[BL] The Regressed Holy Knight Thinks I’m Planning an Apocalypse, but I’m Only Interested in Leveling Up

The sky above Earth had long ceased to be blue. It was a suffocating, bruised shade of violet, choked with swirling clouds of dark miasma and the burning cinders of a fractured civilization. Below the ruptured clouds lay the skeletal remains of human civilization. Skyscrapers that once touched the clouds were now turned into jagged spires of broken concrete and rebar, half-buried under mountains of dust and ash. Roads were crushed beneath the weight of relentless war, and rivers ran dark with dried blood and toxic sludge. Earth had fallen. It had not been destroyed by natural disasters or alien invasions, but conquered by a single, ruthless tyrant. Billions of undead, an endless, ocean-like army of reanimated corpses, marched across every continent. There were undead beasts the size of hills, dragon skeletons whose rib cages burned with ghostly blue flame, and countless billions of former humans, their hollow eyes staring blankly as they awaited a single command from their master. At the epicenter of this global graveyard, situated upon the shattered ruins of what was once Sector 1 of Country K's central plaza, stood a colossal monument of horror. It was a throne. It was not made of gold, marble, or precious gems, but built from the compressed, piled bones of dragons, high-ranking monsters, and fallen heroes. The throne towered thirty feet high, a morbid altar rising out of the ash and dripping with dark magic. Sitting atop it, leaning his chin comfortably against his knuckles, was the sole architect of this apocalypse. He wore dark, tattered robes that billowed in the ash-laden wind. His face was pale, cold, and twisted with an unforgiving malice. In his dark eyes burned an overwhelming crimson light, the undeniable mark of a monarch who had drenched the world in blood to reach the absolute apex of power. "I swear upon the light... I will kill you, Necromancer!" The roar echoed across the desolate plaza, imbued with a sacred energy that sliced through the heavy miasma. At the base of the bone mountain stood the final hope of humanity: five figures, bruised, bleeding, and bathed in the radiant glow of divine magic. At their center was the Holy Knight, Kang Min-Hyuk. His armor, forged from blessed mithril, was cracked and scorched, but his dual-handed holy broadsword burned with an incandescent golden light that pushed back the encroaching shadows. Behind Min-Hyuk stood his party, the last surviving apex rankers of Earth: The Saintess, Cha Eun-Ji, her hands trembling as she channeled her remaining divine power to sustain a fading holy barrier; The Berserker, Gwon Tae-Soo, wielding a massive greataxe twice his size, his body covered in deep wounds that bled crimson; The Phantom Assassin, Lee Shin, lurking at the edge of the light, dagger dripping with shadow energy; And the Archmage, Park Hye-Jin, her staff cracked, her eyes burning with pure desperation as mana flickered erratically around her fingertips. They were the supreme vanguard of humanity. They had slaughtered countless army commanders, conquered impossible dungeons, and clawed their way through the apocalypse. Yet, standing before the throne, they looked like mere children trapped in a tempest. The Necromancer atop the bone throne slowly shifted his gaze downward. He let out a dark, mocking laugh that echoed across the dead silence of the plaza. "Kill me?" the Necromancer’s voice drifted down, heavy and vibrating with suffocating pressure. "Kang Min-Hyuk, do you have any idea how many times I have heard that exact line? 'I will kill you.' 'For humanity.' 'For justice.' It is pitiful." "Shut your mouth, monster!" Min-Hyuk yelled, his voice cracking under the weight of grief and rage. He raised his glowing sword toward the throne. "Look at what you have done! You destroyed our world! You turned billions of innocent lives into puppet corpses! You turned Earth into a hellscape just to satisfy your sick, twisted ambition!" The Necromancer sneered, a look of profound hatred flickering across his face. He leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees as dark lightning flickered around his fingers. "Ambition?" The Necromancer laughed sinisterly, his voice echoing with sharp disdain. "You talk of innocence and justice, Holy Knight. But where was your precious justice when I was evaluated as a useless F-rank trash? Where was humanity's light when your society stepped on me like an insect, spitting on my face simply because my mana was weak?" Min-Hyuk gasped softly, his eyes widening. "You fools cast me into the darkness," the Necromancer continued, his tone dropping into an icy venom. "You left me to die in the deepest dungeons. But in that darkness, I found the ultimate truth of this world. s*******r breeds strength. The more lives I claimed, the stronger my shadows became. Every corpse I raised became a stair on my path to becoming a god. I did not destroy this world because I was mad, Min-Hyuk. I destroyed it because this weak, pathetic world deserved to burn!" "You bastard!" Berserker Gwon Tae-Soo roared, his eyes turning blood-red as his blood-rage skill activated. "You slaughtered innocent people just to feed your own greed!" "Enough talk," the Necromancer murmured, his eyes flashing with lethal intent. "Your corpses will make fine additions to my vanguard." He flicked his wrist lazily. CRACK! The ground beneath the heroes didn't just break; it exploded. An ocean of bleached bones erupted from the earth like a subterranean tidal wave. Millions of rib cages, razor-sharp arm bones, and giant monster spires shot upward, swirling into a hurricane of white calcium that flooded the plaza. The sheer force of the bone flood threatened to swallow the light whole. "Eun-Ji! Shield!" Min-Hyuk screamed. "Aegis of the Sun God!" Cha Eun-Ji screamed, pounding her staff onto the ground. A dome of brilliant gold flared outward, clashing violently against the bone wave. The sound of