Love Letters Bring Disaster
“Fuck. What the hell did I just do?”
The shockwave from the golden arrow that came screaming out of nowhere knocked me unconscious for a moment. Fortunately, I came to soon enough. Clutching my head, I slowly pushed myself up off the ground.
I swept a glance around me, then looked up—slightly above eye level, dead ahead. Two enormous craters had been gouged into the earth there. And the moment I took in the sight waiting above them, I froze solid.
“The Golden Arrow… and a greatsword made of flowers?”
As far as I knew, the only person on the continent of Rahelon who used golden arrows as a weapon—arrows the height of a two- or three-story building, no less—was the Empress of the Roelina Empire.
And the only being who wielded a greatsword of flowers and gold, just a little smaller than those arrows, was the oldest Transcendent on Rahelon: Arsiena Silvairia.
Which meant there was exactly one conclusion to draw from the situation in front of me.
“…Holy shit. Two Transcendents actually got the letters and came looking for me?”
I couldn’t believe it.
Honestly, how could I? Even if the author had dumped every scrap of TMI about the Transcendents into the story, and even if I’d used that information properly—these were still the strongest beings on the entire continent of Rahelon. The idea that they’d react to a letter from some random extra commoner who wasn’t even the protagonist was absurd on its face.
That was why I’d written the letters half as a joke. Grammar, flow, atmosphere—none of it had mattered. I’d just crammed in whatever real facts I knew and dumped out the kind of overwrought, middle-school-syndrome nonsense a guy writes when he’s drowning in three-a.m. feelings.
And now two of them had actually shown up.
“Heh.”
I let out a hollow laugh and took another look around.
As of yesterday, this place had been filled with glittering buildings, magic circles, and the assorted artifacts upperclassmen had submitted as graduation projects. In the blink of an eye, every last trace of the academy had been wiped from existence.
Well—if you wanted to be precise, some fragments still clung on. The problem was that the mana the two Transcendents were casually leaking as they talked, and the divine weapons driven deep into the ground, were steadily erasing the entire area.
Give it five minutes, tops, and the ground where the High Elf Queen’s greatsword stood would sprout a forest, while the earth around the Golden Arrow would become a place where nothing living could ever breathe again.
And I, stuck right in the middle, was scheduled to die a very elegant death as the filling in that sandwich.
“Haa… fuck.”
The swearing just kept coming out on autopilot.
Still, there was only one thing I needed to do first: get a clear read on the situation. I was the one who’d directly caused this mess, so even if everyone else was panicking and babbling, I had to keep my head on straight.
“Okay. Stay calm. Analyze.”
I scanned the surroundings more carefully.
Students, professors, even the people dispatched from the knight orders—everyone was staring blankly up at the two Transcendents in the sky. Slowly, the reality of it settled into their faces.
And once they understood that reality, every single one of them reacted the same way.
Rage.
“…This can’t be right.”
Far off, a white-haired old man who looked like a professor muttered in a trembling voice.
“The academy’s barrier—the one that grew stronger with every Outer God assault—couldn’t even stop the Transcendents of Rahelon, and it ended up like this? Why? Just tell me why…”
“You heard her, sir.”
The students beside him answered through clenched teeth, one after another.
“It’s because of one student. A letter. They’re saying it was a letter.”
“I don’t care who it is—the second we find them, they’re dead.”
“Her Majesty said it earlier. The initials are KJH. That’s our lead.”
“Good. We hunt with that. Class doesn’t matter. When we find them… just beating them won’t be enough.”
“No. Cut their head off and hang it at the academy’s front gate. With a sign that says, ‘This is the love-letter freak who brought disaster down on the continent.’”
Some of the students weren’t even bothering to rein in the killing intent pouring off them as they whipped their heads around, scanning the crowd. A few had completely lost the light in their eyes. One professor was covered in blood, grinding his teeth as he muttered to himself.
“Oh….”
Yeah. I got it.
From their point of view, some lunatic whose brain had been hijacked by his lower half had gone and confessed his love to the Transcendents of Rahelon—beings even the Outer Gods were too scared to mess with—and this was the result.
Understanding that, though, had nothing to do with ever admitting a single word of it out loud.
Why? Because that lunatic was me.
Fuck… if I say “I wrote those letters” right now, the professors will set up a guillotine on the spot.
