Hwoooaahk.
"Hoo… Is it really over now?"
Only then did the real interior of the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult spread out before Sihyun’s eyes. Dozens of pavilions lay scattered through the deep forest, looking almost free-form at a glance.
Of course, it was a little different from the layout he’d seen before he returned to reality, but that was exactly why he could be sure he’d escaped that damn, tedious formation.
The Heavenly Demon Divine Cult.
If it was familiar, it was familiar. And since he’d even seen it recently in a dream, it made the feeling even stranger.
"But why is there nobody here?"
Sihyun looked around with a puzzled gaze. No matter how wide he spread his sense of qi or sharpened his sight to inspect, there wasn’t even a single ant—an absurd emptiness that felt deeply wrong.
Even earlier, the fact that only five Black Kill Squad showed up had been strange. They were supposed to be a ten-man squad.
What the hell was going on?
Sa Cheongrin had said the boss was here, so he’d headed this way, but since this was his first time clearing a Gate, his body wouldn’t move as easily as he wanted.
Sihyun stood there blankly for a long time where he’d first stepped in.
He had to find the boss, but he couldn’t help regretting, a little, that he hadn’t forced himself to find Sa Cheongrin and take that smartphone-looking thing.
But it was already done, and the only method left was the honest one—run around and figure it out one by one with his own body.
"Still… a boss. The boss of the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult is…."
The Heavenly Demon, obviously.
A sharp, prickling pain stabbed into one side of his chest. Sihyun faintly furrowed his brow and slowly rubbed his forehead for a moment.
Then he stared down at the ground like it was his mortal enemy before moving again. Pointless tension piled up, and cold sweat started to leak out.
But after walking a bit, he started noticing more and more parts that didn’t match the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult he remembered.
Back then, there was definitely a pavilion over there, but now it was gone. And the entrance of the training hall here was supposed to face north, not west. Looking again now, even the pavilions felt sparse—like the place was weirdly empty.
"Like the map isn’t fully built… Ah."
Inside the formation, everything had been so real he’d forgotten for a moment, but it came back to him—he was inside a Gate.
That sense of reality wedged itself into his head and dulled the tension that had been making even his movements feel stiff.
"Right. There’s no way this is real."
If it were real, there was no way he would’ve made it out of that formation alive.
***
Step, step.
The wide, empty space was being lightly filled by the sound of boots grinding over stone.
Sihyun was carefully searching as he slowly entered the Heavenly Demon Grand Hall.
In truth, he’d stood in front of this building for a long time, hesitating and letting time bleed away, so now he was in a hurry, and his steps naturally sped up enough that he had to force himself to calm down.
There were still ten people trapped in here, and they were all in a state where they couldn’t even move. Whether he solved it quickly himself or created an environment where they could hold out until a rescue team arrived, he had to do something.
"When the hell am I supposed to search a place this big… Haa."
The interior, dimly lit by torches mounted on every pillar, matched exactly what he remembered—except for the fact that there wasn’t a single person to be found.
But he couldn’t forget that this was inside a Gate. He didn’t know when a monster might jump out, so he had to keep his nerves cranked up.
"Haa…."
Sihyun let out a small sigh and stepped into the corridor on the right.
In that instant—something cold, like a blade had brushed him, slid across his pale throat. Sihyun flinched, stopped dead, pressed his back to the wall, raised his sword, and guarded all directions.
"What was that?"
But no matter how he spread his senses or shifted his gaze, the only thing he could catch was the crackling of torches burning above him.
Worse, the torchlight flickered, splitting his shadow into several wavering shapes, and with his nerves stretched tight, it felt like his throat kept drying out more and more.
Sihyun swallowed his dry spit again and resumed searching, checking the familiar interior piece by piece.
"First, places where there might be things I can actually fight with…."
Places where martial artists often stayed or rested, first. But even there, although chairs and furnishings remained, the aura of living creatures was simply gone, like everything had evaporated.
After checking the inside for a long time, Sihyun returned toward the entrance area and lightly bit down on his lip.
In the end, there was nothing in the early section. But he couldn’t just be happy about it.
A Gate wasn’t a game, but from experience, when there were no small fry, the usual setup was to dump all the difficulty into the boss’s stats. If that was the case, then with his current ability, it was obvious he wouldn’t be able to clear this Gate.
Sihyun felt a pang of regret at his lost power and tried to haul his slipping confidence back up.
'No. There’s no way. And even if it is, there are plenty of methods besides internal energy.'
Still, a deep sigh shoved its way out through his lips.
