Chapter 1 — You Can't Trust People
People can't be trusted.
'Get lost. There's no value in sponsoring trash like you anymore.'
'I'm voiding the contract we signed last time. Effective immediately.'
'I was a fool to ever believe in someone like you and put my money behind you.'
The guilds, having squeezed every ounce of profit out of me, threw me away the moment I became useless.
'We don't need you in the party anymore.'
'Hey, you actually thought we were friends? Seriously?'
'Know your place. Who said you could look at me like that?'
The party members I'd believed were my comrades abandoned me too.
'A man like you has no place here anymore.'
The lover who had once whispered love into my ears left me and fell into another man's arms.
'Filthy bastards, every one of them.'
Thinking back on it now, it was infuriating.
Why had my life been so overrun with trash?
"Damn this life."
For my last thoughts to be of suffering rather than happiness — what a pathetic way to go.
I had worked myself to the bone to live up to the guilds' expectations.
I had poured my body into the fight for my comrades.
For my lover, I had spared nothing — given everything I had.
No one had worked harder than me.
And in return, all I received was betrayal.
Regret came flooding in.
Having swallowed far too many rotten apples called betrayal, I could no longer bring myself to trust human beings.
Family was no exception.
Even the love of the family who had stayed by my side until the very end — I couldn't bring myself to believe in it.
In the end, I left my family behind.
'...If I'd known it would come to this, I should have looked at their faces one more time.'
If there was one thing I should have trusted, it was them.
If there was one thing I should have protected, it was them.
"To think a human this strong still remained. An error in my calculations."
At that moment, a voice seized hold of my consciousness, which had been drifting further and further away.
A small-frumed child.
I knew the creature's name.
"O... man."
I muttered the name through cracked lips.
King of the demons. The strongest being in the world. A devil who had taken the form of a child for the sole purpose of mocking humanity.
He bore many names, but one struck deeper into me than all the rest.
Destroyer.
"It was unexpected enough that those six fell to you, but to think you'd actually wound me."
Pride said this as he touched his own neck.
There, a scratch so faint it was nearly invisible to the naked eye.
'I fought that hard... and that's all I managed?'
Six demons.
Envy, Lust, Gluttony, Wrath, Sloth, Greed.
All six had fallen to my hand.
Because of that, I had assumed the one before me would be no different.
'So this is my limit.'
It was bitter to swallow.
Twenty years, devoured by nothing but training.
And still, I had never reached the being standing before me.
"Wounding me with a mere handful of years — the very idea is absurd."
Pride answered as if he had read my mind.
A hollow laugh escaped me.
If he truly possessed the ability to read the inside of my skull, then combat had never been possible to begin with.
'I'm still weak.'
Fighting the existence before me had made it unmistakably clear.
I was still weak.
I had merely believed I had grown strong.
The only reason I was still drawing breath was Pride's amusement, nothing more.
"The power you wield is unlike any other human's. Far closer to our own mana, in fact."
'Feels like shit, hearing that.'
Every tactic I had conceived.
Every counter I had devised against him.
Every desperate struggle to survive — he had read them all.
'So what had all that effort been for?'
Betrayed by everyone, I had gone straight into the mountains.
I didn't want to speak to a single soul.
Family, friends, acquaintances — they all looked like betrayers to me now.
And so, for twenty years, I never once came down from that mountain.
When my training was finally complete, I opened senses that had been sealed shut.
And in that instant, I understood.
The world had ended.
'If I had finished training just a little sooner... could I have saved Mom and Dad?'
My daughter, gone in an accident. My son, vanished without a trace.
My parents had lived lives of crushing hardship.
And I had sent them off in a way that was far too empty.
"What a pitiful existence."
Pride, reading my thoughts, spat out words steeped equally in pity and mockery.
My teeth ground together.
Then Pride extended his hand toward me.
"Last survivor of humanity. Won't you become a demon? With a power so similar to ours, you would make a demon stronger than those six, at the very least."
Pride spoke to me as my life drained away.
I wanted to laugh.
Even as the strongest human alive, I was nothing more than a curious creature to the absolute being before me.
A hollow laugh spilled out of me.
'The demons killed my parents... and you want me to become one of them?'
Die, then — I could die. But I would sooner die than become what had taken my family from me.
My answer to Pride was a raised middle finger.
"I thought as much."
Pride shook his head, as if disappointed.
My vision blurred.
'If I had one more chance... could I change it?'
My sister's accident.
My parents' deaths.
The betrayal that had torn me apart.
Could I change any of it?
"Time to end you, last of the humans."
With those words, Pride leveled his spear at me.
'If I'd had just a little more time... could I have beaten him?'
I wanted revenge.
I had trained for twenty years to survive in a world where worth was measured in strength.
