Chapter 570: Throne Match

A story derived from the Continental War.

The heat surrounding Continental War: World Championship was greater than expected.

The viewer ratings for most events surpassed the ratings of the Continental War, which had been nation versus nation.

It was a result Pureum had not expected either, and the reason such a major issue could be created was because every expert and every win-rate prediction site had been completely wrong in predicting that America would take overwhelming first place.

At first.

The win-rate prediction sites believed America would win eight gold medals and prove itself the strongest nation with a truly astonishing result.

They had misjudged.

China.

A nation with an overwhelming population and, accordingly, a truly staggering number of talented people.

It was a country no one had expected much from because the players supported by the state would likely appear, but China fielded only those with real skill and took America’s gold medals away.

Japan.

Once the greatest country of economic revival, and now entering another era of revival after its lost decades, Japan was a place where users from the same nation had spent every day snarling at one another. Yet they joined forces and won a gold medal.

Vietnam.

One of the poorer countries, a humble Asian nation that had never once created an issue on the world sports stage, won a single gold medal through the performance of Divine Archer Mio.

Korea.

Among them, Korea had the smallest population, and though it had produced countless pro gamers in the past, it no longer did so and had received low evaluations. Yet Korea won no fewer than four gold medals.

The entire world was astonished, because no one had known the nations of Asia would perform this well.

And the long-awaited day was dawning.

Canada, Europe, and America.

Every participating nation, including the nations of Asia.

All of them believed the most beautiful and valuable gold medal would come from one event.

They considered the gold medal gained from that event the only path that would make their own hard work shine.

[Event Name. Throne Match.]

It was PvP.

A contest where players fought one-on-one through several rounds to determine the runner-up and the champion.

It was the clearest way to determine who was the greatest among all the high-rankers in the world.

It was the event the entire world anticipated most, and the event expected to record the highest viewership. The phrase Pureum had prepared for it spread across electronic billboards all over the world, enough to send the entire world into upheaval.

[There is only one throne.]

A majestic throne rose into view, made from a perfect blend of diamond and gold.

To ascend that throne.

The strongest people in the world began heading to Jamsil Sports Complex.

*****

Da Nang, Vietnam.

A global star stepped down in front of a massage shop advertising foot massages for only five dollars to passing tourists.

“It’s Mio....”

“Divine Archer Mio!”

The hero Vietnam had produced.

She stepped out of the vehicle, guarded by her security team, and stood amid the passionate cheers of the Vietnamese people.

“Why is Mio in front of a place like that?”

“Is she here for a foot massage?”

Amid the murmuring crowd.

Mio only looked at the shop.

It was the place where she had worked at the age of fifteen.

In Vietnam, the culture that women had to support their families had put down deep roots.

When Mio was young, she had massaged the feet of tourists from all over the world in that place.

Then, by chance, she encountered a bow.

For her, who had believed the only thing she knew how to do was massage, it had felt fresh and new.

People did not know.

The five dollars she received there, and the small tips given by tourists from wealthy countries.

Mio had saved them, and she had realized that what she was good at was archery, but she had had to give it up.

Because she had to protect her family.

However.

We’ll do it, big sister.

We’ll go to the massage shop!

You learn archery!

Mio’s younger siblings massaged customers’ feet in her place and earned the tuition for her lessons.

“Our hero!”

“Mio!!”

That was how Mio, the hero of Vietnam, was created.

I will win, no matter what.

Bow—

She bowed to the massage shop, climbed into the vehicle, and set out for Korea with her own story.

The beautiful throne on the electronic billboard had been engraved clearly in her mind as well.

Japan.

An old Japanese estate.

That place, Musashi’s family home, was old and worn, and the family no longer even had the strength to maintain it.

The warriors who had existed until the nineteenth century had long since disappeared, and Japan no longer needed warriors.

The only reason this estate had survived until now was because the descendants had abandoned the warrior’s path and taken on new work.

Among those descendants, there was one person who alone had not let go of that path.

It was Musashi.

I will show the world that warriors are still needed.

His father had not wanted his child to become a warrior.

It was a world where warriors were no longer needed. That was what he had believed.

He had also been ignorant of Ares, so he had simply driven Musashi out.

Four years after being chased away.

