Episode 1
He forced his eyelids open with difficulty.
It was light, but not the kind that stabbed at his eyes. This light carried darkness in it, brushing gently against him.
He didn’t even have the strength to turn his head.
So he closed his eyes again and tried to recall the final moment.
Rather than blocking Baal’s attack, he had chosen to counter it. A final blow distilled from the insight he had gained in that brief instant.
The clash of absurd, monstrous power, something that should never have existed in the human world. After that impact, Yoon Sang-hyuk had lost consciousness. Now he was awake.
Baal?
The duel with Baal.
The future of humanity would change depending on how that duel ended. But there was no cheering around him, no one rushing in to help his struggling body.
So I lost?
And was he dead now?
He had never believed in an afterlife. But now that he knew gods truly existed, and that a ridiculous place like the Demon Realm existed as well, there was no reason an afterlife couldn’t be real too.
Am I standing at the banks of the Samdo River?
The river the dead were said to cross.
The thought brought an involuntary laugh to his lips.
Then it happened.
“How long are you planning to keep laughing like an idiot?”
Yoon Sang-hyuk’s body trembled violently.
It was a voice he could never forget, even if he tried.
“Baa...l.”
He forced the word out. He still had his eyes shut, but he could feel Baal’s presence. That presence, however, felt very different from before.
Some unknown energy stroked over his body. Yoon Sang-hyuk felt his limbs grow lighter, opened his eyes, and slowly moved. His condition had improved beyond comparison with just moments ago.
He rose slowly to his feet.
And realized the place he had awakened in was a familiar one.
Baal’s Grand Hall.
That was right.
This was the grand hall where he had fought his final duel with Baal.
Baal was still seated on the throne atop the raised dais.
“So I really did lose?”
“...”
Baal said nothing. He merely looked at Yoon Sang-hyuk with a faint, unreadable smile.
“What happened to Earth?”
Yoon Sang-hyuk couldn’t read the meaning behind that smile. There was no hostility in it. He shoved against the air and forced his body upright, getting to his feet on both legs.
“After all that effort...”
“Nothing you’re imagining happened.”
“Huh?”
Yoon Sang-hyuk’s eyes widened in surprise at Baal’s words.
“What do you mean?”
“It means you got what you wanted. Except for one thing.”
“One thing?”
Baal slowly lifted a hand and pointed at him.
“Protecting Earth, protecting the people you love, and living an ordinary life with them was what you ultimately wanted, was it not?”
It was.
That was exactly what Yoon Sang-hyuk had wanted.
“You protected Earth and the people you love through your duel with me. But you won’t be able to live an ordinary life with them.”
Yoon Sang-hyuk looked around once more.
The Demon Lords stationed between the vast hall and its massive pillars. Nothing had changed at all since before the duel. This was the Demon Realm. Even though his fight with Baal was over, the fact that he was still here meant something had gone badly wrong.
“Can you tell me what happened?”
“Nothing complicated.”
Baal rose from his throne. Then he extended a hand and swept it aside. The space between them rippled, and an image appeared.
The figures in the image were Yoon Sang-hyuk and Baal themselves.
The two of them standing in opposition, exchanging words. Then Baal began pouring out his power first, and Yoon Sang-hyuk answered in kind, releasing his own.
And the energies they created collided.
Yoon Sang-hyuk’s eyes twitched.
The collision devoured everything around them. The Demon Lords could not withstand that force and were annihilated all at once. Baal’s Grand Hall itself was reduced to dust.
At the final moment, when both energies were aiming to destroy the other’s life, Baal moved his hand. Another force was created. The energy he had made, the one that had driven Yoon Sang-hyuk toward death, changed course. Then, together with the force he had belatedly created, it trapped Yoon Sang-hyuk’s own power.
The image ended with an explosion so immense that he couldn’t even begin to imagine its scale.
“At the very last second, I changed my mind.”
“You mean...”
“I didn’t want you to die. So I chose to live together rather than die together. And the result is exactly this, you and I standing face to face, talking.”
“Earth’s fine?”
“That’s right. The final quest created by the rules born of greed, or whatever you called it, was ultimately judged as your victory. So Earth is fine. Just as I told you before the duel, greed, and those with power like it, will no longer be able to target Earth. But because I used up all my strength to destroy that final attack, sending you back to Earth failed.”
“That’s simple enough. Just send me now.”
Baal smiled and shook his head.
“That means no? What are you plotting? You want me to make a scene here and tear the place apart?”
“It means that even if I wanted to send you, I can’t.”
“Cut the nonsense.”
Baal sat back down on his throne.
“Would you believe me if I said even standing up for a moment and explaining the situation to you is exhausting? I told you I used up everything I had at the last second. I don’t even know how long it will take to recover.”
“So... I can’t go back?”
Baal wore a strange expression.
“I said I can’t send you. I didn’t say you can’t go back.”
