The Angel's True Identity
Main Quest 1: Survival.
A quest whose sole purpose was to keep a character alive no matter the cost—thrust into a desperate crisis and an environment of pure, unrelenting hostility. Level locked at 1. The equipment and tools handed out were so pathetic they made you want to sigh out loud. No matter how brilliantly you navigated it, there was a hard ceiling on the score you could achieve.
For the longest time, first place in the Hall of Fame had belonged to Gracia with 195 points. That alone told you how brutally difficult it was to post a high score.
Even Gracia’s impregnable fortress, the one everyone thought would never fall, crumbled beneath the name Randolph.
Randolph.
Before he appeared…
Park Taewoo, President of the Hero Alliance, closed his eyes. He still remembered the shiver that ran through him the moment the three characters of that name first lit up the Hall of Fame. Back then, opinions about who the man really was had been all over the place.
220 points.
That was the first time every player learned a score like that was even possible in Main Quest 1. Of course, even more absurd numbers had followed later, but the Survival score was inextricably tied to raw ability itself. Randolph had been the one to smash through the 200-point barrier and announce the dawn of a legend.
Cold judgment, lightning reflexes, absolute mastery of weapons… Main Quest 1 is the pure arena where every one of those things is laid bare.
Look at a player’s Survival score and you immediately knew how monstrous they were. Recognition came from pure skill alone—that was the entire point of Survival. Among actual rankers, the correlation was glaring: high-ranker standings lined up almost perfectly with Survival rankings. So the Survival score and ranking could be treated as a direct measure of potential.
If you want to hit max level and push into Transcendence, you have to be someone who can overcome trials alone. Pure skill becomes both your growth ceiling and your potential—that’s just common sense.
No matter how god-tier the gear, no matter how broken the class or skills, a player without real ability always hit a wall. Pangenia had been designed as a single-player experience from the start. Past Level 9, experience itself only came from “overwhelming personal feats” or “hunting and trials completed alone.”
And yet…
…The Hall of Fame rankings just got completely rewritten. Three more people just broke into the 200s.
Randolph had been the first to cross 200. Now three more had done it in a single wave. If Main Quest 1 scores truly reflected potential, that meant three more monsters with growth ceilings higher than Gracia’s had just appeared. One of them had even scored higher than Randolph.
Whoosh!
Fwoooosh!
Park Taewoo watched the light pouring off the returnees. Tens of thousands of people materializing across the world in bursts of radiance.
They’re in there… the monsters who surpassed Gracia. Who surpassed Randolph.
Anyone with half a brain already understood what this meant. That light had brought change—like Prometheus carrying fire to mankind for the first time. To the players, at least, that light was the First Fire itself.
Park Taewoo pulled up the Hall of Fame rankings again and focused only on those who had broken 200.
5th — 195 pts · Gracia
4th — 200 pts · Kueku
3rd — 205 pts · Choi Kangnam
2nd — 220 pts · Randolph
Kueku. Choi Kangnam. Just looking at the names painted a clear picture of nationality. If the tutorial on God’s Island had been anything like the Survival they experienced, then these two had clawed those scores out with pure skill alone. First-generation and second-generation awakeners operated under different conditions, but the score itself was absolute.
Choi Kangnam… that name could only belong to a Korean.
Which meant he had to be found. Immediately. Dragged into the Hero Alliance before anyone else could get their hands on him. A provisional monster with the potential to surpass Gracia. Choi Kangnam! Even the name radiated raw power. If the regional warlords got to him first, the results would be catastrophic. Seoul itself could burn. He would never hand that kind of talent over to those lawless bastards.
At the same time, curiosity stirred. The rewards for ranking high in Main Quest 1 weren’t just gear.
The first logout.
The top ten had been granted the privilege of logging out. Later almost every player would gain that ability, but being able to return to reality the instant you cleared Main Quest 1 carried enormous advantages—information gathering became vastly faster and broader.
Second-generation awakeners don’t possess into Pangenia characters.
His guess was that second-generation awakeners would only be able to operate on Earth. Which raised the real question: what kind of “privilege” had the high-ranking second-generation awakeners actually received?
And more than that…
He was dying to know. The one who had surpassed even Randolph. The monster who had claimed first place—what reward had he been given?
…Two Koreans.
Choi Kangnam wasn’t the only Korean name on the Hall of Fame. First place. Park Taewoo’s eyes lingered on that shining name for a long, long time.
Calculating results…
Overwhelming. Awe-inspiring. A realm no novice could ever reach!
Total Score: 300
Updated to Main Quest — Hall of Fame.
