Game Over, and Over
I was jumped by a succubus.
A succubus.
In the old tongue, a dream demon.
A devil that drains a man of his vitality.
“Oh my, just stay still.”
A succubus approaches by transforming into her prey’s ideal woman.
Once her magic takes hold, you dream of tumbling through a night with her.
That dream feels like paradise itself—but by then, the stories say, you have already handed your life over to the demon.
You buy a lucky pig dream with money. You buy a demon’s dream with your life.
You die while dreaming.
You die with a smile on your face.
“Struggling won’t help. You’re already under my spell.”
The demon spoke.
“Well? You can’t even move, can you?”
She leaned in close, her flushed face brushing my ear as she whispered.
A distance no man could possibly resist.
And for a demon to use such polite speech on top of it—the gap only made the impact worse.
“…Shall I undress you?”
Her hand, which had been wrapped around my waist, slipped slyly down toward the hem of my clothes as she asked.
It was a question, but it wasn’t seeking permission.
If anything, it sounded closer to a plea.
“You filthy demon bitch! Get your hands off me!”
I thrashed and fought back.
“Ah, I like that. Do it a little more.”
The ravenous succubus was no pushover.
If anything, she looked like she was enjoying herself.
“You think someone like me is going to fall to the likes of you?!”
“They all say that. Shall we see just how long you last?”
The succubus smiled sweetly and reached for my belt.
“O Goddess, bestow upon me Your blessing and grace.”
To drive out a demon, the rule is to call upon the power that stands opposite it.
I twisted my whole body desperately and prayed.
“Sorry to interrupt while you’re trying so hard, but it’s not working at all. Your body is still stiff, isn’t it? Hasn’t your heart already been soiled? Or… are you looking forward to this?”
“O Goddess, grant me the strength to overcome trial and hardship.”
“Give it up. The Goddess doesn’t listen to the prayers of a man who’s already lost his heart to a succubus. Look—already…”
KWAANG!
Someone kicked the door in and stormed inside.
As if declaring that any further escalation would not be tolerated, he sliced clean through the heated atmosphere.
Silver armor engraved with a righteous cross.
A Holy Knight of the Order.
“Hold on just a little longer! I’ll save you right now!”
Seureung!
The Holy Knight drew his sword without hesitation.
Cutting off the succubus’s head with that same blade was just as smooth, like one continuous motion.
Chwaak!
In an instant he severed the succubus’s neck, and black blood sprayed in every direction.
Her lovely head rolled across the floor.
Even the severed head was so beautiful that it rolled quite prettily.
“Fortunately, it seems I wasn’t too late.”
Breathing hard, the Holy Knight sheathed his sword and held out his hand.
Tak.
I took it without thinking—and in that moment, I realized.
“Ah.”
I wasn’t supposed to be able to move my body right now.
“Weren’t you under her charm magic…?”
I had messed up.
I had forgotten the situation and clasped his hand, and now the Holy Knight was starting to eye me with suspicion.
“I was, but now that the succubus is dead, the magic’s effects have vanished…”
“There are candles lit all over the place.”
He ignored my words and looked around the room.
“Would a starving succubus really have the leisure to light bright red candles and set an unholy mood?”
Huu—
The Holy Knight blew out a candle with a sharp puff.
The room grew even darker.
The shadows pooled deeper in the hollows of his eyes, casting an eerie shade.
“And your greatsword and armor are just lying around carelessly. As if you tossed them aside in a hurry, like so much luggage.”
His ash-gray eyes swept the room this way and that.
“Did you ever intend to exorcise her in the first place?”
A deep sigh capped the question.
“Commander.”
001
“This is unjust!”
I dangled from the chapel ceiling, bound in iron chains.
Worse, my body kept tipping this way and that under its own weight.
I felt like a chandelier.
“Your Grace, there is no law that says one must always succeed. I tried to exorcise her, but she turned out to be a stronger opponent than expected and I failed. That’s all.”
I finished my rebuttal with a friendly smile.
“Faking being under charm magic? Absolutely not.”
“Daywin.”
The bishop of the monastery narrowed his eyes and glared at me with open displeasure.
“Daywin, are you even aware that you are the commander of the knight order?”
“Well… all the previous commanders died. It just happened to be my turn.”
“You only act humble at times like this. Am I supposed to believe that the commander of the knights fell to something so… low-class?”
“Low-class? She was clearly top-tier. Exactly my type, in fact.”
“I am saying there is no way you could have fallen under a low-class demon’s low-class magic!”
The bishop’s shout made the chapel reverberate.
Tch.
No wriggling out of this one.
“She was a succubus known as the Holy Knight Hunter. Not your ordinary demon.”
“Holy Knight Hunter or whatever, she remains a low-class demon.”
“Not Holy Organ Hunter—Holy Knight Hunter.”
“Daywin! That is not important!”
Is it not important…?
The meaning changes quite a lot.
“The undying enemies are pouring in, and if the commander is like this…”
“There is no hope left.”
“What?”
