Hermes' Shoes
“Jinwoo...”
Kim Seoyeon tried to hold him back from behind with a look of feigned panic, but even that was pure pretense. I knew the “shock” carved into her face had nothing to do with her man stepping forward. It was the panic of realizing the lie she had just spat out.
Honestly, it was absurd. We hadn’t even parted on good terms, yet she was already spinning stories that painted her ex as some kind of stalker. Was that really how people talked about former lovers?
She’s making sure every last scrap of lingering affection dies here.
Even the few decent memories we’d shared were rotting away. Looking back, I really had lived like an idiot.
And the guy who believed every word of it wasn’t much better. Birds of a feather. A match made in hell.
“Hey. I’ve been listening quietly this whole time, but what kind of complete nonsense are you spewing?”
Kim Hana stepped in at that moment. Both eyes blazing, she shoved her chair back and stood.
Jung Jinwoo snickered.
“And who the hell are you? Some paid girlfriend-for-hire?”
“Excuse me?”
“How much did he give you? Looking at the size, maybe fifty? Stretching it thin on that 2.3 million won salary, huh? I’ll double it—just learn to stay out of places you don’t belong.”
He even knew the exact number—2.3 million. Apparently Kim Seoyeon had laid my entire life bare for him. Not the good parts. Mostly the bad ones. Five years of memories were being flushed straight into the gutter.
“...I booked this restaurant myself, and I invited him here because I owed him a favor. Just because you have a mouth doesn’t mean you get to run it however you—”
“Your tab? Two hundred should cover it, right?”
Jinwoo pulled out his wallet and thrust a thick stack of fifty-thousand-won bills toward her. Kim Hana looked at the money like it was a pile of rotting filth.
“What kind of scumbag is this guy?”
“Scumbag?”
“Yeah, scumbag. You think money makes you everything? You’re half-baked as a person. How old are you supposed to be that you turned out this pathetic?”
“...This bitch is insane.”
Jinwoo’s face hardened. He raised his hand. Most people would have stopped at the threat. He didn’t. He swung for real.
Kim Hana squeezed her eyes shut on pure instinct.
Thwack!
I snatched his wrist mid-swing. His eyebrows twitched upward.
“Ha. Look at this. Playing the man now, are we?”
“Let’s take this outside.”
“Outside, nothing. Get on your knees and apologize first—hngk?!”
Crrraaack!
Jinwoo’s eyes flew wide. A bone-crushing pain shot up from his wrist without warning.
What the—? Why is this bastard so strong?
This wasn’t normal human grip strength. How many people on the entire planet could crush a wrist like this? As far as Jinwoo knew, Park Hyunmyung had never so much as looked at a gym. Work, home, the occasional date—the rest of the time he was a shut-in glued to a game. No way that loser had trained grip strength seriously.
Then... could it be?
A Player?
Had he used a Broken Fragment of the Golden Rule to synchronize? No—impossible. Synchronizing turned you into your Pangenia character. The man in front of him was still just Park Hyunmyung.
Which meant he had been born with this kind of power. That made even less sense.
“Ready to talk outside now?”
“You son of a...”
Jinwoo shook out his freed wrist, face twisting with pure rage. Talk outside? Not a chance.
You picked the wrong guy.
He could swallow anything else, but losing to trash like this? Unforgivable. He and Park Hyunmyung were different breeds of human entirely. Showing even a shred of deference to this nobody would be the most humiliating thing imaginable.
In that instant, golden light began to swirl around Jung Jinwoo’s entire body.
He was a Player. He had used a Broken Fragment of the Golden Rule to bring his power into reality. Becoming a warrior of Pangenia granted transcendence that a thousand ordinary people couldn’t touch. No matter how strong a grip Hyunmyung had, he was still just a civilian. Beating a synchronized Player was impossible.
Jinwoo smiled with dark satisfaction.
I’ll make you beg on your knees.
The thought of forcing an apology out of him wouldn’t stop the grin from spreading. The world had already changed. From now on, Players would lead it. He was already being praised as a Dimension Warrior. Who would care if he neutralized one ordinary guy?
“Wh-what is that?”
“A Dimension Warrior!”
“Transformation? Is he really transforming?”
