ultimate vessel. Now, I’m going to destroy your world using the very body you all praise and worship as your Great Hero. Sounds fun, doesn’t it?"
"...Never." Hong Yeon’s voice trembled with absolute fury. A blood-red aura violently flared to life around her. "I will never let that happen. Even if my body crumbles to dust, I will tear you apart."
"Hmm."
In response, a mirroring red aura erupted from Nemesis’s stolen body with explosive, earth-shattering momentum.
"Try it."
Her voice had warped into something entirely monstrous.
*
The Great Hero, Hong Yul.
The moment her younger sister, Hong Yeon, officially became a Rank 1 hunter, Hong Yul abruptly announced her retirement and vanished from the public eye.
On the surface, the excuse for her retirement was the severe worsening of her accumulated injuries.
In truth, the red aura was far too dangerous a power for any human to wield. It hadn’t been an issue during her absolute peak in her twenties, but as she aged and suffered consecutive traumas, her natural immunity to the red aura collapsed. From then on, every time she invoked that power, her own body rotted away.
It was an overwhelming strength, bought at the cost of shaving away her own lifespan. Yet, despite that heavy toll, she had fought on more battlefields than any other hunter in history.
Then, Hong Yul suddenly declared her retirement. After that day, she cut ties with everyone.
Not the Korean government, not the comrades who had bled beside her, and not even her own flesh and blood, Hong Yeon.
She simply vanished without a trace, as if she had been erased from the world. When a Great Hero makes up their mind to disappear, no one can find them.
Knowing the agonizing pain her sister had endured, Hong Yeon didn’t aggressively try to track her down. Instead, she worked herself to the bone, desperately trying to fill the massive void her sister had left behind.
Whenever the government attempted to locate Hong Yul, Hong Yeon would throw a fit, fiercely opposing the search.
Hunters were always in short supply, and she had seen far too many retired veterans dragged back into the mud, forced to roll around on the battlefield until the day they died.
Because of that, Hong Yeon despised it whenever anyone even brought up Hong Yul’s name.
But the truth was... Hong Yeon knew.
She knew that Hong Yul’s remaining lifespan was slipping away like sand through an hourglass.
She had prayed that her sister would find her own sliver of happiness, even if only for the short time she had left.
However.
In the end, Hong Yul had returned.
Back to the battlefield.
Leaving her frustrating juniors behind, she burned away the very last embers of her life to fight Nemesis all alone.
If Nemesis hadn’t possessed the insidious ability to steal its killer’s body upon death, Hong Yul might have single-handedly gifted true peace to the world.
But ultimately, that was not how her story ended.
Yusin exhaled a long, deep breath and stepped up to the front line.
There was no way he could keep his composure.
Just how many times did they have to go through this? Disasters. Demonkins.
He felt a terrible, overwhelming hatred for beings like this—creatures that ruthlessly trampled upon and mocked the human heart.
Luminous blue feathers fluttered through the air as Yusin’s attire seamlessly shifted into a resplendent azure robe.
"I’m sick of this."
He raised his right arm, and countless magic circles unfurled across the sky. Buffing arrays rapidly layered themselves over the initial spell matrixes.
"Let’s end it all right here, Disaster."
"Sounds good."
The Final Disaster smiled with Hong Yul’s face and spoke with Hong Yul’s voice.
"If I wipe out your raid team without leaving a single rat alive, do you think humanity will finally surrender?"
Yusin swung his arm violently, and the thousand fireballs shot forward like a barrage of meteors.
In response, Nemesis let out a playful, mocking, "Hi-yah!" and casually swatted the air with her fist.
The crimson shockwave that rippled out from that simple, effortless punch instantly annihilated over a thousand amplified Fire Cannons. It didn’t stop there—it swept through the rear guard, reducing dozens of hunters to ash in the blink of an eye.
The fierce backdraft sent survivors flying like ragdolls and ripped ancient trees out by their roots.
"Not bad," she muttered, clenching and unclenching her fist to test the stolen muscles.
At that exact fraction of a second, Yusin—having already circled behind her—spun his body and delivered a picture-perfect, devastating kick.
Yusin was too stunned to speak. His expression completely froze.
His opponent had reacted without even bothering to look back. Her perfectly extended index finger had blocked Yusin’s leg right in the middle of his overwhelming attack.
Even as his Devastar spell detonated at point-blank range, she stood perfectly fine in the epicenter, completely unharmed.
"A Master of the Magic Tower who fights in close-quarters combat. How peculiar."
Just then, the thick black smoke from the explosion parted like the Miracle of Moses. Hong Yeon descended from above, her sword crashing down in a vertical guillotine strike.
But once again, Nemesis caught the legendary blade using nothing but her index and middle fingers.
"But it’s weak."
Yusin and Hong Yeon trembled, forcing every ounce of their strength into their respective limbs, but Nemesis didn’t budge a single inch.
It felt as if they were trying to physically push down a mountain.
"Weak. Weak. Weak. Weak."
