Chapter 1 - {I Fell into the World of a Romance Fantasy}
{I Fell into the World of a Romance Fantasy}
Translator : Elizabeth
"It’s not bad, but honestly, the illustrations were wasted on this."
That was the only review he uttered as he turned off his smartphone screen.
<The Regressor Saintess Only Walks the Flower Path>
A Romance Fantasy novel that reeked of intense clichés right from the title.
Normally, it was a genre he wouldn't even glance at, but the reason he was possessed enough to press the purchase button was purely due to the cover illustration.
A mysterious Saintess with silver hair and red eyes, and the black-haired Grand Duke of the North guarding her back.
Honestly, he didn't care about the male character.
It was just that the illustration of the female lead, the Saintess, was breathtakingly beautiful.
'It was all carried by the illustrations.'
Since the art quality was so breathtaking, he wondered if the content might be decent too, but his anticipation turned into disappointment.
"As expected."
The content was predictable.
The female lead, who suffered from albinism in modern times, is summoned to another world and becomes a Saintess.
She becomes the Crown Princess, but her husband becomes a tyrant. She is imprisoned and eventually beheaded by the Grand Duke of the North, who raises a rebellion.
The female lead, who was the Empress, is also beheaded.
And then, regression to the past.
The story is about her choosing the Grand Duke of the North, who killed her, instead of the Crown Prince this time to change her fate.
"Just a common mass-produced novel."
Kang Jin-ho let out a long yawn and tossed his phone onto the head of the bed.
Still, it wasn't difficult to read until the end.
Thinking of the female lead's illustration while reading made it passable.
At least the readability wasn't bad.
'It was okay for killing time.'
Considering he had to go to work tomorrow, it was better to just go to sleep quickly.
At that time, Kang Jin-ho did not know.
That the commonplace novel would become his reality.
There was no sensation.
He floated for what felt like an eternity in pitch-black darkness where there was neither up nor down.
A strange sensation where he couldn't even tell if he was breathing or if his breath had stopped.
Amidst a pressure that felt like being thrown into the middle of the deep sea, a bizarre pain repeated as if his entire body was being finely shattered and reassembled.
It felt like muscles were tearing, bones were twisting, and molten lead was being poured into every single blood vessel.
"Aaaargh!"
He wanted to scream, but no voice came out.
He lost consciousness and woke up dozens of times like that.
He didn't know why he was feeling such pain.
He had been in this state ever since he came to his senses.
How much time had passed while he prayed for this pain to please end?
"…Gasp!"
The scent of damp soil pierced his nose strongly.
Kang Jin-ho snapped his eyes open, vomiting out the breath that had been stuck deep in his lungs.
"It's… not an unfamiliar ceiling?"
The first thing that caught his eye was not an unfamiliar ceiling.
It was a dense forest that seemed to cover the sky, and massive trees he had never seen before.
"Where on earth is this?"
Kang Jin-ho, who tried to raise his body, paused.
His point of view was low. It wasn't his usual eye level.
The sense of incongruity wasn't just that. The sensation of his hand touching the ground was strange.
"…Why is my hand like this?"
It wasn't the hand of an adult male, rough with calluses.
He saw the hand of a boy—white, slender, and with bones not yet fully hardened.
'Don't tell me it's possession?'
Kang Jin-ho hurriedly crawled to a nearby puddle of water to reflect his face.
The face that floated on the water surface was, contrary to expectation, not a case of possession.
However, while it was unfamiliar, it was simultaneously terribly familiar.
A young face with baby fat not yet lost.
It was exactly his appearance from his middle school days, around 15 years old.
"This is driving me crazy."
The texture of the soil was too vivid to be a dream, and the pain felt when he pinched his cheek was realistic.
First, grasping the situation came first.
'Let's get out for now. Staying here won't solve anything.'
Kang Jin-ho pushed through the forest and walked aimlessly. The fortunate thing was that language worked.
Upon exiting the forest, he saw a village, and he could understand the words the people there were speaking.
It seemed a language patch had been applied.
First, to obtain information, he asked a passing peddler, and the answer he heard was a spectacle.
"This is the Roelia Empire. Did you lose your way, young friend?"
The Roelia Empire.
The Winter Grand Duchy that blocks demonic beasts exists in the North, and the Imperial Family continues a bloodline of blonde hair and gold eyes; it was definitely the world inside the Romance Fantasy.
"Ha. Fuck."
A hollow laugh burst out.
It seemed this place was the world inside the novel he read before falling asleep yesterday, <The Regressor Saintess Only Walks the Flower Path>.
It wasn't possession, nor was it reincarnation.
He had fallen across dimensions with his own body, just younger in age.
Is this what they call a 'Trip' in subculture terms?
But the real problem was something else.
"Mister, then what year of the Imperial Calendar is it now?"
"Hoho, you must have lost your sense of dates rolling around in the forest. Isn't this year 380 of the Imperial Calendar?"
The peddler's answer made Kang Jin-ho's mind go blank.
'It's damn well 10 years ago!;'
The starting point of the original novel is the Imperial Year 390.
The time when the female lead, Saintess Han Seol-ah, is summoned is also around then.
"I'm screwed."
Kang Jin-ho clutched his head and flopped down to sit.
He didn't have a penny to his name.
