The Devil's Talent
Devil's talent. Carlo stared at Tae-oh with unfocused eyes. A single night had been more than enough time for one man's world to completely collapse. Tae-oh quietly observed Carlo's reaction. The man's shoulders trembled faintly, weighed down by grief and despair. The beast-like wails had already poured out in such excess that his voice had gone dry. All that remained now was an endless, crushing emptiness and self-loathing.
Tae-oh drove the final nail into that coffin.
The reason Tae-oh hadn't told Carlo the truth was crystal clear. From a gamer's perspective, Carlo was currently a core NPC who absolutely needed support to clear the next stage. What if this crucial character's mental state shattered completely? What if he killed himself or became a useless wreck? That would be game over.
The noble, beautiful truth—that Raymon had chosen to act as a spy to protect Carlo, and that Roselyn had willingly become a hostage for the same reason. If Carlo ever learned they hadn't truly betrayed him, what would happen? Nine times out of ten, the overwhelming guilt would destroy him. The realization that he had driven the two people he cherished most into hell just to survive was poison potent enough to shatter any human mind.
So Tae-oh had twisted the truth. He had reduced Raymon to a villain who had sold out his friend to the very end for his own safety and a woman. A clear axis of evil—traitor Raymon and mastermind Valik. Only with such obvious enemies could Carlo find a reason to keep living. Only then could he burn with the desire for revenge.
It was a surefire prescription: instead of letting sorrow consume and break him, channel bone-deep rage as fuel to push forward.
'The story needs at least this much drama. Otherwise, climbing all the way to that high position wouldn't make any sense.'
Anger was the finest fuel of all. If you just pointed it in the right direction, you could ride it straight to victory after victory. Tae-oh glanced at the four hearts floating in the corner of his vision and the corner of his mouth curled upward.
The tutorial—the survival game in the Sector 7 forest—was over. He'd eliminated the annoying watcher Raymon, and now he held a ledger that could put a leash around the Knight Commander's neck. He was certain the phase had transitioned perfectly.
Within those dull, lightless eyes, a terrifying murderous intent—focused solely on revenge—rose like heat haze. It was exactly the look Tae-oh had wanted.
'He asked!'
At Carlo's words, Tae-oh stepped through the blood scattered across the floor and approached him.
Carlo's unfocused pupils slowly turned toward Tae-oh. A cracked voice leaked from between his lips. He looked like a beast that had lost even the ability to think for itself, blindly seeking direction.
Carlo stared at Tae-oh without answering. A mere conscript daring to urge his commander into insubordination and propose an alliance. Under normal circumstances, Carlo would have cut Tae-oh's throat on the spot for such insolence. But rank and military law meant nothing to Carlo now. He was even starting to wonder if this strange new recruit—who had handed him both the justification and the means to kill Valik—was some heavenly benefactor sent to him.
Every proposal had its price. Even Carlo understood that much. Tae-oh answered as if he'd been waiting for the question—short and clear.
For a split second, Carlo's brow twitched. From the side, Rolls—who had been silently watching—let out an audible gasp.
Aura. The exclusive power of knights, the absolute boundary separating ordinary humans from superhumans. Not just anyone could learn it, and even decades of training often failed to awaken it. Yet a mere rank-and-file soldier had just uttered the word.
A faint spark of life had returned to Carlo's voice. The absurd demand had momentarily jolted his reason back into operation. Tae-oh knew that perfectly well. Even in the game, awakening Aura required finding numerous fortuitous encounters or completing brutally difficult training quests. It wasn't something you could pick up the morning after deciding to try.
Tae-oh's eyes were dead serious. Having died hundreds of times, his dynamic vision and reflexes had already reached the limits of human capability. The only thing he lacked was the destructive power that could ignore the laws of physics. The overwhelming difference in weight class he'd felt so painfully during his fight with Raymon couldn't be bridged by alchemy and cheap tricks alone. The bosses in the next stage would wield far more vicious Aura than Raymon. He couldn't keep running away throwing gas grenades and poison forever.
Carlo bit his lip, conflicted. Under normal circumstances he would have slapped the madman across the face, but right now Carlo wasn't in a state to make normal judgments. His mind was filled with nothing but hatred—the desire to tear Valik apart. The recruit standing before him was an incomprehensible being who had single-handedly taken down a War Wolf and trapped even Raymon. If he worked with this man, perhaps he really could cut Valik's throat.
After a long silence, Carlo gave a heavy nod.
A satisfied smile spread across Tae-oh's lips.
And so the deal between a lowly soldier and a company commander was struck.