As Nemesis spread her crossed arms, her red aura exploded outward in a devastating omnidirectional blast.
The two hunters hurriedly aborted their attacks, launching themselves backward to escape the blast radius.
"The Guardian and the Master of the Magic Tower. Weren’t you two supposed to be humanity’s strongest?"
She wore a lethally seductive smile as she pulled her right arm back.
"I thought this woman was just the appetizer, but it turns out she was the main course."
"Dodge!"
A massive pillar of red energy blasted out in the direction of Nemesis’s swinging fist. Before anyone even had the time to register the warning, five veteran hunters were swept up in the cataclysmic firepower and wiped out of existence.
"This body is so much fun."
Taking a large, sweeping step forward, she unleashed a blinding barrage of punches into thin air. With every phantom strike, the bodies of the suit-clad hunters violently ruptured and burst apart like overripe fruit.
"Aaaaaaaaah!"
Just then, with his colossal fists tightly clenched, Gabriel descended upon Nemesis from the heavens like a bolt of holy lightning.
Gabriel’s meteor strike slammed squarely into her back. She dropped to one knee with a sharp groan as the stone floor around them caved in, shattering and shooting into the air like shrapnel.
"I-It worked!"
"That’s Gabriel for you!"
However, the expression on Gabriel’s face—the man who had just thrown the punch—was paralyzed with sheer, unadulterated terror.
"Look at you, all scared."
Her slender, pale hand was casually gripping Gabriel’s giant fist. Without even shifting her stance, she simply squeezed.
"Aaaaaaaaah!"
With the gruesome, sickening sound of flesh and bone being crushed inside an industrial press, mangled chunks of meat squeezed out from between her fingers.
"Ugh! Urgh!"
Driven by a desperate, pain-fueled fury, Gabriel threw his uninjured fist straight at Nemesis’s face.
She didn’t even flinch. She simply shielded her face with the red aura. Gabriel’s massive fist was ground away into bloody mist, like a cream cake shoved into blender blades.
"Aaaaaaaaaaaagh!"
Gabriel howled in excruciating agony. Nemesis reached up and forcefully clamped her hand over his mouth, cutting off his screams.
"I loathe loud, squealing things."
"Urgh! Cough! S-Stop...! Please!"
As Gabriel trembled violently, blubbering and begging for his life, Nemesis giggled at the delightful entertainment. Her face was the picture of pure, sadistic satisfaction.
"But I just love that terrified look on your face."
Letting go of his face, Nemesis seamlessly followed up by driving a brutal uppercut into his jaw with her other fist.
Gabriel’s head was cleanly ripped from his neck, launching high into the ash-choked sky.
"...This can’t be!"
Even though he had recently been outshone by Yusin, Gabriel was still a titan among men—a hunter whom the public perceived as an absolute powerhouse.
Yet Nemesis had butchered him like a cheap toy.
—"Everyone, snap out of it!"
Sham, swiftly regaining her composure, screamed over the comms.
—"Don’t think of that thing as a human just because it looks like one! Fire! If you have any firepower left, pour it all out right now!"
The hunters steadied their stances, pulling the triggers of their firearm devices. A barrage of magic bullets and Unique Abilities poured toward the enemy, only to be effortlessly shredded and scattered by the crimson aura surrounding Nemesis.
—"Gravity abilities aren’t working!" a voice panicked over the comms.
—"The red aura is tearing right through curse effects!"
—"What the hell kind of power is this?"
Back when Hong Yul’s martial prowess had been aimed at monsters and fiends, they hadn’t fully grasped the sheer terror of it. But now, standing against her, they realized there was no power more agonizing to face. To make matters worse, her body, hijacked by Nemesis, exuded a suffocating pressure that easily surpassed her prime.
"Everyone, step back." Hong Yeon strode forward, her knuckles white around the hilt of her sword. "Half-baked attacks will only get in the way. I’ll handle her."
Hovering in the sky above, Yusin watched her closely. It was the first time he had ever seen Hong Yeon wear such an expression. Anger, sorrow, despair, and crushing guilt—a volatile cocktail of emotions swirled in her eyes, fueling the immense force of her grip.
Yusin pressed a finger to his earpiece. "Yeon, stay calm."
—"I hear you, Yusin," she replied through the comms.
She lowered her center of gravity into a battle-ready stance.
—"I am calm."
She blasted forward, the stone floor violently shattering beneath her boots. In less than the blink of an eye, the ninety-eight-foot gap vanished into three. Hong Yeon swung her blade in a brutal arc just as Nemesis threw a devastating punch.
An explosive roar ripped through the air, so deafening it defied belief that it came from steel clashing against bare knuckles.
Hong Yeon’s golden eyes flashed, and she blurred into a relentless barrage of strikes. Her sword swept in hundreds of branching arcs, painting the sky with countless crimson slashes. Yet, Nemesis expertly danced through the deadly trajectories, weaving her own punches into the lethal web to dismantle the assault.
The noise was absolute.
