Black Badger

People were too shocked to move.

Many of the Badgers hadn’t even grasped what had happened. Several of them widened their eyes and searched for the source of the sound. They hadn’t been able to follow Hildebert’s movement as he burst toward the wall in an instant.

Taut, strained air.

No one could easily open their mouth.

The silence was broken by a choking cough.

Jaeyeon pushed against the ground with the soles of his feet, struggling to draw in more oxygen. 𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚

“Answer me.”

Hildebert muttered.

It was a voice held down as if it might burst at any moment.

“Why did you throw me into the portal?”

He wasn’t strangling him.

But the fist gripping his collar was pressing into Jaeyeon’s Adam’s apple. The clothes Hildebert had been yelling at him to take off were a hair’s breadth away from being torn apart by sheer grip strength.

Jaeyeon coughed two more times.

Then he answered.

“To save you.”

BOOOM!

A scream spread, then died down.

Ami sucked in a sharp breath, then raised her voice when she saw the red blood flowing from the back of Jaeyeon’s head.

“Hilde!”

Hildebert didn’t hear her.

It seemed like he couldn’t.

The man who had slammed Jaeyeon into the wall lifted the hand gripping his collar upward. Jaeyeon’s shoe tips barely brushed the floor as he was almost lifted into the air.

“Why?”

The whisper was low.

“Why did you do it?”

“-You.”

Jaeyeon replied in a choking voice.

“So I could watch you and Kyle find peaceful rest together?”

BOOOM!

This time, Jaeyeon’s body flew through the air.

Tracing a parabolic arc, his body smashed into the opposite wall. A dull impact echoed, and a pale cloud of dust billowed up.

Badgers’ screams rose and fell.

Ami had both hands clamped over her mouth now.

The other TF members didn’t dare intervene either. Frozen in place, they could only stare at Hildebert’s blazing eyes.

The command staff also remained silent, watching Hildebert closely.

All three of them had stepped forward, positioning themselves between the ordinary Badgers and Hildebert.

Hildebert, who had thrown Jaeyeon, slowly straightened his body.

“It was already over.”

He whispered gently.

“It was all over back then, Jaeyeon.”

“Khk, kehk!”

Jaeyeon spat out a cough.

From within the dispersing dust, the man staggered as he forced himself upright. The shock had been severe; his body didn’t seem to obey him properly.

He possessed an enhanced body, so the injury to the back of his head had already healed.

Hildebert slowly approached Jaeyeon.

“And you flipped it all over like this?”

“I saved you and you’re still throwing a tantrum....”

“You’re making me do this to you again?”

Hildebert snatched up Jaeyeon, who had begun crawling on all fours.

Grabbing the back of his neck, he dragged him back to the center of the year-end party hall.

Jaeyeon kicked and struggled, but it was a futile flail.

The fox-eyed man was slammed down onto the floor.

Hildebert looked down at the one groaning beneath him.

“I cleaned everything up. I ended the war. Kyle died, and I died. Rei, whom humanity named a tenth-class Creature, died too. For humans, it should’ve been the best possible ending.”

“-I was only trying to save you! How was I supposed to know what you bastards were doing, holding hands like that at the end!”

Jaeyeon screamed.

Instinctive fear clung to his pupils.

“That black-haired one, I left him to die outside the portal!”

The year-end hall rang.

“My goal was you, not both of you! I threw you into the portal so you’d get treated by that crazy mage inside! You alone!! Just you!!”

“But in the end, Kyle lived, and I lived too.”

Hildebert pointed out.

His voice was calm, utterly flat.

That didn’t mean he’d stripped the near-explosive fury from his tone.

At some point, his right hand gripping the sword hilt was trembling faintly with extreme anger.

No one failed to recognize that he was on the verge of exploding.

“Don’t make excuses.... At least tell me how you plan to clean this up.”

“Fuck, I really didn’t know! If you hadn’t put on that pathetic melodrama at the very last moment, this mess wouldn’t have happened!”

“Was the mage inside the portal Cecil?”

Hildebert asked slowly.

He didn’t blink an eye at Jaeyeon’s flailing.

“So you’ve met Cecil.”

“He’s out of his mind but stupidly strong, so most of the time even I couldn’t open my mouth around—.”

“Is my memory loss your doing too?”

Hildebert muttered, almost to himself.

Jaeyeon’s face went pale.

At the same time, resentment welled up in his eyes.

“Ha!”

Hildebert didn’t react.

He stared into empty space, a face sunk in thought. It didn’t even seem like he was properly listening.

“That wasn’t my doing! I don’t know anything about that!”

“Redoing everything from the start, when it was already finished....”

The golden-eyed man murmured to himself while gazing into the void.

“It was a finished war....”

“I left that black-haired one there.... I left him bleeding out on the ground to die!”

“It wasn’t even an injury that could recover in such a short time....”

“Yeah, no! I really thought he’d just die there!”

“But he lived.”

Hildebert suddenly looked at Jaeyeon.

At the abrupt clarity of his words, several people flinched.

The white-haired swordsman shot a glare blazing with near-mad fury.

“Because of you, both of us lived.”

For a moment, Jaeyeon reflexively jerked his upper body backward.

But fear soon turned into indignation.

“-Then you never should’ve given humans immortality!”

Jaeyeon screamed as he pushed himself up from the floor.

“You gave them the clue to eternal life, and now this never-ending hell—.”

BOOOOM!

A sword slash tore through the air.

A sharp, pure-white attack.

It vanished before cutting through the wall. No one was cut. It served only to instill fear and shock into the Badgers.

