When I lifted the Tarp, Luna was standing inside.
She was covered in wounds and bruises from head to toe, glaring at us with deadly, hateful eyes.
Trying to hide my astonishment, I muttered, “What the hell happened here?” and immediately began healing her wounds.
Scatroj let out a deep sigh and began to explain the situation: “Brother, while we were waiting for you here, we completely lost contact with our scouts.
Sensing something was wrong, I ordered Kaju to scout the perimeter, and they returned to the edge of the camp with her.
You know…
that ‘coup’ topic we used to talk about back during our game days.”
I nodded to show I understood and turned back to Luna.
She was thrusting her shackled hands through the bars of the wagon, frantically trying to grab my throat.
Her face was contorted with rage.
She roared at me, shouting with pure hatred: “I will kill you!
No matter what, I will absolutely kill you!
Anyone who dares threaten my people, my lineage, they—”
I didn’t let her finish her sentence.
Using my mana, I created an invisible pressure in the air and sealed her mouth with a spell, cutting off her voice.
Then, I stepped closer to the wagon.
Leaning toward her ear behind the iron bars, I spoke in a whispered, ice-cold tone that only she could hear: “What about Oberon?”
The moment she heard the word ‘Oberon,’ Luna’s eyes widened in sheer terror.
Her body began to thrash even more violently than before, and she started kicking the bars.
I turned around and gave Scatroj a nod of approval.
Signaling that he didn’t want to prolong the matter, Scatroj pointed at the wagon and barked an order to the mages behind the trees: “Silence this beast.
But do not kill it.”
The dark mage soldiers waiting for orders at the treetops extended their hands toward the wagon.
The moment I noticed the ominous, parasite-like curse magic gathering at their fingertips, my reflexes kicked in.
I deployed a thick, impenetrable protection barrier that completely isolated the wagon from the outside world.
The soldiers’ curse magic struck my barrier and dissipated.
Scatroj looked at me, completely unable to make sense of my move.
“Kaan?” he asked in a questioning tone.
Even though he was older than me, our current physical avatars made us nearly the same height.
I took a sharp step toward him.
Our eyes locked; we stared into each other’s eyes for seconds.
Then, I slowly lowered my gaze.
As I began walking toward where Ermo and the others were, I threw one last cold glance over my shoulder: “You’ve become corrupted, Scatroj…
This isn’t who you are.”
When I reached them, Ermo and Enwoybi’s lively, playful conversation cut off like a knife, replaced by a heavy silence.
Exhausted, I collapsed into a large tree hollow, leaning my back against it.
Ermo coughed slightly, trying to diffuse the tension in the air.
“I take it things didn’t go well?” he asked.
I rested my head against the hard bark of the hollow.
Looking directly into both of their eyes, I recounted everything that had just happened inside, piece by piece, and what Scatroj had done.
As I spoke, both of their expressions turned grave, and their gazes drifted toward the path Scatroj would soon come down.
It was Enwoybi who broke the silence.
“Kaan, you know…
this place is no longer just a digital world; it’s a complete reality.
Naturally, the culture and the heavy responsibilities of this world affect us too,” he said, striking his staff against the ground.
“There is a whole nation that Scatroj and I are responsible for, lands we are forced to protect.
You know very well how brutal this universe was, even during our game days…
Not to mention what happened during the founding of the Western Empire, the blood that was spilled.”
I pressed my head harder against the hollow and closed my eyes.
At Enwoybi’s words, flames suddenly erupted from the dark corners of my mind.
For a brief moment, the screams of people dying in the midst of brutality and the stench of slaughter flashed before my eyes.
I snapped my eyes open.
“I will never regret that incident,” I said in a sharp, clear voice.
A brief silence followed.
Then, I laughed softly to lighten the mood.
“But seriously, man, it’s so absurd…
The history and reality of this world we are living in right now consist entirely of the strategic moves we made back in our game days.
The others couldn’t find anything to say to my words; they simply nodded in agreement.
Just then, Kaju appeared before the three of us and dropped to his knees.
