Chapter 1
Chapter 1
Prologue
When he opened his eyes, he was inside the world of the fantasy novel he had finished reading overnight, “The Mage Who Conquers the World.”
It was truly absurd.
And that absurdity did not end there.
The role he had in that story was…
“He’s just an extra?”
An extra who only appeared briefly in the latter half.
“An extra, yes… but…”
The setting of this extra was far too peculiar to ignore.
Because this extra was…
“Isn’t this guy, by setting, ridiculously strong?”
Too strong to be called an extra!
Chapter 1 Even Though He’s an Extra
Um Tae-seong had been reading a web novel until he fell asleep last night.
“The Mage Who Conquers the World.”
It was a fantasy novel set in a fictional world governed by swords and magic, not Earth.
The reason he started reading it was simple.
Sometime last week, a heavily discounted promotion had been running nonstop. So he began reading it casually out of boredom, but as he kept purchasing and reading one episode after another, he ended up finishing a long series of more than five hundred chapters.
He did not like the ending.
Not at all.
It was not enough to simply call it a bad ending.
It was the worst ending imaginable.
Could there be anything worse than a protagonist who overcame countless hardships, only to trample everything he had protected and bring about the destruction of the world?
The reason Um Tae-seong read web novels was to forget reality.
Because his reality was far too cruel.
Yet after immersing himself in a story like that, the conclusion turned out to be something like this.
He went to sleep in a mood filled with irritation and lingering discomfort.
And then…
“Does this even make sense?”
When he woke up, he found himself inside the very world of that novel he had finished reading and gotten angry at, and not just that—he had become an extra character within it.
When Um Tae-seong opened his eyes, a message appeared before him, explaining his situation.
“You have awakened in the world of ‘The Mage Who Conquers the World.’”
“You will now live as the character Mord Bernas from ‘The Mage Who Conquers the World.’”
“This is the moment when ‘The Mage Who Conquers the World’ begins.”
“If Mord dies in this world, that will mean your death as well.”
“…What kind of nonsense is this?”
Um Tae-seong was dumbfounded.
He opened his eyes and found that he had become a character in a novel?
But at the same time, a sensation surged through him that denied his disbelief.
“This body… is real?”
Um Tae-seong had been paralyzed from the waist down.
It had happened a year ago.
While returning from a convenience store late at night, he had been struck by a runaway vehicle driven by a drunk driver.
Although he miraculously survived, he was left paralyzed from the waist down and had lived each day in despair.
But what about now?
The pain that had always tormented his body was gone without a trace, replaced only by a slight sense of hunger.
His entire body overflowed with strength, and both of his legs firmly supported his weight on the ground.
“My God.”
That alone was enough to bring tears to his eyes.
To once again stand on his own two feet, something he had once taken for granted but believed he had lost forever.
It was unbelievable.
Yet an overwhelming sense of reality dominated him, making it impossible to dismiss this as a dream.
“Defy the fate of destruction. Then your wish will be granted.”
“A wish? What wish?”
While he was still absorbed in that vivid sensation, the final message appeared before his eyes.
“You will be able to choose the life you desire, and whatever you wish for will be placed in your hands.”
At the same time, memories began flooding into his mind.
“…!”
Um Tae-seong staggered.
Countless memories swirled like a panoramic scene unfolding in his head. He floundered within the torrent of memories.
“Hah… hah… what is this?”
Clutching his head, he let out a groan.
Then he froze in surprise.
The words he had just muttered were not in Korean.
They were spoken naturally in Prine, the common language of this world.
“What is this…? Are these the memories of this body? No, something’s different…”
Um Tae-seong realized that what had been implanted in him were not personal memories, but structured knowledge about the language and writing system of this world—information applicable to anyone.
He now not only fully understood Prine, but could also read and write the Prine script, which held a status even higher than Earth’s alphabet.
And next, the memories of Mord’s life came flooding in.
However, this time, Um Tae-seong did not struggle in the torrent of memories.
“So this is how it works.”
The memories felt distant, like watching a film.
He came to understand how Mord was born and how he had lived.
But he did not share Mord’s emotions.
“Is this perhaps a measure to protect my sense of self?”
Absorbing another person’s memories, including their emotions, as if they were one’s own would be extremely dangerous. It would surely corrupt Um Tae-seong’s identity.
“Whoever did this to me…”
An indescribable feeling welled up.
It was frightening, yet at the same time, thrilling.
Perhaps because he had lived each day in despair since the accident?
Even in such an unreal situation, Um Tae-seong found himself accepting that this was reality.
No, he discovered that he desperately hoped it was not a dream.
And after what he had just experienced, he could no longer deny this situation as a dream. It was too unreal, yet an overwhelming sense of reality dominated him.
“In any case, this means they want my consciousness, as a person from Earth, to use this body instead of Mord’s original self.”
He could not even begin to guess who the transcendent being that had turned him into Mord was. But at the very least, it must have determined that Um Tae-seong’s consciousness was necessary to achieve its purpose.
“A body that was a minor extra in The Mage Who Conquers the World, but brimming with latent potential.”
Mord Bernas was merely a fleeting extra, so it would have been stranger if he were well remembered.