The Constellations of the Hall of One Hundred Constellations show intense interest.
‘The Cruel Constellation’ strokes its chin. Reward contents are further upgraded.
‘The Ominous Constellation’ licks its lips. Reward contents are further upgraded.
‘The Ruthless Constellation’ eyes gleam. Reward contents are further upgraded.
‘The Merciless Constellation’ pretends indifference while quietly revealing interest. Reward contents are further upgraded.
A flood of text exploded across my vision. I had crushed everything, claimed everything, and seized a score that stood alone. The rewards could wait. Right now my attention was locked on the “Holy Star” floating before me.
…Just as I thought. The fairies hadn’t recognized me, but the Angel of Blessing had known exactly who I was from the very beginning.
“So you’ve finally decided you’re willing to talk.”
I clicked my tongue softly. This “angel” in front of me was the same one that had forcibly ejected me the first time.
…Yes. An angel.
The problem was that it looked nothing like any angel I had ever imagined. No pure-white wings. No human body. The thing floating before my eyes was about as far from “angel” as you could get.
This is supposed to be an angel?
At first I simply couldn’t process it. An angel that had never once appeared in Pangenia—at least, I had believed I’d never seen one.
I have seen it.
I thought I hadn’t… but I had definitely seen something that looked exactly like this. Inside the Death God Religion of the Empire.
A massive yellow orb. Easily a hundred times larger than a dragon’s ordinary Wish Orb. The Death God Religion had used that orb to track the exact number of players logged into Pangenia. Every scrap of information they possessed about players had come from that thing.
And that yellow orb had been an angel?
Insane.
Suddenly everything made sense. Why Pangenia was crawling with demons, demonkin, and monsters of every kind—yet never a single angel.
Even if angels exist, you could still claim they don’t.
Who the hell would look at this and think “angel”? I wouldn’t. Even if the orb itself announced, “I am an angel,” I still wouldn’t believe it.
The note of surprise in its voice made me shake my head.
“I am shocked. It’s just that I once saw something similar inside the Death God Religion.”
It felt like a childhood dream had been shattered. This was the kind of innocence destruction that left nothing standing.
Gabriel continued.
“What’s the difference?”
In short, a miracle given form. A bringer of miracles—that was an angel. An angel that had lost its Grace could work no miracles at all.
I asked the question that had been burning in me for a long time.
“Did the angels descend from the Heavenly Realm?”
Immediate answer. Directly connected to the Heavenly Realm.
“What kind of place is the Heavenly Realm?”
A vague answer. But it clearly wasn’t heaven. And it told me they had almost no interest in human affairs—when even an angel used words like “arrogant and proud.”
“…I entered in this body instead of Randolph because I’m the master of the island, right?”
Even Gabriel, Angel of Blessing, hadn’t intended this. In other words, a second awakening like mine was unlikely to ever happen again.
“Wait. Don’t tell me—”
I scowled. I already had a bad feeling about what came next.
Gabriel left a few cryptic final words.
“If we speak any longer, a ‘Record’ will remain.”
“This is the limit of how long I can prevent myself from being ‘Recorded.’”
“We shall meet again.”
“Together with the Fairy Dragons once they have grown.”
“……Please. Lead us unto salvation.”
With those words, everything ended.
‘Grace of the Archangel’ has been granted.
A Hidden Class ‘Succession’ has arrived.
‘Gabriel, Angel of Blessing’ ejects you from the island.
Gabriel had ejected me in a frantic rush, as if time itself were running out. What had that talk about a “Record” meant?
I thought back to the first time I saw an “angel” inside the Death God Religion. Back then I had assumed it was some kind of information aggregate—the way every game player left a “log.” If that was true, then Gabriel had been forced to kick me out simply to keep any “log” of our conversation from existing.
To hide me.
The intention was obvious. It didn’t want my existence revealed. There was no need for anyone else to know that I was the master of God’s Island—or that I was Randolph.
But even that revelation paled beside the shock waiting for me now.
This place is…
When I opened my eyes, I was no longer in the underground aqueduct where I had entered God’s Island. The damp, mildewed stench was gone. The surroundings weren’t even dark. I had been moved somewhere—but I was certain this wasn’t Earth.
“Out of the way! Move if you don’t want to be trampled!”
“Hyaah!”
A mounted procession thundered past. Knights in gleaming silver armor galloped straight through the heart of the city, the emblem of the Goddess Sect gleaming on their shoulders.
I looked around. And I knew.
Adrium—the holy capital of the Goddess Sect.
This was the heart of the Goddess Sect itself.
And I had entered Pangenia in the body of Park Hyunmyung.