Beneath a sky filled with orange light.
A desperate war for survival raged between two forces across a vast territory.
“Aaaagh!!”
“My arm!!”
For some, death.
Those who were merely wounded in battle were at least fortunate enough to scream.
-CLANG—!
-CLANG—! CLANG—!!
Throughout the burning territory, the harsh clash of metal assaulted the ears.
One of the principal forces within the territory consisted of grotesque beings someone had created.
Corpses walking around with flesh hanging in tatters.
Skeletons with nothing left but white bones.
Golems made by forcibly stitching together different bodies.
Ghosts drifting through the air.
Beings whose presence became known only after death.
It was an army of undead known as a calamity.
“If you die, you'll become one of those monsters! Fight in groups!! Those who become monsters will never enter God's embrace!”
The urgent shout was still ringing out when it happened.
-BOOOOM—!!
With a tremendous burst of force, the roof of the castle at the center of the territory exploded into the air.
-RUMBLE—!
Amid the stone and wooden debris raining down from above, a gigantic dragon appeared, with nothing but bones remaining of its body.
The dragon rose into the sky on ragged wings, opened its jaws, and gathered magic power within them.
The most destructive power possessed by dragonkind alone.
Its breath attack.
But because it had already become a bone dragon, the breath it unleashed toward the ground carried the power of darkness along with its acidity.
-ROOOOAR—!!
The destructive breath was powerful enough to sweep away even the castle's ruins.
Yet someone stood against that power.
A young man wearing orange armor and holding a sword in each hand.
What distinguished him was his black hair and East Asian features.
“Haaah!!”
With a battle cry, the young man raised his sword. Orange light surged skyward, driving back the dragon's breath.
A blinding flash erupted, and both the pitch-black breath and the dragon flying overhead vanished in an instant.
With the enemy's greatest fighting force suddenly gone, the soldiers' morale soared.
“Waaah!! Hero!”
“The Hero's winning!!”
But not everyone was pleased by the sight.
“Tch! Imagine treating a foreigner whose origins we don't even know like a hero.”
“Tut, tut! What's so wonderful about that calamity butcher?”
“Perhaps this, too, is a trial bestowed upon us by God….”
These were the jealous, envious remarks of those in high positions, every one of them dressed in luxurious clothing.
Meanwhile, a man descended gracefully from the spot in the air where the dragon had disappeared and came to a standstill.
He looked down upon the Hero with eyes that seemed to scorn the entire world. The Hero responded with blazing anger.
“Do you intend to become a god of death?! Why did you turn the people of the territory you ruled into monsters that can't even die?!”
Faced with that fiery rage, the man replied in a calm but powerful voice.
[Hero of the accursed Order. You do not know the truth.]
“The truth? Are you talking about how innocent people became undead because of your greed?!”
At the Hero's accusation, the man struck the ground hard with the tip of the staff in his hand.
It was a brief but weighty expression of anger.
[That is a lie spread by the Order to win the faith of fools! Do not insult the imperial citizens who loved this country! The Emperor who placed his trust in me! Or me as a necromancer!]
Powerful magic burst from the tip of his staff and spread outward, enough to make even the Hero standing before him flinch.
“Urgh!”
[If you do not know the truth of what the Order did to my territory, then you will never understand my anger either!]
There was a strange resonance in his voice that sent a shiver through everyone who heard it.
But the Hero said everything he had to say.
“I know nothing of your anger. But if I leave you, a calamity, unchecked, this world will be swallowed by corpses!”
Then, as though taking pity on the Hero, the calamity told him one thing.
[Naive one. Do you not know that this world has already been swallowed by the false being the Order calls God?]
“What? What are you talking about...!”
At that moment, the priestess standing behind the Hero cried out.
“Hero! The time…!”
No sooner had she shouted than the sky began to darken.
The holy magic spread across the surrounding territory, which had been weakening the monsters, was gradually losing its strength.
Realizing there was no more time to argue, the Hero raised his sword and shouted.
“Emilia! Support me!”
At his request, the priestess named Emilia raised both hands and released divine power from her entire body.
-WHOOOOSH—!
As he received her divine power, his depleted vitality surged back, granting him the strength to fight again.
The Hero raised his sword toward the calamity and let his fighting spirit flare.
“Disappear for the sake of this world! Calamity of Death!”
Seeing the Hero's fighting spirit, the man called a calamity raised his staff and prepared to meet him.
