Chapter 156: The Worst Possible Nightmare

So in the end, this was what it wanted to show him.

To show him just how completely and miserably he would collapse inside an irreversible despair.

“Ah……”

What made it worse was that Yu Hilo only regained consciousness three full years after the traffic accident. At the moment when he resolved to destroy the X-Gate again and wipe this world away, a strange sense of déjà vu struck him.

And then—everything vanished, as if it had all been an illusion.

Left alone in the darkness, Yu Hilo couldn’t remember whether he had cried there or laughed. He no longer had the strength to feel anything at all. As if everything inside him had burned away, he was utterly hollow.

All that remained to fill him was the bleakness of reality.

Within that pitch-black space, Yu Hilo’s ability erupted. As the shell of darkness peeled away layer by layer, a familiar scene emerged.

While Yu Hilo had relived three years in that place, less than an hour had passed here. The blizzard still raged on, yet the silence remained unchanged.

His body lay collapsed on the ground, hovering near death. His legs were frozen solid, refusing to move, and even opening his eyes was difficult. His eyelashes were crusted with ice, and each breath shattered into white mist.

If he had delayed even a little longer, he would have died—
and not just died, but died trapped inside his most painful memories.

Gritting his teeth, Yu Hilo forced himself upright. With a face as cold as frost, he stared at the glowing Gate Core.

As expected, his shadow had not frozen.

There was no hesitation. No lingering regret.

And so, with his own hands, Yu Hilo brought everything to an end.

Yu Hilo tried his best to summarize what he had experienced.

Despite his calm tone, Seong Jiwoo was visibly shaken. For a long while, he could only part his lips without managing to speak. His deeply sunken eyes remained fixed on Yu Hilo.

“If I hadn’t realized I was trapped in an illusion… I probably would’ve never woken up.”

And he would have died there.

Perhaps the world would have gone on peacefully without him.

Until now, every gate and dungeon had inflicted only physical pain. Higher difficulty simply meant it became harder to survive physically.

A dungeon that tailored psychological torment to a specific individual—he had never heard of one, let alone experienced it.

Even so, it wasn’t hard to imagine that it had been far more agonizing than any dungeon he had ever fought through.

Digging up pain you had barely managed to bury was like tearing open a scar that had just begun to heal. It was so excruciating that letting the wound fester again might have been preferable.

And Yu Hilo had entered such a place—twice.

“…Was it the same this time too? How—how did you even go back there…?”

Even asking felt wrong. Seong Jiwoo couldn’t finish his sentence, guilt weighing heavily on him. It felt as though he had pushed Yu Hilo straight into a death trap.

Pain like that didn’t dull just because you experienced it more than once.

“I thought it’d be better to face it knowing what it was… rather than being caught off guard. And now, losing that person doesn’t hurt as much as it used to…”

Before, when his world had collapsed, nothing remained.

Now, Seong Jiwoo—his one complete world—was still here.

Yu Hilo stopped speaking and looked at him.

As long as he could keep receiving that affectionate, irreplaceable gaze meant only for him, he could endure any pain.

He recalled the final floor of the X-Gate—the second time he had reached it.

“When you go in there, your judgment gets blurry. It’s like your soul gets patched over. The version of me inside the illusion becomes stronger than my real self. Uh… does that make sense?”

“…Yeah. More or less.”

Seong Jiwoo nodded slowly.

“And also… it wasn’t the same as before.”

To be honest, when he reached the final floor the second time, he wasn’t that afraid. He thought he already knew what awaited him.

He believed the final floor simply amplified a person’s most painful memory.

Even years later, the most painful memory for Yu Hilo was still that day. If anything, he had no other memories painful enough to compare.

Being with Seong Jiwoo had never been painful.

So he arrogantly thought this time might be easier.

“But when I went to the final floor this time… I saw something different.”

“Different…?”

“Yes. The final floor doesn’t actually show your most painful memory. What it really shows is…”

The most painful possible situation.

Yu Hilo hadn’t realized it, but that had been true the first time as well. What happened in the illusion had never actually occurred.

The dungeon’s goal hadn’t been to simply throw him back to the moment he lost Yoo Jieun.

What the X-Gate’s final floor wanted to give Yu Hilo was the despair of realizing that even if he went back, he would still fail to fix anything—and lose everything all over again.

