Cha Seohu and the Cult Leader were in similar condition.
Neither of them was in normal shape, and because of that, neither could gain the upper hand as the fight dragged on with stubborn persistence.
Under normal circumstances, the Cult Leader would have subdued Cha Seohu with ease, which only showed how much damage Chronos’s light had done.
“Hah, urgh...!”
But Cha Seohu’s condition was no better, with his shoulder injury leaving his left arm completely useless.
In the blink of an eye, the Cult Leader closed the distance right in front of him. His hand shot out, seized Cha Seohu by the throat, and slammed him straight into the ground.
“Ghk!”
The black earth packed across the floor sprayed up roughly.
Tightening his grip around Cha Seohu’s throat without the slightest mercy, the Cult Leader spoke in a gentle voice.
“Why are you making this so complicated, Mr. Cha Seohu?”
He looked down at Cha Seohu as he struggled, as if he truly could not understand.
“Did I fail to explain myself properly? Or was I not persuasive enough?”
“Kh, urk, let... go...”
“When I see ignorant people like you, who refuse to accept grace and reject it instead... it’s truly pitiful.”
The anger had faded from the Cult Leader’s face, and he had returned to the same calm expression as before, though the swollen black blood vessels bulging across him remained.
“You call me a cultist. Is that really true? Do I look like someone peddling illusions for personal gain?”
“Urgh...!”
The hand around his throat tightened more and more.
Under the crushing pain and pressure on his neck, under the suffocating sensation of not being able to breathe, Cha Seohu gritted his teeth and fought to break free.
“Think carefully, Mr. Cha Seohu. I am not some cultist. I am only making a truth already known to the world a little clearer. Death is no longer something to be feared.”
Watching as the lack of oxygen gradually blurred the focus in Cha Seohu’s eyes, the Cult Leader went on.
“When you catch a cold, you take cold medicine. When a tumor grows inside the body, it is removed through surgery. When you’re in pain, you receive treatment. It’s the same thing. If someone is living a life of suffering, you let them find peace through death. It is a treatment already being practiced by many people all over the world. I am simply—”
The Cult Leader’s words cut off.
Cha Seohu, his hand trembling violently, barely managed to grip the sword hilt that had fallen beside him again and swung the blade without hesitation.
The Cult Leader instantly released his throat and sprang back, narrowly avoiding the attack.
“Cough, cough! Khk, hah...!”
Cha Seohu sucked in the air that had been blocked off, coughing harshly as he forced strength back into his body and rose.
“You disgusting bastard. Talking garbage out of your mouth.”
When Cha Seohu lifted his head, his face was pale and drenched in cold sweat. Bright red finger marks stood out vividly on the white skin of his neck.
“Yeah. People living hard lives? Of course there are. In a world this fucking miserable, how could anyone be happy all the time?”
Using the sword planted into the ground to brace himself, Cha Seohu barely managed to straighten his back and face the Cult Leader.
“But that example of yours is pretty ridiculous.”
One corner of Cha Seohu’s mouth twisted upward.
“Doctors go through hell to cut tumors out of a patient’s body because the patient wants to live, and cold medicine only cures a cold. The reasons life is painful are different for every person, but you ignore all that and just say, ‘Well, you’re having a hard time, so go kill yourself. Then you’ll feel better’?”
The more Cha Seohu spoke, the more his voice shook.
“Even an uneducated bastard like me knows what complete bullshit that is. You’re the only one with flowers in your head. People don’t live as stupidly and simply as you do.”
A prickling pain spread through his chest, like being stabbed by needles.
Cha Seohu knew exactly where that pain came from.
Because he had thought the same thing himself. Because he had wanted to die when things became too hard and too painful. Because he had actually planned to die, and right up until just before meeting the Cult Leader, that plan had remained unchanged.
“...No, maybe even now.”
What Cha Seohu had truly wanted all this time, even while running himself ragged to keep the world from ending, was simple.
To return to the previous timeline and die together with the collapsing world.
To meet Ryu Sunghyun and the Circle Guild members from before the regression one more time, and then disappear with no regrets in that ruined world.
That was exactly why he knew how dangerous the Cult Leader’s words were.
Because he could imagine all too well how sweet those words would sound to someone enduring life one day at a time—that death would bring relief.