[Yes, Hero! Try to bring death to the calamity once called the Immortal King, who was helplessly descending into madness!]
At that moment, countless different magic circles appeared behind him, shining with brilliant light.
[All the magic in this world is with me. Come, try to overcome this trial as well!]
At his cry, different spells poured out of the brilliantly blooming magic circles.
Flames streamed from blue magic circles, lightning from red ones, and transparent ice from yellow ones.
While the Hero frantically dodged them, spears tipped with spikes of stone and iron erupted from green magic circles spread across the ground.
‘He's completely overturned the theory of magic!’
Ordinarily, a magic circle was assigned a color corresponding to its element.
But these circles unleashed magic entirely unrelated to their usual colors, confusing whoever faced them.
On top of that, curses that could drive humans mad circled around the Hero, eating away at his body and mind.
But he was the Hero.
He had survived by enduring and overcoming countless hardships and ordeals.
With his indomitable will, he endured the curses. With his sword imbued with divine power and his perfectly honed swordsmanship, he cut down the threatening spells.
As the spectacular battle continued with neither side showing any sign of victory, the Hero noticed something strange.
‘What is this? Why is there no killing intent behind his attacks?’
It felt as though he were fighting an empty doll.
Just then, Emilia, who had been supporting him from behind, shouted in alarm.
“Hero! In the sky!!”
At her warning, the Hero hurriedly looked upward.
There, a gigantic magic circle unlike anything he had ever seen or heard of was sucking in the surrounding magic power and growing ever more formidable.
‘What is that?’
He had fought in countless wars, defeated monsters called calamities, and witnessed all manner of rare phenomena.
But never had he seen or heard of a magic circle of such size or construction.
‘This is dangerous!’
Feeling the familiar chill that warned him whenever his life was in danger, the Hero realized he had to stop this at all costs.
He charged at the calamity, throwing his life on the line.
He took the incoming spells head-on and relentlessly closed the distance to the man called a calamity.
Neither the pitch-black ropes springing from the ground nor the ice gripping his legs could halt his stubborn advance.
When he finally drew close to the calamity, he swung his sword with all his strength, despite the agony of his entire body burning and tearing apart.
“Huh!?”
The Hero was stunned.
As though he had been waiting for this very moment, the calamity spread his arms wide and welcomed the Hero's blade.
-SLASH—!
[Our amusement ends here.]
Those were the incomprehensible final words the calamity uttered as his body was cut diagonally in two.
At the same time, pitch-black light erupted, and the magic circle was completed in an instant.
‘Accursed Order. Just wait. I will return!’
The moment the magic circle that had adorned the sky was completed, the Calamity of Death collapsed where he stood.
The enormous magic circle vanished almost immediately, leaving no way to tell whether his spell had succeeded or failed.
“Did I… defeat him?”
The victory left a bitter taste in the Hero's mouth. Somehow, even though he had won, it didn't feel like a victory.
“Hero!”
At Emilia's cry, however, the Hero forced himself to nod.
“Yeah, I'm fine. I've defeated the Calamity of Death.”
With the aura of death now completely gone, the Hero could finally be certain of his victory.
But even the Hero did not know.
He did not know that the calamity he had defeated had awakened in another world.
Nor that the bond between them had yet to end.
***
-CLATTER. CLICK..
On one floor of an old building shrouded in darkness, the stench of blood hung thick in every corner.
At the source of that bloody smell, a small makeshift operating room had been set up.
Metal instruments clinked softly beneath the operating room's bright lights, while a man dressed in green surgical scrubs peered into someone's open abdomen.
A moment later, he removed a still-throbbing heart from the abdomen and handed it to an assistant waiting beside him.
“Pack it quickly. Freshness is everything.”
“Yes, Doctor.”
At the doctor's command, the assistant quickly opened a device resembling a cooler.
Inside were harvested organs, tubes connecting to them, and stored blood.
The assistant deftly operated the device and finished the connections. The heart began beating as though its owner were breathing normally.
After the liver, kidneys, and other vital organs had been removed and stored one by one, nothing was left inside the man's slit-open abdomen.
“Send the box outside and tell them to bring in the next log.”
The assistant responded immediately, without a flicker of emotion at the doctor's order treating a human body like an object.
“Yes! Understood.”
The order was swiftly relayed, and soon another sleeping person was carried naked onto the operating table.