“It pushes you into the worst possible situation. It’s a nightmare, literally. And you know, hyung… my biggest nightmare right now is—”

“……”

Yu Hilo assumed Seong Jiwoo already knew.

But Seong Jiwoo had no idea.

What could possibly hurt Yu Hilo the most?

Seong Jiwoo bit down on his lower lip. Even imagining a scenario where Yu Hilo suffered was unbearable.

An unknown emotion surged up from deep within him.

“Losing you. Forever.”

In the second illusion, Yu Hilo lost Seong Jiwoo, not Yoo Jieun.

He opened his eyes at the point of regression. Because it mirrored events he had actually lived through, it felt completely natural. Lost in the haze of the illusion, he sensed nothing strange.

Everything unfolded exactly as it had in reality.

Without the slightest deviation.

Seong Jiwoo reached out his hand first, patiently waiting until Yu Hilo finally took it.

They spent countless days together. Yu Hilo loved Seong Jiwoo just as deeply as before. And eventually, he faced another separation.

Up to that point, everything was vividly remembered—because it had truly happened.

The problem began when time moved beyond what he had actually lived.

The life of an adult Seong Jiwoo—one Yu Hilo had never witnessed.

“Honestly… I don’t remember much. And I don’t want to.”

“…Because it was too shocking?”

“Maybe. I just remember falling into deep despair after losing you… and suffering terribly. So I…”

He had tried to destroy everything again.

That was all that remained in his memory.

As he denied Seong Jiwoo’s death over and over, he eventually found himself standing in a frozen wasteland. His eyes were already raw and swollen beyond recognition.

He didn’t even remember how he woke up.

Like a madman, he forgot he was inside the X-Gate at all.

His sense of reality returned only much later—after so much time had passed he couldn’t even estimate how long. His legs had turned bluish, already necrotizing.

The moment he realized Seong Jiwoo still existed in reality, only one thought filled his mind:
I have to see him. Right now.

He poured every recovery potion Seong Jiwoo had once given him down his throat. A burning heat spread through his body, as if he were being scalded, and his skin slowly returned to its normal color.

Minutes later, after clearing the gate, Yu Hilo exited the X-Gate without pause, gulping down recovery drugs as he headed straight to the press conference.

Only after wrapping Seong Jiwoo tightly in his arms did he finally feel at ease.

He wanted Seong Jiwoo to understand what he meant to him—how overwhelming his presence was.

So Yu Hilo spoke the clearest truth he knew.

“Without you, hyung… nothing has meaning. So I—”

But Seong Jiwoo turned pale.

“Don’t tell me… you followed me into death there?”

Even if it was just an illusion, Yu Hilo should never have died for him.

Hunters were supposed to face death—especially the deaths of comrades—with composure. Few truly could, but they still had to learn how to let go.

To survive, they had to.

Watching the silent Yu Hilo, Seong Jiwoo sank deeper into thought.

“Hilo. You have to live without me.”

“……”

“And I have to live without you.”

Yu Hilo’s eyes trembled violently at the firm words. He looked deeply wounded.

“…Why… why would you say something like that?”

“We have to. So…”

Seong Jiwoo glanced once more at the blood-red number floating in the system window. Even though he already knew it was there, seeing it again made his heart drop.

Perhaps he had already resigned himself to that wretched fate.

That was why he was afraid—why he was imagining a future without himself, or without Yu Hilo.

Seong Jiwoo let out a deep sigh.

Yu Hilo’s gaze cooled as he watched him.

“Why do you keep looking over there?”

“…Huh?”

Yu Hilo rose and stepped right up to him. As Yu Hilo moved closer than the system window, it vanished naturally.

“Thinking that thing keeps controlling you… I can’t stand it. I want to tear it apart.”

“……”

“You said fate can be changed. That it can be changed.”

“Hilo…”

“I don’t even think that thing is our fate to begin with. But if you believe it is, then let’s change it. Fate, destiny—rip it all apart and remake it. At the very least, you won’t say something so cruel again.”

“……”

Seong Jiwoo pressed his lips together.

He knew his words had hurt Yu Hilo—and they wounded him just as deeply.

He didn’t show it, but he was suffering too.

“If this situation is just too heavy… too painful…”

“……”

“Then just close your eyes.”

Yu Hilo’s large hand gently covered Seong Jiwoo’s eyelids. Darkness filled his vision.

“I’ll take care of everything after that.”

A cool, resolute voice echoed beside his ear.

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