Prophecy Fulfilled
The bewilderment from the other side of the screen bled straight through the letters, unfiltered.
The pushback was only natural.
From the perspective of a rising talent who'd poured his entire life into tomorrow's tournament, being blindsided with you're going to die out of nowhere — I was lucky not to take a slap across the face.
But the afterimage seared into my mind was still razor-sharp.
The horrible crack of a railing splintering. The cascading flood of bodies. Silver armor drenched in blood.
That pathetic final cry was still screaming in my ears like it wanted to tear them off.
Pressing a hand to my throbbing temple, I rapped out my replies on the terminal slab, rough and unceremonious.
There wasn't a drop of sympathy or comfort mixed in.
He was, after all, some man whose face I couldn't even see. Whether he believed me or not was his business.
The input indicator at the top of the terminal jangled violently, and a frantic reply popped out.
Family honor. Withdrawal. Proof.
His desperate plea came through loud and clear — but I had no slack left to spare for him.
Brushing it off with practiced ease, I typed out my last lines.
The instant I hit enter, a convulsion like my skull splitting open clawed through my brain.
My vision spun and darkness closed in.
A bizarre sensation — as if my entire soul were being sucked into the gallery terminal.
The feeling drained out of my fingertips.
I'm actually going to die like this — and with that thought, I seized the mana battery jammed into the bottom of the terminal and yanked it out without ceremony.
Thock!
The moment the battery popped free, the faintly glowing screen went dead.
The crushing pressure squeezing me from all sides drained away like the tide, as if it had never existed.
"Haah...! Kh—kgh, cough!"
Only then did blood return to my brain, and the air forced its way back down my throat.
At the same time, an uncontrollable nausea swallowed my whole body.
With a patter, blood poured from my nose onto the headboard.
"...I can't keep doing this."
I barely got the words out.
Hands smeared with blood, clutching my head — I keeled over onto the bed just as I was.
All priests of this shrine have disconnected.
"...Huh?"
Frozen mid-blink, Freya — second daughter of House Blackwood, the empire's foremost martial family — stared at the silver-inlaid terminal slab, the cold system message still hovering above it.
"What is this?"
It was that bottom-tier shrine she'd ducked into, gnawed by anxiety over whether she'd place well at the Sword Dance Festival.
And the priest there had burst out of nowhere with doom-saying about her dying tomorrow, spat out his piece, and then cut the connection.
"Seriously? Who just brazenly spouts prophecies like that?"
Freya was dumbfounded.
In all her life she had never heard of a priest treating people so carelessly.
Crushed to death by a crowd, he'd said — as if the heavily reinforced arena railings of the Northern Grand Duke could ever collapse.
Suppressing her exasperation, she left the Nameless Ancient Shrine Gallery and slipped into her usual haunt, the Sun Shrine Gallery.
As she skimmed the bustling board, her eyes snagged on one concept post.
An owner of a dead shrine with ZERO worshippers picks a fight to bait people so he can snag one single follower? He's literally terrorizing a major shrine? His handle is even "NamelessPriest" lmaooo
The comment that had challenged the priest was archived and being flayed to powder.
Mostly it was a parade of bile: this is why bottom-tier shrines never make it, pathetic attention-grubbing tricks, line after line.
"...Figures."
Freya let out a hollow laugh.
So it was just the cheap rabble-rousing of a shameless fraud, trying to drum up interest and gather worshippers.
Right. Let's write it off as nonsense.
With her mind made up, she rose from her seat.
And yet — because of that voice saying she would die tomorrow — something sat heavy in the pit of her chest, an uneasiness that wouldn't scrub away.
Deciding to cool her tangled head with a walk, she stepped out of her room.
The manor corridor at midnight was cold.
Passing quietly through the hall, Freya's steps came to an abrupt halt before the study at the far end of the house — her father's.
A faint lamplight leaked through the gap in the door.
And from beyond it came the hushed, low voices of the head of the family, Count Blackwood, and his intelligence officer.
"Word from the northern expedition army is that flocks of crows are gathering in abnormal numbers. Furthermore, some of the supply-line soldiers have begun developing... unexplained blotches on their skin."
"Surely you don't mean — an omen of plague? The Sun Shrine's oracle proclaimed it a great victory, did it not?"