“There’s no point listening to any more of your bullshit. You’re a fucking bastard, and your ideology is even worse. I’m going to erase you here. The world is already chaotic enough without trash like you in it.”
“I see...”
The Cult Leader, who had gone silent for a moment, gave a bizarre smile that somehow looked relieved.
“So in the end, you do not understand me. And I do not understand you. Is this what they call two sides of the same coin?”
The flesh along the Cult Leader’s lower half swelled here and there, and new tentacles burst out. The writhing mass of tentacles that had nearly all been cut away and were disappearing swelled again with vigorous life.
“It’s all right, Mr. Cha Seohu. Your role has not changed. No, if anything, it has become even more important. That vivid life force of yours will restore the wounded divine tree. Perhaps it will make it even stronger than before.”
Bang, bang—the tentacles slammed against the dirt floor and closed the distance at terrifying speed.
“That is your destiny. To become fertilizer for my precious divine tree!”
With a cry full of exultation, the Cult Leader charged.
The outstretched tentacles crashed toward Cha Seohu’s body like a tidal wave. Cha Seohu slashed through the middle of several tentacles and ran.
'Even if I cut them, they’ll just regenerate anyway. No need to waste energy really fighting.'
Before leaving, Chronos had made a point of telling him to endure.
Part of it was because Cha Seohu was injured, but it also meant there was no point in fighting in the first place.
He still did not know what Chronos had meant when he said the light had seeped into the tree, but for now, all he could do was trust that advice and drag this out for as long as possible.
“You little rat!”
When Cha Seohu gave up on fighting altogether and started doing nothing but running, irritation and impatience crept into the Cult Leader’s voice.
He needed to capture Cha Seohu quickly and offer him to the injured tree, but instead Cha Seohu kept fleeing and wasting time.
Clicking his tongue, the Cult Leader chose to pay the price and draw on even more power.
At once, the bulging black blood vessels spread beyond his face and crawled over his entire body. In return, even more tentacles sprouted from his lower half, and his body swelled larger.
In that state, he chased after Cha Seohu. The outstretched tentacles sliced through the air, trying to seize a fluttering hem, an arm, a leg.
That was when—
Kugugugung!
The enormous black tree right beside them gave a violent tremor.
At the same time, roots far larger than any of the Cult Leader’s tentacles burst up through the dirt floor.
The roots lunged so quickly that before Cha Seohu could even dodge, they wrapped all around his body and dragged him inward.
“Ugh, what the...!”
Cha Seohu, horrified, slashed at them at once, but he could not leave so much as a scratch.
Instead, the impact felt as though some invisible force had struck the blade itself, and the shock made him lose his grip on the hilt.
A thick root coiled around his waist, then more wrapped around his injured arm and right leg. It was like being caught in the grip of a giant’s hand; no matter how hard he struggled, he could not break free.
Cha Seohu’s body was dragged straight toward the trunk. His legs began sinking into the earth.
“Ah...!”
At the sight, the Cult Leader cried out with a face full of ecstasy.
“It has chosen the sacrifice! As expected, my eye was true!”
Deathly pale, Cha Seohu struggled to break free, but the more he resisted, the stronger the crushing force on his body became.
The closer he got to the tree, the more he could feel a chilling energy stabbing at his skin. When he lifted his head, the black tree loomed in his vision, now seeming even taller and vaster as it towered before him.
'Wait, this...'
The realization that he might really become fertilizer for the tree made his whole body turn cold.
But the sword he had dropped was buried somewhere in the black earth and nowhere in sight, and there was no way of knowing when the light Chronos had spoken of would actually take effect.
In the meantime, now that Cha Seohu had been dragged all the way to the tree itself, his body began to sink into the soil. The earth rose past his thighs and up to his waist.
'No. A way, I need to find a way...!'
Cha Seohu desperately forced his mind to work.
One arm was pinned, and both legs were already buried deep in the soil.
Was there... any way out of here with just his right arm? At the very moment despair rose all the way to his throat—
“Give up, Mr. Cha Seohu. Even the divine tree desires you. You, so vividly alive!”
The Cult Leader’s delighted voice rang out.
'...Wait. It wants ‘me, vividly alive’?'
A certain item Cha Seohu had almost forgotten for a while flashed through his mind.

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