Musashi entered that old estate.

Musashi.

Even for him, arrogant and foolish as he had been, his father had been someone he missed.

It was his first visit in the four years since Ares began, and he thought his father, fiery as ever, would drive him out again.

But.

“Welcome home.”

His father welcomed him with a powerless smile.

The age spots on his face, his bent back, and the expression that seemed to say he had been waiting all told Musashi that he had come far too late.

“Did you accomplish what you wanted?”

“...To some extent.”

His father smiled bitterly.

In the current world, there were no people who wanted to become warriors.

However.

Soon, his father saw them.

The hundreds of Japanese people who had come with Musashi.

“Our name is ‘Warrior.’”

They were people who believed in Musashi, who had become interested in the idea of being warriors and joined him, and their guild’s name was, in fact, Warrior.

Seeing them, his father smiled faintly.

“...You’ve changed.”

“....”

“You, who only ever thought of yourself, now carry people like that.”

His son, who had once been a complete disaster, was carrying the lives of hundreds of people.

“Fight like a warrior until the very end.”

Musashi bowed his head, and his father went back inside the house.

As he left, his father’s voice came from behind him.

“I’ll prepare a meal for when you return.”

He would win and return, no matter what.

“I’ll be back.”

Musashi left his home carrying his own story.

In his gaze as he headed toward Haneda Airport, the throne on the electronic billboard was reflected.

*****

America.

Before a grave.

A beautiful man stood holding a bouquet.

He had black eyes, long black hair tied back tightly, a black suit, and pure white gloves. In his hands were beautiful flowers.

The gravestone before him read:

[My love, Sophia. Sleeping here.]

Sophia.

The man stared endlessly at that name.

It was Valhalla.

After placing the flowers on the grave, Valhalla looked at the gravestone for a long time.

Valhalla.

He had been born in an orphanage on an isolated patch of American land.

From childhood, he had been delicate and weak, quiet, and rather cold. A child named Sophia had approached him.

“Hello?”

That was their first meeting.

The two of them grew up together.

At five.

When Valhalla was teased for being an orphanage child and cried his eyes out, Sophia, who was bigger than the others, beat them up.

At nine.

When Sophia was teased, Valhalla, who had somehow grown much taller than Sophia, beat those same sorts of people up this time.

At twelve.

They went to school together like best friends, and both of them attended as honor students without shame, sweeping up scholarships as well.

At seventeen.

At a time when their new identities had been established, the two of them realized that the emotion they felt for each other was love.

At twenty.

Valhalla volunteered for and left to join America’s strongest special forces, the Navy SEALs. Sophia, who had become a proper office worker, cried and cried as she watched him go.

At twenty-one.

Valhalla, who had earned licenses related to light aircraft in the special forces, rented one very small and shabby light plane and flew into the sky with her.

There, Valhalla briefly became a pilot, and Sophia, seated beside him, received Valhalla’s proposal above the clouds.

That day, the two of them became the happiest people in the world and promised each other a lifetime.

At twenty-two.

She was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer, and Valhalla held a wedding that year with his bride in bed.

At twenty-three.

Sophia knew Valhalla would not be able to endure being left alone.

Reduced to only thirty kilograms, she placed an oxygen tube in her nose and left him her final words.

“Find a reason to live, Valhalla.”

May 27.

Valhalla was alone again, and then the world called Ares appeared.

The fact that he had been from the strongest special forces helped.

He hunted like a madman to forget every bit of suffering and pain.

When he hunted like that, madly, Sophia did not come to mind.

But he could not find a reason.

Because no one could chase after him.

Supreme.

Because he had already gained everything and climbed to the highest place, Valhalla could not find any reason at all.

Emptiness and sorrow.

Pain and agony.

He suffered in a competition where there was nowhere higher to climb.

And so Valhalla lay before Sophia’s grave for days without eating or drinking.

Because he wanted to sleep beside her.

But then....

One message woke him.

—Breaking news.

—The most influential person in Ares this year is Blacksmith Hyun, who created the Twin Dragon Sword during the Continental War.

—Korea’s Blacksmith Hyunsoo. Creating miracles.

“.......”

It was the first time.

The first time someone had broken one of his records.

An indescribable feeling came over him. Endorphins surged through him at his first defeat.