He bowed his head respectfully, bending low enough to touch his forehead to the dirt.
“The human race will always remember the great sacrifices made by you and the other supreme beings, Master Kaan,” he said with gratitude.
Laughing, I pointed at Enwoybi.
“It’s fine if they don’t remember this long-eared one, don’t worry about it,” I said.
As Ermo and I burst into laughter, Enwoybi suddenly leaped to his feet, scowling with feigned anger.
“You inferior race…
Are you mocking an elf king like me, you pathetic humans?” he snapped.
Ermo burst into another fit of laughter, continuing to mock him: “You shall respect the glorious Elf King, Papiyus XII!
You shall kneel!”
While Kaju stood up slightly, unsure of what to do, Scatroj finally emerged from the path.
He silently walked over, sat on a log, and fixed his eyes on me.
Seeing Scatroj arrive, I pointed a finger at him and shouted: “Look, Scatroj!
This long-ear is mocking us again, playing king!”
Instantly grasping the situation to melt the tension between us, Scatroj joined in and let out a booming laugh.
As our laughter gradually faded, Enwoybi leaned against the tree behind him and crossed his arms over his chest.
“Man, it’s been a whole year since we came to this world, and it’s still the same bullying…
Don’t you guys ever get bored?” he grumbled.
Wiping the tears of laughter from his eyes, Ermo dropped the bomb: “Well, you’re not human, dude, you can’t get bored.”
After another round of laughter, Scatroj coughed slightly, inviting the group back to seriousness.
Looking directly at me, he spoke: “I’m sorry, Kaan…
I didn’t want to act like that back there, by the wagon.
You know, we are currently in the Dragon Lands, and you can more or less guess how critical the situation is.
You know me anyway; I’ve always been someone who is overly cautious, overly prudent.”
I waved my hand dismissively in the air.
“Forget about it…
It doesn’t matter, don’t sweat it,” I said.
After chatting a bit more about the old days and strategies, Enwoybi leaped to his feet, twirling his staff in the air.
“Alright Ermo, visualize the manor we’re going to clearly in your mind now,” he said enthusiastically.
Ermo looked at him and smirked.
“The idea of a long-ear touching me while casting magic deeply disturbs me, dude…
Lady Velmora, the supreme of supremes, the ancient of ancients, the antique of antiques, will open the portal,” he said, turning around.
Following these exaggerated, praise-filled words, Velmora turned bright red with embarrassment and quickly ran behind Ermo to hide, pinching his shoulder hard.
While Ermo writhed in pain, I glanced briefly at Scatroj.
Seeing him nod in approval, I stood up.
As I walked alone toward the wagon where Luna was being held, I suddenly felt a strange, sinister fluctuation in the flow of mana in the air.
Just as I was about to accelerate into a sprint, one of Kaju’s guards, Brom, suddenly stepped out in front of me, blocking my path.
He gave me a sharp military salute.
I was forced to stop.
Reluctantly returning the salute and lowering my guard, the soldier stammered: “M-Master…
May I tell you something?”
I clasped my hands behind my back and looked down at him.
“Speak, Brom.
What is it?”
Brom lowered his eyes to the ground, his shoulders slumping.
“Master…
In that great cataclysm that happened a year ago, I lost my entire family.
If you and the other supers (players) hadn’t been there to intervene that day, I would probably be dead too.
Since then, I have been serving Master Scatroj with loyalty…
Thank you so much for everything,” he said with deep gratitude.
I gently placed my hand on his shoulder, softening my voice.
“I am very sorry for your family…
But don’t worry, as long as we are alive, I will never allow such destruction to happen in this world again,” I said.
Thinking the matter was closed, I was just about to leave his side when Brom suddenly reached out and grabbed my arm firmly.
With a calm but lethal movement, I turned my torso back toward him.
I fixed my eyes on his hand. Follow the newest chapters on g.com.
“Yes?” I said coldly.
Putting normal soldiers aside, even Kaju wouldn’t dare touch me without permission, so Brom physically stopping me like this was, frankly, incredibly bizarre.
