I Played Well

Giyeol, Sect Leader of Poakgwido, felt his manhood surge with raw excitement.

The Demon Immortal who had been slaughtering his disciples with total emotional vacancy had, upon seeing him, flinched — if only for a heartbeat — and wavered. Wasn't that proof that the teachings he had built were not in vain? Wasn't it the living certificate of every effort he himself had piled high?

So he used his Law.

The Law drove itself into the Demon Immortal the instant that brief opening appeared.

The Law of Play — , meaning simply to play — was the very proof Giyeol had forged from the day he entered Poakgwido to the day he seized the sect leader's seat. It was a Law that dragged out and detonated the secret, shameful craving to have fun that slept beneath a cultivator's true nature; a terrible Law that forcibly exposed one's most twisted private tastes — long locked away — to the entire world and delivered a social death.

"Cute little thing! I have an amazing proposal for you? Won't you join us too?!"

And through that forced revelation, it was a Law that turned any cultivator who found pleasure in their own newly unearthed preferences into a kindred ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠spirit of the same breed.

Truly a powerful Law, befitting the Sect Leader of Poakgwido — the foremost of the Demonic Path sects, a name other cultivators avoided like the plague.

"You know? Fantasy's Song is a god-tier game?"

"...Oh my?"

Yu Hee's reaction landed completely outside anything Giyeol had imagined.

It wasn't lewd. It wasn't cruel. It wasn't even shameful. The twisted preference Yu Hee had never been able to voice in her previous life simply didn't exist outside this game she had poured fifty thousand hours into.

Those blood-red eyes — rubies, the only window through which anyone could sense emotion on the expressionless Demon Immortal's face — sparkled clear and transparent.

A madwoman. Even if she was already insane, without a Law of one's own there was no resisting a Law — which meant that this, right here, was the Demon Immortal's twisted preference itself.

Indeed. A Demon Immortal.

From the Demon Immortal's body, red slaughter karma erupted like volcanic ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠ash, shoving the Law aside in a single instant, and the world rewrote itself around her as its center.

"A Mental World?! How adorable can you get?!"

Giyeol drew his True Name Dharma Treasure.

The Nascent Soul that burst from his forehead donned, in perfect unison with him, a red hat that appeared to be the True Name Dharma Treasure itself. His muscular body took on a copper sheen; dark shadows fell across his face; a red radiance rose where his eyes should have been.

"If you kill my sect's little darlings and still refuse to join us, well — I have no choice, do I?"

A bitter cold settled into that coquettish falsetto. A violence of overflowing power boiled up through his entire body, distorting the surrounding space as Giyeol declared toward the Demon Immortal:

"You'll have to die right here, Demon Immortal."

Applying the Law to himself at last, Giyeol tore through space and flew at the Demon Immortal, swelling his writhing muscles into a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠fighting stance.

That alone shattered space with the aftershock. A portion of the Mental World collapsed.

One of the Demon Immortal's arms was caught in the blast and torn clean off — but when Giyeol confirmed that the main assault, the Vajra Tathagata's punch and his own fist, had been stopped by a blue horn that had sprouted from above the Demon Immortal's head, and watched that blue horn lose its light and vanish—

Before he could reset his stance, the Demon Immortal opened her mouth.

"...Map setting change. Scale."

The world crumpled like a sheet of paper.

Space itself shrank. In an instant Giyeol was reduced to nothing, standing on the palm of the Demon Immortal who looked down at him with expressionless red eyes. He poured spiritual energy into his Dharma tool, forcibly resisting the Law's power.

"What combat cultivator shows up for a mere ancient-grade mission, seriously."

Having reached Nascent Soul and now wielding her fully completed Law, Yu Hee stacked her other hand over the monster standing on her palm the way one swats a bug, and pressed down.

As if to offset that overwhelming difference in force as the sky itself crashed down in the shape of the Demon Immortal's hand, the Vajra Tathagata and Giyeol raised both fists and punched toward the falling heavens.

"Ow — that stings!"

Giyeol's power, amplified by True Name Dharma Treasure, Dharma tool, and the force of the Law itself, ignored even the size gap between ant and human through the Law's authority and unleashed its full might.

Then he tore free of the Demon Immortal's grip, dodging or shattering the massive red light-pillars that poured down to pin him, and charged her with a storm of consecutive punches.

"Ora ora ora aaaahhh!!!"

With the first punch, space shattered. With the second, spatial rifts burst open and shredded the surroundings. With the third, even the Mental World warped under the catastrophic barrage of fists.