When I spoke in an uncharacteristically serious tone, the bishop asked back with an incredulous look.
“Those things. There is no longer any way to stop them. Kill them and they rise again. The great nations that boasted overwhelming military might have been swept away one after another. We will have to redraw the maps. If anyone who can draw them is still alive, that is.”
Unable to find a rebuttal, the bishop fell silent.
“The Sword Saint, once called the hope of humanity, died for nothing, and even the elite of the Allied Nations were annihilated. My brother knights fell before my eyes, and now… fewer than a hundred of them remain.”
When I closed my eyes tightly, old memories flickered.
A past that could only be freed by dying.
“I will say it once more. There is no hope left.”
“No. As long as the Goddess watches over us, there is hope.”
Well, I figured he would say something like that.
But for someone who had been an atheist even back in Korea, invoking an otherworldly goddess was not going to summon courage that was never there.
Korea.
It had been so long since I last thought of my hometown that I could not even remember when.
I had simply opened my eyes one day and become the youngest son of a count’s house.
Strangely, the language of this place and its way of life were already in my head.
Reincarnation is convenient in many ways, I had thought.
I had lived in this world of magic and monsters—this other world.
And now I had reached the end of the world.
I had never intended to become a Holy Knight from the start.
My body simply possessed absurdly strong divine power; it was not as if I worshipped that cultish goddess.
If my house had not been wiped out in the first place, I never would have had to flee into the Holy Knight Order.
I would have lived comfortably as the third son of a count.
Not that it means anything now.
Beolkyeok!
The door burst open in the middle of my thoughts.
“Your Grace!”
It was the same Holy Knight who had kicked the door in last time.
If the knight order had a dedicated door-opening specialist, it would unquestionably be this guy.
His name was Chris.
“You must evacuate at once!”
Chris shouted urgently.
“Evacuate?”
“Right now…”
Before Chris could finish.
Kwajijik!
One side of the chapel roof vanished.
As casually as peeling a single layer off a crepe cake.
The stone building crumbled.
The presence was right behind my back.
Thanks to hanging from the ceiling, the sound and vibration carried perfectly.
Or rather…
It had been aiming for me from the start and simply missed because my body was tilted.
-Keureureuk.
Through the torn gap in the roof, a massive claw appeared.
Then it thrust its rotting, putrid face boldly inside.
The horn that had once brushed the clouds was broken limp, and the eyes that had somehow contained overflowing mana had lost their light—yet the overwhelming pressure remained.
A dragon.
That plague had even resurrected beings of mystery.
The Sword Saint of the continent, the elite of the Allied Nations, the Holy Knights who had led me from the front…
And the Holy Knights who had followed behind me.
All of them had been swept away and killed by the undead.
Right.
It was simply my turn.
“Hoo.”
I let out a long breath and drew up my divine power.
I—
Pakang!
—shattered the iron chains wound around my body like vines in a single burst.
Dozens of fragments of metal rained down with a clatter.
I, who had been hanging from the ceiling, landed together with the chain pieces pouring down like rain.
“Chris, bring me my sword.”
“Please stop leaving it lying around!”
Buung—!
Chris twisted his whole body and hurled the massive greatsword.
He had brought it to hand over from the beginning, so what was he complaining about?
Chak!
I caught the greatsword with both hands and pointed it toward the roof.
After aiming at the zombie dragon’s rotting mug, I wrapped the blade in divine power.
Uuung—
The cold greatsword took on a warm color, like sunlight.
“Chris, about that succubus.”
“Are you finally admitting it?”
Chris drew his own sword at my side.
Instead of fleeing with the bishop, he stepped even farther forward than I had.
“You know it too—if a succubus gets you, your body and mind go numb and you thrash around until you die. You die without even knowing if it’s dream or reality. No pain. No resentment.”
“Yes, which is why a succubus’s magic is the most humiliating…”
“It was the most comfortable way to die.”
Of the options available to me right now, it had been the most comfortable way to die.
If I was fated to die in the end anyway, I at least wanted to choose how.
I alone did not want to die miserably.
“Sorry for barging in for nothing, Commander.”
Chris snorted with a sarcastic smile.
“No need to apologize. It failed anyway. Just like His Grace said…”
I raised both arms high.
The greatsword, ready to unleash its sword aura, vibrated as if it would burst at any moment.
“I don’t fall for low-class demons’ low-class magic or anything like that.”
From above to below.
I swung the greatsword.
KWAAAAANG!
A beam condensed into intense light slammed into the collapsed roof.
And that was the first time.
──!
Absurdly enough.
It was the first time a message window floated up before my eyes.
When you think about it, Laward had a mission to save the world, but he had long since forgotten anything of the sort.
He had been given the chance to marry no fewer than five beautiful girls.
The destruction of the world never even entered his sight.
Laward decided to spend the little time remaining until the end without lingering regrets.
Someone else would handle the noble sacrifice.
Surely the Holy Knight Order, strong against the undead, was working hard at it.
Better not to half-ass it and leave it to the professionals.
