A Swagger Among Demons
The way he struck an arrogant pose right in the middle of the demons—anyone seeing him would think he’d spent more than ten years living among them, that’s how natural he looked.
“Why are you trying to attack my guild members?!”
The HolyKnightSizeKing guild master desperately tried to stop Tae-hyun.
A lot of his guild members were still in Abalab City. They hadn’t managed to get out yet, so if the demon army attacked now, the damage would be enormous.
“Now, now. The great Lord Edaor commanded us to bring him the lives of the living. Didn’t you hear?”
The HolyKnightSizeKing guild master was experiencing firsthand what people meant when they said the sister-in-law trying to stop the fight was even more hateful than the mother-in-law doing the hitting.
“Looks like our HolyKnightSizeKing guild master still hasn’t gotten rid of his old habits. That’s a very bad look. Lord Edaor is merciful enough to let it slide, but you’d best be careful from now on.”
Watching Tae-hyun play the perfect lackey, Edaor burst into booming laughter.
“Kuh-hahaha! Count Kim Tae-hyun! I’m already satisfied that I brought you into my army.”
“You flatter me, Lord Edaor!”
“Kuh-hahahaha!”
“...”
The other players could only stare in disbelief.
Even in the middle of his shock, the HolyKnightSizeKing guild master stepped forward again. Unlike the others, if he stayed still, he was the one who’d get singled out.
That absolutely couldn’t happen.
“No, I mean, there are tons of players in Abalab City, so why does it have to be my guild members? There are plenty of other people too!”
“You seem like you hate me.”
A simple but devastating reason.
The HolyKnightSizeKing guild master hurriedly waved his hands.
“No! I don’t hate you! Why would you get the wrong idea like that?”
“You really don’t hate me?”
“Of course not!”
Inside, he was boiling with rage, but outwardly he somehow managed to hold his expression together.
He wasn’t guild master for nothing.
For the sake of the guild, he could do anything.
“Didn’t you curse me out earlier?”
“When did I ever do that?! Those other bastards did!”
The HolyKnightSizeKing guild master frantically pointed at the other guild leaders as he made excuses.
“?!”
“What the hell, you bastard?”
The other guild leaders, who had been happily watching the HolyKnightSizeKing guild get threatened by Tae-hyun, stared at him in confusion.
What the hell’s wrong with this guy?
Is he trying to drag everyone down with him?
“Hmm... really? I thought you were one of the ones talking shit about me. Guess I was mistaken.”
“Right! I never said a thing!”
The HolyKnightSizeKing guild master threw away his pride.
Right now, pride wasn’t what mattered.
There was no way he was taking the full hit alone while the other guild bastards got away clean.
“Then what happened in the arena didn’t leave any bad feelings behind either?”
“Of course not! What kind of loser drags something like that out after an arena match? It was a fair and square fight!”
Listening nearby, Cain clicked his tongue in disapproval.
As a former guild master himself, it didn’t exactly feel like someone else’s problem.
At least I kept my pride and lost. What kind of pathetic crap is that?
It was really the pot calling the kettle black, but Cain didn’t see it that way.
“Really? Then I’ll leave the HolyKnightSizeKing guild alone and...”
“...!”
As Tae-hyun’s gaze shifted, the other guild leaders flinched.
D-don’t tell me...
“Which one should I pick? Hey. You choose.”
Tae-hyun turned to the HolyKnightSizeKing guild master.
“Huh? Me?”
“What, you don’t want to? Should I hit your guild instead?”
“No! I want to choose!”
Watching from the side, Yang Sung-gyu marveled inwardly.
That little bastard’s a demon!
Just moments ago, the guild leaders had all been united in their hatred of Tae-hyun. Now they were splitting apart in an instant.
With nothing but his tongue, he’d torn them away from each other and made them point blades at one another.
It was even nastier than Kim Tae-san in his prime.
“Uh... well...”
The HolyKnightSizeKing guild master hesitated.
