The void released me.
Light bled through the darkness. Edges sharpening into focus like a camera lens adjusting after being smashed.
I could feel something. The sensation of standing on solid ground. A chest rising and falling.
A body.
Every nerve ending fired at once. Silk against my skin. Each thread sliding against my forearm. The cool air on the back of my neck. The dull, persistent ache in my left knee. The weight of long hair brushing my shoulders.
A voice cut through the fog.
"Young Master? Young Master Jinhae, are you alright?"
Coming from somewhere to my right and slightly behind me.
"You've been staring at the mirror for quite a while now. Should I call for the physician?"
My eyes focused on what was directly in front of me.
A mirror. Bronze-framed, polished to a liquid sheen, mounted on a lacquered wooden stand. And in its surface, a face.
This face was narrow. Pale as fresh snow, with high cheekbones and a jaw that tapered to an almost feminine point. The eyes were dark, sharp, framed by long lashes that most women would kill for. The lips were thin but well-shaped. The nose was straight and aristocratic.
Long black hair fell past the shoulders, silky and well-maintained, gathered loosely at the crown by an ornate jade pin carved in the shape of a crane.
He was beautiful.
Fragile. Bookish.
"Holy shit," I said.
The words came out before I could stop them.
But the words were definitely mine.
I knew this face, this body, this man intimately, from hundreds of hours of gameplay, from every dialogue tree and every stat screen and every frustrating, agonizing playthrough.
Jinhae.
I'd first discovered this character buried in the game's secondary roster.
He was an NPC. A secondary playable character. The eldest son of the Kang family — a minor noble house affiliated with the Orthodox Faction, wealthy enough to afford silk robes and jade hairpins but nowhere near powerful enough to matter in the grand scheme of Murim politics. A scholarly family. A family of administrators and record-keepers and diplomats.
Not fighters.
And Jinhae was the weakest of them all.
My gaze dropped from the mirror to the hands resting on the vanity table. Thin. Pale. Fingers like white candles — long and elegant, perfect for calligraphy, useless for gripping a sword. I turned them over. The palms were soft as a child's.
I shifted my weight experimentally. The left knee screamed. A sharp, grinding pain that radiated up through my thigh and down into my shin. I winced, teeth clenching, and my hand shot out instinctively to grab the walking cane leaning against the vanity.
Right. This.
This was his biggest problem. His body was completely fucked.
I thought about my stats — and the moment I did, it appeared.
A translucent blue screen materialized in my field of vision, hovering just above the mirror's surface. The same UI. The same font. The same layout I'd stared at for eleven thousand hours. But now it was here, floating in real air, casting a faint blue glow on the bronze mirror frame.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
KANG JINHAE
Eldest Son of House Kang — Orthodox Faction
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Eloquence .............. 89 / 100
Intelligence ........... 99 / 100
Charisma ............... 82 / 100
Perception ............. 78 / 100
Manipulation ........... 74 / 100
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Martial Spirit .......... 0 / 100
Battle Instinct ......... 0 / 100
Internal Energy (Qi) .... 0 / 100
Physical Strength ....... 4 / 100
Agility ................. 3 / 100
Endurance ............... 6 / 100
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Romantic Interest ....... 91 / 100
Sexual Desire ........... 97 / 100
Seduction ............... 81 / 100
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Condition: Chronic Meridian Collapse (Left Leg)
— Movement Speed: -60%
— Cannot learn standard martial arts techniques
— Pain threshold reduced significantly
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
I stared at the numbers.
Every combat stat was in the gutter. His meridians were so damaged he couldn't even circulate Qi, which in the Murim was like being born without lungs.
On paper, he was the worst character in the entire game. A crippled scholar in a world where the strong devoured the weak.
But those top stats.
Intelligence at ninety-nine. Eloquence at eighty-nine. Charisma at eighty-two. And — the stats that mattered most to me — Romantic Interest at ninety-one and Sexual Desire at ninety-seven.
Baek Museong's Sexual Desire was three.
Jinhae's was ninety-seven.
This body wanted women. Craved them. Was built for seduction the same way Museong was built for slaughter. Where the Sword Saint's blood ran hot for battle, Jinhae's ran hot for flesh.
A smile crept across my new face.
But the real treasure wasn't on this page.