The night air felt unusually refreshing on the way back to the barracks, clearing his head. Tae-oh stretched broadly, loosening his stiff muscles.
"Haa, I'm fucking exhausted. Still, the haul this time is historic."
As Tae-oh muttered to himself while walking, Rolls—who had been following—suddenly stopped. When Tae-oh turned to look, Rolls was glaring at him with his jaw clenched so tightly it looked like it might break. The usual sarcastic attitude and light grumbling were gone. In their place was an expression of genuine shock and horror.
"What's with you? Step in some shit?"
Even at Tae-oh's light joke, Rolls didn't laugh. He swallowed once, then spoke in a suppressed voice.
"What kind of nonsense is this now? Suddenly questioning my species."
"Don't fuck around. From what I saw, it doesn't look like Raymon actually betrayed anyone. The guy was playing dog for Valik until the very end just to keep Carlo alive. Same with Administrator Roselyn."
Rolls' eye for detail was sharper than expected. With nothing but fragments of conversation overheard from the warehouse roof, he'd accurately pieced together the truth of the incident.
There was a faint tremor in Rolls' voice. He had rolled across brutal battlefields, piling corpses into mountains, yet Tae-oh's ability to shatter a living person's heart and cleverly twist even the truth felt like an entirely different level of cruelty.
Tae-oh shrugged as if it were nothing.
"Because it's more beneficial to me that way."
The answer was so simple and transparent that Rolls' breath caught in his throat.
"What?"
"If Carlo learned the whole truth, he'd probably think, 'Ah, my friend and the woman I loved sacrificed themselves to save me. I'm truly trash,' then dig a hole, hang himself, and die. What we need isn't some pathetic wreck drowning in sorrow. We need a shield that will step forward and swing the sword for us."
Tae-oh pulled a cigarette from his pocket, put it in his mouth, and lit it.
"Huu. Protecting the honor of dead people won't put food on the table or give us anything. The living have to figure out how to survive. From Carlo's perspective, isn't burning with betrayal and seeking revenge a much stronger motivation than dying from guilt?"
Not a trace of guilt or hesitation showed on Tae-oh's face as he exhaled a long plume of smoke. It was the face of a perfect pragmatist who calculated only efficiency and gain.
Rolls let out a hollow laugh.
At Rolls' question, Tae-oh flicked the ash from his cigarette and scratched his chin.
"Well, it's not like I planned everything perfectly from the start. The situation just flowed that way while I was doing things, so I figured I might as well squeeze every drop of profit out of it. Besides, once you understand the principles behind mana circuits and all that, it seemed like something I could put to use pretty quickly."
Of course, it was only possible because of the information he'd gathered over hundreds of deaths and his deep understanding of the system, but he saw no need to explain that to Rolls.
"Ha...?"
Rolls looked up at the sky, completely dumbfounded. This was talent. A devilish talent capable of rising overwhelmingly high. Morality? Humanity? Love? Pity? A cold-blooded creature whose gaze excluded all such emotions, viewing situations purely as sequences of events. And yet, toward his own people, he showed warmth and affection.
Rolls suddenly became curious. He couldn't even begin to guess how far the devil standing before him could climb.
Dragged in as a mere conscript, he'd taken down a squad leader in his first battle, toyed with an assassin, slaughtered elite imperial soldiers, hunted magic beasts, and politically purged even the Knight Commander's spy. Now this same recruit was grabbing the company commander by the throat and demanding to learn Aura?
If a bard wrote a song about any of this, he'd be beaten and thrown out of every tavern—and rightly so. At this insane pace, Rolls could almost imagine him someday grabbing the King of the Kingdom by the collar.
But one thing was certain: he was dying to see where this madman's future would lead.
Rolls roughly rubbed his cheeks with both hands and took a deep breath.
The sudden declaration made Tae-oh turn his head.
"What? Where's this coming from all of a sudden?"
Rolls' eyes had never looked more serious or determined.
Tae-oh stared blankly for a moment at Rolls' abrupt declaration of quitting drugs, then burst out laughing.
"Wise choice. A guy with a working brain is way more useful than some junkie."
Tae-oh tossed the cigarette he was smoking to Rolls.
"Smoke the cigarettes though. Don't throw a fit from withdrawal symptoms."
Rolls snatched the Meditation Herb cigarette out of the air and grumbled.
"I was planning to. Cigarettes aren't drugs."
"If you take cigarettes away from a soldier, what's the point of getting through the day?"
The two of them chuckled as they returned to the barracks.
The next day, Tae-oh headed to the company commander's office with an expression that was equal parts anticipation and worry. Knock knock—
When he knocked, a voice came from inside.