No means to prove his identity either.
The only person he knew of was the Saintess who would appear 10 years later, but even she was just a Korean living somewhere on Earth right now.
Even his body was that of a 15-year-old brat.
A sense of hopelessness rushed in like a tsunami regarding where to sleep tonight and how to resolve his next meal immediately.
"Isn't a male lead in a Romance Fantasy usually possessed into someone with a bit of status? Why am I a naked 15-year-old Trip…."
If there was a damn god, he felt like grabbing them by the collar.
It was then.
Kooong-! Kooong-!
The ground vibrated slightly.
Birds in the forest screamed and flew up all at once, and urgent bells began to toll from the direction of the village visible in the distance.
Clang- Clang- Clang-!
"It's a monster! A monster has appeared!"
"Everyone run! They are coming down!"
The peaceful village turned into pandemonium in an instant.
People screamed and ran, and dust rose thickly.
"What is this situation now?"
Kang Jin-ho stared ahead blankly.
The trees of the forest snapped and broke, and a massive shadow revealed itself.
Its height was well over 3 meters, and its entire body looked as hard as moss-covered rock. A monster holding a log as thick as an embrace like a club in its hand.
"T-Troll?"
It was a monster one would only see in fantasy novels or games.
But the pressure of facing the bastard in reality was on a different dimension than a few lines of text.
The foul stench and killing intent were terrible.
"Kueoooooh!"
The bastard roared and spotted Kang Jin-ho standing at the entrance of the village.
People had already fled, and there was no one around.
The only one left was him, in the body of a 15-year-old brat.
'I have to run.'
He thought so in his head, but his legs wouldn't listen.
There was no way a person who lived ordinarily in modern South Korea could deal calmly with suddenly seeing a monster the size of a house.
It felt like his feet were glued to the ground, frozen in fear.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
The Troll approached with long strides.
Every time the ground shook, Kang Jin-ho's heart also beat like crazy.
The bastard raised the log club high.
'I'm dying.'
His vision went dark.
Unable to do anything, dying a dog's death.
Kang Jin-ho reflexively curled his body and covered his head with both arms.
Vwoom-!
Accompanied by the tearing sound of air, the club slammed down.
"Aaaargh!"
Kang Jin-ho screamed.
Soon, a dull sound of collision hit his eardrums.
Kwaaang-!
'…Huh?'
There was no pain as expected.
He didn't feel the terrible sensation of bones shattering or flesh bursting.
Rather, only a heavy vibration was transmitted, and his body felt as light as a feather.
"……?"
He opened his eyes stealthily.
And at the sight unfolding before him, his jaw dropped.
"Kue, Kueok?"
The Troll that struck him was instead stumbling backward.
As if it had hit a steel wall, the log club the bastard was holding had split in half and was rolling on the ground.
Perhaps the bastard's palm had torn, as black blood was dripping down.
"What… is this?"
Kang Jin-ho looked down at his arm blankly.
There wasn't a single scratch.
No, not even a bruise.
He was definitely hit squarely. But it didn't hurt.
It felt as if a mosquito had landed and left.
'Don't tell me.'
That pain he experienced in the dimensional rift.
That terrible sensation of his body breaking and reassembling.
Was that not simply a side effect of crossing dimensions?
'Did something modify my body during that process?'
"Kuuooooo!"
The confusion was brief; the Troll roared even louder, as if enraged by the fact that its attack was blocked.
The bastard threw the split club, swung its bare fists, and charged.
A fist the size of a house flew toward Kang Jin-ho's face.
He couldn't dodge this time either.
But it was different from before.
In the place where fear had vanished, a strange instinct squirmed.
'I can see it.'
It was slow.
The Troll's movement, which had seemed like a truck rushing in, now looked like slow motion.
The boxing gym he attended as a hobby on Earth.
The basics the director had taught him until his ears bled moved his body.
Weaving.
Kang Jin-ho lightly ducked his upper body and let the Troll's fist flow past.
The sound of wind grazed his ear, but not a single hair was touched.
And an opening.
The bastard's empty abdomen came into view.
"Ah, screw it!"
His body moved before his thoughts.
The rotational force starting from the tips of his toes kicking the ground traveled up his waist to his shoulder, and then to the tip of his fist.
The most basic, but the most certain single blow.
Straight.
Paaang-!
It wasn't a dull thud.
A roar, as if a cannon had exploded, rang through the forest and the village.
"…Huh?"
The moment Kang Jin-ho's fist plunged into the Troll's abdomen.
The giant body over 3 meters tall crumpled like a sheet of paper.
A shockwave burst out behind its back, and the trees in the forest near the village snapped away.
Kugugung!
The Troll couldn't even scream.
The bastard, sent flying like a cannonball, only stopped after crashing into a boulder dozens of meters away.
The boulder shattered into pieces, and the Troll became a pulp unrecognizable in shape and went limp.
Silence flowed.
Whiiiing~
The village, which had been chaotic, became quiet in an instant except for the sound of a small breeze.
Even the fleeing people held their breath at this spectacle.
Kang Jin-ho looked down at his fist blankly.
A small and tender fist from which white smoke was rising.
But its power was far beyond common sense.
"Am I… perhaps damn strong?"
It seemed he wouldn't have to worry about starving to death in this damned world.