Yet strangely enough, Um Tae-seong could recall the entirety of “The Mage Who Conquers the World,” abbreviated as SeDokMa, with remarkable clarity.
In particular, the parts where Mord appeared were as vivid as something he had just experienced.
“My memory isn’t usually this good. This must also be some kind of consideration.”
In SeDokMa, the information related to Mord was extremely sparse.
But when that limited information combined with Mord’s own memories, he was able to understand many things.
An extra is, in essence, a minor character.
Whether a character is a protagonist, supporting character, or extra does not depend on their setting.
In other words, even a peerless beauty, a powerful dragon, or a capable individual summoned from another world could be considered an extra if they had no real narrative presence.
SeDokMa had an unusual number of such extras.
There were countless characters with impressive backgrounds who met meaningless ends.
Because he had read SeDokMa quickly over a short period, Um Tae-seong could not recall the exact number, but whenever there was a lull in the story, such characters would inevitably appear and die.
Mord was one of those extras.
A bloodline member of the Bernas Grand Duke family, a peculiar lineage.
Originally an illegitimate child of the Grand Duke of Bernas, he appeared later in SeDokMa as a hidden card prepared by the Grand Duke, who would emerge as a powerful enemy in the latter part of the story.
“Yet despite all those elaborate settings, he never even got into a proper fight and just died.”
Described as a monster among monsters, strong enough that even the protagonist’s party, composed entirely of overpowered individuals, could not guarantee victory against him if he were to awaken.
But Mord, introduced with such a description, was ambushed by the protagonist’s faction during a magical ritual the Grand Duke was conducting to fully control his mind, and met an abrupt and meaningless end upon the discovery of his existence.
“Was this supposed to be a joke, or what kind of development was that… so this is what it was for?”
Um Tae-seong sighed.
Mord’s memories were separate from his own. They were like records he could access at will, and he would not know their contents unless he consciously chose to look.
After skimming through the memories, Mord seemed like a rather frustrating individual.
Mord’s mother died just days after giving birth to him.
Though she had been healthy, her condition steadily deteriorated during her pregnancy, and in the end, she no longer had the strength to recover after childbirth.
Because of this, Mord grew up hearing that he was “a child who devoured his mother.”
Even though he had a large build for his age from a young age, he lived a life as a weakling who was bullied by everyone and unable to resist.
It was not because he lacked strength, nor because he did not know how to be angry.
The phrase “a child who devoured his mother” had been carved into his young heart as a wound, swallowing him in guilt.
At the age of fifteen, Mord made his way to the Bernas Grand Duke family.
This was according to his mother’s dying will.
“If by chance you bear my child from today’s events, and that child grows up to safely pass their fifteenth birthday, then come to my family together.”
So the Grand Duke of Bernas had revealed his identity and spoken those words.
Following that will, Mord went to the Bernas Grand Duke family, where he underwent several verification procedures and was accepted.
“That must have been just a few hours ago, earlier today…”
Mord was filled with the desire to be acknowledged as the child of a father he had never met.
“The Grand Duke must have found it easy to raise him as a loyal hound.”
Mord was merely an extra in SeDokMa, but the Grand Duke of Bernas was one of the main antagonists. Naturally, there was extensive information about him.
The same applied to the Bernas Grand Duke family.
“Officially, he would never be recognized as a legitimate son… but human feelings don’t align so neatly with reason.”
In noble families, illegitimate children were rarely recognized as members of the house.
Unless all legitimate heirs had perished and an illegitimate child had to be raised as the successor, it was unlikely.
The Bernas Grand Duke family had more than enough direct descendants.
So Mord would never be officially recognized as a true member of the Bernas lineage.
“But I have no reason to cling to such pointless things.”
Um Tae-seong had no intention of being bound by Mord’s circumstances.
“To save the world… that’s something only a protagonist would do. Yet here I am, an extra, expected to take on that role.”
The ending of SeDokMa was simple.
It ended with the protagonist destroying the world.
The protagonist, who was not entirely benevolent to begin with, ultimately chose the path of destruction for his own selfish desires. That fact left Um Tae-seong feeling deeply disgusted.
“In any case, this is doable.”
Um Tae-seong felt motivation welling up within him.
At the very least, this was far better than lying in a hospital bed in despair as a paralyzed man.
The mere sensation of standing on his own two feet made him unwilling to give this up.
“No. I will see this through.”
He would never return to the hopeless state where he could not even stand or walk on his own.
“A wish…”
The wish that came to Um Tae-seong’s mind at that moment was simple.
To regain the healthy body he had lost in the accident.
“No, that alone is not enough.”
But he quickly changed his mind.
A being capable of causing something like this would surely grant a wish beyond the limits of reality.
Besides, the task he had to undertake to achieve his wish was no small matter.
If he was going to save the world from its fate of destruction, there was no way he could settle for merely regaining his health.
Of course, saving the world was an absurdly large-scale goal.
But this body he had taken over possessed the potential to achieve it, and he also had the future knowledge obtained from SeDokMa, effectively a god’s-eye view.
It was a challenge worth taking.
“But even a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. For now, I’ll take care of what’s immediately in front of me. Fortunately, it seems I have enough strength for that.”
Um Tae-seong reined in his expanding thoughts and decided to focus on what needed to be done right away.