A Twisted Fate
Sunghyun and the Earth's Adversary.
A knight appeared at the place where the two of them had clashed.
The man looked around and trembled.
He had been in the middle of the trials to join the Royal Knights. Overwhelming mana and killing intent had washed over him, so he had come to investigate and report—and now…
Tremble, tremble—
Even the residual echoes of mana left behind were enough to set his whole body shaking.
If he had been standing here when it happened…?
"I'd be dead. I'd be dead for sure."
The knight spun on his heel at once.
"I have to get back to the kingdom and report this—now!"
By the time the knight reached the kingdom, word had already spread that a new monster had been born in the Forest of Demonic Beasts.
The news reached the king. His reaction was surprisingly indifferent.
"Enough. Bury the matter here. There is no need to dig any further."
And so the record of the battle between Sunghyun and the Earth's Adversary was erased.
The reason for the king's decision was simple.
A message from Hermes.
His disciple was in the Forest of Demonic Beasts—so no matter what news arrived, the king was not to be surprised. And if possible, he would prefer the story not spread too far.
A god's disciple… What kind of person is he, exactly…
While making conversation with the head of legal affairs, the king had heard several accounts of "him."
A man who had crushed a nation's finest prodigies.
A man who had won against the entire world.
The first time he heard it, he had laughed it off. Where in the world would you find someone like that?
It made no sense by any ordinary standard, did it?
But once Hermes revealed the man's identity, the king's thinking changed.
If he's a god's disciple, even those legendary-sounding stories start to sound plausible.
"I'd rather he not end up fighting my daughter, though."
The king looked up at the sky.
His eyes shone gold.
Sunghyun used the Rest Space like an emergency escape hatch. The moment the light enveloped him and deposited him inside, he collapsed right where he stood.
"Haaah! I thought I was going to die."
The enemy's strength had been incomparable to anything he had faced so far.
He had to do something about this lopsided stack, one way or another.
The Coin Shop cannot be used inside the Rest Space.
"Ha… right."
In the Rest Space he could browse the Coin Shop, but purchases were locked.
"What now. Hey, Sense~ What am I supposed to do in a situation like this?"
Sunghyun waited for Sense's pull, the way he always did.
Just sleep, you idiot.
Unlike usual, the response carried a clear note of irritation.
Fair enough.
His body was a wreck; rest came first. Body had climbed to 63 through this fight, but the gap with Mana was still seventeen levels. Closing that blank was more important than anything—and yet he had burned through every last drop of mana in the battle, so for a while he would be fine.
"So basically… just sleep for now, huh."
Sunghyun charged the bed like a man collapsing.
Fwooom—
"Uuugh—. I'm alive. Sleep first, think later."
Audumbla's milk, Zeus, his parents, Hermes, and finally the fight with the Earth's Adversary.
It had been one hell of a day.
Thinking back on that last battle, he couldn't help feeling lucky.
"So that's why they tell you to study, huh."
Dumb bastard.
Shrinking your body wasn't always a good idea. If that final attack hadn't landed cleanly, he would have been thoroughly dismantled. But the one lying here was him, and the other guy was nothing but coins sitting in his account.
So.
"I'm the stronger one. Damn right I am."
Sunghyun surrendered to his steadily closing eyelids and drifted off.
Fwooo—
As he fell asleep, the lights around him dimmed on their own.
Warm sunlight stabbed through the window and into his eyes.
"Aaargh, my whole body aches."
There wasn't a corner of him that didn't hurt. After a proper sleep, though, the head that had refused to turn properly was spinning crisp and clear again.
Physical balance?
Raise Body with the coins he got from killing the Earth's Adversary. Done.
And when would he buy dimensions?
Kill stronger things, jack the coin total itself back up, and buy them then. The way he always had.
Simple, wasn't it?
Get stronger, and more coins come in.
"Nnngh! All right—let's go. Right after breakfast."
Sunghyun stretched and ordered a bowl of doenjang jjigae.
"Mmm~ smell that."
He shoveled down the soybean-paste stew while browsing the newly unlocked S-rank listings.
"Whoa. Now we're getting the real high-end stuff."
Among the S-rank items was a permanent subscription to the very Rest Space he was currently living in.
A mid-to-low-end travel package the gods use when they go on trips.
More shocking than the existence of a permanent subscription was the fact that eleven thousand coins counted as a mid-to-low-end travel package.
Sunghyun sprayed the doenjang he had been holding in his mouth into the air and shot to his feet.
"Pffft! This is mid-range?"
He had started to think he was finally making real money.
Compared to the gods, he was still microscopic.
Think about it rationally. Sunghyun had held these powers for less than a week. The gods had lived for tens of thousands of years. If the two of them held similar coin balances, that would be the strange part.