Laward held a wedding with all five beautiful girls at once and enjoyed a life steeped in pleasure.
He met an end without regret.
But the world was destroyed.
“…….”
It felt as if my heart had dropped.
The sentences before my eyes, that name, dug dimly into my mind.
I remembered.
Five years ago.
Laward had been the protagonist of the game I played before coming to this world.
The protagonist of a bishoujo dating simulation game made by a junior in my university club.
A game.
And a dating sim, at that.
……This was not another world.
This damn world had waited until the very last moment to deliver the most important piece of information.
Only after five years had passed.
Only on the brink of destruction.
And above all, one fact I now knew with certainty.
Play finished.
Returning to the title screen.
Restarting from the first save point.
I had been nothing more than an extra.
“Hwaaak!”
I opened my eyes and sucked in a sharp breath at the same time.
The feeling of just escaping a nightmare.
A strange sensation, as if the sound of my heart racing was echoing inside my head.
Kung!
I must have made quite a noise, because someone roughly opened the door and entered the room.
“What is the matter?!”
This was the third time someone had mistreated an innocent door.
But this time it was not the door-opening specialist Chris.
“Young Master! Are you all right?!”
The household steward approached with a worried face.
Ahh.
Those familiar gray hairs.
Those familiar nasolabial folds.
I saw a familiar ceiling.
Sunlight seeping through the window and the scent of old books reached me.
As if the smell of a perfume I had used long ago had brushed past, my sense of smell arbitrarily dragged up old memories.
Thanks to that, my heart gradually settled.
This is my room.
This is my house.
The boringly peaceful past.
“…I’m fine.”
So this is what it meant by starting from the first save point.
I had returned to five years ago, to the time I first came to this world.
Before the world was ruined.
Before I became a Holy Knight.
Before my house was wiped out.
Then, let me think carefully now.
About this world.
And about that game.
Clearly the message window had said an “Ending” was unlocked.
Ending number 30 had opened, and the world was destroyed.
Ending.
Among the 31 endings, the one where the protagonist saves the world was only one.
The path where the protagonist Laward dumps every heroine and sets out to stop the end times.
It was a hidden ending that only triggered by overturning the usual final goal of a dating sim—romance.
At the same time, an ending that required making five women cry.
“Ha, haha! I see. So it was unrequited love… all along. It’s okay, it’s okay. Don’t worry about it! I’m really… fine!”
“Why all of a sudden? Weren’t you feeling the same way as me? You… you found someone else, didn’t you? Someone like me is just… in the way?”
“Impudent thing. You thought that if you rejected me here I would only grow more interested in you. A good strategy, but not the correct answer. Haa… I shall give you one more chance.”
“Funny. Even hearing something like that, I still think I want to have you. You can have me too if you want. Yeah, funny. Every single word and action, expression and gesture I showed in front of you… I regret them all. I never thought about anything until now, but suddenly that thought hits me. I should have been a little prettier.”
“…Why? Then who do you think suits you? Is there another woman prettier and kinder than me? Or is it just that I… No. I’ll just do better. Okay?”
I recalled the scene where the heroines’ illustrations had appeared one after another.
Pitiful and wistful.
I had only spoken of parting, yet their faces looked as if the world had collapsed.
Even though it was the only ending in which the world did not collapse.
As I continued thinking about the endings, I realized one thing.
What I had to do was simple and straightforward.
I had to recreate the hidden ending.
I had to interfere before the protagonist connected with the heroines.
I challenge the protagonist.
I destroy the harem.
A paladin from the sticks never had a chance to meet the protagonist’s party, whose main stage was the Academy.
Moreover, before becoming a Holy Knight, I had never even left the house.
Far from adventuring in a new world, I had locked the door and stayed inside.
I could eat as much fine liquor and cuisine as I wanted just by breathing in my room, servants waited on me hand and foot, and money never decreased no matter how much I spent.
There was no reason to go on an adventure.
Insurance over adventure.
Safety first.
Foolishly, I had believed that decadent lifestyle would last forever.
Now I possessed the experience of having reached the end of the world.
I had a chance to correct my mistakes.
In the first place, rather than me becoming a Holy Knight, it would be better for the protagonist Laward to save this damn world that would soon be destroyed…
“Wait a minute.”
A Holy Knight?
All I need to do is stop the romance between the protagonist and the heroines.
I… know a status in which love becomes a sin.
I know it very well.
I just need to make the protagonist into a Holy Knight.
If the protagonist becomes a devout Holy Knight, he will naturally dump every heroine.
Because Holy Knights must keep their purity.
“This is it.”
This is the only way.
Making Laward into a Holy Knight.
The more I thought about it, the more the anger that had been buried deep inside came surging up.
Holy Knights had to keep their purity.
They had to protect their “first time” until the very end.
And I… had been that kind of Holy Knight.
Some people never even got to hold a woman’s hand once while trying to stop the end of the world once, and what?
Pleasure? A harem?
That cheeky bastard…
You get a taste of it too.
I’ll make sure you grow old and die a lifelong bachelor.