Hello, I'm a Demon
I was lying in a cave.
Why? Hell if I knew.
I went to sleep, woke up, and here I was—a cave. What was I supposed to do about that?
And I was in nothing but my underwear.
Ever felt a rock dig into your bare flesh? The sensation is truly delightful. I'd already enjoyed that particular charm back in the military and sworn I'd never feel it again. So what the hell was this?
Hm? Who am I?
Thirty years old. Name's Jeong Hoon.
As for my life… my hobby was gaming—no genre restrictions. I had a job, I worked out, and I'd socked away a decent amount of money. The one single blot on an otherwise clean record was that after college I enlisted as a non-commissioned officer and pissed away four years of my life. What a fucking blunder.
Thankfully I landed a solid job at a mid-sized company after I got out… but I should've just gone in as a regular conscript after freshman year!! If you're reading this: go as enlisted. That's sincere advice from the heart.
Thinking about it again is pissing me off. Fuck.
Aside from that one disaster, my life had been smooth sailing. Except it looked like the period at the end of that sentence was about to drop.
Had someone kidnapped me? I wasn't restrained, though, and I could move freely, so kidnapping didn't quite fit…
I started to sit up—and something odd caught my eye.
"Huh?"
My original body had a bit of spare fat and a modest amount of muscle. This was not that body. This was carved, sculpted muscle. On top of that, my field of vision felt strangely elevated, which only made the unease crawl deeper under my skin…
I tried to stand in a hurry, and my body launched itself like a spring. I deep-kissed the cave wall.
THUD!!!
"Guhk!… Huh?"
The impact sounded vicious, but the pain didn't match. I peeled myself off the wall and checked it—and holy hell, there was a crack running through the stone.
If I'd hit hard enough to crack a wall, my skull should've been pulp. But my head didn't even hurt. Not so much as a scrape.
As a test, I grabbed a loose rock and squeezed.
Bang!!!
The stone shattered.
What the… this is terrifying.
And come to think of it—caves are pitch dark with no light coming in, aren't they? Questions piled up so fast I almost sat down for a good think, but the stench rolling in from outside killed the mood immediately.
"Ugh! What is that smell…"
It was coming from outside—worse than rotting garbage—and something about it set every alarm in my head ringing. Staying put was just going to farm me a collection of question marks. Careful not to rocket myself into another wall, I shuffled toward the thin scrap of light at the mouth of the cave.
And the first dazzling vista of this new world was…
"…."
Countless corpses hung from a massive tree, dangling by nooses. On the ground, a grotesque magic circle was drawn in twisted symbols, and black-robed bodies lay strewn everywhere.
I was completely fucked.
………………
"What the hell is this…?"
The rotten stench from earlier had been coming off these corpses. And yet, staring at this nightmare, I didn't panic.
I'm looking at something this horrifying and I'm fine?
Once my racing heart settled and my head went cold, the scene snapped into sharp focus. Being forced calm like that felt wrong. A violent sense of dissonance, maybe. It was unsettling—but right then, it was also a real help. Screaming in terror wasn't going to change a damn thing about my situation.
I started surveying the area for information. The bizarre magic circle. The dead. The altar… Looking at all of it, only one idea came to mind.
Human sacrifice—the classic fixture of horror novels, movies, and games. That was the only definition that fit.
The problem was that the circle was oriented toward the cave, and the cave mouth was hung with twisted ornaments. Don't tell me…
Putting it all together: they had performed a human sacrifice, and what came out wasn't a demon. It was me.
That made no sense. Was I a demon? Of course not.
There had to be… something more, right? They just happened to stage a sacrifice here, the demon-summoning just happened to go sideways, and I just happened to get yanked in? Does that sound remotely plausible?
Fine. I'd have to examine everything more carefully. Rummage through the corpses. Go through the altar's belongings one by one…
"I really fucking hate this…"
I dug through the bodies with grim determination. They were crawling with insects—maggots everywhere, for fuck's sake. Nausea rose hard, but I swallowed it down. What choice did I have?
Interestingly, the bugs bolted the second I got close. Nothing swarmed me. Well. At least the corpse flies weren't dive-bombing my face. Small mercies.