Red embers and fierce sparks erupted in every direction, engulfing the battlefield. Wherever their crimson strikes collided, the earth caved in or violently split apart, completely terraforming the landscape. Just what kind of battle was this? The observing hunters shuddered, paralyzed by a mixture of absolute awe and primal terror.
Even the fractured ground was too narrow a stage for their clash. The two women took to the sky, exchanging blinding blows as their crimson auras detonated in midair.
Nemesis’s leg swept past Hong Yeon’s cheek, leaving a clean gash that looked exactly like a blade wound. Letting out a fierce battle cry, Hong Yeon unclipped the scabbard from her waist and thrust it forward, tearing a bloody line across Nemesis’s abdomen.
For aura users of their monstrous caliber, the boundary between a sword and a blunt object simply didn’t exist. Whatever they wielded transformed into a legendary blade, capable of severing anything in the world.
Their weapons and limbs tangled in a deadly knot before violently breaking apart. In the recoil, Nemesis’s tattered clothes fluttered upward, exposing her bare stomach.
Hong Yeon was dumbstruck, her eyes widening in shock.
Marring her sister’s toned abdomen were countless jagged scars and a constellation of needle marks.
"How much do you actually know about this woman, Guardian?" Nemesis laughed, her voice a cruel echo. "What a foolish human. So pathetic it’s practically pitiable. I wonder, does her precious little sister even know? Does she know that her participation in countless disasters to earn the title of a great hero, that fighting so desperately she ruined her own body, was all for the sake of her last remaining blood relative?"
Hong Yeon fell silent.
"She would concede anything for her little sister. Her power, her command, and even..." Nemesis’s glowing orange eyes shifted toward Yusin. "Her heart."
Once again, fist and sword collided in a violent shower of sparks. But Nemesis refused to shut her mouth.
"Did you know? After she poured her red aura into you, her own immunity to it completely collapsed."
"When you were wailing in agony during the transfer, she stood behind you, shedding tears of blood."
"For you. All of it was for you."
Hong Yeon glared with absolute fury. "But you are not my sister!"
Right as fist and sword locked in a brutal contest of strength, grinding steel against aura, Nemesis smiled. It was a twisted, mocking expression. And then, mimicking a trembling, tender voice, she spoke.
"Yeon."
In that single, damning instant, the strength evaporated from Hong Yeon’s arms. Her sword’s trajectory faltered, twisting aside. Nemesis lunged straight into the fatal opening.
Just as the brutal hand, cloaked in a lethal red aura, closed in to tear Hong Yeon’s face apart—
A black streak plummeted vertically from the heavens, slamming a boot directly into Nemesis’s face.
—"I told you to stay calm!" Yusin roared through the comms.
With his Devastar armor fully activated, Yusin drove his heel into Nemesis’s skull, plunging her thousands of feet down from the sky.
They collided dead-center with the earth, instantly carving out a catastrophic crater.
"You little...!" Nemesis snarled, reaching up to snatch his leg. But Yusin was already retreating. Activating his Wing Golem, he launched himself backward and extended his arm toward her.
Meteors rained down from the sky, striking with the speed and ferocity of lightning.
Surging to her feet, Nemesis punched the empty air, the sheer concussive force shattering and detonating the meteors mid-flight. Within seconds, the sky was smothered in a thick blanket of volcanic ash.
It’s not over yet!
Yusin gritted his teeth and violently twisted both arms.
Centered entirely on Nemesis, the earth snapped upward as if it possessed a will of its own. Faster than she could react, Yusin clenched his fists.
The bedrock curled into a colossal sphere, brutally crushing inward to entomb her at its core.
With Nemesis trapped inside the massive earthen prison, Yusin raised his palm. The titanic sphere levitated high into the sky. He then brutally twisted his clenched fist to the side.
The sphere violently compressed, shrinking to a quarter of its original size under immense gravitational pressure.
However, no matter how devastating a seventh-order spell was, it couldn’t contain her for long. Fissures spiderwebbed outward from the core, bleeding the blinding crimson light of her aura. Yusin dragged in a deep breath, instantly queuing his next seventh-order spell.
Frost rapidly crystallized across the surface of the floating earthen sphere.
Within moments, high-density ice boasting the durability of solid mithril encased the prison. The biting cold cascaded downward, flash-freezing the terrain below to form a massive terrestrial glacier, while the ice above expanded to more than twenty times the sphere’s original thickness. In the blink of an eye, a frozen asteroid hung suspended in the sky.
"Is this... for real?"
"I don’t even have the energy to be surprised anymore."
The surviving hunters let out hollow, breathless chuckles.
Yusin touched down on the frozen ground, exhaling heavily as he braced his legs wide. He pulled his right arm far back, his mana rapidly surging and converging in the palm of his hand. This was the finale—the exact decisive strike that had once brought down the Generalissimo.
A blinding blue flash of absolute annihilation pulverized everything in its path, tearing a massive, smoking hole straight through the heart of the frozen asteroid.