Even Heroes Need a Home
The capital city of Seoul remained heavy with the acrid smoke and choking dust of yesterday’s disaster, yet the entire nation pulsed with an opposite kind of fever—unabashed, electric heat.
“Citizens watching right now, does this scene really seem believable to you?”
The news anchor’s voice cracked with raw emotion.
“Exactly thirteen hours after the Catastrophe-class monster known as the Belial Bird appeared over Mapo-gu, it has vanished without a trace. According to the official statement… there is not a single casualty.”
The camera slowly panned across the scene.
In the very center of Mapo-gu, the thirty-story apartment building where the monster had first landed—Block 3 of the ○○ Apartment complex—now looked as though a colossal hand had torn it in half. The entire central section had collapsed. The upper floors had been shredded like paper, concrete and rebar raining down in a chaotic avalanche. Inside, smoke still curled and dust drifted, but every eye was locked on the spot where the creature had disappeared.
A simple crater. Not a crater—something far more deliberate, as if the monster had been wiped clean from existence.
The walls on either side had melted into smooth, glass-like surfaces, leaving no trace of the original structure. Only the faint outline of what must have been a human silhouette remained, burned into the melted concrete.
“Is this real?”
“That was supposed to be a Catastrophe-class monster? They said it was the same thing that survived tank shells!”
Some kid in the crowd had whispered it—something about a hero wearing a mask. Nobody was sure.
The voices of the gathered citizens never stopped.
Hundreds of smartphone flashlights cut through the haze.
Hashtags like #SeoulMiracle, #MonsterVanished, #HeroExistence were already dominating every corner of the internet.
The only piece of concrete evidence the reporters had confirmed was this: inside the collapsed core of the Belial Bird’s explosion, a blackened human-shaped mark had been found.
Thermal analysis ruled out radiation or explosives. It was pure, non-natural, non-physical residual heat.
Someone had killed it.
***
The night I took down that monster and saved dozens of people—it had been the single greatest night of my entire life.
Whoever said “with great power comes great responsibility” never understood the irony.
At first I had been terrified. Even with cheat-mode abilities, this wasn’t a game anymore. Could I really do this?
But the moment it was over… I realized this was what catharsis actually felt like.
For a gamer who had survived on instant ramen and late-night streaming, this was straight-up heroin.
Especially when I pulled those kids out of the rubble. The look in their eyes—the first time in years they felt truly alive—had cracked something open inside me.
But.
There was still one problem.
The electricity was dead in the refugee camps. I was still living in those freezing tents.
Most people in this world treated monster-destroyed apartments like casual collateral damage. For someone who had grown up in a normal world playing games all day, it was a culture shock on another level.
Being a human who used to farm gold in MMOs and live the dream… in a world without power, that dream had suddenly become nightmare fuel.
In fact, it might have been easier just to live inside a monster’s stomach.
Conclusion?
I never wanted to go back to those tents.
But the perfect solution had already found me.
“Must’ve been because it flew right through here… the whole place is completely ruined.”
Creak.
Three soldiers patrolled the perimeter of the ruined apartment complex. Rifles slung over body armor, their shadows stretching long whenever the emergency lights flashed.
“Stay out of this restricted area. Back up.”
“Got it~.”
I waved once, then casually stopped.
I looked like I was retreating.
But at that exact moment—
**Shadow Crossing activated.**
Whoosh.
My body melted like wind. Senses blurred from chest to toes. The world turned gray. Time slowed to a crawl. Sound faded into static.
This was the border between the physical and the shadow realm.
I walked through it like it was nothing.
The soldiers’ radio chatter drifted past.
“Yo, did the walkie just die?”
“Huh? No one even walked by…”
I swallowed my laugh.
My shadow slid straight under the tape and past the barbed wire. No one noticed a thing.
Whoosh.
The boundary dissolved. The stink of oil and rust slammed back into my nose.
“Phew… yeah, that’s the real cheat right there.”
I stepped into the wreckage that had once been my home—now on the other side of the military cordon.
