“Master…?”
Knock knock
“Master, is something wrong?”
The surroundings were frighteningly quiet. This was the Heavenly Demon’s safehouse, a place I’d handed over after beating down the elders who opposed it, for a master who didn’t like noisy things.
Of course, I’d mixed in my own personal intentions too, but on the surface, that was the reason.
But they’d screeched and screeched about how you couldn’t let just anyone in, so I almost killed every last one of them, elder or not—then I held back and held back because I’d have too few bastards left to put to work. That was the kind of place this was.
So wasn’t it only natural that it was quiet?
Yeon Taewoon tried to rationalize it like that, but he couldn’t stop his instincts from sensing the dark misfortune whipping through the space and screaming at him.
It was too quiet, unlike usual, and there was no presence at all. Little by little, his hands began to tremble thinly, and his face started to harden stiff.
“I’m coming in.”
Still, there was no answer. Yeon Taewoon hurriedly sliced through the thick locked door with one hand like he was cutting tofu.
Wood and ten-thousand-year cold iron fragments scattered down in a rush, revealing the inside of the wide room.
The floor was red, and the room was filled with that unpleasant metallic fishy smell. It was a color and a smell he’d gotten sick of, after pushing through life-and-death lines with Master all this time.
On top of that, Master was lying there limply like a doll with its strings cut, wearing a white—no, now reddened—long robe.
“…Master? Don’t play pranks again.”
Jeong Sihyun originally liked pranks. After startling me, he’d blatantly watch my reaction, and if there was no reaction, he’d get a little sullen.
After I got older, those kinds of pranks weren’t exactly surprising, but for a master who felt hurt, I’d always pretended to be surprised.
So even now, this had to be one of those pranks.
“This prank went a bit too far. I was really startled, so get up now.”
Honestly, at Yeon Taewoon’s level, he could easily detect something like a person’s vital signs. But Master was an expert martial artist who’d just stepped into the Profound Realm—erasing his presence would be easy. It had to be.
“…Fuck.”
No, actually, there was no one in at least this Central Plains who could deceive my senses.
Yeon Taewoon’s fingertips twitched for a moment, and with a single step, he shot out in an instant, pulled Sihyun into his arms, and held him tight. The body in his arms was still warm. But there was no heartbeat.
In that moment, blood-red eyes sank darkly.
“…You made me live however you pleased, and now you’re throwing me away like this?”
Get up. Get up, please.
In a slightly trembling voice, Yeon Taewoon gently shook Sihyun’s body.
Thud.
The hand that had been precariously draped over his body fell to the floor.
At the same time, Yeon Taewoon’s world collapsed into ruin.
***
“Haah. Haah… I’m back?”
Jeong Sihyun panted, struggling for breath as if he’d just fought hundreds of masters, and slowly stroked around his neck—where blood had been gushing out just a moment ago.
But of course, all his fingertips felt was the smooth texture of skin.
‘My body feels a little heavy, but my Inner Power is still here….’
It was a little strange, but after taking a few deep breaths to steady himself, Sihyun slowly straightened the body that had been bent over and looked around.
The space he was standing in looked a bit old, but it was an old apartment of about fifteen pyeong that had everything it needed.
Only then did his memories start to come back, one by one. Right—this was the jeonse place he’d barely managed to get with the money he’d scraped together to death his whole life, plus loans.
“Wow…. A phone…. This was what I missed the most while I was there.”
It was a life where, while taking care of Taewoon, he’d painfully realized just how little he knew about kids.
‘If I could’ve used this while raising Taewoon….’
For a moment, Sihyun gave a slightly bitter smile at how Taewoon was the starting point of every single thought he had, then picked up the phone lying next to the computer desk.
“…Huh?”
But after charging it for a bit and turning it on, Sihyun couldn’t help blurting out a stupid, puzzled sound. The moment he unlocked it, as if it had been waiting, chats and texts poured in like crazy.
He wasn’t someone who had a lot of people he was close with, and there was no reason he should be getting contacted like this. It was strange.
Opening the messenger app first, Jeong Sihyun slowly started checking from the top chat.
But as he read the far-from-normal contents, his expression gradually hardened.
“What…. the hell? ‘Are you alive’ out of nowhere—what is this supposed to….”
The ridiculous messages seemed to keep coming for a while, then stopped completely after a few months.
Looking closely, the sent dates on the messages and the date displayed on the phone were showing a difference of about three years.
“No way, three years passed…?”
Jeong Sihyun suddenly grabbed his head as it started to throb sharply, then collapsed onto the chair that had been shoved aside.
Ten years was such a long time that no matter how he turned his brain over, he couldn’t remember the exact date from when he’d crossed over there.
And now that he thought about it, the System Window had never said it would send him back to the time when he’d disappeared.