A picture painted itself in my head. The academy’s front gate, still in ruins—no chance of rebuilding yet—with a wooden post driven into the rubble and my head hanging from it. Below it, a little plaque.
This is KJH. Jealous that Leon was flirting with a few girls, he dared to commit an irreversible act.
“…Okay. Simple enough, then.”
Run.
I followed the scream of pure instinct and made the call. I hadn’t used the name I’d gotten in this world—Erevan. I’d signed the letters with the initials from my past life’s real name, Kim Jaehyuk. As long as I kept my mouth shut, the odds of anyone connecting me to them were zero.
Besides, listening to the two of them talking up there, they definitely sounded interested—but the tone was pure: We ought to meet this arrogant little brat in person.
So yes. Run.
Above me, two Transcendents. To either side, hundreds of furious professors and students. Below, a campus reduced to ash.
“Even the geography is out for my blood.”
I dropped low and slipped between the ruins of a building that hadn’t fully collapsed yet.
First priority: get out of this plaza. Next: wash my identity clean. After that… figure out how to finish the remaining quests while I looked for a way to stay alive. Whatever else happened, if I didn’t take care of every last Outer God, a bad ending was waiting for me.
With a mental escape plan sketching itself out, I twisted my body to slip quietly out through the rubble.
But the moment I took that first step forward, I had no choice but to freeze.
The reason was simple. Out of nowhere, the sky on the opposite side from the two Transcendents had gone darker than—what was it called, Vantablack? Darker even than that.
“…….”
Nobody had flipped a switch, and yet the sunlight drained away like someone dimming the lights in a room. At the same time, the wind, the sound, even the flow of mana all seemed to be sucked in one direction, pressing down with a weight I could feel in my bones.
I looked up on reflex.
The golden arrow. The greatsword of flowers and trees. Off to one side of the sky between those two weapons, something familiar was floating.
“Is that… a star? No—a black star…?”
A sphere darker than pitch, like undissolved ink. What had started as a speck was suddenly the size of my palm, then the size of a house, then swelling until it was nearly as big as an entire building.
“W-what is that…?”
One of the students staring blankly at the black sphere asked in a shaking voice. No one answered him. Even the two Transcendents, still locked in their war of nerves overhead, went silent and turned their gazes that way.
Then the black star simply… stopped expanding—and tore open.
Like someone on the inside had kicked the door down. The black shell split, and crimson light poured out from within. At the same time, a heat so fierce it stole the breath from your lungs rolled across the area, and something inside slowly set one foot forward.
The first thing that appeared was a leg.
A thigh and calf so long and so pale they almost looked unreal, with blood-dark hair cascading all the way down to the ankle. What covered them could barely be called clothing—red leather and black straps tangled together in a display of skin so excessive it made you want to look away.
Her midriff was all but fully exposed. Her waist was impossibly narrow. And her chest and hips… they mocked every human concept of modesty head-on. Even if you tried to design a body like that as a comic-book character, you probably couldn’t make it this unrealistically perfect.
…Uh. This is an R-rated cosplay shoot, right?
I instinctively jerked my eyes to the side, then slowly dragged them back.
Right. Humans are adaptable creatures. If I kept looking, I’d get used to it… or, no, I probably wouldn’t.
Last of all came her face.
Eyes the color of blood. A mouth curved in a faint smile that was half bored, half entertained. Dark crimson hair spilled down her back in a long fall, and between the strands, two black horns peeked out. Even her ears weren’t human—slightly long, pointed at the tips, the unmistakable ears of a demon.
Only then did I recognize her.
And just as I did, the two Transcendents realized who she was and fell silent. Then every last person at the academy fell silent with them.
“…….”
“…….”
The one who shattered that choking stillness was none other than the woman who had put everyone into it.
The Demon King of the Black Moon—Nemesia Ragneil.
“You insolent human—!”
It sounded like thunder. The crimson-haired woman stood in midair and roared in a voice that tore every other sound to shreds.
“Where are you!”
Her red eyes swept the plaza. The air itself seemed to split under that gaze.
“The price of daring to whisper love to the Demon King of the Black Moon—”
Her eyes dipped slightly. Through the rubble, covered in dust, half-crawling—my eyes met hers.
Those red eyes curved, far too pleased.
“Will you not pay it yourself?”
…Ah.
Fuck.
She found me?
