I Woke Up and the World Had Turned Upside Down
After I got home, I washed up thoroughly.
Honestly, a little sand was all that had stuck to me. All I'd done was film, after all.
Still, I took a proper shower just the same.
Then I slept. Maybe the shock had hit me harder than I thought—I was simply exhausted. The moment I lay down on the bed, my eyes closed on their own.
And when I opened them again, the world had turned noisy.
First of all, the messages had poured in.
Of course, I ignored most of them. They were all useless.
Park Soyun's messages, though—I didn't ignore those.
Suddenly the stream of messages from Park Soyun stopped. She was probably screaming somewhere.
Then, about three minutes later, the messages exploded in a continuous flood.
Kak-talk.
Kak-talk.
Kak-talk.
An excited Park Soyun was firing them off in a frenzy. I answered them one by one for a while, then eventually gave up because it was too much work.
Checking messages this much is enough…
This time I checked the NewTube reaction. Honestly, the NewTube reaction was the most important thing right now.
I knew they'd upload something.
And just as I'd expected, there it was—one video.
Geum Seongho's hit piece targeting me.
I'd known he would upload something like this.
A quick look showed it was an absolute spectacle.
He had gone out of his way to emphasize my pathetic expression and every little action. He even went so far as to call me a "failure."
On top of that, without verifying a single fact, he had flatly declared that I had run away. It was absurd.
Toward the end he even started spouting pretentious one-liners like some kind of sage.
What was it again?
Something about how a superhuman who couldn't keep his promises didn't deserve to be called a superhuman?
I could only stare in disbelief.
And following Geum Seongho's lead, a whole pack of other cyber wreckers had moved as well. Most of them were the same ones who had targeted me before. They attacked me in roughly the same style he had.
In any case, NewTube was in an uproar. The video Geum Seongho had uploaded had already passed a million views. Of course it was noisy.
But I didn't get angry.
I smiled instead.
I can send a whole bunch of them straight to hell with this, can't I?
Unfortunately, it wasn't the big catch.
The major NewTuber who had first targeted me years ago hadn't taken the bait this time.
Honestly, the thought crossed my mind: Should I wait a little longer?
But I shook my head. Dragging it out too long would only make things worse. Everything had its proper timing.
I immediately prepared to upload my own video.
To avoid any suspicion of editing, I didn't cut a single frame. I just uploaded the raw footage straight to my NewTube channel as it was.
The title was extremely simple too.
[Dungeon 1st Floor Clear Footage]
It looked a little half-hearted, but that was deliberate.
Anyway, the moment I hit upload, my heart started pounding.
This was finally proper revenge. Of course I was nervous.
Just then the door opened and my clone walked over to me.
"Master."
"Hm?"
"It is time for training."
"Training? Wait, today was the day I went into the dungeon."
"What exactly did you do inside the dungeon?"
"…Ahem."
I cleared my throat at her words. It was just embarrassing for no reason.
I stood up with a reluctant look on my face. I really wanted to check the video reactions right away. But training came first, it seemed.
"Today I will teach you proper swordsmanship."
"…Is that hard?"
"Yes."
"Ugh."
You've heard the saying, right? "I woke up and the world had turned upside down."
I felt that exact thing this time.
Of course I hadn't actually slept—this was after finishing training. Even so, in that short span of time the world had completely changed.
First of all, the view count on the video I'd uploaded was insane.
…Two million?
It had only been three hours since upload. And it already had two million views. That was a record-breaking speed.
Is this even possible?
On top of that, the comments were flooding in. There were so many it was hard to read them all.
Every kind of comment imaginable showed up.
From people questioning the video's authenticity, to people praising me, to people cursing Geum Seongho, to people shocked by the Heavenly Demon's appearance, to people trying to guess my superhuman rank—it was complete chaos.
Most of it, however, was positive.
A few comments still insisted it was fake, but most of those got piled on by everyone else and were either edited or deleted.
All in all, this level of reaction was more than solid.
Maybe because I was being treated as Korea's first-ever S-rank-level superhuman?
Everyone was watching my video with a pretty favorable eye.
I wonder how Geum Seongho's video is doing?
This time I checked the comments on the video Geum Seongho had uploaded. I was extremely curious how his channel was holding up.
And the moment I saw the comments, I broke into a wide grin.
The comments under Geum Seongho's video were nothing but curses. Everyone was mocking him, insulting him, and wishing him the worst. You could even see his subscriber count plummeting at an insane speed in real time.
At this point he's completely finished.
It was safe to call it a confirmed one-way ticket to hell.
Geum Seongho had sent more than a few people to hell over the years. And this time he was finally receiving that karma in full.
I read through the comments with a deeply satisfied expression.
Nothing could be more entertaining than this. Watching a NewTuber who had once targeted me fall into hell in real time… it was pure, absolute comedy gold.
It was so fun that I just kept reading comments for a while.
How much time passed like that?
My eyes started to get tired.
I looked away from my phone and fell into thought for a moment.
With this much, have I basically achieved my goal?
My brand value had shot up massively this time. If I went live, far more viewers than usual would show up.
On top of that, I had sent Geum Seongho and a few other cyber wreckers I never liked into hell. Even just that was an excellent result.
Of course, it's a shame Superhuman Lab didn't take the bait…
The Superhuman Research Institute.
Or Superhuman Lab for short.
Korea's largest cyber wrecker channel. And the first one that had ever targeted me. You could say he was the one I hated most.
Anyway, you couldn't get everything you wanted right from the start.
I nodded to myself and got ready for bed. The night was already deep. It seemed best to sleep for today.
Tomorrow will be even more chaotic, won't it?
It was late at night right now. That was probably why the issue hadn't fully exploded yet.
By tomorrow, things would be different again.
Maybe it would even show up on the morning news. That would be entertaining in its own way.
I take back the "that would be entertaining" part.
"Kim Sinhyeok!"
"Kim Sinhyeok, please give us a statement!"
"Is it true you're Korea's first S-rank?!"
"There's talk that the summon you called is the Heavenly Demon—is that true?!"
It was chaos from the apartment entrance. A whole crowd of reporters had gathered at the gate and was making a scene.
Thankfully it was a decently secure apartment. If it hadn't been, I would have been in serious trouble. Of course, this still meant I was getting some serious side-eye from the other residents. I would probably have to hand out gifts later as an apology.
In any case, this whole thing had become a much bigger issue than I'd expected.
It had actually made the morning news. My real face had appeared, and my clone's face had appeared right alongside it.
The anchor had looked completely worked up too.
Which made sense—an S-rank-level superhuman appearing in Korea for the first time. Of course they were excited.
Anyway, it looked like I wouldn't be able to leave the house for a few days.
After coming back inside, I lay down on the bed and picked up my phone.
Maybe I'll just watch some NewTube?
I wanted to see how the cyber wreckers were reacting. I was pretty curious what kind of response they would show after watching the video I'd uploaded.
Maybe they would do a complete 180 and start praising me.
Or maybe they would dig up some new angle and attack me again.
Wait… Superhuman Lab!
Right then, Superhuman Lab's latest video popped up in the algorithm.
The thumbnail showed me looking defeated. Their clickbait game was truly next-level. It seemed they were trying to find some angle to attack me with after all.
I immediately clicked on Superhuman Lab's video.