Bariel was human.
‘That is right. I was human. A very decent human, at that.’
He had been born human and had fallen into the Demon Realm. Even until the very moment he rose to the position of Demon King—no, the Fist King and ruled the entire Demon Realm, he had continued to wonder why he had fallen there.
‘...Damn it.’
He had lived an ordinary life.
Until middle school, he attended school like everyone else, and when he became a high school student, he was lucky enough to awaken as a superhuman and enroll in a superhuman training school.
Then one day, he fell into the Demon Realm. There had been no prophecy, no warning whatsoever.
When he opened his eyes, he was in an unfamiliar world. When he came to his senses, everyone was his enemy.
‘It was a hard life.’
The human body was weak.
Even though he had awakened as a superhuman, he was weak.
‘Because in the Demon Realm, even my Status Window vanished.’
In the Demon Realm, where power was everything, weakness meant death, and Bariel was weaker than all else.
He had lost count of how many times he had nearly been killed by monsters, and whenever he managed to get even a little money, vicious gangs robbed him of every last coin.
That was what it meant to be weak in the Demon Realm.
The only fortunate thing, perhaps, was that he had kept his life.
But none of that mattered now.
‘Because I survived.’
Bariel the demon—no, Bariel the human—had survived. He had not died.
In place of the Status Window he had lost, he gained demonic energy, and grew absurdly strong.
If one were to ask what he had done as soon as he became that strong, the answer was simple.
‘I was reborn.’
He discarded the human name he could no longer even remember and lived as ‘Bariel.’ He moved only to survive, only to grow stronger.
‘I took revenge.’
Bariel destroyed those who had trampled him. Those who had used him as a plaything.
In the end, he smashed everything in the Demon Realm, even the ruling class that had created its damned system.
He even killed the Demon King, the strongest being there, and dragged him down from his throne.
‘I earned honor.’
Until the moment he defeated the Demon King, Bariel’s only weapons had been his fists, and people called him the Fist King.
It was the beginning of a legend the Demon Realm would never see again, and the birth of a new ruler.
‘I gained everything in the Demon Realm.’
And with that entire journey over, the throne before him proved that this was the very moment of that birth.
Once he sat there, every being in the Demon Realm would venerate and respect him as king.
A new authority would be his.
Bariel walked toward the throne without hesitation.
‘My name is Bariel...’
He gave a faint chuckle before the throne, then turned around.
Now it was time to set everything down and begin again.
He closed his eyes and let himself fall back onto the throne.
‘And the king of the Demon Realm...’
A warm, soft sensation enveloped his entire body.
Was a throne supposed to be this plush?
Or was it because he had laid down the burdens of his heart?
Immersed for a moment in that illusion, Bariel opened the eyes he had closed...
“...Wait.”
For some reason, he was somewhere else.
***
‘Hmm.’
Bariel let the strength leave his body and surrendered himself to the throne.
‘For some reason, this feels a little uncomfortable for a throne. Is it just my imagination?’
It was a little different from the feeling that had seemed both soft and dignified. Perhaps it was because fatigue from his long battles had piled up.
It felt as if he could not sense anything, including his demonic energy.
‘That makes sense. All I did was charge forward like a madman.’
How many years had he spent fighting?
How many hardships had he overcome while clawing his way up from the bottom?
His body and mind were surely both exhausted.
That was why Bariel accepted even this sensation as something natural.
He could accept it.
‘...Wait a minute.’
Surely it would not be so bad to enjoy this sensation for just a moment.
Thinking that, Bariel surrendered himself to the somewhat hollow sensation, and at that very moment—
SMACK―!
A crisp blow rang out.
“...?”
An unknown impact struck him, completely unexpected.
Bariel’s eyes snapped open.
His vision spun, and the scene before him lurched.
“...”
His cheek burned as though it were on fire.
Before he could ask what had happened, his head was lifted.
“Hah. Closing your eyes? Well, look at you. Are you not going to open them?”
As his shaking vision returned, the shape of a man appeared before him.
Long, narrow eyes. A build slightly larger than his own.
“When someone talks, you should listen. Who said you could ignore me as you please, huh?”
“...A person?”
A deep, severe voice, and even a tone that seemed to sneer at him.
‘...What is this?’
Bariel tilted his head.
His gaze moved to the man’s clothes. More precisely, to the emblem attached to them.
‘...Superhuman Training.’
That was what was written on the emblem.
He could read languages.
From reading books in the Demon Realm’s library, he could say he had already mastered every language in existence.
But that was not why he could read this.
“This is...”
“Hey. Kang Dae-hyun, are you ignoring me right now? Hey. Hey!”
Judging by the language... no, according to his memory, this place was Korea.
‘I was definitely just...’
He had definitely sat on the Demon Realm’s throne.
He had sat upon the throne of the Demon Realm, ended every battle, and reached the summit.
‘Something... something is strange.’
And yet now, he was in Korea, a completely different world, being beaten.
And by someone who seemed no more than a brat at that.
‘...Hah. No, wait.’
It was absurd, and all too sudden, but in that instant, something in his memory flashed.
“Do you know me?”
“What the hell are you talking about, you bastard? Did getting hit make you lose your mind?”
This situation. This way of speaking. This bastard’s face as he freely vented his irritation at him.
Everything began to surface from long-buried memory.
‘This place... this atmosphere...’
It was from years ago—no, from so long ago that it was now difficult even to recall.