He was a young man in his twenties, rather handsome and solidly built.
The doctor gazed indifferently at the young man, who lay asleep as though unconscious, then picked up a scalpel and plunged it straight into his chest.
-SQUELCH—!
The instant red blood spurted from his chest, the sleeping man's eyes flew open.
-GRAB—!
Perhaps sensing danger, he seized the wrist of the doctor holding the scalpel and shoved him aside.
“Aaagh!!”
“Doctor!!”
He immediately sat up on the operating table, clutched his dizzy head, and struggled to collect his thoughts.
Before he could, however, the guards who had heard the two men's screams flung open the door and rushed inside.
“What's going on?!”
Four gangsters entered, their faces menacing and their bodies covered in japanese style tattoos.
At the sight of them, the doctor exploded in anger.
“What the hell did you do?! The anesthesia hasn't worked at all!”
The gangsters frowned deeply upon seeing the awakened man, then bowed their heads in apology.
“We're sorry, Doctor. We'll deal with it right away.”
Looking thoroughly irritated and put out, they approached the man who had awakened.
Meanwhile, the man on the operating table was staring blankly around him and muttering something.
“Why has the world of souls I built disappeared…? Where has all my mighty magic power gone, leaving only this…?”
Then one of the gangsters placed a hand on his shoulder, and the man's gaze suddenly turned sharp.
“How rash of you to dare lay a hand on me.”
The gangster was incensed by the man's contemptuous gaze, which looked down on him with utter arrogance.
“What the fuck are you saying?! Are you trying to get yourself killed?!”
The instant the gangster spat out his curse, a small magic circle flashed briefly at the man's fingertips.
[Weakening]
With that strangely resonant word, the man grabbed the wrist of the gangster touching his shoulder and twisted it.
-CRACK—!
The bones snapped and shattered so easily they might have been made of biscuits.
“Gyaaaaaagh!!”
The other gangsters were startled by the sight of their companion stumbling backward and squealing like a pig being slaughtered. They rushed forward.
“What the hell!!”
“Ah, shit! Grab him, quick!!”
“Doctor, you two get out of the way!”
The three remaining gangsters, flustered, lunged at him together to restrain him.
Then that strange resonance flowed from his mouth once again.
[Pierce. Leotra.]
With those words, numerous pitch-black holes appeared around him, as if they were dripping down in a continuous stream.
-WHOOSH-WHOOSH-WHOOSH—!
From each dark hole emerged a long, thick, snow-white spear.
-SQUELCH—!
-SQUELCH-SQUELCH-SQUELCH—!!
The spears pierced not only the approaching gangsters but also the fleeing doctor and his assistant in a single instant.
“Ugh!
“Ghk!”
“Grrgh!”
With their bodies impaled in an instant, they hung from the spears, unable even to scream properly.
But these were no ordinary spears. They were the long finger bones of some unknown creature.
“Fortunately, this fellow came along as well.”
After that cryptic mutter, he gazed impassively at the people hanging from the bones.
If not for the blood spilling onto the floor, they might have looked like slabs of meat hanging from butcher's hooks.
‘More importantly, what exactly is going on here?’
Climbing down from the operating table, he struggled to make sense of his circumstances.
Then he calmly began to recall who he was and what had happened.
‘I'm Veylord Carpe Diem, the last necromancer of the Empire and lord of the great city of Carpe Diem. As the Calamity of Death, I engineered my defeat at the Hero's hands.’
Once he remembered that much, his present situation began to make some sense.
‘It seems the reincarnation spell I created worked, but….’
The final spell cast by the man called the Calamity of Death was a reincarnation spell that no one had ever successfully performed before.
And he had succeeded, obtaining a new body like this.
But something was strange.
‘Where in the world am I? Even the shape of the walls and the floor are strangely clean.’
Everything he could see was utterly different from the place where he had lived.
‘And my memories are intact, so why is my body so big? Could it be possession rather than reincarnation?’
If he had truly reincarnated, he should at least have the body of a child.
But the body he now possessed was that of a fully grown adult.
At that moment, he felt pain in the chest where the scalpel had struck, along with the sticky flow of blood.
‘I need to heal this body first.’
If he allowed the bleeding to continue, he might lose the body he had only just acquired to excessive blood loss.
“Hmm?”
As he tried to absorb mana to restore his wounded body, he noticed something unusual.