Honestly, he’d underestimated the current world. The Heavenly Demon Divine Art he’d started cultivating again really was a peerless art, and if he wanted, he could enter a certain realm quickly—so he’d gotten careless.
If he’d known a crisis like this would hit out of nowhere, he never would’ve trained so leisurely.
Sihyun vowed that the moment he got out, he’d train like hell again, and moved deeper into the hall.
Crackle!
Darting around and rummaging through everything like a flying squirrel, Sihyun had started to resign himself a little as things kept matching his expectations.
"This is seriously a boss-only map. It has to be. There’s no other way this makes sense… Fuck, what do I do."
His body wasn’t even in perfect condition, and now two-thirds of his internal energy was gone, so even the motivation he’d had left was dripping away.
Even so, he kept checking steadily, and around the middle of the hall, he stepped into a huge cavernous space where statues of past Heavenly Demons stood in magnificent rows.
"But how is the inside implemented this perfectly? Kinda crazy."
As Sihyun swept his gaze over the cavern that rose all the way up to the ceiling, he ended up recalling a memory he’d tried not to bring up.
-'Can I write my name on this wall?'
-'If Master wants to, you should.'
-'It’s your home now. So I’m asking the homeowner for permission.'
-'What? Hahaha, permission granted. Do it as much as you want. But you have to write my name too.'
Sihyun rubbed the stiff back of his neck slowly, smiling a little sadly at the familiar voice that felt like it might reach his ear at any moment.
He hadn’t kept it one hundred percent, but while he’d been here, he’d tried his best not to leave traces. He was someone who had to leave eventually. Leaving traces would only make more people suffer—that’s what he’d believed.
But right after he cleared the final quest… back then, he’d been anxious, not wanting to return to reality, and he’d had a childish impulse, wondering if it would be a little sad to be forgotten completely like this.
Thinking about it now, acting like some kid scribbling their name on a desk at that age was honestly embarrassing.
Sihyun flushed slightly as he moved—then suddenly turned his gaze behind the statue he’d been told was the First Heavenly Demon, the one he’d doodled near back then.
★Jeong Sihyun was here★ +Taewoon too
The familiar graffiti, carved carefully with a blade, drove itself deep into his eyes. His heart dropped with a heavy thud.
"W-What? Why is that graffiti here…?"
His lips started trembling on their own, and his blood ran cold. He’d written it while laughing, so the ending had been sloppy and crooked—and the fact that even those tiny details were replicated made it impossible to believe it wasn’t exactly what he’d carved.
His stomach lurched hard like he was getting seasick, and something that surged up hot felt like it slammed into his throat and blocked it tight.
Standing there blankly, staring at the carved graffiti, Sihyun’s breathing grew ragged, and he forcibly pressed down the rising, frantic feeling of 'what if'.
"No… It’s just reflecting what’s in my head. It could be that kind of Gate."
But a person’s heart doesn’t just obey their will. At the same time, he dragged up a situation that contradicted what he’d just said, thinking about the parts outside that had changed in ways he couldn’t understand.
He couldn’t be sure of a single thing, couldn’t understand anything—yet Sihyun stared at the floor for a moment, then abruptly spun around.
And forgetting the careful searching he’d been doing just moments ago, he started sprinting deeper inside.
Maybe because his internal energy control was getting erratic as his emotions bounced around, every time Sihyun’s foot hit the ground, the stone floor gouged irregularly and chips of rock sprang up in all directions.
"Really? No way—hoo… Really?"
His two feet stopped in front of a door that looked thick enough to be absurd.
He’d rushed here without thinking, but even now, Sihyun couldn’t be sure of anything. Hesitating briefly and catching his breath, he lifted his head and checked the brilliantly written plaque.
[Throne of the Heavenly Demon Who Rules Ten Thousand Demons]
Yeah. If the Heavenly Demon was anywhere, it would be here.
Sihyun clenched his trembling hand tight again, took a few deep breaths, then shoved the door open without hesitation.
Grrrgn—
"Haa… Haa. Hah… Jeong Sihyun, you fucking idiot."
There was no way.
The inside—simple but grand, with a height that had to be several meters—was just as empty as everything else up to now.
Because it was so wide open, there wasn’t even a place a person could hide, so before he could even hope, it was the kind of simple layout that cut off every possibility all at once.
Yeah. There was no way.
Thinking Yeon Taewoon—the game character—could be here… he had to be out of his mind.
He had no idea what was going on with the graffiti, but like he’d thought earlier, maybe it really was just a composition built from his memories, and it couldn’t be proof of anything.
"Yeah… Even if something is here, it wouldn’t be the kid I know."