Sure, they’d only just joined hands to deal with Tae-hyun, but could he really turn around and attack them right away?
“If you don’t choose in five seconds, I hit your guild.”
“...The Suning Guild! Let’s hit the Suning Guild!”
“Are you out of your mind?!”
Su Ning exploded.
He rounded on the HolyKnightSizeKing guild master with the expression of a man who’d just been smacked in the back of the head.
“What happened to all that crap about teaming up to deal with Kim Tae-hyun? You bastard. You think you can stab me in the back like this and walk away?”
As Su Ning pressed him aggressively, the HolyKnightSizeKing guild master faltered for a moment.
He did have a point.
And Tae-hyun, seeing that hesitation, started whispering from the side.
The devil’s tongue, stirring up the heart of a confused man.
“Hey. Don’t trust him. You know what he did before all this started? He worked with the Restaurant Guild and spread poison-laced food. Bet a few of your guild members got eliminated after eating it.”
In truth, Tae-hyun himself had played a much bigger role in their elimination.
Cain had taken out a few, and before the finals, several others had eaten Tae-hyun’s poisoned cooking and taken a hit to their Luck, which knocked them out too.
But the HolyKnightSizeKing guild master had no way of knowing that, so of course he was tempted.
Attacking someone for no reason and attacking someone with a decent excuse were two completely different things.
That was why justification mattered.
When the HolyKnightSizeKing guild master started wavering, Su Ning hurried to persuade him.
“Hey, don’t listen to that bastard! If we just combine our strength, there’s nothing he can do!”
“Sure. Nothing I can do, even though Edaor is backing me and I’ve got a demon army behind me.”
Tae-hyun’s voice dripped with sarcasm from the side.
Su Ning ground his teeth.
Tae-hyun had truly mastered the art of being insufferable.
Whether Su Ning liked it or not, Tae-hyun kept talking.
“Doesn’t matter to me. Sure, Su Ning colluded with another guild, poisoned the arena, pulled every dirty trick in the book, but I’d still be fine teaming up with him. We can just hit everybody together. Edaor would probably love that.”
“Don’t listen to him!”
“And I’m not even sure you people could stop me anyway. You all drank Edaor’s liquor, didn’t you? You can’t resist him properly anymore.”
“...!”
“So what’ll it be? Join hands with Su Ning and try to stop me from commanding the demons, or join hands with me and hit the Suning Guild?”
A demon in human form.
The only reason they had united at all was because Tae-hyun had suddenly appeared. Originally, all the guilds here were competitors.
If they could avoid losses themselves and land a blow on their rival, the Suning Guild, then it was killing two birds with one stone.
“We hit the Suning Guild!”
“I’ll side with you!”
When even the Crying Hammer guild master stepped forward, Su Ning went pale.
At this rate, no one would remain on his side.
“Y-you... you’ll regret this! I swear you’ll regret this!”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Su Ning. Since when were we close enough for you to say something like that?”
“Exactly. And honestly, Kim Tae-hyun is way more trustworthy than you are. You’re the one who poisoned the arena.”
Beside them, Cain nearly choked coughing.
What? Kim Tae-hyun is more trustworthy than Su Ning? Are they insane? Didn’t they see me self-destruct?!
The broadcast had people completely fooled.
Compared to Su Ning, who had led a guild and done every rough, dirty thing under the sun, Tae-hyun’s image was bound to come out looking better.
But to Cain, who knew the truth, the whole thing was absurd.
“Fine. Then let’s do this!”
Su Ning flared up in anger and stormed off first.
The Crying Hammer and HolyKnightSizeKing guild masters turned to Tae-hyun with awkward smiles.
“Then...”
“You are hitting the Suning Guild, right?”
“Of course. Go attack them. Tell your guild members too.”
“Tell our guild members too?”
“Obviously. You think Su Ning’s just going to sit still? He’ll call his guild members and strike first. If you stay put, your people will get blindsided before they even know what happened.”
“R-right! I need to call them right now!”
Watching the guild masters scramble away in a panic, Tae-hyun nodded in satisfaction.