Inside: concrete dust and the monster’s acidic slime. The air tasted like rotten whale blubber.
I passed the mangled corpse of the Belial Bird I had killed days ago. Neck snapped, beak impaled in the asphalt. Black mucus coated the ground; its wings hung broken against the outer wall like torn fabric. A stray feather brushed my shoulder—cold, rubbery, not real.
Every breath pulled the stench deeper into my lungs.
A monster’s remains still leaking existence.
Ahead, the familiar skeleton of the apartment block. The one where my room used to be, with the monitor glow leaking from the window every night.
Now only rubble and twisted rebar remained.
“Ugh… I thought with all the Catastrophe monsters around, there’d be some insurance bullshit for destroyed homes. This world’s plot is hopeless.”
That was what I had heard in the refugee camps.
Even with cheat powers, the rules here were pure darkness to a brand-new isekai player.
So I slipped in among the crowds, used the chaos.
And it was effortless.
“Ah, I was hit by the monster attack yesterday… my memories got…”
I faked memory loss like a pro.
One line. Golden ticket.
“Oh my, you poor thing!”
“Poor young man, what a nightmare…”
“Here, take my blanket—you’ll freeze…”
…They thought I was some NGO volunteer.
Because the world had gone to hell, everyone clung to each other like family.
If you had memory loss, the whole bloodline adopted you on the spot.
If someone died, you became “our son.”
Thanks to that, I got food, a place to sleep, and clean intel.
Smoke manipulation had to be S-rank by now.
And the first real piece of intel I collected was that, in this world, **private home ownership was banned**.
“I-I can’t buy my own house?!”
“Oh man, this kid must have taken a real hit to the head!”
“No, there’s no such thing anymore. After the monsters appeared, even foreign capital bought properties got seized by the government. Basic stuff like this you forget?”
Every building in the disaster zone was under government custody until full reconstruction.
That was public-school common sense.
Now it was a national housing rotation system. When your home got destroyed, you waited years for your next turn in a refugee camp.
Electricity? Luxury.
Warm water? Laughable.
This world wasn’t just hardcore—it was “dreams and hope don’t exist” hardcore.
Even houses were state-rented. The ultimate “dogshit world setting.”
But for me it was just another sad story.
“Was it down here?”
I descended the stairs instead of climbing, following the collapsed hallway deeper underground.
The deeper I went, the air changed. I passed the underground parking garage and continued into the emergency access tunnel I had never explored before.
At the end, a single rusted iron door.
A rusty padlock that had been abandoned for years rested on it, thick with dust and time.
“This is far enough.”
This was the underground nobody ever found—beneath the world’s debris, in absolute darkness where even one ray of light refused to reach.
This place was perfect. A secret sanctuary only the **Dark Hero** could claim.
I raised my status window with a thought.
The quest I had completed days ago when I pulled sixty-four trapped civilians out of the collapsed apartment still hovered in my vision.
[Quest Completed! Reward: ‘Underground Base Construction Rights (I)’ acquired]
[Description: The only secret territory known only to you. A Dark Hero needs at least one secret base, right? Auto site selection and base infrastructure construction complete.]
“Perfect. From now on, the warehouse behind this door is my kingdom.”
I gave the command without hesitation.
“Use Construction Rights.”
[Initiating underground base construction.]
The floor trembled.
Black fog poured from the concrete cracks and spread like living smoke, climbing the walls like tentacles.
Shadows thickened. Metal melted and reshaped. Pipes and cables wove themselves into new circuits.
The underground was… **awakening**.
Steel bones grew. Pillars twisted. Black forms pulsed like hearts. Tiny red lights braided through the wiring like veins.
When the vibration stopped—
[Congratulations! Secret base has been completed!]
No more abandoned warehouse. Only a gleaming metal floor, crimson mana circuits tracing the walls, and a faint hum of power echoing from somewhere deep inside.
This was the fortress of a Dark Hero.
“…Holy shit, that was insane.”
In the darkness, I let out a low laugh.
This place was now my **Shadow Kingdom**.