I willed the screen to scroll.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[PAGE 2 — HIDDEN ABILITIES]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Mind Evolution ......... Lv. ??? [LOCKED]
— Requirements: Unknown
— "The body is a cage. The mind is the key.
He who masters thought itself need not
bow to the tyranny of flesh."
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
No further abilities available.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
There it was.
Mind Evolution. The single most broken, most absurdly game-changing ability in the entire game. Hidden behind a character that ninety-nine percent of players would never touch because his combat stats were dogshit and his starting condition made him look like a joke.
I'd discovered it by accident during my thirty-seventh playthrough, when I'd chosen Jinhae on a whim and stumbled into a questline that no guide had ever documented. The ability required rare ingredients to evolve.
Once unlocked, Mind Evolution fundamentally changed everything. Telekinesis. Corporeal Reformation. Mental domination. The ability to crush a man's will without lifting a finger. To read surface thoughts. To project emotions into others' minds.
It scaled with each new ingredient.
No other character in the game came close. Jinhae at full Mind Evolution wasn't just powerful, he was a god wearing the skin of a cripple.
But that wasn't even the best part.
Mind Evolution also unlocked the Relationship Meter for Jinhae. Without it, he was blind. He had no way to see affection levels. Flying completely dark. Which was why most players who did try Jinhae's route would fumble through relationships with zero feedback and give up in frustration.
I didn't need the meter to know what the heroines wanted. I had eleven thousand hours of knowledge burned into my brain. But having it would confirm, refine, and let me track my progress with surgical precision.
I knew exactly where every ingredient was. I knew the fastest route to collect them.
The question was time.
I dismissed the status screen with a thought and turned away from the mirror.
She was standing right there.
Three steps away. Hands clasped in front of her. Head tilted slightly, brow creased with worry. Azure hair falling in a loose curtain past her shoulders.
Ahyun.
My breath stopped.
The game had been generous with her character model. Obsessively detailed. But this — this was something else entirely. No rendering engine could replicate the slight flush on her cheeks, the way her lower lip was just barely fuller than the upper, the gentle movement of her chest with each breath.
She wore a servant's hanfu — simple, cream-colored, tied at the waist with a pale blue sash. But "simple" didn't mean much when the body wearing it was built like hers. The fabric strained across her chest, pulled taut over her enormous breasts. They were heavy enough to create a visible crease where the cloth gathered beneath them, the swell of each one clearly defined through the thin cotton. Her waist was narrow. Her hips flared out in a soft curve that the cut of the servant's dress couldn't hide.
She was looking at me with those wide eyes. Completely in love with a man who, in the original timeline, would lose her in a matter of weeks when a silver-haired swordsman walked through the front gate and took her away like she was luggage.
This was the second reason Jinhae was so broken.
He started the game with Ahyun's relationship at maximum. She adored him. She was devoted to him.
And in the original game, it didn't matter. Because Baek Museong arrived at the Kang estate during the early-game recruitment event, spotted Ahyun, and claimed her as his attendant. A request the Kang family — minor nobles desperate to curry favor with the rising Sword Saint — could not refuse. Jinhae watched the woman who loved him get handed to another man like a piece of furniture.
It was the single most gut-wrenching moment in Jinhae's route. The scene played out in a brief cutscene — Ahyun's face crumbling as she was led away, looking back over her shoulder at Jinhae standing in the courtyard with his cane, unable to do anything.
I'd watched that cutscene dozens of times.
Every time, it made me want to reach through the screen and strangle Museong with his own topknot.
Not fucking ever again.
I crossed the distance between us in two limping steps. The cane thudded against the wooden floor. My left knee screamed in protest, but I didn't care.
"Young Master, what—"
I pulled her into my arms.
She let out a small, startled sound.
A tiny "ah!"
Her body went rigid for half a heartbeat, every muscle tensing at the unexpected contact. Then she melted into me, her hands unclenching from their formal clasp and floating up to rest against my chest, her forehead dropping to my shoulder.
She was warm. The heat of her body soaked through the thin cotton of her servant's dress and into my silk robes.
My hands moved on pure instinct. My right hand slid down the curve of her spine, down past the small of her back, over the swell of her hip, and landed squarely on her ass.
I grabbed. Full palm. Fingers sinking deep into flesh, warm and impossibly plush even through the dress. My hand squeezed, and the fat of her left cheek bulged between my fingers. I pulled her tighter against me, my other hand mirroring the motion on her right side, both palms now full of her, kneading, gripping, feeling the sheer weight of her backside shift and compress under my fingers.