The days when he had awakened as a superhuman, struggled his way into the training school, and been bullied.
And the days when, from time to time, he had been beaten like this as an outlet for delinquent bastards’ stress.
‘How many years did I spend in the Demon Realm again...?’
He had lived having forgotten the very concept of dates in the first place, so there was no way he would remember.
But...
“...This is not bad.”
“Hey. Hey! Are you standing there in a daze right now? Hey!”
“I am not deaf, so shut that filthy mouth of yours for a moment.”
“...Ha!”
Yes. He had returned.
To the time before he had fallen into the Demon Realm in a human body, to the days when he had been bullied at the training school.
“Now that I think about it, it has been a very long time since I last saw you.”
“You have been muttering to yourself for a while now...”
For now, that was all he could know. He had no idea what was going on, but at least that much was enough.
“This bastard, seriously...!”
“Hmm.”
And now that he knew that, he had taken more than enough hits.
SWISH―.
Bariel tilted his head back and lightly dodged the fist.
Though it was a speed he would normally have evaded with ease, his body felt heavy, and the fist narrowly grazed past his head.
“Huh?”
The man who had thrown the punch flinched in surprise.
“Are you seriously putting up a fight...!”
Before he could finish speaking, Bariel threw a punch and struck his jaw.
CRACK―!
“Gah!”
With a choked cry, the man toppled backward.
“Hmm... It is hazy. What was your name again...?”
Dae-hyun tilted his head as if in thought.
So much time had passed that he had forgotten, but the memory was slowly beginning to return.
“Se-chan... Right, Park Se-chan.”
Same age. Same class.
A delinquent who had tormented him more persistently than the others.
Bariel looked at him and nodded.
“I have no interest in you anymore.”
Looking at Park Se-chan, who lay sprawled on the floor without any annoying provocation or excuse, Bariel clicked his tongue.
“...First, figuring out what is going on takes priority, I suppose.”
No matter how bewildering and absurd the situation was, standing still would change nothing.
Things changed only when one moved, and clues appeared only when one tried something.
Bariel, who had survived with great difficulty in the Demon Realm, knew that well.
“Hmm.”
“You bastard...”
“Stay still. Unless you want that arm shattered.”
That was why he rummaged through Park Se-chan’s pockets.
At the very least, Bariel believed this was the best action he could take at that moment.
“Well, now.”
After a few seconds of rummaging.
Bariel found something small in the man’s pocket and pulled it out.
“How long has it been since I last saw a smartphone?”
A rectangular object, a little larger than his palm.
A smartphone.
By now, even how to use it had grown hazy in his mind.
‘Well, even so.’
CLICK―.
They said the body remembered what was familiar, did they not?
He turned on the smartphone’s screen naturally.
「May 17, 2040 (Wed) 08:30」
The display lit up, showing information including the time and date.
‘Putting the time aside, what matters is the year and date...’
Bariel stared at the numbers in thought, then scratched his head.
“Wait. If it is May of 2040... then the day I was dragged into the Demon Realm has already passed, has it not?”
It was somewhat vague, but he had suddenly fallen into the Demon Realm around early May.
That meant the time when he had been dragged into the Demon Realm had already passed.
‘Even if I assume going to the Demon Realm was a dream, I have no memory of spending this missing stretch of time... Something is strange.’
There were many things bothering him, but there was no point in clutching his head and agonizing over them here.
Thinking that, Bariel nodded...
BUZZ―.
In that instant, the smartphone vibrated.
「Shin-hyuk: Dae-hyun, are you okay? Nothing happened with Park Se-chan again, did it?」
A message appeared on the screen.
When he read the friendly message, a hollow laugh escaped him.
“This was mine to begin with. ...So my smartphone was taken too.”
He had lived in a truly miserable way.
He had endured with great difficulty.
Bariel scratched his head and looked at the name sewn onto his school uniform.
“Right. That is right.”
Come to think of it, the word ‘name’ reminded him of something.
More than his name, more than the current time, there was something he had to check first.
‘If I have returned, then it should exist here.’
There was no way it would have disappeared.
A dreadful doubt crossed his mind, but no, that could not be.
Thinking that, Bariel swallowed hard and uttered one short phrase.
“...Status Window.”
DING―!
[Kang Dae-hyun]
[Stats: Strength (8), Agility (10), Intelligence (30), Unique Stat = Divine Power (10)]
[Type: Healing Type (C)]
[Traits: Speed Reading (E), Quick Thinking (C), Observation (C+)]
[Skill: Lesser Healing (LV.1)]
A colorless, transparent window appeared, exactly as he had expected.
“Hmm.”
Myths, legends, ghost stories.
It was a special authority that no myth, legend, or ghost story could explain, let alone grant.
An existence that quantified and displayed strength more objectively than anyone or anything else.
And...
‘The foundation of the growth and awakening that allowed superhumans to become stronger than ordinary humans.’
His own Status Window, which he had not had in the Demon Realm and which he was seeing for the first time in ages.
“Well. Putting that aside...”
With a faint laugh, he examined the Status Window.
“...It has been quite a while since I saw this, too.”
A Healing Type, one that did not suit the majestic Fist King.
Not ‘demonic energy,’ but ‘Divine Power.’
And...
“Kang Dae-hyun, is it?”
Kang Dae-hyun, not Bariel.
How long had it been since he was called by this name?
“...This may not be so bad in its own way.”
Listening to a name that felt both familiar and unfamiliar, he slowly began to walk.