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Taehyun glanced at the flame in Bummo Koo’s hand. Fireball was an elemental-type skill, and although it was only a 1st Class skill, the temperature within the classroom rose.

The other children who had been watching the situation unfold murmured worriedly, but Taehyun didn’t care. He knew that not a single one of them was going to intervene anyway.

Taehyun walked forward and stopped about five feet away from the fireball. Thinking he had done that out of fear, Bummo Koo snickered and began to shout roughly, “Do you understand now, you little loser? Why don’t you...”

“Shut up. You can’t even maintain it for long anyway.”

Halt.

“You little fucking…!” Bummo Koo trembled in fury at his light taunt.

“Try it, idiot.” Taehyun smirked.

Though the age of awakening varies by person, it normally happens during their youth. However, they could not use their powers freely until they became adults and were granted permission to become Players.

That was because power usage was subject to state sanctions, excluding certain special cases.

Of course, since a children’s scuffle couldn’t possibly be considered a special case, it would be considered criminal activity if Bummo Koo used his skill to hurt anyone here.

‘They would normally cancel their skill by this point…’ But Taehyun supposed Bummo Koo did not have that much intelligence. Though he didn’t know how he had felt in the past, the current Taehyun could only see Bummo Koo as an average boy in his teens.

“Die!” And as he had expected, Bummo Koo hurled the skill toward him.

Whoooosh. A fireball the size of a fist flew toward him from just five feet away, and it was aimed at his face at that.

“Tch.” The timing had been risky. Clicking his tongue lightly, Taehyun stepped to the side and dodged the Fireball skill.

Bang! Having lost its target, the fireball crashed into the lockers behind him and vanished.

“Uh…” Bummo Koo looked stunned after witnessing the unbelievable movement.

Three seconds. To the average person, it was considered but a short moment. But in the Abyss, people’s lives were at stake in that timeframe.

Closing the distance in an instant, Taehyun slapped Bummo Koo across the face. The slap was nothing special since he had lost all of the toned muscles from his past life. Its strength was similar to a boy of that age. However, Bummo Koo slid helplessly to the ground, having lost the strength to stand.

“E… Eiik!” Perhaps he realized how ridiculous the situation was, he quickly attempted to stand up but failed miserably. From the untrained mana usage and series of shocking events, the strength had left his body as an early symptom of a reflux.

Smiling menacingly, Taehyun gazed down at him. ’Looking at him like this, he really is a kid.’

In the past, he had been unable to awaken his powers and was called a loser. Getting caught up in all sorts of trouble was just an add-on. The school bullies had picked fights with him and used their useless skills, while Taehyun had charged at them without a skill of his own.

Taesik Jo and Bummo Koo had been the worst of them; generic thugs who preyed on the weak and yielded to the strong. From what he remembered, five others had moved schools because of these two.

‘Normally, I would have gone easy on them, but…’ After his fifteen years of porting, Taehyun knew far too well that sometimes, mediocre kindness returned to stab one in the back.

Thump. Taehyun sat down on top of Bummo Koo’s body.

Slap. When he swung his hand, the head of the boy on the ground shot to the side once more. “Our proud bully, Mister Bummo Koo. How do you feel?”

“You... you...!”

Slap, slap.

“You fu...!” Taehyun’s continuous blows did not let him finish his sentence.

Slap, slap. Slap, slap.

“Hey, try saying that again.”

The hand that had been slapping the boy had turned into a fist at some point.

Phuck. Phuck. Phuck. Phuck. 

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.

“Ugh.. uh... stop…” It had been around 30 seconds since the one-sided violence had started. Blood gurgling from his mouth, Bummo Koo began to sniffle.

“Huh? Hey, why are you crying?” Even as he said so, Taehyun’s hand did not stop.

“S-Stop it, you bastard! He’ll die!” Having recovered some of his vision, Taesik Jo shouted at Taehyun with bloodshot eyes, though he did not step forward.

“You should know, having hit a lot of people, that people do not die that easily. And I’m not done with you either, so.”

Bang. “Come over here.” Taehyun slammed Bummo Koo’s head into the floor and stood up.

Seeing Bummo Koo, likely knocked out from how he was completely still, Taesik Jo slowly began to retreat. “S-Stay away...!”

“Hey. Don’t make your friend sad and come over here.” Having built up a grudge for a long time, Taehyun was about to grab Taesik Jo by the collar when a girl emerged from the crowd of students who had been watching.

“Taehyun Kim, stop!”

‘Oh?’

“Are you really trying to kill them? You’ve already given them what they deserved.” The girl glared at him with a face that showed she had never once experienced such ordeals.

She stood tall at over 170cm, with her hair neatly tied up in a ponytail, wearing the same school uniform as everyone else. However, there was something about her that exuded elegance. ‘She was already unique from the rest at this age.’ 

Ayeong Lim. In the past, he assumed she was a girl who grew up in a wealthy family with proper education and had awakened a top-class skill. A hypocrite who was too naïve. However, she later became an SS-Rank Player and attained numerous achievements. The expression often associated with her had been noblesse oblige.

Stamped with the title of loser in the past, Taehyun had fought a ferocious battle throughout his life. It had been natural for him to detest her. ‘Ayeong Lim had stepped forward like this in the past, too. Though the attacker and victim are reversed this time.’