He felt unease in the life that had been empty.

That day, Valhalla gave up ending his own life and had no choice but to return, in order to widen the narrowed gap again.

From then on, whenever he thought he had widened the gap, Hyunsoo chased him down.

That repeated several times.

And finally, Hyunsoo had made Valhalla himself request a match first, bringing them to this point.

“...Sophia.”

Whoooooosh—

The blowing wind felt as if Sophia were answering him.

“I found the reason.”

It was the first reason he had found since she left.

It was his own victory.

In the life he had believed empty because he stood alone, unmatched, he would defeat the one pursuing him, trample him down again, and climb higher.

“I’ll come again.”

Valhalla turned and headed to Korea, to put an end to his own story.

*****

Korea.

Just as everyone seemed to carry at least one story like that.

A man was sitting in a VVIP room at a hospital in Seoul, and he too had his own story.

[There is only one throne.]

As he looked at the majestic throne appearing in one corner of the VVIP hospital room, his past life flashed before him like a panorama.

He had been gasping under hospital bills he could not pay, and he had heard the words, “Perhaps you should give up on your father?” hundreds of times.

The doctor, Jinseop, had said, “Mr. Hyunsoo, shouldn’t you at least live...?” For the sake of a young man who had only been twenty years old, he had said something he should never have said as a doctor.

Hyunsoo, a foolish guardian, had been like most guardians.

He could not do that.

He kissed his father’s hand, which he held tightly in both of his own.

When that young man, Hyunsoo, rose and stepped outside, the people who had looked at him with pity, mourned for him, and reddened their eyes with him stood in the hallway.

Jinseop looked at the young man who had once gazed back in despair, his face covered in burn scars.

The nurses were the people who had pretended not to hear the voice of the young man crying alone in the emergency stairwell.

“Hyunsoo.”

As Hyunsoo stepped forward, Jinseop called him, and Hyunsoo turned his head to look at him.

“Do your best.”

Hyunsoo smiled faintly and went on.

On his way out of the hospital.

Before the world’s greatest event, which would soon arrive, the waiting patients burst into cheers.

“It’s Hyunsoo.”

“Our hero.”

“Waaaaaaaah!!!”

Amid those cheers stood a car Taeha had prepared, along with the guild members who had built the nation of Hyun with him until now, each arriving in their own cars.

Vroooooom—!

A sports car worth hundreds of millions.

A Rolls-Royce worth hundreds of millions.

And several more cars, each worth hundreds of millions, carried him away.

As the vehicles entered Jamsil Sports Complex, citizens waving the Korean flag made it clear they had gathered from every corner of the country.

The radio played from inside the speeding car.

—Today, Korea’s Master Blacksmith Hyunsoo is scheduled to participate.

—With estimates that more than four hundred thousand people have gathered around Jamsil Sports Complex....

—You must remember that every one of them has gathered to cheer for a single person.

Cheers rang out endlessly toward the vehicle that entered Jamsil.

Participants from all around the world arrived one after another.

—Musashi is getting out of a black Carnival with hundreds of guild members.

Vroooooooom—!

—Divine Archer Mio is getting out of a Rolls-Royce, the finest luxury car in the world, and is being escorted.

Vroooooooom—!

—A motorcycle has broken through the traffic and made a dazzling entrance.

—It’s V-Valhalla. He looks truly incredible!

—Come to think of it, Hyunsoo hasn’t arrived yet, has he?

—Does Hyunsoo always come by bus, as usual?

—He is known to love taking the bus. But since today is special, maybe he’ll take the subway instead? Haha.

At that moment.

Vrooooooom—!

Vroom, vroom, vroooooom—!

A Lamborghini, a Ferrari, a Bugatti, and a Rolls-Royce appeared.

There were at least ten cars, each worth hundreds of millions of won or more.

—What is that..?

—Huh... Who on earth is that?

At the appearance of those vehicles, dozens of waiting security guards moved and headed toward the Rolls-Royce in the center.

One of them opened the door, and a man stepped down. The entire world was shocked.

—H-Hyunsoo?

—It’s Hyunsoo!

At that unexpectedly dazzling entrance, the entire world surged into upheaval and became certain.

The battle for the throne, which none of them would yield, had begun.