‘Why is the mana so thin here? And this place… this isn't a normal place.’
The space was filled with resentment so dense and viscous that it felt oppressive.
As a necromancer, he had encountered places like this many times. He focused his mind on his eyes.
His pupils opened wide, revealing an abyss that seemed to swallow light.
‘There's nothing wrong with my Spirit Sight.’
Spirit Sight was among the most fundamental abilities a necromancer needed.
Without it, one could neither see supernatural beings nor form contracts with them.
‘From this, I can infer that Spirit Sight is an ability bound to the soul, not the eyeballs or brain matter.’
True to his nature as a mage who pursued truth and knowledge, he was already devising theories to investigate, even in these circumstances.
But he knew perfectly well that this was not the time, so he set the thought aside and looked elsewhere.
A plastic curtain smeared with red blood appeared before his eyes.
But his gaze was fixed on what lay beyond it.
-I… I want to live…
-G-give… it back… what's mine….
-My heart… my liver… my eyes!!!
They were blackened, vengeful spirits clinging to the people who had been impaled on the finger bones and killed, pouring out their hatred and resentment.
There were dozens of them. No, perhaps more than a hundred.
‘It seems this was a place where those people treated other people's lives like toys.’
Not one of the vengeful spirits he could see looked normal.
Most had their abdomens split open and their vital organs missing. Others lacked both eyes, and some had even had their arms and legs cut off.
Suddenly, he felt a part of his head grow hot, and his emotions surged violently.
‘This is dangerous…! Why?!’
-Do not devote your heart to life.-
In that instant, the first principle of necromancy, engraved in his mind, surfaced and cooled his overheated thoughts and emotions.
‘It seems the aftereffects of the reincarnation spell are still lingering. To think I nearly lost my reason over something like this. Unless….’
A necromancer was someone who had to behold hideously deformed vengeful spirits and listen to their almost curse-like grievances every day, every hour, every moment.
One wrong step could easily lead to madness, leaving only a limited choice of paths.
Such people had to either enter the Church and spend their lives there or become necromancers who commanded souls.
That was why necromancers had to read, memorize, and engrave principles like the one he had just recalled upon their hearts, with a fervor bordering on indoctrination, to keep themselves from going mad.
“Phew…!”
With his reason cooled once more, he sought a way to make up for what he currently lacked.
‘I need to use them to regain my power first.’
There were two ways for a necromancer to accumulate magic power.
The first was to absorb the mana mixed into the atmosphere and convert it into magic power, just as ordinary mages did.
‘There's strangely little mana in the air here. The first method won't work.’
The second was to resolve the grievances of those who had died and become vengeful spirits, then convert the resentment they had accumulated into magic power.
Even the magic power he had saved for after his reincarnation was almost exhausted from killing those men.
[Listen!]
At that moment, fluent Korean came spilling from Veylord's mouth.
“Ahem!? What language is this?”
Though the words had escaped him spontaneously, the language was completely unfamiliar.
And yet he could speak it with remarkable fluency and understand it perfectly.
Then, along with a sharp, tingling headache, someone else's memories surfaced.
It felt as though brain matter were flowing along his spine and forcibly injecting memories into his head.
[My name is Kang Chan-seong. I am twenty-five years old and a citizen of the Republic of Korea.]
‘Are these the memories of this body's original owner? That makes me almost certain my theory about possession is correct.’
He had intended to reincarnate, but something must have gone wrong, leaving him in possession of someone else's body by force.
‘Perhaps this body's soul, too….’
But with his magic power depleted, he could not simply cast the reincarnation spell again right now.
‘For now, there's nothing I can do about it.’
Having quickly assessed the situation, he spoke again.
[I have killed those who killed you. Stop clinging to those worthless lumps of meat and wailing!]
At his strangely resonant shout, the hate-filled gazes of all the vengeful spirits turned toward him at once.
It was a sight that would have made anyone's blood run cold.
But he showed no sign of fear beneath their stares, as though he were perfectly accustomed to them.
Instead, as if to show them something, he used all his remaining magic power to cast a spell on the corpses hanging from the bones.
[Liquefaction]
The flesh and fat clinging to the corpses melted away like a mud face mask.
-Uuuuuugh!
-Aaaaaah!
With even the corpses they had been cursing now gone, their resentment lost its target. It swirled through the air as they let out dreadful screams.
-GRAAAAAH!!
-HAAAAAGH!!
