Chapter 1
Chapter 1
There’s a saying that youth is like the morning star.
It shines beautifully for only a brief moment before disappearing.
And my youth had just begun.
I stared at the two glowing words on the screen over and over again.
Accepted.
“Mom!!!!!”
My name is Lee Siwoo, the shining protagonist of youth who had just gotten accepted into university.
“I! Have come to destroy this world! Offer up your necks and wait for me!”
Ever since I was little, unlike other kids, I especially admired dark heroes.
“Ha ha! I am the destroyer of the world!”
Like every child, I constantly imitated the heroes I saw on TV. I wrapped myself in blankets around the house, grabbed tree branches like weapons, and wandered around the neighborhood.
“What the heck! Go away!”
“That’s weird! Why would you like something like that?!”
“Idiot! Moron!”
And for some reason, I was never popular.
Well, I’m pretty used to it now, but back then, I remember it hurting a lot.
The only escape I had was the world of heroes inside the TV.
As a child, I was almost always sitting in front of it, and inside the screen, the dark hero was always laughing.
“Ha ha! You dare attack me?!”
Then time passed, and during my middle school entrance ceremony, I made a mistake I would regret for the rest of my life.
“My name is Lee Siwoo! I shall destroy this school!”
Maybe puberty had hit me early.
Maybe I lacked social skills because I had no friends.
Maybe I was too immersed in heroes.
Or maybe it was all of those things combined.
Either way, that moment became one of the biggest turning points in my life.
Three years later, I thought I’d finally escape my middle school reputation once I entered high school…
But every high school I applied to that was far away rejected me, and I ended up attending the school right next to my middle school.
Of course, I thought about transferring.
But it wasn’t like I was being bullied or ostracized, and my family situation wasn’t exactly wealthy either. Besides, by then, I had already gotten used to this kind of life.
“Hey! Destroyer! What’re you doing?!”
“Ah, stop calling me that!”
Truthfully, it wasn’t like I had absolutely no friends.
And honestly, telling my parents about all this felt way too embarrassing.
What? You think it’s weird that my parents didn’t know their son was basically the school laughingstock?
Well, there was a reason for that.
My parents loved each other so much that they ended up having my little sister ten years after me.
When I was fourteen, Sia was only four years old, right at the age where she needed all of my parents’ attention.
Not that I resent her or anything. Actually, I adore her.
Because honestly, she’s ridiculously cute.
Ah, if I had my phone right now, I’d show you pictures.
Cringe?
What kind of thing is that to say?
Anyway, that day was the day after I turned twenty.
The moment I became an adult, I went wild partying with my friends, and I didn’t wake up until four in the afternoon.
“Ugh… my head…”
Suffering from my first-ever hangover, I had no choice but to sit there drinking the dried pollack soup Mom made while listening to Dad’s lecture.
“Siwoo, what have I always told you?”
“Uh… not to do things I’ll regret…”
“That’s right! The person who knows your actions best is yourself! So live without doing things you’ll regret!”
I slowly swallowed spoonfuls of the soup while listening to the lecture I had heard countless times before.
“Yes…”
“And what else did I always say? What kind of family are we?”
“That Great-grandfather fought for independence—”
“Exactly! In this world your great-grandfather risked his life to protect, shouldn’t you live proudly and honorably?”
“Yes…”
The lecture continued even after I finished eating, all the way until I finished the apple Mom had peeled for me.
I had heard those words for over ten years, so half the time I let them go in one ear and out the other.
But now, strangely enough, I missed hearing them.
Then came Friday, January 3rd.
I was lying at home, still suffering from a lingering hangover.
I was sprawled across the sofa, wasting time on my phone with the TV playing in the background when a voice from the screen caught my attention.
“Ghk! You… just what are you…?!”
“Hm?”
At some point, the animation I had watched for nearly half my life had started playing.
“I am the destroyer of the world! Remember that!”
The hero inside the TV hadn’t changed at all in ten years.
“That brings back memories…”
I was quietly reminiscing while watching TV when the vibration in my hand dragged me back to reality.
“Hello?”
“Oh, Siwoo.”
“Mom? What’s up?”
“Could you go pick up Sia?”
“Huh? Suddenly?”
Mom was asking me to pick up my little sister from school.
“We’re going out to eat meat tonight. Your dad and I are heading straight to the restaurant, so you go get her.”
“…Alright.”
“Please, son~”
Mom said she loved me before hanging up.
“What time does school end again…”
I checked the time and got ready to head out.
“I! Shall destroy this world—!”
I turned off the TV, threw on some clothes, and left the apartment.
As soon as I stepped outside and headed toward the elevator, I noticed a large sheet of paper hanging in front of it.
“Huh? Elevator inspection?”
The paper said the elevator was under maintenance.
