The Dragon's Nest #1
A flower bud blooms under the moonlight.
That was the name everyone used for the NTR genre game.
Han Ijin had no idea who he was before he started playing it.
He had simply been lured in by a title and picture that looked somewhat plausible.
By the time he realized what he had in store, the refund window had long since passed.
He had no choice but to play the game, crying all the way.
Because money was precious.
Each and every line he read felt like climbing a mountain.
His stomach would churn at times, as if he were overeating.
Yet he endured it with all his might and brute force, clearing all six endings.
In every single one of those endings, Adonis was invariably tragic.
He had searched every corner of the map and even the dust in the room corners.
There was no happy ending.
One had to exist somewhere….
[I really don’t know who wrote this disgusting story. Even for an NTR game, it’s too much.]
Han Ijin left a scathing review full of fury and was about to delete the game when he fell asleep.
Although the game was one he would never look at again, the time and effort he had already invested made him reluctant to part with it.
So he simply left it tucked away in a corner and forgot it in the recesses of his memory.
Surprisingly, he woke up as Adonis, who had perished miserably in a forest corner and been eaten by dogs.
That was enough to drive Han Ijin to the brink of madness.
His head spun, his chest tightened, and his face flushed crimson.
By contrast, his body, worn out to the limit, hung limp, and his emaciated frame was plain to see.
The strange thing was that, despite it all, he felt no discomfort as if he had just eaten and slept well.
Perhaps it was the blessing bestowed by the goddess, Han Ijin thought with a slight chill.
“Ugh……”
He rose from leaning against a tree, and his whole body ached.
His legs trembled, yet they felt heavy and solid like ancient trees.
What to do.
What would happen next.
The more he thought, the more his head spun, and he had no energy to lift even one finger.
It was natural after waking up in a strange forest in someone else’s body after leaving a warm room at dawn.
“Hoo, hoo……”
Han Ijin—Adonis deliberately took deep breaths, drawing in and exhaling air.
Not to calm his thoughts, but to ease the tightness in his chest, even a little.
He wanted to empty his cluttered mind completely.
Thanks to that, a crack had formed in the dam that had been tightly sealed, and he now had room to think of something else.
Right now, I am Adonis.
Adonis was the protagonist of the game, and falling in the forest meant he had met the wandering-death ending.
Because Adonis had been gullible like a fool, he never thought of revenge even after the party betrayed him and simply collapsed.
That was why he could not escape the swamp of helplessness caused by the shock of betrayal.
“Game, game……”
Adonis kept muttering the word game over and over in his mind, and a square shape suddenly popped up and vanished.
It was fleeting, but it was clear, and he could not forget it.
In this game, there was an inventory that stored items, the things gamers usually called items.
And in that inventory, items that could be called the harvest of suffering were packed full.
The problem was how to open that inventory.
In a game, one would simply press a keyboard button to open and close it easily.
But this was reality.
There was no keyboard to press a button, and no other method occurred to him.
Even if he opened it, he could not be certain whether items were there or not.
But if he could open it, he had to try.
[Krr…]
While he was pondering how to retrieve the items, a low growl from a beast stirred Adonis.
His fur stood on end, and he scanned the surroundings with calm, narrowed eyes.
Because the area was not densely wooded and the sun was already up, the shape of the beast was clearly visible.
It was a wolf, howling with bared fangs.
His eyes curved with malice, brimming with the resolve to tear Adonis to shreds.
To the wolf, Adonis was not a rival but merely a lump of meat full of blood and flesh.
Today’s rations.
Eventually, the wolf let out a loud howl and slammed its paws into the ground.
The way it charged forward was like tearing through the wind, and its momentum was no less fierce than a bull charging to gore with its horns.
A normal human like Han Ijin would have been cowed by that force and shaking in terror, unable to lift a finger.
Until the sharp fangs pierced deep into his belly and spilled blood.
Until his breath was cut short.
But right now, Han Ijin was the hero Adonis.
Even though he had not thought of repaying the betrayal, he was still a hero.
A hero who had overcome countless hardships, crossed the line of death, and spilled rivers of blood.
That was why his body could respond with cold calculation rather than fear.
He twisted his body slightly to dodge the flying wolf and, at the same time, swung his fist to smash the wolf’s side.
Though emaciated, he was still a hero, and that hero’s fist easily pierced the wolf’s flank.
It not only delivered a crushing shock that shattered all its organs but also made a hole.
Adonis hastily pulled his fist out, and the wolf, emitting a yelp, collapsed to the ground.
With no strength left, it let out a pitiful sound and eventually closed its trembling eyes.
Blood gushed from the wound and it died.
Adonis stared at the dead wolf for a moment, then hurriedly gathered the branches lying around.
He uprooted the grass that had spread evenly around the wolf and cleared the ground to make it level.