Just as their resentment was about to run wild,
someone reached out a hand to them.
[Come here. Leave that sticky resentment with me and depart for the place where you belong.]
No sooner had he finished speaking than the vengeful spirits, drawn toward his hand, surged toward him like a flood.
Veylord's body shook violently as he absorbed their grievances through his entire being.
-A necromancer's power resides in the vessel of the soul.-
At that moment, a change occurred within the dark, empty world inside his soul.
The thick, concentrated dregs of their resentment settled at the very bottom of that world, becoming its land.
-Build a world of your own within your soul.-
The resentment of those whose grievances had been eased, even a little, drifted through the air, unable to settle anywhere.
‘I have resolved your grievances. Now submit to my will!’
At his command, the resentment that had been flowing aimlessly gathered into one according to his will, shining proudly upon the land.
Then it transformed into rich magic power, as concentrated as whiskey made by fermenting and distilling grain, and began to fall one drop at a time.
-DRIP…! DRIP…! DRIP…!
The droplets became tiny lights and welcome rain in the barren world within his soul, soaking into his body.
‘My once-mighty world is gone. If it's gone, I'll simply start again from the beginning.’
At that moment, something occurred that ordinary people could neither see nor hear.
Pale smoke streamed through his head, pierced the ceiling, and stretched into the sky.
These were the souls that had departed, leaving behind all their lingering thoughts and resentment.
-WOOOOOOO~!!
Their soundless cries began to reverberate throughout the entire building.
***
“Ahh… my head feels clear now….”
By the time he opened his eyes again, his earlier confusion had vanished without a trace.
“Now that magic power is flowing through me, I can finally think properly. At last, I understand what sort of world this is.”
He had been able to read memories from the lingering thoughts of the vengeful spirits that had flowed into him.
Using those memories, he had learned about the world he now inhabited.
“A world without magic or supernatural abilities. It seems I've stepped into a strange world indeed.”
Stepping down from the operating table, he pulled aside the plastic curtain stained red with blood.
As he slowly walked toward the figures who had been reduced to bones, the long white fingers that had been stretched outward descended.
“I am Veylord Carpe Diem, the last necromancer of a fallen kingdom and lord of the great city of Carpe Diem.”
He met the eyes of the skeletal figures and spoke to them as though they were living people.
Then something strange happened.
“Click.”
“Clatter.”
“Clack, clack!”
As if answering him, their fleshless jaws moved, rattling their teeth together.
No one else would have been able to understand what they were saying, but Veylord understood them easily.
“You have no right to complain that you were unjustly killed. In the language of this world, they call it reaping what you sow.”
“Clack-clack!”
When their mouths opened once more, he lightly snapped his fingers.
-SNAP—!
With a sound like flint striking flint, a strange magic circle appeared.
[SKREEEEE!!!]
[HAAAAAGH!!]
At that instant, the skeletal figures suddenly burst into flames.
“There is no way to repay your sins. Suffer for eternity and wait until the grievances of the vengeful spirits have been resolved.”
Then soundless screams erupted from the very depths of their souls.
Only those capable of hearing them could hear these screams, and only those capable of seeing them could see them.
“Those flames will go out only after your bones have burned to ashes and the ashes have turned to dust. Until then, taste the agony of having your souls burned.”
[SKREEE!! Save me!! No, just kill me instead!!]
[Please forgive me! Haaagh! It hurts..!! It hurts!!!]
Only his ears could hear the dreadful screams begging for death.
But it seemed he no longer wished to listen, for he gave a light wave of his hand through the air.
[Open the door. Lavirans.]
The shadows on the floor stretched outward, filling the ruined room.
-CREEEAK… THUD—!
An awful creaking of hinges rang out, and the shadow slowly opened downward like a door.
-SLITHER-R-R—!
When the shadow door opened, pitch-black tentacles rose languidly through the gap, salivating.
[Devour.]
At that single command, the tentacles shot upward as though they had been waiting. They wrapped around the skeletal figures, swallowing even their screams.
[HAAAAAGH!!]
[NNNGH!!]
They were sucked into the shadow in an instant, and even the last traces of their existence vanished completely.
In the dark space, where only silence remained, he began to walk.
‘Now that I know about this place, I need to find a way back to my original world.’
-CREEEAK.
An unpleasant creak of hinges accompanied the opening door. From beyond it, dark light spilled out and enveloped his body.