But by the time my training was done, the betrayers were already gone from the world.
Emptiness swallowed me whole.
And then, as if to fill that void, new targets for my vengeance appeared.
The demons.
The ones who had killed the family that stayed beside me to the end — even though I couldn't bring myself to trust them.
Once I learned the truth, I began killing demons, one by one.
But this demon before me — I could not kill.
'Revenge was supposed to be the only purpose of my life.'
After swallowing that poisoned apple, the one goal left to me was vengeance.
Revenge against those who had abandoned me.
Revenge against the demons who had killed my family.
And I had failed to properly carry out either one.
"Even if you had more time, you never could have defeated this body."
Pride's voice wormed its way into my ear.
Absolute.
A word only one who looked down upon all things could use.
But I knew better.
'There's no such thing as absolute in this world.'
"Haha! What an amusing thought."
Pride cackled as though something I'd thought was utterly hilarious.
His laughter carried the weight of absolute certainty.
"And even if that were true, you would never live to prove it."
Pride's spearhead gleamed.
The instant I saw that light, the ember guttering out inside me flared back to life.
'If only I had one more chance...'
But human life does not come with second chances.
"What is your name?"
'Han Jin...'
There was no need to open my mouth — he could read my thoughts anyway.
"Any last words?"
Having heard my name, Pride granted me this final mercy.
I forced my mouth to move.
For my last words, there was only one thing I wanted to say.
"Go fuck yourself..."
At my final words, Pride laughed — a sound of pure enjoyment.
"That was mildly entertaining. Han Jin."
With those words, Pride cut off my head.
'Ah. What a truly worthless life.'
My consciousness faded into the distance.
"......"
I woke in bed, drenched in cold sweat.
I wanted to scream, but no sound came out.
As if I hadn't spoken a word in years.
'I was definitely killed by...'
Pride had killed me. That much was certain.
I had resisted until the very end, and flipped him off for good measure.
That death could not have been a lie.
And yet here I was, still alive.
"What the hell is going on?"
I startled at the voice that came out of my own mouth.
My voice had always been a deep, heavy bass.
But the voice leaving my lips was nothing like it.
As if I'd gone back to how I used to be...
'Used to be?'
I'd thought it myself, and it still sounded absurd. Returning to the past? Impossible. Things like that simply don't happen.
'What is this...!'
Panicking, I looked around.
The changed voice. The shrunken body. And finally — this room.
Something about it struck me as achingly familiar.
"No way. This is...!"
Yes. There was no way I could have forgotten this room.
This was the room where I'd spent my school years.
It — this house — should have been reduced to rubble long ago.
I had watched it burn with my own eyes, consumed by the demons' flames.
Knock, knock.
Then came the sound of knocking at the door.
"Jina — get up and come eat."
The voice carried a warmth I hadn't felt in what seemed like a lifetime.
My soul still half-drifting somewhere else, I slowly felt tears tracing down my cheeks.
It was a voice I had thought I would never hear again, drifting through from beyond the door.
"Mom...?"
I opened the door carefully.
A familiar figure darted past me and down the hall.
Long black hair, gathered in a ponytail.
Familiar — and yet a sight I'd thought I'd never see again.
"Han Sunha! I told you not to run in the house!"
"Ah! Sorry!"
'Sunha...?'
At the sound of Sunha's voice, I wanted to bolt for the kitchen that very second. But for some strange reason, my feet wouldn't move.
'If this really is a dream...'
I was terrified.
Terrified that these beloved voices might be nothing but illusions conjured up by my own broken mind.
"Jina, come eat."
Then another voice reached me.
A voice pitched similar to mine.
But unlike mine, it held warmth and gentleness within it.
'...Please don't let this be a dream.'
Swallowing my sobs, I sprinted for the kitchen.
"Han Jin! You heard me tell Sunha not to run just now, didn't you?"
Mom's sharp rebuke came flying at me for the sight I made.
I couldn't hold back anymore. I grabbed both my mother and father and crushed them into a hug.
"What's gotten into you?"
"A twenty-year-old grown man, crying out of nowhere like this?"
Mom and Dad just stared at me in bewilderment for a long moment.
And I wailed like a child, loud and unrestrained.
"Oppa, did you eat something weird?"
Sunha, seated at the table, gave me an odd look.
I turned and saw her face.
The face of my insufferable little sister — the one I'd thought I'd never see again.
That face I had once found so irritating to look at was now unbearably precious to me.
This time I went to Sunha, pulled her into my arms, and wept.
"You little bag of bones have actually lost it!"
Unlike the rest of my stunned family, Sunha slammed her fist into my back with all her might and screamed.
The feelings that had frozen solid inside me were melting away, all at once.
'In this life, I won't let a single one of them die.'