People began murmuring the moment they saw the change. Blue hair. Tightly packed muscle. A real spear-wielding warrior. Fewer than a hundred Dimension Warriors were publicly known in Korea. Jinwoo wasn’t one of them, but the sheer rarity of the sight left everyone breathless.
A hero’s entrance!
Jinwoo’s shoulders soared sky-high.
“Kneel, you bastard.”
He was completely at ease. Wasting the Golden Rule’s duration was a shame, but this was a once-in-a-lifetime chance—to erase Park Hyunmyung completely from Kim Seoyeon’s eyes.
The smile didn’t last.
Rumble!
...Earthquake?
The ground suddenly began to shake. Cracks spider-webbed across the building. And that wasn’t all.
“M-monsters!”
“Aaaah!!”
Giant bean-shaped insects—each a full meter long with razor-sharp fangs—burst up through the floor from underground. Monsters that had no business existing on Earth. Yet the appearance was familiar.
Chid Worms! Another erosion?
The invasion had started again. Jinwoo clenched his fist.
They’re only level 2 trash.
No matter how many level-2 Chid Worms appeared, they were still just worms. Slow, low aggression. In fact, the ones that had surfaced weren’t even attacking people yet. But monsters inspired terror by their mere existence. People screamed and fled in every direction.
“You... consider yourself lucky.”
With the erosion underway, Park Hyunmyung was no longer the priority. Jinwoo seized the opportunity. This was the perfect chance to become a real hero.
“Everyone! Stay calm! I, Jung Jinwoo, will protect you!”
How many people had skyrocketed to stardom after the Giant Mantis attack? There was no law saying Jung Jinwoo couldn’t become a genuine hero too.
Sshhk!
He drove his spear straight through a Chid Worm. Its shell split and it burst apart. Viscous fluid sprayed everywhere, but Jinwoo didn’t stop. Four Chid Worms had come up inside the restaurant. He slaughtered all four in the blink of an eye, then spun his spear into a ready stance and surveyed the room with a leisurely smile.
Click! Click!
People raised their phones without hesitation, capturing every second of him on camera.
Perfect.
Jinwoo cheered inside. Once the videos went up, he’d be a star by tomorrow. Just imagining it filled him with warm satisfaction.
Rumble!
But the erosion and invasion weren’t finished. More Chid Worms began wriggling in from outside. An enormous number of them poured through the entrance in a relentless tide.
“These damn bugs...”
The numbers were high, but that was even better. A chance to show the whole world his heroic side. He killed several more as they pushed through the doorway.
—...Who killed my children?
Something that wasn’t a Chid Worm entered. A Chid Mamba—a monster with the carapace of a Chid Worm and the bloated form of a human. It appeared amid a cloud of poisonous mist, and Jinwoo’s expression froze solid.
Why is a main raid boss here?
The Giant Mantis had been a field raid boss. A Chid Mamba was on an entirely different level. Like a Hydragon, it required at least ten people. And it ranked even higher than a Hydragon.
“Ah...”
Jinwoo’s entire body locked up. The Chid Worm slime coating him had been converted into a nerve toxin by the Chid Mamba’s skill, paralyzing him completely. The Chid Mamba glanced at its dead children with cold eyes.
—My poor little ones. That human murdered you when you had done nothing wrong.
“Aaaah...”
A warm trickle ran down Jinwoo’s leg as the Chid Mamba closed the distance. He was going to die. If he stayed still he would die. But his body refused to move. The monster’s hand brushed his cheek. Trapped in the poison fog, Jinwoo shuddered, then rolled his eyes back into his skull.
And then—
“I’ll kill every last one of you! You monster bastards!”
Hallucinations took hold. Jinwoo began swinging his spear at people.
“R-run!”
“Wh-what are you doing all of a sudden?!”
Total chaos. In Jinwoo’s eyes, every person looked like a Chid Worm. His gaze finally locked onto Kim Hana. Terror flooded her eyes.
Ah...
Jinwoo was completely gone. She had seen plenty of madmen, but this one ranked among the worst—eyes pure with bloodlust. Her feet felt glued to the floor.
“Ghk... ghhh-heh-heh!”
Pure madness. A genuine lunatic.
Thud-thud-thud-thud!
Raising his spear, Jinwoo charged at Kim Hana like a man possessed.
“Die!”
Kim Hana squeezed her eyes shut.
