"Uwaah!!! F-fire!!"
"There's a fire in the inner storeroom right now!!! We have to report to the boss at once!"
This place—packed with people running around with water buckets and others who could only shout in panic—was one of the venues where a secret auction was about to be held.
Sihyun, wearing a face full of anxious urgency as if he were one of them, darted back and forth hauling water.
'After pouring that much oil, there’s no way it’ll go out easily.'
But only for a moment. When the flames, wavering as they belched black smoke, leapt to the adjoining hall, Sihyun quietly killed his presence and slipped off in the opposite direction.
The hall he had set ablaze was where they had arranged the items slated to appear at the very end of today’s auction. Which meant it was stuffed with extremely rare, extremely expensive things.
"Ah, I just want to finish this and go back to reality."
Of course, Sihyun had no interest in the auction lots; he only let out a small gripe as he thought of the protagonist of this world whom he was about to meet. The final step of the linked quest that had begun the moment he arrived was right in front of him.
Even so, the idea that he was about to clear a long quest that had dragged on for months made his steps gradually lighter.
But the faint excitement dropped flat the instant he saw the big crate ahead, leaving only hollow disappointment behind.
The minimap said this was the place. Yet the bleakly neglected room held nothing but a lonely crate wrapped in chains and piles of broken boxes, the kind of scene where you couldn’t even imagine a person being here.
"What is this. Did the minimap break?"
Right then, he caught a sound from inside the crate—so faint an ordinary person would have missed it—a thin, tiny breath. At this first-time situation, Sihyun scratched his head with an awkward grimace, then slowly turned his gaze and fixed it on the wooden crate.
"Hah… no way. They wouldn’t have locked someone in there… would they…."
A foreboding silence began to fill the messy surroundings.
"Damn it."
Sihyun yanked out the dagger he had hidden away, breathed internal energy into it, and quickly severed the chains binding the crate. Then he threw open the heavy lid, which had been fitted tight with no gaps, in one go.
"Fucking bastards."
It was a truly scrawny child. With tangled black hair and rags you could mistake for scrap cloth, the kid’s injured body was crumpled in the crate like a wad of tissue, breathing in the thinnest thread.
Even if a protagonist needs trials, he had never imagined anything this brutal.
He’d thought his own life had been rough, but this didn’t even compare. Sympathy rose up on its own, and his neat eyebrows drooped long.
"Hey. Are you okay? I’m here to get you out."
The child inside must have realized the lid had opened only then; the kid slowly lifted his head.
The boy thought the world was a prison. It was pitch black, there was nothing, and it didn’t allow even the slightest room to escape.
While he existed there without even knowing what that meant, a figure tinged with a slightly dark brown light came into view in front of him.
As he recognized it, the surroundings began to change like paint bleeding outward. He felt a little dizzy, and then a blue light surged in and scattered like shards.
And the last thing was a warm voice.
"Please save me."
The words slipped out of his cracked, scabbed-dry mouth before he knew it. Then those beautiful brown eyes were half-hidden under eyelids that tightened in pain.
A shame. An anxious, urgent feeling rose unconsciously.
"Sorry I’m late."
The man in blue light armor crouched into that cramped space and lightly lifted his body into his arms.
In that instant, something dug in deep and a sharp pain stabbed into his chest with a jolt. Taewoon didn’t yet know what that was, but he felt strangely delighted.
***
[system: Chapter 12. Take control of the Demonic Cult.]
"Phew…."
Sihyun gave the blue, translucent window floating in front of him a sidelong glance, then sat down limply on the flat boulder one step to the side.
'This really is the last part.'
The thought that his grueling, ten-year journey—packed with countless battles—was about to end made his tension start to ebb already.
But deep inside that anticipation, the truth of his heart might have been wishing the quest wouldn’t end.
'I don’t want to go back anymore….'
Sihyun tore off a broad leaf from nearby and used it to roughly wipe the blade surface, which was caked thick with blood, and let out a secret sigh.
"Master, are you all right?"
A husky, melodious voice speared down at the crown of Sihyun’s head, which had been bowed. He quickly put away the gloom, lifted his head with a bright, casual smile—
—and met the eyes of a beauty whose white, slender face held delicately placed features, contrasted by hair like black ebony that seemed endlessly dark.
A man with slightly upturned eyes and red lips was kneeling in front of him, staring up with a faintly plaintive look.
"Good boy."
Smiling, Sihyun gently stroked Yeon Taewoon’s hair as the man looked at him with worried eyes.
This all began nine years ago.
Sihyun had been an ordinary office worker about to enjoy a rare long vacation. He just liked games more than most, so of course on the first day off he holed up at home and scrolled through the game list he’d left in his cart.
"Huh? A martial-arts game. When did I put this in the cart? Is it like Black Soul?"