That took care of the guilds that had been glaring daggers at him.
They’d be too busy fighting each other to think about him.
Tap, tap.
“...?”
Lee Da-bi was quietly poking him in the side.
“...We’re friends, right?”
“What? Were we?”
“...”
“You’re really not going to touch Power Warrior, right? Right?”
“If you keep chattering beside me like that, I’ll hit Power Warrior first. You there, winged one. Can you carry me?”
“Of course, Count.”
The winged demon bowed politely to Tae-hyun.
Tae-hyun was a little touched.
Edaor was being more generous than the Archisus Church ever was.
Letting me borrow subordinates like this. What a nice guy.
Tae-hyun grabbed onto the winged demon and climbed on. Cain and Yang Sung-gyu followed and mounted winged demons of their own.
“Power Warrior isn’t even that important here right now anyway.”
Power Warrior had numbers, sure, but it was hard to find genuinely strong players among them.
The ones he really had to worry about were guilds like Suning and Crying Hammer.
Those were solid guilds made up of powerful players.
And thanks to the arena, Tae-hyun had become their sworn enemy.
For now, he’d managed to make them fight each other with nothing but his tongue, but once the Edaor quest was over and enough time passed, those guilds would turn hostile toward him again.
After all, people didn’t forget the grudge of having their items stolen so easily.
Probably easier to just crush all of them.
Tae-hyun was beginning to feel like he was piling up far too many enemies.
If he combined his current enemies with all the potential enemies from Fantasy Online 1, there were enough to line up in a queue.
No more making enemies. From now on, crush them on the spot.
Tae-hyun intended to follow along with Edaor’s quest, smash the guilds he was hostile with in the process, and then betray Edaor when the time was right.
As the holder of the Avatar of Archisus class, there was no way Tae-hyun could stick with Edaor to the end anyway.
The real question is whether I kill Edaor or just run...
Honestly, now that he’d already secured the chest, running probably wouldn’t be much of a problem.
Not like I can open it right now.
There were too many demons under Edaor’s command nearby. If he opened the chest and tried to absorb some authority right here, he’d just get caught.
“Tae-hyun. What do you think Edaor’s trying to do?”
“What does any demon try to do? Show up in a city packed with people, absorb emotions, call in his army, and sweep the whole place.”
Powerful demons occasionally emerged from the Demon Realm.
Each and every one of them was boss-monster level, the kind of existence that triggered large-scale quests.
Tae-hyun, who had been through all this since Fantasy Online 1, was very familiar with demons like these.
So he disguised himself as the governor and opened the arena to gather people, absorb their emotions, and make underlings out of them.
He could absorb the emotions people spewed out, and on top of that, he had the chance to turn strong players—ones good enough to reach the arena finals—into his subordinates.
Edaor had gotten himself one hell of a profitable deal.
If left alone, he’d keep rampaging through the area and grow stronger and stronger.
Boss monsters like this always had to be dealt with early.
Just like how things around Marquis Marden had ended relatively cleanly because Tae-hyun had taken him down quickly.
If Tae-hyun hadn’t been there, Marquis Marden would have destroyed at least a few nearby cities or castles.
And the players there would’ve been swept up too, naturally.
Edaor was highly likely to do the same, but...
“Move out! For Lord Edaor, bring me the lives of the living!”
—KWA-BOOOOM!
Rather than stopping him, Tae-hyun was borrowing demons from Edaor and getting ready to rob other players blind.
“That’s a Suning guild member over there!”
“Good. Let’s go!”
Fairly large guilds often equipped their members with guild-specific gear or insignias.
The Suning Guild was no exception.
Which meant they were easy to spot even from a distance.
“What the hell?!”
“What’s wrong with these bastards?!”
You have defeated a living being in Edaor’s name.
Your contribution within Edaor’s army has increased.
Edaor is pleased.
KWA-KWA-KWAAAANG!
With a thunderous crash, Edaor’s demons began attacking the Suning Guild members.