The Vajra Tathagata behind him followed its master blow for blow, tearing the Mental World to ribbons, and Giyeol finally shook off even the Law that had covered him, returning to his original size. He raised his fist high to finish the Demon Immortal whose body was riddled with holes—

The powerful Dharma tool only the Sect Leader of Poakgwido possessed, summoning the Vajra Tathagata that tore through techniques, seals, and even Mental Worlds.

The extreme dual training of body and fist that could shred even the flesh of an early Nascent Soul cultivator barehanded, ignoring spiritual energy entirely.

The True Name Dharma Treasure that sealed spiritual energy inside the body rather than releasing it, reinforcing the physical form to its absolute limit.

And finally the Law itself, amplifying that power by intensely revealing his own body.

Facing Giyeol's full arsenal — power he was confident could tear apart even a mid-stage Nascent Soul cultivator one rank above him in a frontal one-on-one — the Demon Immortal opened her mouth through a blood-soaked body.

"...D...ie!"

The seal, fueled by the Demon Immortal's burning blood, charged forward — and the Vajra Tathagata smashed it with a downward punch.

"Through death — cycle!"

With the Demon Immortal's cry, her Nascent Soul burst from her forehead, rolling a small wheel in its hand, and opened its tiny wriggling mouth.

The Demon Immortal's Law wasn't Scale?!

This was a problem that arose because the Demonic Path sect leader had received no information whatsoever that the Demon Immortal was a Transcendent Species — an irreversible mistake.

Having tried to block the Law of Scale with a powerful Dharma tool that could interfere with and stop any Law once experienced, the Vajra Tathagata flailed at empty air. Through the gap it failed to cover, the Sea of Slaughter Tribulation began overflowing into the eroded world through the Mental World gate the wheel had opened — and in an instant it engulfed Giyeol.

Even Togo, a Nascent Soul who had once touched the Deity Transformation realm, could not endure the Sea of Slaughter Tribulation without the protection of Prisoner Mode. It was a sea composed of countless deaths.

Cultivators lived training spiritual energy in the mountains, avoiding ordinary people, dwelling entirely within the cultivators' world alone, because the Turbid Qi emitted by short-lived mortals was bothersome and interfered with cultivation.

The Great Sea of Slaughter Tribulation was, for cultivators, an ocean of highly concentrated Turbid Qi.

The Dharma tool forming the Vajra Tathagata was the first to fail. It crumbled under the Great Sea of Slaughter Tribulation; the black chainmail underwear vanished, leaving Giyeol naked. Even so he refused to quit, enduring the pouring sea with a body enhanced by Law and True Name Dharma Treasure, pushing through to finish the Demon Immortal—

But the Great Sea of Slaughter Tribulation, composed of death that struck at cultivation itself, was simply too vast.

As the endlessly surging sea followed the Dharma tool in overwhelming the True Name Dharma Treasure until it could no longer hold and faded, the red hat vanished, the copper skin returned to normal, and the Nascent Soul vomited blood in a gush.

Ah. So this is where I end.

Looking at the Demon Immortal beyond the horizon of the red sea, feeling a song he had never heard before ringing like an auditory hallucination, Giyeol realized his own death — and smiled.

"I, Giyeol! Lived and died for my pleasure and for myself alone!"

Even as the Great Sea of Slaughter Tribulation barely squeezed through his fading Law and invaded his early Nascent Soul body, killing him from within, Giyeol laughed.

"Ahahahaha! I played well!"

So, cute Demon Immortal who killed me — you enjoy yourself too.

I hope you're happy about beating me.

With that final thought, the Sect Leader of Poakgwido — Nascent Soul at last swallowed whole by the Sea of Slaughter — faced death, the end of cultivation.

"Ah, fuck."

That smile at the end — was that him trying to evacuate the remaining NPCs?

Somehow I'd thought he wasn't putting up a last-ditch fight right before dying.

"Still, I wiped out the sect, right? Mission success, yeah?"

Damn. This usually means reduced mission rewards, though.

Failing a total wipe... this is all because that field boss's laugh — which should have been hearty no matter how you looked at it — was way too delicate, and the dissonance was so severe I covered my ears and got distracted. That was the problem.

Even after pulling out the Great Sea of Slaughter Tribulation and wiping the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠entire sect, nothing proper remained.

The boss was basically naked to begin with, so no drop items either.

The exp was fat, though!

"No, fuck, that was just bullshit I blurted out because I got hit by the Law!"

What the hell are you talking about with this piece-of-shit broken game!

Don't go making me think about it for no reason, seriously!