She gasped. A breathy, trembling sound that went straight to my cock.
My face pressed forward into her chest. The cream cotton of her hanfu was warm against my cheek, and beneath it her breasts engulfed me. Pressing against both sides of my face like warm pillows. I could feel her heartbeat through them, rapid and frantic. I turned my head slightly, nuzzling deeper, and the cotton stretched against my mouth. I breathed in and smelled her.
"Y-Young Master—" Her voice cracked. "What's — why are you—"
I didn't answer. I pressed my lips against the swell of her breast through the fabric. Felt the heat of her skin. Felt the give of the soft tissue. My hands tightened on her ass, pulling her hips flush against mine, and I knew she could feel me hardening against her thigh because her whole body shuddered and a whimper broke in her throat.
"Master—" she whispered. Not pushing away. Just trembling. "You've never... you've never done this before..."
I inhaled her scent one more time and forced myself to pull back. Just enough to look at her face.
She was crimson. From her collarbones to her hairline, every inch of visible skin had flushed a deep, burning red. Her lips were parted. Her pupils were blown wide, the azure of her irises reduced to thin rings around enormous black circles. Her chest heaved, those massive breasts rising and falling with each breath.
She was looking at me like I'd just told her the sky was green.
"What day is it?" I asked.
"W-what?" Ahyun blinked. She was still pressed against me, my hands still resting on her ass.
"The date, Ahyun. What's today's date?"
"It's... it's the fourteenth day of the fourth moon, Young Master."
My stomach dropped.
The fourteenth day of the fourth moon. The Kang family's banquet.
The first event.
The domino that started everything.
It was today. Not in a few weeks.
"Damn," I muttered.
"Young Master?"
I looked at Ahyun. She was still flushed, still trembling slightly, still looking at me with those enormous azure eyes full of confusion. Her nipples were still hard through her dress.
I wanted to devour her.
Later. Later. I had work to do first.
"Ahyun." I released her hips and straightened up, gripping my cane firmly.
"Prepare my formal robes," I said. "The dark blue set with the silver embroidery."
"The formal—" Her eyes widened. "You're attending the banquet tonight?"
"I am."
"But Young Master, you never attend the banquet. Your father said you didn't have to—"
My hand moved before she could finish.
I brought my palm down hard on her ass. A sharp, crisp smack that echoed through the bedchamber. The fat of her right cheek compressed under my hand and bounced back, jiggling visibly even through her dress. The sound was obscene in the quiet room.
"Ah—!" Her whole body jolted. Her eyes went wide as coins. Her mouth fell open in a perfect little O.
"Did I ask what my father said?" My voice was calm.
"N-no, Young Master—"
"Then what did I ask you to do?"
Her lower lip trembled. The flush on her face had deepened. Her thighs pressed together beneath her dress. Her nipples were so hard now they looked like they might tear through the cotton.
"To... to prepare your formal robes," she whispered. "The dark blue set. With the silver embroidery."
"Good girl." I let my hand linger on her ass for one more second, fingers pressing into the warm, stinging flesh where I'd struck her, feeling the heat radiating from the impact. Then I released her. "You don't question me, Ahyun. Not today. Not ever. When I give you an instruction, you follow it. Understood?"
I knew exactly what that slap had done to her. Ahyun's hidden kink profile was one of the first things I'd mapped. The developers had given every heroine a set of concealed arousal triggers, invisible flags that multiplied affection and lust gains when activated.
Ahyun's was spanking.
A firm palm cracking against the fat of her ass would spike her hidden arousal meter by thirty points in a single hit. And it scaled — the harder the strike, the sharper the sound, the more dominant the context, the higher the multiplier.
But that was only half of it.
Her breasts were her second trigger. A slap across those massive, heavy tits would push her arousal past the overflow threshold instantly. In the game's code, the flag was labeled CLIMAX_FORCE_TRIGGER. One hit. Immediate orgasm. No buildup required.
Right now, standing three feet from me with her thighs squeezed together and her breath coming in shallow little pants, Ahyun was already soaked. I could see it in the micro-tremor running through her calves.
"Yes, Young Master," she breathed. "I understand."
She bowed deeply, her azure hair spilling forward over her shoulders. Then she turned and walked toward the wardrobe on the far wall, her hips swaying with each step.
"Let's begin."