The brief exchange sank into a heavy silence.
But Freya, who had caught those few words from outside the door, felt her breath freeze on the spot.
Gooseflesh raced up her spine.
Flocks of crows. Blotches on the soldiers. Omens of plague.
The exact comment that 'NamelessPriest' had made — the one everyone in the Sun Shrine Gallery had just been mocking and jeering at.
That person...
Freya's lips trembled.
He was right.
The omen of plague that even the head priest had failed to see — that bottom-tier priest had pierced through it alone.
Not a fraud's babble.
It might be a true prophecy.
And if so...
That icy warning — that tomorrow the arena railings would collapse and she would be crushed beneath the bodies —
In the darkness, Freya's eyes began to shake uncontrollably.
"Ugh... ughh..."
My eyes snapped open to a headache like my skull was about to split.
Pale sunlight filtered through the cracks in the boards. It was the next morning.
"Cough! Ah, my head..."
As I pushed myself upright and scrubbed my face, my fingers came away coated in crusts of dried blood.
What on earth happened last night?
The memories pieced themselves together like a puzzle.
My head blazing hot enough to burst. The alien sensation of someone else occupying my body.
Another person's future bleeding into my vision in crimson on its own, my fingers moving against my will to foretell their death.
Then the torrent of blood and the blackout.
It was... a bizarre experience, like receiving a god's descent.
"...No way."
I laughed hollowly and forced my head to shake.
Absurd. Ridiculous.
In a lifetime of living, I'd never once had an experience like this.
So I got isekai'd, and suddenly I awaken spirit-possession powers — the ghost games I'd spent my whole life in Korea dodging?
Nope. Not buying it. Absolutely not.
Probably just malnutrition making me see things.
Just as I was scraping together my denial of reality, a spark flashed through my mind.
"Wait — the mana battery...!"
Thud.
My heart plummeted.
"I'm so screwed!"
Last night, unable to bear the pain, I'd ripped the mana battery right out of its socket.
If that battery ran dry, freezing or starving to death on this mountaintop would only be a matter of time.
There was no way to procure supplies except through admin Merit in the first place!
The problem was that farming Merit by baiting people was harder than plucking stars from the sky.
10,000 views on a post bought you a measly 10 Merit.
It took ten upvotes to scrape together a single point.
In other words, I was in a crisis where I'd need a thousand upvotes — or a single 100,000-view post — just to afford one mana battery.
"Come on, hold out! Even a few minutes!"
I scrambled for the battery lying on the floor and jammed it back into the terminal.
The screen crackled to life — and in that exact instant,
Ding! Ding-ding! Ding—!
Chimes burst out, ringing gaily through the hollow of the shrine.
At the same time, golden notification windows flooded my vision.
The first visitor has arrived at the 'Nameless Ancient Shrine Gallery'!
Bonus granted: +50 Merit
The first post has been created in the gallery!
Bonus granted: +50 Merit
The first comment has been posted in the gallery!
Bonus granted: +50 Merit
"...Huh?"
Fifty Merit apiece — just like that, 150 Merit had banked in an instant.
"That's insane."
The exclamation burst out of me on its own.
So this is how the money flows once you're wearing the owner's armband.
Who knew a grand-opening bonus could taste this sweet?
Without delay, I entered the Admin Shop and bought Low-Grade Mana Battery — 100 Merit.
Grmmm.
The air above the altar warped, a rift in space tore open, and a single box dropped with a thud.
Inside, I found a mana battery radiating a brilliant azure glow.
"I'm alive...!"
I was still letting out the sigh of a man who'd just dodged ten years off his sentence when the notifications refused to stop.
Ding—! Ding—! KWA-BOOM—!
Athunderous chime, like festival fireworks going off, hammered into my ears one after another.
"Wh... what is this?"
My jaw dropped as I stared blankly at the screen.
A thousand Merit? Plus three hundred for the offering?
Over two thousand Merit — a fortune — had come pouring down on me like a bomb, overnight.
While I stood there frozen, unable to make sense of it, a red notification window popped up at the center of the screen.
A new post has been uploaded!
With trembling fingers, I clicked the notification.
At the very top of the refreshed board, the title of a post made by that jet-black knight from last night seared itself into my eyes.
"...Huh?"
My prophecy.
It actually hit?