Sunghyun did not care about any of that.
"Aargh! Still so far to go!"
He was a battering ram that only looked forward.
That obsessive drive toward growth had earned him plenty of nicknames back on Earth.
Mad dog. An eight-ton truck with a broken steering wheel. The train in "the dog barks, but the train keeps rolling"—and so on.
Of course, no one ever said those things to his face.
What happened to the people who did?
No idea. He never saw them again.
"Anyway. What do I do from here."
He was starting to rack up coins in the ten-thousand range without much trouble. A feeling settled in that it was time to set a direction.
There wouldn't be many more chances to farm coins in this forest. Once he took down that lizard, he would step into the ominous woods beyond. And once those woods were cleared?
Could he go home?
Not a chance.
The coins he needed ran into the millions. For now it felt like gathering growth and seed money—but that phase would end soon enough.
So then?
All-in on investment?
Sense sent back: that wasn't it either.
One half of his mind turned over the future while his eyes kept scrolling with his finger—and then a single idea flashed through.
Wait.
Once you held five percent of another dimension's shares, you could go there, right?
Five percent of this planet was only a few tens of thousands of coins, wasn't it?
And there were plenty of similar planets out there, weren't there?
Wait.
Yeah. There were.
Fwaaaash!
It felt as if a light had switched on inside his head.
Mercenary!
That was it—become a dimensional mercenary!
In all his years investing on Earth, the single most important lesson Sunghyun had learned was this:
Pipeline.
The money you made from investments mattered—but the pipeline that let you keep investing, and keep surviving, mattered more than anything.
And right now, Sunghyun had built the perfect pipeline.
Working title: the Great Dimensional Tour!
Even inside Hermes's tiny little dimension, he had pulled in tens of thousands of coins in a single week—and the coins still coming would be several times that.
Which meant—!
"Other dimensions are gold mines too!"
His growth would never stop. Coins would keep piling into his account.
What could be better than that?
"All right! Future plans locked. First, clean up this forest."
Direction set. The only thing left was the obstacle right in front of him.
And that obstacle, as always, would be crushed under raw force.
Simple, wasn't it?
"Whew~ Looking at it again, this is no joke."
The place where he had hurled his final thunderbolt at the Earth's Adversary. Standing there once more, Sunghyun surveyed the surroundings and whistled.
No matter where he looked, it no longer resembled a forest.
A mountain of piled stone. Yes—a stone mountain was the accurate description.
The roots the Earth's Adversary had put down in its giant form had drained every scrap of vital energy from the area. Everything around had become wasteland.
"Damn. No wonder it pulled that evolution stunt and keeled over. Seriously, why does every bastard who picks a fight with me grow in some weird-ass way?"
The wolf. The saber-toothed tiger. The giant.
Given enough time, even the demonic beasts whose heads he had taken in this forest might have walked a similar path.
"Sigh. That's just my lot in life. When has living ever been easy. Ah—right. Fate. That rings a bell."
The word "fate" dragged up a memory.
After his mother was attacked, Sunghyun had once gone to a fortune-teller's house.
The moment he set foot toward the entrance, the mudang came flying out, dropped to the floor in a full prostration, and wailed.
"Aigoo! Aigoo! I still have so much left to do! Why would someone like you come to a place like this…!"
Figuring the person was simply unhinged, he tried other places. The reactions were identical.
Stubbornness took hold. Sunghyun toured every corner of the country—and eventually met an old man.
The old man wore a hanbok of a kind you would never see in twenty-first-century Korea. As Sunghyun approached, a soft wind rose from nowhere, and a pleasant scent of wood pricked his nose.
"Aigoo-ya. My subordinates kept submitting memorials, so I came in person—and would you look at this."
The old man studied Sunghyun for a moment, then sighed.
"Child…. Stop visiting the mudang. When you appear in their places, the connection between shaman and god is severed. Hmm. Seeing you in person, I understand. Your fate is a hard one—the kind that will not leave those around you in peace. Hmm… This old man will offer you counsel. You…"
The instant the old man began to speak—
KWA-RUNG—!
Blue lightning crashed down before his eyes.
Sunghyun's memory cut off there.
When he opened his eyes, he was lying neatly on his bed. No trace of that day remained. But the memory itself was so vivid that from then on, Sunghyun roughly understood: ah. My fate is a hard one.
"Anyway. Where am I supposed to find that lizard?"
If he just smashed the whole forest, would it come out?
He was about to activate Thunder King [A] and dig through the surroundings piece by piece when a familiar sound rolled down from the sky.
KWAAAAAAAH!
"Oh? There it is."
It had come. His final meal.