Then he searched the surroundings and gathered two stones to use as flint and struck them together to start a fire.
Although he had never done this before, he was extremely skillful and accurate.
Crack! Adonis’s hand made a chilling sound as he snapped the wolf’s sharp fang in two.
The sharp, pointed fang was not lacking as a substitute for a blade.
Thanks to that, he peeled the skin smoothly, scraped the meat and bones, and sucked out the blood.
He discarded the useless intestines to use as fuel.
His blood-stained hands wiped them off against a nearby bush, but the acrid iron smell lingered.
The red stains on his hands did not clean off.
How was this possible.
Adonis tilted his head while gazing at the meat on the bone, which was browning and cooking.
He felt fortunate that he would not starve, but something felt off.
Even if his soul had changed, did the experience in his body remain?
After thinking and thinking again, he could not reach a conclusion.
Adonis shook his head and lifted the meat on the bone.
Was it truly all right to eat the meat straight from the body that had died while wandering.
That worry gripped Adonis’s hand.
Eventually, unable to withstand the fragrant aroma and the charred brown surface from the fire, he took a bite.
At least, with the last remnants of his reason, he took a small amount cautiously.
“Oh.”
Even though no seasoning had been added, and although it had a slight bitter aftertaste, it tasted good.
That was why he unconsciously let out a low sigh of admiration.
Adonis slowly finished eating, and before the sun set, he gathered more firewood.
Because he was afraid there might not be enough.
There was skin, and there was meat.
Moreover, even after eating meat, his emaciated body did not ache.
At least he had cleared one hurdle.
That was probably why Adonis let out a long sigh with his face slightly relaxed.
It seemed his heart, which had been gradually lightening, had become even lighter.
With the knot in his chest gone, the worry about what to do next was blocked from Adonis’s view.
Above all, escaping this forest was certain, but the next step was the problem.
Wasn’t he supposed to return to the Empire, where he had already abandoned his position and fled, the Empire he always complained about with everyone’s mouths.
Empire. Hero party.
When he recalled them, Adonis’s expression twisted like a demon.
He ground his teeth so hard that they creaked and clenched his fists until the knuckles cracked.
It was the accumulated resentment that burst out all at once after watching the endings and their miserable processes, all of which were hopelessly tragic.
This was not Adonis’s resentment, but the resentment of a user who had played the game.
“Hoo……”
He sighed and smoothed his twisted expression.
After that, he twisted the corners of his mouth and drew a twisted curve.
Because everything was set in stone, the word revenge could not even be touched by his hand, and it brushed through Adonis’s mind.
Revenge.
Adonis was intoxicated with that sweet, heart-cleansing ring and repeated the same words again and again.
The more he did so, the more he burned with the desire to take revenge.
The intensity of that desire was visible in his eyes.
The problem was how to take revenge and how to lay the foundation for it.
If he used his power as a hero, he might be able to kill them easily, but right now Adonis could not use that power properly.
Only the power that the body and instincts nurtured by crossing countless lines could exert.
His resentment would not simply disappear by cutting their lifelines.
Instead, the aftertaste would be unsatisfying, and the feeling of relief would be little.
Means and methods for revenge.
Adonis pondered how to fill the two most necessary things while carrying the bone with the meat on his shoulder and setting out on the path.
In his empty hand was the wolf skin, to be used as a blanket.
He had originally planned to spend the night there, but he changed that and began walking diligently to get out of this place quickly.
As he had concluded earlier, first he had to escape the forest.
Empire. Several kingdoms. Demon Realm.
Adonis recalled the map he had drawn of the countries and surrounding geography he had seen countless times.
Then he realized that the forest he was currently in lay between the Demon Realm and one of the kingdoms.
“Ah…!”
Suddenly, Adonis let out another low groan.
Although it was not included in the official story, it was the cave hidden as a fun hidden element that he remembered.
He had been told that the cave drew inspiration from the cave dragon that had been released earlier, and in the industry it was commonly called the Dragon Lair.
The owner of the lair was a dark-red-scaled dragon called the Evil Dragon, and defeating it would yield dragon hearts and various equipment and money.
However, since it was a game, he realized it would not affect the ending, and when he watched the second to last endings, he never entered the Evil Dragon’s lair.
As Adonis, there was no reason to suffer that much trouble for just one item.
Anyway, the ending where he defeated the Evil Dragon was the one where he died at sea.
In the ending, Olivier, who had come with him saying they would travel by ship, gave him poisoned food, killed Adonis, and threw the body into the open sea.
So right now, maybe the Evil Dragon was still alive.
The possibility was extremely high.
Adonis recalled every single line of dialogue he had exchanged with the Evil Dragon Semiramis when he defeated her and set the Evil Dragon’s lair as his destination.
Right now, that was the only thing he could do, relying on the slender thread of hope that it might be possible.