If I'd Known, I Wouldn't Have Killed You Guys
If I'd Known, I Wouldn't Have Killed You Guys
[A sudden thought had crossed my mind. After saving the world hundreds of times, wouldn't it be all right to destroy it just once?]
Suddenly, that line came back to me.
The expansion of thought happened in an instant. I felt the flow of mana in the particles of my eyes, which had merely been beautiful before. Wind, clouds, sun. I sensed mana from everything, literally everything.
It was the result of my body being swapped from Lee Seong-un to the Archmage Olivia.
Olivia, reflected in the ice, was beautiful.
Her distinctive sharp eyes created the atmosphere of a young lady from a distinguished family. And with the blue-green robe she wore, she was nothing short of a painting.
Of course. It took me days to customize this.
...No, wait.
I was fucked.
For an ordinary person, this would have been a joyous opportunity, but I wasn't happy at all. Unfortunately, this world wasn't the fantasy Neverland; it was a goddamn hellhole.
A world teeming with maniacs ready to chop off my head at any moment.
I wished this situation were a dream.
Denying reality, I brought my hand to the ice wall.
It was cold.
My pinched cheek hurt like hell.
"This can't be happening. Scientifically, possession is impossible..."
I couldn't bear the overwhelming despair.
A secret government brain experiment?
Could a mere experiment reproduce this magical power pulsing in my heart?
This was reality. Goddamn reality.
"No. I don't know yet."
I said in a trembling voice, hoping against hope that things wouldn't turn out that way.
"S-status window."
But the next moment, a deep sigh escaped me.
[Olivia]
- Level: 100
- Class: Archmage of Bitter Cold and Lightning
- Titles: One Who Destroyed the World, Exterminator.
There was no denying it now.
This wasn't a dream.
It was goddamn reality.
***
In the previous Run, to see the Genocide Ending, I had literally killed 'everyone'.
To what extent? Even the great demons who brought down the empire waved me off, saying, 'That's a bit much...'
Hundreds of millions of humans alone.
On top of that, elves, dwarves, beastmen, fishmen, even dragons. After slaughtering them all, I tore open a dimension and invaded the Demon World, annihilating even the demonfolk.
There was a reason the community called me the God of Destruction.
[Favorability transfer complete.]
- Imperial Princess Aria is confused.
- Sword Saint Kiel wants to dispel an inexplicable displeasure.
- Red Dragon Eryas harbors fury.
- 89.9% of the continent's inhabitants treat you as a witch.
Since the enmity from that God of Destruction account had transferred, it meant that at least billions would start cursing the moment they saw me.
No, maybe they'd go for a knife first?
Far from returning to Earth, even surviving seemed daunting. It couldn't get any more terrible than this.
But the next moment, a notification window appeared and dragged my mental state from rock bottom down to the deepest pit of hell.
[Analyzing player stats.]
[Player's level is too high for the story progression!]
[Difficulty adjusted to Hell.]
- 15 major NPCs will regress with memories of the previous Run.
- List of regressed NPCs: Imperial Princess Aria, Sword Saint Kiel, Archmage Melina...
I didn't know about anything else, but one thing was certain.
I was fucked.
***
I stopped lying prostrate in despair and got up.
There was no time for this.
The notification window had clearly said 15 major NPCs had regressed. Not just one, but all fifteen!
Being labeled 'major NPC' in Lactea meant they were strong enough to be a handful even in the late-game scenario.
To put it bluntly, if all fifteen gathered, they could even see the Normal Ending without a player.
Of course, since I'd seen the Genocide Ending, I'd even taken the Demon God's head solo, but that was because the system was designed that way from the start.
[To you who brought down the world, the entity known as the Demon God was utterly insignificant. You ultimately brought down even the Demon God.]
After that script appeared, the Demon God just died.
Supposedly, it was the result of absorbing the power of all the life forms I'd killed, granting me power surpassing that of a god, or something.
From that alone, the Demon God might seem pathetic, but it was Lactea's final boss for all that.
Its bizarre patterns and brutal damage not only made users weep tears of blood, but also turned tens of thousands of users into rage-uncontrollable lunatics.
Because of this, in the game's early days, just approaching the Demon King was treated as insane talent, let alone actually defeating the Demon God.
No, why was it so hard if you just needed to gather fifteen major NPCs to clear it?