The smile from finding a familiar face had been short-lived. A moment later, he curled up the corner of his mouth once more. “So you stayed quiet while I was the one getting beaten up, and you’re stopping me now that I’m trying to enact some justice?”

“…”

He knew that she had come into the classroom just a moment ago, but that didn’t matter to Taehyun. He didn’t plan to get pushed around by a hypocrite on his first day back in the past.

Taehyun grabbed the collar of Taesik Jo, who froze in front of him. “L-Let go...!”

“Shut your mouth and keep it that way, or your teeth will get knocked out.”

Slap, slap. Slap, slap. Taehyun repeated exactly what he did to Bummo Koo.

“Eurh... S-Skill… Ice... Gahh…!” When Taesik Jo attempted to use his skill as a final struggle, Taehyun stabbed him in the eyes once more. As a consequence of forcefully canceling the skill, it activated abnormally.

Cra-a—a-ck. Taesik Jo’s Ice Hand was an E-Rank skill that reinforced his hand with ice. But looking at the state of his hand, it instead looked like he was afflicted with frostbite. If he doesn’t treat it soon, then he may even lose his hand.

Taehyun clenched the frozen hand, then lightly pushed away the screaming Taesik Jo. He instantly collapsed to the ground.

“Taehyun Kim, you…” Ayeong Lim’s eyes narrowed at the unexpected course of events.

“You have anything left to say, class rep?” Taehyun asked her in a light voice as if he had just finished cleaning.

“Since things have come this far... I have to report this to the teacher.”

“Do whatever you need to. That’s what you’re there for, isn’t it?”

“...”

The bell rang right then, signaling that the next period was starting. ‘Good timing.’ Taehyun shrugged once, then left the classroom. Who needed classes when he’d just regressed to the past? He hadn’t gone to college in his past life either.

They only whispered amongst themselves as he passed by, not a single one of them stopping him.

***

The place he arrived at was the school’s roof. Because classes had started, there wasn’t a single person up there.

Taehyun strode to a corner where there were cigarette butts strewn carelessly across the ground. Nicknamed the Smoking Zone, it was one of the few places on the school campus that was hidden from security cameras.

Taehyun opened his status page.

[Name]: Taehyun Kim

[Age]: 19

[Rank]: E

[Skills]

– Devour (0%)

It was the standard status window used before being officially upgraded.

‘There’s definitely a limit to the information that I can view…’ But he could still clearly see that he’d awakened his powers, and that fact gave him a strange sense of elation.

He still vividly remembered the face of Asmodeus and the King. In reality, all of that had happened less than an hour ago. He’d heard of countless skills before, but nothing of Regression or Time Manipulation.

“But why E-Rank? It would have been nice if it were S-Rank or maybe even SS-Rank.” Living with the potential rank of Unknown for twenty years seems to have made him unconsciously expect to awaken as S-Rank at minimum.

Just then, he realized that there was something written after the skill name. ‘0%? Wait, don’t tell me... Is this a growth-type skill?’ He rubbed his eyes and looked again, but the 0% was still there.

“My goodness.” A smile incomparable to the ones he had before drew over Taehyun’s face.

Normally, the ranks of skills were decided when they had been awakened. Reawakening was the only way to upgrade a Player’s awakening and skill rank. However, according to statistics from the Player Association, there were less than ten thousand reawakened Players worldwide.

And even rarer than reawakened Players were growth-type Players.

‘If this really is a growth-type skill…’

His title of loser, the lack of money and power, the life of a Player that had only been a dream to him in the past… He thought back to his past life, where he resided at the bottom of the bottom…

He now had some confidence that this life may be different.

“No way.” He believed that he would one day awaken, which was why he had studied anything and everything related to Players. Not only that, he also did continuous weight training and managed his stamina to become an unawakened porter.

He could still recall all the information he studied and knew of training exercises to enhance his body strength. Furthermore, the red-haired man who had sent him to the past, the one who was called King… ‘It seemed like he was implying that we will meet again.’

The skill that the man had left with him did not seem like an ordinary growth-type skill. He looked at the status page once more. There was no description of the skill nor the amount of mana required to activate it. The only choice he had was whether to use it.

“Devour... does it eat something, then?”

He had read about skills related to absorption in the past. They were able to absorb mana, items, and sometimes even living beings. The higher rank skills could even store the absorbed contents in a sub-dimension and take it out.

‘But Devour…’ Even Taehyun, who knew countless different Players and skills, had never heard of this skill.

“Why don’t we give it a try, then?” He checked his surroundings, but there wasn’t a target he could use his skill on.

Devour.

Ding. [Not an applicable target for skill usage. Searching for applicable targets within range.]

A message appeared, and strength left his body. It was an aftereffect of using mana.

“It has an auto-search feature too? This thing isn’t joking around…” He had been making several different presumptions.

Banng! The rooftop door slammed open to reveal a boy.

Thump, thump, thump, thump. “Ah~ So this is where Taehyun Kim, the big man of our Gungook High, was at.”

“Hyuksoo Bae?” Taehyun frowned at the appearance of an unwelcome visitor.

Ding. [Target for skill usage found. Skill is available for use.]

The message made his frown turn into a joyous smile. “Hey, it’s my boy Hyuksoo,” Taehyun greeted the giant boy brightly.