“Ugh… I hate stairs…”
I trudged down the stairwell, and after a while, I noticed a woman walking up from below.
“Red hair? That’s… a pretty unusual taste.”
The woman was climbing the stairs wearing a black leather coat, her long crimson hair flowing behind her.
Each step of her high heels echoed sharply in my ears.
Without thinking, I glanced at her face, but she wore a black mask and black sunglasses, making it impossible to see her clearly.
“She’s kind of creepy… Well, probably just a stranger.”
I ignored it and tried to walk past her.
But the moment we crossed paths, the sound of her heels suddenly stopped.
“Huh?”
I immediately turned around, but her hand reached my back first.
“Uh?”
She lightly pushed me.
And just like that, I lost my balance.
My body twisted halfway as I fell, and it was obvious that the back of my head was going to smash against the stairs.
“Fuck!”
But all I could do was curse while desperately reaching forward.
I tried grabbing onto her clothes, but she was too far away.
My body tilted further and further.
The woman who pushed me lowered her mask with one hand and smiled.
“Because it was a promise.”
“What—”
“A promise… must be kept.”
She said something else, but I couldn’t hear it properly.
My vision suddenly turned white.
“Ugh…”
“What are you saying…”
Slowly, I opened my eyes and looked around.
Everything was completely white.
I floated in the middle of an endless white space.
“Where is this?”
Then I heard a strange voice echo inside my head.
“W-What? What are you saying?”
But I couldn’t understand a single word.
For some reason, the voice sounded frustrated, almost like it was sighing while desperately trying to communicate something to me.
The incomprehensible voice continued speaking.
Then suddenly, light began intensifying from every direction.
“Aaaaagh! Help me!”
Terrified, I struggled wildly, but the light only grew brighter until it completely swallowed me whole.
After the voice spoke its final words, I lost consciousness again.
Fortunately, when I woke up this time, there was actual ground beneath me.
“AAAAAAAH!!!!!”
I screamed pathetically and collapsed onto the floor as my legs gave out.
“Um… are you alright?”
Standing before me was an unbelievably beautiful woman dressed in pure white robes.
Her long blonde hair flowed gently as she slowly approached me.
“Here, please take my hand and stand up, Hero.”
“Ah… y-yes.”
I grabbed the hand she offered and stood up.
Her hand was unbelievably soft and pale.
“Um, Hero…”
“Y-Yes?”
“You can let go of my hand now…”
“Ah! S-Sorry!”
Realizing I was still holding her hand, I quickly let go and looked around awkwardly.
The place I had awakened in was a massive hall.
All around us stood men completely covered in white armor and helmets, silently holding white spears.
“This place is…”
As I stared around like an idiot, the blonde woman smiled faintly, apparently amused.
“This is the sanctuary of the Order, Hero.”
“The Order…?”
The walls and ceiling of the hall were covered in symbols and paintings of a woman depicted like a goddess.
“The sanctuary of the Goddess Church isn’t a place just anyone may enter, Hero.”
“…Goddess Church?”
Was this some kind of roleplay?
The woman, who kept calling me Hero for some reason, stepped back a few paces and pulled something out from her robes.
“Now then, Hero, please introduce yourself.”
She held out a circular pendant with both hands.
“Uh… first of all, where exactly is this? And why am I here…?”
“…Pardon? Weren’t you given an explanation?”
“What explanation…?”
As I asked back, I could see her expression subtly darken.
Clank—
The armored men around us shifted at the same time.
But—
“No, wait.”
The woman raised one hand slightly.
“Is she someone important…?”
The woman, who looked around my age, stopped the armored men with a simple gesture.
“…I am the Saintess of the Goddess Church.”
“The Goddess Church? Saintess?”
Well, she was pretty enough to be called a saintess.
“This place is a world entirely different from the one you came from.”
“Another world?”
“Yes. And you are the Hero summoned to save our world.”
“A Hero? Summoned?”
A summoned Hero from another world?
What kind of nonsense was this?!
These days the trend is reincarnation or regression! Summoning? That’s old-fashioned! That stuff was popular ten years ago— no, what am I saying? More like something straight out of the 90s!
“Yes, Hero. Please introduce yourself.”
The Saintess once again held out the pendant.
“An introduction…”
I sank deep into thought.
Everything happening was far too sudden.
Another world.
Hero.
It all felt unreal, like a dream.
I had no sense of reality at all.
It felt like I had become the protagonist of a novel or manga.
Honestly, everyone has probably imagined escaping reality and traveling to another world at least once.
Especially someone like me, who had always lived closer to fantasy than reality.
And now, that fantasy had become real.
“Um… Hero?”
Since I stood there silently without reacting, the Saintess looked worried.
I slowly took a deep breath and closed my eyes.