A thumbnail with dazzling, intricate graphics lodged itself in his eyes at once. Naturally, a fan of fantasy and martial-arts stories, Sihyun had no choice but to click on the game whose title had snagged his gaze.
"Wow, the graphics are insane."
And the moment he opened the details page, the main trailer tickled his nerves hard.
The footage looked like real combat—both the one-on-one duels and the massive clashes of countless fighters were rendered with goosebump-realism. He couldn’t understand how a game of this quality had stayed buried.
"Or maybe they poured their souls into the trailer only? Still, at this price, it should have some level of quality…."
He hesitated briefly over the price—ninety thousand won—but the afterimage that kept flickering in his mind pushed him to squeeze his eyes shut and hit purchase.
'Right, this is why I busted my ass earning money.'
His phone buzzed with a quick payment confirmation. Watching the install bar fill fast, he launched the game the instant the completion badge popped up.
And he chuckled at the two buttons on the screen.
"Oh, the demonic faction is the trend these days."
Two choices for faction selection floated nonchalantly over a breathtaking background.
Without thinking, Sihyun moved the cursor to the button that said the demonic side, shoulders bobbing in excitement with no idea how much his life was about to change.
Click.
With the tiny sound of the mouse, a blinding light burst from the screen—and at the same time, Sihyun fell into a strange place.
The instant he opened his eyes in the middle of a deserted forest, a translucent window popped up and, absurdly, started handing out a quest without preamble.
[system: Make the protagonist into the Heavenly Demon and conquer the Central Plains. When the story ends, we will return you to reality!]
Sihyun was stunned, but the situation was already upon him. He spent some time denying reality and groping for a way back, but there was no path to survive here except by clearing the quest.
After that, he rolled along following the quest line, rescued the scrawny protagonist kid from a slave market, and—despite years of chaos—kept winning and inching toward the end.
At first, the kid never spoke and was stone-faced, so he worried constantly about whether he’d ever grind through the tasks with him.
But now the kid called him “Master” and served him with devotion—which meant that for almost ten years they had done everything together and shared a lot.
'Weirdly, I can’t remember the game’s title.'
Sihyun scratched his head like it was nothing, then lowered his gaze at the soft voice he heard.
"I’d like to find an inn somewhere but… I’m sorry, Master… because of me."
"No! How is any of this your fault. Not at all."
He’d let his mind wander for a moment, and already those ruby-dark eyes were growing wetter and wetter. Startled, Sihyun sprang up, pulled Taewoon—who was sitting on his knees—into his arms, and cradled his head.
"My private revenge keeps making Master suffer."
"The Demonic Cult bastards are the ones at fault. You just keep your eyes forward. I’ll back you up on everything else, okay?"
It wasn’t exactly the place for such behavior, with blood-soaked chunks of corpses strewn everywhere, but for Sihyun the most important thing was to soothe Taewoon first.
As the protagonist of this world, Yeon Taewoon was—by the game’s settings—the current Heavenly Demon’s illegitimate son, a character with genius intellect and perception, and looks beyond human limits.
Though as a child he’d been so thin and twig-like that you couldn’t help saying, is this kid really the protagonist?
'But now he’s absurdly handsome….'
On top of that, the techniques Sihyun had only been able to force with skills—Taewoon would master at a glance. Once he grew into an adult, he’d become a top-tier monster no longer bound by named forms.
'If we’re just talking ability, he could probably seize the Demonic Cult without my help now….'
But there was a problem: modern man Jeong Sihyun, shocked by how much more savage this world was than expected, had unknowingly raised Yeon Taewoon too gently, holding him close.
He hadn’t noticed for a long time, and when he finally came to his senses, Yeon Taewoon wasn’t a cruel, terrifying martial artist—he’d become a soft, kind puffball.
'I didn’t raise him to be timid across the board… so how did this happen.'
Nestled quietly in Sihyun’s arms, Taewoon accepted the patting—and then, perhaps struck by another bout of self-reproach, he hugged Sihyun’s waist hard and let out a labored breath.
Ugh.
After days of nonstop fighting, his back already creaking, Sihyun felt like he could hear it grinding.
Honestly, Taewoon had grown so much stronger than him that even comforting him like this was a bit of a strain now—but seeing him struggle like this made Sihyun soft, and he couldn’t bring himself to push him away.
'Good grief… what kind of Heavenly Demon is like this… what am I supposed to do about all the novels I read.'
After soothing Yeon Taewoon for a long while, Sihyun checked the quest window on the sly as the sun hanging high in the sky tilted a little, and he firmed up his plan once more.
At that moment, Taewoon’s relaxed expression hardened, and the moist glow in his eyes sank dark.
'What exactly are you hiding from me, Master.'
Taewoon quietly clenched a fist, as if ready to crush the blue light that circled around Sihyun. But as it soon scattered like smoke between his fingers, he quickly stowed away the emotion that was about to spill past his eyes.