The corner of his mouth was twitching slightly, and his eyes looked as if they were about to pop out.
I violently wrenched my arm free from his grip, placed my hand on his back this time, and injected my mana into him.
“You look sick.
I wonder if your mana veins are—”
Before I could finish my sentence, I sensed a horrifying anomaly in the mana flow I was examining.
It lacked the flexible, harmonious vein structure that should belong to a normal human; on the contrary, the blood inside was ferocious, relentless, and aggressive—just like that of a pureblood demon!
By the laws of nature, a human’s internal mana region was fluid and adaptable.
Demons, however, could be distinguished instantly by their highly aggressive, dominant, and toxic blood that acted like a parasite within any host body.
The moment he realized I had figured it out, Brom’s pupils rolled completely back, his eyes turning pitch black.
He was just about to open his mouth to scream when I thrust my other free arm forward with lightning speed.
Piercing through his chest in a single motion, I ripped his heart out from behind.
While Brom looked at me with shocked, unbelieving eyes through the massive hole in his chest, I simply rolled my eyes.
“Stop wasting my time…
We knew you were a half-demon hybrid from the very beginning anyway.
We just thought you chose the side of humanity,” I said, delivering a hard kick to his collapsing corpse.
Before leaving his side, I took one last look at his lifeless face and spat on it: “By the way…
We were the ones who killed your father back then, too.”
Muttering to myself, I stood straight: “I’ve lost too much time, I need to catch up with Ermo and the others immediately…”
I gathered my mana and initiated the spell to blink directly next to Luna’s wagon.
However, the spell didn’t trigger; the area had been sealed.
“What the hell?!” I froze for a split second.
Channeling my mana entirely into my body to increase my physical speed, I began sprinting through the trees toward the wagon.
When I burst through the bushes into the clearing, the sight before me sent a chill down my spine.
The dark mage soldiers had formed a perfect circle around the wagon.
Each of them had both arms pointed toward the ground, channeling an ominous runic network beneath the earth.
The inside of the wagon, meaning the space around Luna, was entirely enveloped in a dense, pitch-black, and sinister layer of mist.
They had woven such a powerful isolation barrier around themselves that even though I was witnessing the event with my own eyes, I couldn’t sense the slightest magical ripple with my senses.
As I inspected the intricate magic circles they had established, I noticed the black mist shifting.
Inside the shroud, Luna was thrashing like mad, throwing punches against the fog.
This wasn’t a killing spell; it was a type of parasitic magic that seized control of the victim’s mind.
Since I sensed no intent to kill within the mist, I slowly and silently drew my katana from my inventory.
The moment I breached the barrier and slipped inside, the black mist began to move much more fiercely, much more violently against Luna, as if it had sensed my presence.
When the mages heard my footsteps and noticed me, one who appeared to be their leader shouted without looking back: “Hybrids, attack!
The ritual is almost complete!
Do not disappoint our Master!”
Leaping into the air, I evaded the strikes of the hybrid mages rushing toward me.
Mid-air, I pointed my hand down toward the hybrids below and gathered my mana to wipe them out with a single spell.
At that exact millisecond, my vision suddenly went completely dark.
Inside my ears, right in the center of my brain, I began to hear a soul-scratching, diabolical whisper echoing:
“Do you not crave power, Kaan?…
Doesn’t it secretly bother you, doesn’t it vex you that Enwoybi is always better, always superior to you when it comes to magic?”
The demonic whisper continued to breach the weakest walls of my mind, seeping deeper into my consciousness:
“You are jealous…
Admit it.
Everyone has a place, a nation they belong to in this world.
But you…
You love that elf girl, who wouldn’t hesitate to kill you at the first opportunity…”
My hand, suspended in the air, began to go limp involuntarily.
The tip of the katana between my fingers slowly sagged downward.
I was losing consciousness.
Coming from the darkest depths of my soul, the whisper delivered the final blow:
“I can make that elf your slave, Kaan…
You can show her your true power, everything you desire.
Yes…
Yes, accept me…
Surrender your soul to me…”