“That’s the same thing. How the hell am I supposed to return from the Demon Realm to Earth? Is there even a way?”
“Simple. I just need to recover my strength.”
“Really? That does sound simple. How long do you think that’ll take?”
Baal held up one finger.
At the sight of it, Yoon Sang-hyuk gave a thin smile.
“One year? If it’s about a year, I can wait gladly.”
“What nonsense is that? Who do you think I am? I am Baal, ruler of the Demon Realm, source of all evil, and darkness itself. I used all my strength. Do you really think I’d recover in just one year?”
“Then how long?”
“At minimum, a thousand years.”
“That’s too much for a joke.”
“Why would I joke with you?”
Yoon Sang-hyuk’s face crumpled at Baal’s dry tone. As Baal said, there was no reason for him to be joking.
“That’s not simple at all.”
“For beings like us, who live an infinite life, a thousand years is nothing more than an instant.”
“That’s only from your point of view. Ah! Don’t tell me a thousand years here is the same as one day in the human world?”
“Of course not. Time is fair to no one.”
Behind the Mask of Chaos, Yoon Sang-hyuk’s face flushed red. Baal was saying he would have to spend a thousand years here if he wanted to leave the Demon Realm and return to Earth.
After a thousand years, Earth would no longer be the same place Yoon Sang-hyuk knew.
No, Earth might even be gone by then.
He hadn’t known it before, but now he knew beings with transcendent power existed across many dimensions. Baal said with absolute certainty that nothing like that would happen, but the future had not happened yet. There was nothing he could be sure of.
“So you’re telling me to wait here for a thousand years?”
Baal was still smiling that unreadable smile.
Yoon Sang-hyuk would have loved nothing more than to lunge at him and bury a fist in his jaw. The fact that all his power was gone made it entirely possible. He had already confirmed that his own strength had remained intact. Right now, killing Baal would be easier than flipping his hand over.
But if he killed him, he would simply revive again, and for now there was no way to get back to Earth without Baal. So all he could do was watch.
Then he felt another gaze and turned his head.
Vassago, third among the Demon Lords, was watching him. Vassago looked at Yoon Sang-hyuk for a moment before shifting his gaze to Baal. For a brief instant, Baal looked back at him as well.
It seemed the two of them were having some kind of conversation in their own way.
“Want to hear an old story?”
Baal spoke first.
“I don’t think now is the time for old stories.”
“It’s a story that’ll help you, so listen. This is about before I became king of the Demon Realm. About the ruler who came before me.”
“You mean Satan?”
Satan.
The ruler of the Demon Realm before Baal.
Baal had become the ruler after defeating Satan.
“That’s right. Satan was... very strong.”
As if remembering the past, Baal’s eyes grew distant.
“I challenged Satan more than a hundred times. For reasons I never understood, Satan never annihilated me, even after I challenged him and lost. Back then, I couldn’t understand why. But now I can understand Satan’s heart.”
“Because he was bored?”
At Yoon Sang-hyuk’s words, Baal gave a faint smile.
“Correct. The one who stands at the highest point, the one who must decide everything, is always lonely. The loneliness and boredom they feel are beyond anything you could imagine.”
He was only human, able to live for barely a hundred years at most, so as Baal said, he couldn’t really imagine it. He had seen such people many times, though, and so he could only vaguely guess that it must feel something like this.
“Thanks to me constantly challenging him, Satan must have found a sliver of enjoyment in that miserable emptiness and boredom. That’s why he didn’t annihilate me. And perhaps he even realized, or maybe vaguely suspected, that this decision would eventually drag him into the abyss.”
Yoon Sang-hyuk said nothing, only watched Baal in silence.
“The victor takes all. According to the laws of the Demon Realm, I seized this throne. At first, it was wonderful. Becoming the king of the Demon Realm I had dreamed of so long felt like having everything. But Satan hadn’t merely handed me this throne. He gave me loneliness and solitude, emptiness and boredom too.”
Baal let out a quiet laugh.
“It seems I’ve gotten a little sentimental after recalling the past. Enough useless talk. Let me get to the point. At the far north of the Demon Realm, on the frozen land, there lies a place called the Abyss of the Void.”
“The Abyss of the Void...”
“I defeated Satan in our duel, but I could not completely erase him. Part of it was that my strength was insufficient, but it was also my final mercy for Satan, who had never annihilated me despite having so many chances. The Abyss of the Void. Satan is imprisoned there. His soul and body separated, bound by chains without end. And the ones who follow him... the Demon Lords of that era, the ones who refused to follow me, the new king of the Demon Realm, are imprisoned there too.”
“If I go there... can I return?”
Baal rose from the throne.
“The Abyss of the Void. Bring me Satan’s heart from there. If it’s Satan’s heart, I’ll be able to recover my strength in an instant. Which means...”
Baal pointed at Yoon Sang-hyuk.
“I’ll be able to send you back to Earth.”