What I scavenged: strange tokens, a wad of weird papers, a stick, a grotesque book… even some jerky and a pouch of coins. The papers and books I'd looted from the dead were useless, though. I couldn't read a single character.
Then, from one of the black-robed corpses, a mirror turned up. What, was this guy a demon-worshipper whose hobby was skincare?
I held it up to my face with that stupid thought still hanging in the air.
".!!"
It wasn't my face.
But it was a face I knew very, very well.
"Th-this face… this is my game character…"
The stylized game model had been rendered into something real—just realistic enough. Sharp, defined features. Sky-blue hair. Golden eyes. The kind of quietly smiling look that belonged on a church youth-group heartthrob. Honestly? The face was so handsome it was almost unfair.
……………
There was a game called Erwenkel. Weird name? Yeah. I don't know either. Players asked the company if it meant something. They said it didn't mean anything in particular.
Name aside, it was a pretty standard RPG. Level up, set skills, swap gear, kill bosses, raise stats—if that was all it offered, it wouldn't have survived the modern market. So what made it special?
The system, maybe. It had a certain romance to it. For one thing, there were no levels. Instead, every action had its own Mastery Rank. Sing and you raised Song Mastery. Swing a sword and you raised Sword Mastery. Work a forge and you raised Smithing Mastery. Hoe a field and you raised Hoe Mastery. You trained by repetition, ranks climbing from F to S. Familiar enough, right?
Ranks unlocked skills, and skills attached stats—Vitality, Dexterity, Mana, that sort of thing. When you created a character you chose a growth specialty, so a warrior's martial masteries climbed easily while a mage's magic masteries did the same. Everything outside your specialty rose like absolute hell. Raising it meant enduring pain on a near-masochistic level…
Anyway: base stats started at 5, capped at 50. There were six of them—Vitality, Strength, Endurance, Agility, Dexterity, and Mana. No Intelligence stat. The idea that raising Intelligence made you cast better and expand your mana pool was, according to the designers, just weird.
Vitality, Strength, Endurance, and Agility were the physical suite, as you'd expect. Dexterity covered precision and craftsmanship. Mana was exactly what it sounded like: the size of your mana pool.
To get strong, you had to raise all six evenly. A would-be warrior who only stacked the physicals and ignored Dexterity and Mana? The moment a monster threw a curveball, he'd see that mystical word MISS and fold like wet paper, zero ability to create variables. A would-be mage who only stacked Mana and skipped physicals and Dexterity? Teamkill with a misfired spell, or dump one big shot and drop dead. And enemies weren't going to politely wait for you to finish casting. Were you really going to party-play for the rest of your life?
To keep that from happening, the whole point of the game was mixing primary and secondary stats into a coherent build. Mages hammered iron to raise Vitality. Warriors stitched clothes with needle and thread for Dexterity. Watching a warrior, an archer, a rogue, and a mage lined up side by side hoeing potatoes—you had to wonder what beautiful mind dreamed that up.
That was the loop: raise the character, clear trash mobs, run dungeons, kill bosses. I'd been playing for years and having a blast.
Except… this game was over seven years old. You know what that means?
Mages who finally maxed warrior masteries and started clubbing monsters with their staves—force-mage Gandalfs. Archers who ditched underpowered arrows and started lobbing grand magic like projectiles. Rogues tankier than the frontline warriors, holding the vanguard. Warriors calmly disarming traps. You got to watch all of that. In other words, it was the era when the time-rich Bill Gateses of the player base started racking up absurd achievements.
Characters drifted toward all-rounders as the years piled up, sure—but if it was fun, who cared? Thanks to those time-Gateses, every party run threw something new at you.
And the story? Anyone who's touched an RPG already knows it. Kill rabbits, then wolves. NPCs mutter that the world is in danger. You grind the plot while seething at the shopkeepers who sell potions to the heroes of destiny at full price. Power inflation keeps rolling—knight commanders, kings, dragons—until finally, to save the world, you claim a god's power… and kill the god.
Why am I telling you all this?
Look at that last story beat. You obtain the power of a god. And you kill a god.
Wow. By this world's standards, I was either an Outer God come to end everything—or a demon.