“Wow… even to the end, you screw me over.”
Sihyun checked the time that had slipped by in a way that made no sense, over and over, but he couldn’t accept reality in one go, and he just stared blankly ahead.
Krrrk!!
“Kkuaaaagh!!”
“Die!!!”
Bang! Bang!!
“Ah! You scared the hell out of me! What is that?”
Before Sihyun could even pull himself together from the confusion, the building shook very slightly, and a few people’s desperate screams came through.
And right after that, a scratching sound like before, and popping sounds, jammed themselves chaotically into his ears.
Sihyun sprang up and stomped over to the balcony at the far end of the kitchen where the noise was coming from. A sudden ominous premonition started wrapping around his body.
“Fuck, I’ve still got a ton of loan left—what the fu… huh?”
Outside was fine, but it wasn’t fine. This place was supposed to be a slightly run-down neighborhood with only low villas and apartments clustered together.
But between the low buildings huddled together, there were expensive houses here and there, and huge buildings that looked like they’d be dozens of floors tall.
And behind those buildings, there were several buildings in an Eastern style that he knew all too well, clustered together to form a single complex.
“What the hell is this insanely mismatched sight….”
Just then, a loud bursting sound rang out again. Sihyun lowered the gaze he’d been holding forward and started looking down more carefully.
Two people were fighting something strange. No—the skin color was blue, so he didn’t recognize it at first, but that looked like a human, somehow.
“…What the hell, are you kidding me?”
It looked like they were the source of the noise that had just exploded, and sure enough, the people tangled together were alternating between screaming and making the sound of smashing something, all at once.
In this unexpected situation, as naturally as he always did, Sihyun tried to circulate his Inner Power and heighten his sight.
But the Inner Power filling his dantian didn’t move, as if it had hardened stiff.
When the Inner Power he’d used freely for ten years wouldn’t move, he panicked. By now, Inner Power was practically like a part of his body—like hands and feet—so when something he never expected happened, he suddenly started to feel anxious and restless.
“No, why is this happening too.”
After that, Sihyun tried several more times to move his Inner Power, but his hardened dantian stayed the same.
Only then did he realize that his body feeling heavy and burdensome wasn’t just an aftereffect of coming back.
But only for a moment did he despair over the Inner Power problem. Noticing a change in the people brawling, Sihyun’s eyes widened without him realizing, and he leaned his upper body out the window.
“Wait…. That guy is shooting something like fire from his hand right now? Huh?! Is that Sword Aura?”
A man was lighting fire in his palm and whipping it like a lash. And from the woman’s sword beside him, a white haze rose up, then soon flared, taking on a rough, lumpy shape.
His hands trembled a little. He couldn’t tell what that fire really was, but the blunt energy wrapped around that sword was, even if crude, definitely Sword Aura.
Haha. What kind of dogshit is this.
I went through that fucking misery for ten years in a game, and I even left Taewoon behind like that, so why is the world like this?
With a hollow face, Sihyun just stared down at the world that had changed a little—no, had changed a lot.
And after watching the three exchange blows outside the window for a long time, only when the oddly colored-skinned person’s neck came off under the two people’s combined attack did he finally manage to back away, step by step.
Of course, he hadn’t spent ten years for nothing, so killing wasn’t shocking.
But murder was illegal in South Korea, wasn’t it. In broad daylight like this, that openly?
Sihyun got confused about whether he was still inside the game.
“Does this make sense? Hey, System, come out.”
With a maybe-this-will-work feeling, Sihyun called for the System Window that had worked him to the bone, but when there was no response in the surrounding silence, he let out a small sigh of relief.
Then that meant it really was reality. But a way to find out….
“Ah!”
Jeong Sihyun suddenly remembered, belatedly, that if this was reality, he could get information through a computer and a phone—things that used to be obvious.
He sprang up and walked over to the sofa where the phone he’d plugged into the charger was. Using the computer felt unpleasant, just in case.
“Crazy….”
The moment he went into his usual portal site, the main page was plastered with things he’d never seen before. He hurriedly tapped into news and logs and started reading.
-Hunter Association AFEC team. Entering a B-rank Gate that appeared in Seoul today! What will the results be?
-A-rank Hunter Kim Seulgi’s strength and beauty. Behind-the-scenes of a pictorial shoot
-“We’re forming a union of freelance hunters.” The whole world’s attention focused!
-Cheonghwa Guild. Clear of the 3rd floor of Gangwon Province’s God’s Mine. All members return safely.
“Hunters…? God’s Mine?”
No matter how he read, there wasn’t a single headline he could understand right away. Sihyun started digging deeper into the internet.
The conclusion was this: this was definitely the world he’d lived in, but it also wasn’t.