grinding bone against divine aura was deafening, like glass shattering against iron. "Tae-Soo, Hye-Jin, buy Lee Shin some time! Distract the tyrant!" Min-Hyuk commanded, surging forward. His boots shattered the pavement as he charged up the bone mountain, his holy blade carving a path of golden destruction through the rising skeletal tide. "Grand Cross!" Min-Hyuk swung his sword in a massive cross-pattern. A radiant shockwave sliced through hundreds of skeletal giant beasts, shattering them into dust. Behind him, Gwon Tae-Soo swung his greataxe in a whirlpool of red destruction, crushing every undead that dared approach the Saintess. "Die! Die! Die!" he screamed, tearing through bone behemoths with sheer brute strength. Above them, Archmage Park Hye-Jin unleashed her ultimate magic. "Infernal Meteor shower!" The sky tore open, and giant flaming rocks coated in blue mana rained down onto the Necromancer's throne. At the exact same time, a shadow detached itself from the gloom directly behind the Necromancer's head. Phantom Assassin Lee Shin materialized out of thin air, his black daggers coated in armor-melting shadow poison, aiming directly for the tyrant's neck. "Got you, you monster!" Lee Shin hissed. Snap. The Necromancer didn't even turn his head. He simply snapped his fingers. In less than a millisecond, the shadow beneath Lee Shin detached itself and formed a pair of skeletal hands made of dense, obsidian-colored bone. The hands caught Lee Shin by the wrists in mid-air with absolute, crush-depth force. CRUNCH. "Aaagghhh!" Lee Shin screamed as his wrists were instantly pulverized. Before he could react further, a spike of black bone burst from the ground beneath him, impaling his chest and lifting him high into the air. Blood dripped down the ivory spike. "Lee Shin!" Min-Hyuk roared, his heart plummeting. The flaming meteors descended from the sky, aiming to pulverize the throne. The Necromancer simply raised an open palm toward the sky. A massive wall of condensed, black miasma formed above him like an umbrella. The meteors struck the barrier and instantly vanished, their fire smothered and their kinetic force completely negated. "Is that the best an Archmage can do?" the Necromancer mocked, his dark voice overwhelming the battlefield. He turned his palm toward Park Hye-Jin. "Soul Drain." A shockwave of dark gravity erupted from his palm. Park Hye-Jin didn't even have time to scream; her mana and life force were violently ripped from her body in a visible stream of bright blue light, flowing straight into the Necromancer's hand. Deprived of her life force instantly, she collapsed to her knees, coughing up dark blood as her body aged decades in a matter of seconds before crumpling onto the cold ash. "Hye-Jin!" Berserker Gwon Tae-Soo abandoned his defense and charged toward the Necromancer, his greataxe burning with the sacrifice of his own vitality. "I'll kill you!" "Too slow," the Necromancer whispered coldly. From the pile of bones beneath Tae-Soo's feet, three colossal dragon skulls materialized. They snapped their jaws shut simultaneously with violent force. Tae-Soo's berserker aura shattered like cheap glass. The colossal warrior was pinned, his armor crushed, his blood spraying across the snow-white bone throne. Within less than two minutes, the strongest party in human history had been completely annihilated. Cha Eun-Ji dropped to her knees, her holy energy entirely depleted, tears streaming down her pale face as she watched her allies fall before her barrier vanished into dust. Only Kang Min-Hyuk remained standing. He was at the peak of the bone mountain now, just ten paces away from the tyrant. Blood trickled down Min-Hyuk’s forehead into his eyes, tinting his vision red. His legs shook from exhaustion and blood loss, but he forced himself to stand upright, gripping his holy sword with white knuckles. "Why...?" Min-Hyuk wheezed, spit and blood falling from his lips. "Why did you have to turn into this...?" The Necromancer stood up from his throne. He casually walked down the steps of bone, stopping right in front of the bleeding Holy Knight. He looked down at Min-Hyuk with cold, merciless eyes. "Because power is the only absolute truth in this world," the Necromancer said, his voice cold and devoid of human warmth. "You were weak, so you lose. I am strong, so I rule." The Necromancer raised his hand, black lightning gathering at his fingertips, preparing to obliterate Min-Hyuk's soul. Min-Hyuk closed his eyes. The absolute weight of despair crushed his heart. Earth was dead. His friends were dead. Everything they fought for was gone. If only... Min-Hyuk thought frantically, his soul crying out in agony. If only I had known earlier... If only I had found him when he was still weak... Before the gates broke... Before he grew into a monster... I would stop him before he ever raised his first corpse! Deep within Min-Hyuk’s soul, a dormant, mythical-grade artifact, the Hourglass of the First Light, swallowed by him in an ancient dungeon years ago, began to burn with a blinding, transcendent radiance. The Necromancer’s eyes narrowed as he felt the sudden surge of overwhelming temporal magic erupting from the dying knight. "What is this power...?" "I will stop you, Necromancer!" Kang Min-Hyuk screamed with his final breath, his body engulfed in a column of blinding white light that tore through space and time itself. "No matter what timeline it takes... I will hunt you down before you start your apocalypse!" FLASH! The radiant light exploded, shattering the surrounding air and turning back the wheels of fate. When the light faded, the top of the bone mountain was quiet once more. The Necromancer stood alone in the crater, looking at the lingering trace of temporal magic hovering in the air. His brow furrowed in anger as he realized what had transpired. "Time regression..." the Necromancer muttered, his dark voice filled with cold irritation. "You think running to the past will save you? It changes nothing. I will simply kill you again."