Only Jaeyeon’s body, which had been lunging forward, was blasted back by the shockwave, flying toward the Badgers.

Dragged across the floor with a long scrape, Jaeyeon’s body came to a stop at the Commander-in-Chief’s feet.

The Commander-in-Chief looked down at Jaeyeon with an expressionless face.

Yehyeon nudged Jaeyeon’s body forward with the tip of his black shoe.

“Be quiet.”

Hildebert returned the sword—one no one had even realized he’d drawn—to its sheath.

“I’m barely holding onto my reason right now. Help me not cut something down.”

“...A senior....”

Someone murmured in a trembling voice.

The surrounding Badgers stared in shock at the one who had spoken.

The command staff also turned their heads to identify the owner of the voice.

Only Hildebert didn’t make a stunned expression.

Instead, the white-haired man turned his head toward the Badgers.

“Did you hear that? Your senior turned the war I ended into complete nothing.”

Hildebert was still gripping the sword hilt.

His knuckles were bleached white from how much strength he was pouring into his hand through sheer rage.

“I wrapped everything up, and you humans flipped it all back over.”

“Uh....”

“Humans.”

Hildebert said without emotion.

“A finished game.”

Then he stared at the floor for a long while before lifting his head.

“Do I have to clean this up again?”

At the question, thick with fury and cynicism, the one who had said the word senior closed his mouth.

A chilling silence settled.

At that moment, only Yun thought, ‘Jaeyeon isn’t human,’ but he displayed the judgment not to voice the thought aloud.

In the silence, Hildebert turned his body toward the Badgers and Jaeyeon’s side.

He looked at the Badgers who had been raising their voices just minutes earlier.

“Don’t you think I’ve done enough?”

No one answered.

“What was it you were dissatisfied with, that you gathered here for? I couldn’t answer properly earlier.”

No one opened their mouth.

Most of them couldn’t even bring themselves to meet Hildebert’s eyes. Crushed by the anger and pressure radiating from the golden-eyed being, they lowered their gazes. Some of them trembled faintly.

The only ones who didn’t waver were the command staff, the war heroes, and those who had once been TF.

Hildebert let out a breath, as if ❖ Nоvеl𝚒ght ❖ (Exclusive on Nоvеl𝚒ght) to restrain his rage.

“My memory’s come back to some extent, so I was thinking I’d at least answer. What was the problem?”

Again, there was no response.

Everyone stood there, lips tightly sealed.

The one who made a sound was someone else.

Jaeyeon, crouched near the Commander-in-Chief’s feet, lifted his head.

Hildebert’s eyes, which had been aimed at the Badgers, rolled downward.

“If you hadn’t gotten all sentimental with each other at the end, there wouldn’t have been a problem....”

Jaeyeon pushed against the floor with his elbow and stood up.

“Then only you would’ve survived.... Just you, the way he and I intended!”

“This, right here. Are you perhaps the disciple of that human who gaslights you?”

“...That person loves me!”

Watching Jaeyeon clutch his chest and shout, Hildebert let out a scoffing laugh.

At that sneer—so far removed from the usual Hildebert—Ami’s jaw dropped.

But Hildebert didn’t see it.

He looked up at the ceiling of the year-end hall with cold eyes.

“Someone whose very received love isn’t even real.”

Most people didn’t understand his muttering.

Only a very few, including the command staff, understood that icy mockery.

“You’re not even Mongmong.”

Jaeyeon let out a strangled shriek.

Howling, he charged at Hildebert, curses spilling nonstop from his mouth.

Hildebert lowered his gaze expressionlessly and watched the man rushing toward him.

At a glance, the swordsman looked as though he was sick of it all.

With a mask-like face, he merely watched Jaeyeon approach, indifferent.

But as the distance closed, the fury flared up again in his golden eyes.

A feeling so vast it made one dizzy just to face it.

Hildebert knocked aside the punch Jaeyeon threw, then drove him into the floor.

BOOOM!

“Kyah!”

“Ugh!”

“Black!”

Floor fragments flew everywhere.

Iron chairs toppled from the shock.

Yehyeon thrust out his arm, pushing the Badgers back as he shouted.

“Stop him!”

Kairos ran toward Hildebert.

But he couldn’t fully restrain him. Even when he grabbed Hildebert’s arm and called his name, it was useless. Hildebert lifted the arm Kairos was holding and smashed it into Jaeyeon’s face three times.

Paak! Pak! Pak!

Then Hildebert grabbed Jaeyeon by the collar and lifted him up.

Yun and the other TF members kicked off the ground.

Several large men rushed across the year-end hall and latched onto Hildebert.

But Hildebert didn’t even glance at them. He gave the seniors no chance to say anything.

Because he didn’t throw another punch.

The swordsman, who had abruptly halted his violence, neither drew his sword nor spat curses. Instead, he quietly stared at Jaeyeon.

He looked into Jaeyeon’s eyes, where fear, rage, sorrow, and countless other emotions were tangled together, and whispered.

“I’ll make sure you can never die.”

It was a mutter smeared with disgust.

“I will never forgive you and him, for the rest of your lives.”

The flat voice dropped straight into the other man’s ear.

“Live forever in pain.”

“I—.”

“Jaeyeon.”

Hildebert loosened the hand gripping his collar.

“I’ll give you an endless life.”

Having finished speaking, he turned sharply and walked toward the exit of the year-end hall.

No one dared call out to the owner of the scattering white hair.

They stood frozen in place until Hildebert disappeared from view.

Until the pressure crushing the air finally lifted, and until the red-haired rookie asked the command staff for permission and sprinted out of the year-end hall.