And then—
Shhhhk!
Thud!
The sound of something thick being cleanly severed by something razor-sharp brought everything to an end. Kim Hana opened her eyes. Jung Jinwoo stood there staring down at himself in pure bewilderment.
“Huh? What? Where’d my arms go? Why... why are they on the floor...?”
The arms that should have been attached were gone. From the elbows down they had been sliced off as cleanly as paper. Only after a long moment did reality hit him.
“M-my arms. Aaaargh! My arms!!”
He rolled on the floor, howling in agony. Someone had cut both of his arms off. Who?
Jinwoo finally lifted his head. There stood the man who had taken them—holding a massive greatsword, eyes like a bottomless abyss that held not a single emotion. Looking down at him as if he were an insect.
Just meeting that gaze sent a chill through his entire body. This man was a destroyer. Someone who had committed slaughter on a scale Jinwoo couldn’t even imagine.
“P-please... please spare me...”
The man simply turned his head and walked past, as if Jinwoo weren’t even worth noticing—as if he had only cut the arms because they were blocking the path. There was no greater form of disregard.
But Jinwoo could do nothing.
Swaaaah...
The Golden Rule ended. The transformation dissolved, returning Jinwoo to an ordinary human. The severed arms did not return.
“Ah.”
Despair flooded his eyes as reality fully registered. This had to be a dream. It had to be. He had strutted forward, wet himself, fallen into hallucinations and attacked people, then lost both arms. Could anything be worse?
He had thought that tomorrow he would be a hero like the others. Hope had flipped into despair in an instant.
Click!
Even now people were taking photos, recording video, livestreaming the entire spectacle on social media. Every single one of his disgraceful acts was being captured.
...Yeah. A dream. This couldn’t be real. When he woke up he would be back in the real world. But no matter how many times he closed and opened his eyes, reality refused to change.
A Player.
Jung Jinwoo had used a Broken Fragment of the Golden Rule. Proof he was a Player.
Yet his level was pathetic. Being a Player meant he had lived at least a year in Pangenia. How was he only level 4? Had he stacked so many talents like me that the required experience ballooned exponentially?
Watching the way he hunted the Chid Worms convinced me otherwise.
Game and reality are different. He got scared and neglected hunting.
He was stuck at level 4 because he was terrified of dying. Not everyone started with the Ironblood Lord’s heart like I had. In that sense, Jinwoo’s level was more realistic than mine.
Still, something felt off. After synchronizing with Randolph I had become considerably stronger even in reality. Jinwoo, despite being a Player, was barely different from a regular civilian. Was I the strange one, or was Jinwoo just exceptionally weak?
Plenty of questions, but one fact was crystal clear: Jung Jinwoo was the single biggest idiot on the planet. Delightedly slaughtering the Chid Worms that had suddenly poured out in bulk. He clearly had never properly pushed the main quest either—only hunting.
His class itself is a fairly high-tier spearman category. He must have ranked high enough in the class-acquisition main quest to earn logout rights.
What a waste of a class. Looking at how he had logged out and used a Broken Fragment of the Golden Rule, he had almost certainly ranked high on the class main quest.
...Wherever Chid Worms live in large numbers, a Chid Mamba is always there.
Anyway, Chid Worms weren’t aggressive. But you must never kill them casually. Do that and the Chid Mamba will always come for revenge.
While everyone’s eyes were glued to Jinwoo and the Chid Mamba, I quietly slipped away to an empty spot and used my own Broken Fragment of the Golden Rule. Then, when Jinwoo charged Kim Hana, I severed both of his arms with Michaela’s Blade.
—Ooh. What a delicious-looking human.
A main raid boss stronger even than a Hydragon. The Chid Mamba licked its lips while staring at me. My level was still only 3. Even summoning the Hydragon wouldn’t make this an easy fight.
But I wasn’t worried.
Michaela’s Armor has been equipped.
Michaela’s Helmet has been equipped.
Heavenly Dragon Man set effect is now active!
Hermes’ Shoes have been equipped.
Current stats are lower than the equip restriction.
Fairy Queen’s Tears drastically lowers the equip restriction of Hermes’ Shoes.
You can now use Swiftness.
I looked at the floating messages and smiled with quiet satisfaction.
Good thing I cleaned out the secret auction house ahead of time.