At that moment, an overwhelming impulse surged within me.
It spread through my entire body in an instant.
I couldn’t resist it.
My whole body trembled.
Blood rushed through my veins and slammed into my brain.
My heart pounded violently.
I couldn’t reject it.
I mustn’t reject it.
I didn’t want to reject it.
I couldn’t reject it.
My consciousness blurred, feeling as though it might snap at any second.
Barely holding onto my sanity, I finally spoke the words I had repeated countless times in my imagination.
“My name is Lee Siwoo! I am the destroyer of this world!”
I opened my eyes and shouted proudly at the Saintess.
“…”
The Saintess stared at me with wide green eyes, clearly shocked.
“Uh… Saintess? If you don’t react, this is actually really embarrassing…”
“Haah… so once wasn’t enough after all.”
The Saintess placed the pendant back into her robes and shifted her gaze to my right.
A faint light flickered briefly from the pendant, but nobody noticed.
Standing there was one of the armored men with his hand resting on a lever.
“Pull it down.”
The moment she gave the order, the armored man pushed the lever downward.
It creaked loudly with the sound of rusted machinery, and mechanisms connected to it began moving all around us.
“W-W-Wait—?!”
Suddenly, the floor beneath me opened up.
“AAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!”
Screaming at the top of my lungs, I plummeted into a bottomless abyss.
“Alright, prepare for the next summoning.”
While Lee Siwoo fell into the darkness below, the Saintess and Holy Knights closed the floor again and began cleaning up the surroundings.
Watching the Holy Knights operate the mechanisms, the Saintess let out a deep sigh.
“Haah… why did this trial have to happen now of all times…”
The current situation was extremely unusual.
Ever since the first Hero descended, a new Hero had been summoned every hundred years.
But now, only ten years after the previous Hero had returned home, the Goddess’s oracle had descended once again, completely ignoring the established cycle.
Because of this, not only the Goddess Church but also the imperial palace and a handful of the continent’s highest-ranking elites were in chaos.
“Ah, fuck, why did it have to be me…”
And the Saintess herself was especially distressed.
After all, unless there were extraordinary circumstances, the Saintess was always destined to become the Hero’s first companion.
“How hard did I work to finally become Saintess…!”
Truthfully, becoming the Hero’s companion wasn’t exactly considered a good thing.
Being the Hero’s companion meant leaving the headquarters of the Goddess Church in the imperial capital and wandering across the continent alongside the Hero, risking your life constantly.
Even if it was for the noble purpose of saving the world alongside the Goddess’s chosen Hero, it was undeniably a brutal job compared to the duties of other Saintesses.
Especially after the Saintess accompanying the Second Hero died during the journey, nearly every candidate started refusing the position whenever a Hero summoning approached.
“Why?! Why the fuck did the oracle suddenly appear now?!”
“Saintess, preparations are complete.”
“Ah, understood.”
The senior Holy Knight informed her everything was ready.
The Saintess, who had been lost in thought, began chanting the summoning spell once more.
Ten years after the Ninth Hero’s journey ended, Illusia, the newly appointed Saintess, was already reciting a summoning spell for the second time in her life.
Then, accompanied by a brilliant light, the silhouette of a person appeared in the center of the summoning circle.
“Now then, Hero. Please introduce yourself.”
Unlike the previous idiot, the man calmly looked around before answering.
“Uh… my name is Kim Chulsoo…”
“Welcome to this world, Hero.”
The pendant emitted no light at all.
But no one, including the Saintess herself, noticed.
When I regained consciousness, I found myself surrounded by complete darkness.
“Ugh… my head…”
Thankfully—or maybe not—despite falling from such a height, it seemed something had absorbed the impact because my body felt mostly unharmed.
I quickly looked around.
And the moment I realized where I was, I couldn’t help but scream.
“Holy shit!!!!!!!”
I had landed in the middle of a massive pile of bones.
This all happened within five minutes of arriving in another world.
“So that’s what happened.”
I explained everything that had happened to me in this other world to Wilson, who stood before me.
“What do you think?”
I asked him, but no answer came back.
“Wilson?”
Even after I asked again, Wilson remained silent.
“Wilson, when someone asks you something, you’re supposed to answer.”
I crossed my arms and glared at him, but Wilson didn’t even blink.
“Answer me!!!”
Finally losing my patience, I shouted.
Wilson still remained silent.
“ANSWER ME!!!!!”
I grabbed Wilson and slammed him into the ground.
“ANSWER!!!!! ME!!!!!”
Wilson shattered into pieces.
I stood there panting in fury.
“Please! Send me back home!!!!!”
Stepping on what used to be Wilson’s skull, I climbed down the mountain of bones.
“Haah… I shouldn’t have said that…”
And just ten minutes after arriving in another world, I experienced my very first regret.