It was simple.
Because gathering all fifteen in one place was goddamn fucking difficult.
As befitting major NPCs who were big shots across the continent, their personalities were utterly capricious.
Imperial Princess Aria, despite possessing the empire's greatest intellect, pretended to be a fool because she found things bothersome. Sword Saint Kiel, for all that he was the head of a ducal house, had an incurable wanderlust and couldn't stay still for a moment.
Even just those two were like that, and I was supposed to gather fifteen?
On top of that, among them were a Revolutionary who despised the class system and a villain who enjoyed murder.
There was a reason they called it a newbie-killer game.
But now, all those NPCs had regressed.
'With memories of being killed by me.'
Since they'd been killed by me even before the Demon God could descend, their arrows would be aimed not at the potential threat of the Demon God, but at the concrete threat that was me.
The fifteen who could even take down the Demon God were shaping up to join forces to kill a single person.
I was fucked. Thoroughly fucked.
Two, maybe even three, I could handle somehow. But more than that?
My head would be smashed immediately.
I had no intention whatsoever of entering a game of chicken whose outcome was already decided.
Therefore, the only way to survive was one.
'Find a new ending.'
On the very day the new ending was updated, I possessed a character in the game? Unless I was an idiot, I had to deduce that finding a new ending was the escape method.
In fact, finding a new ending itself wasn't a big problem. I was the Pioneer who had reached the Pinnacle in Lactea, and no matter how shitty the game operators had been, I was confident I could find a measly ending if I had enough time.
Yeah. If only I had enough time.
Now, I had possessed a character inside the game.
What was the problem with that?
It was simple.
It meant that if I couldn't find the new ending within one attempt, I'd die.
Since my life was on the line, I couldn't afford even the slightest mistake. For example, if I killed a bandit I met on the road.
But what if the condition for seeing the new ending turned out to be 'No-Kill'?
I'd be trapped in this world forever, chased by the strong until I died. Even out of sheer resentment for having been possessed, I couldn't die like that.
'First, there had been four possible cases for seeing an ending.'
I began to write characters on the ground.
1. Genocide growth transfer followed by Normal Ending.
2. Genocide growth transfer followed by No-Kill Ending.
3. Genocide growth transfer followed by Genocide Ending.
Options 1 and 2 were relatively easy. Because I just had to survive somehow until the Demon God appeared.
Option 3 became a headache once people started hiding to avoid the massacre.
I'd have to become the seeker in a game of hide-and-seek with millions, not knowing when it would end, and that wasn't as easy as it sounded.
Killing people was also somewhat distasteful.
...And option four.
"A completely new approach."
Truthfully, this was the biggest headache.
I didn't know the problem, and I didn't know the answer. In this case, I had no choice but to rely purely on luck.
All I could do was desperately pray it wasn't option 4.
'For now, the textbook answer was to endure with No-Kill until the Demon God appeared. I'd decide whether to switch to Genocide at that point.'
What was certain was that it was impossible to take down the Demon God alone except through the Genocide route.
That meant, if it were case 1 or 2, I would need allies to help me.
"How was I supposed to find allies in this situation?"
Just as I wondered whether I needed to learn mind-control magic...
Something cracked and shattered, and a massive shadow covered the sky.
"K-kyaaaak-!"
The wyverns that had been gliding fled in terror. After a few more flaps of their wings, the wyverns froze solid white and plummeted to the ground.
Craaash!
Crunch!
Upon impact with the ground, the wyverns' bodies shattered into pieces, literally. The northern wyverns, whose cold resistance was fearsomely strong, had frozen in mere seconds.
There was only one existence capable of such a thing.
I slowly turned my head.
[You. How the hell are you alive?]
A massive white dragon, exuding cold air, glared at me.
"Me?"
Perhaps not expecting a human less than a worm to be so audacious, its massive body flinched for a moment. Its face was as if looking at a madman.
Naturally so. I was grinning broadly.
It couldn't be helped.
[Glacia]
- Level: 77
- Favorability: -10 (Human Hatred)
That was all that appeared in its status window.
Setting aside the lofty dragons' passive human hatred, if the favorability had transferred properly, it should have been at least minus 80.
But Glacia? A mere minus 10.
That meant one thing.
This bastard. I hadn't killed it.
"Found one. An ally."
***