The Demon's Long-Awaited Return
A sky filled only with ashen storm clouds, a realm of utter despair. Beneath it, the final battle was drawing to a close.
Humanity's strongest six-man raid party, who had set out to conquer the Demon Castle, had finally come face-to-face with Demon King Gerhart alone after stepping over countless sacrifices.
After a desperate fight, the raid party had barely managed to bring the Demon King to his knees.
"Impressive. For mere mortals, you've pushed me this far."
"Save your bluster!"
Humanity's last hope, Hero Reinhardt, gripped his sword anew and assumed his stance.
Boom!
"Reinhardt! Hurry!"
Dwarf Master Urgen, who was blocking the Demon Castle gates, shouted in a strained voice. Outside the gates, the three dukes of the demon realm were pounding on the door to support their king. If they didn't slay the Demon King right now, it was over.
"Just hold on a little longer!"
One thrust of the hero's holy sword into the Demon King's heart, and it would all end.
"Haaah!"
Reinhardt squeezed out his last reserves of strength and drew the holy sword.
A weapon that nullified the unique ability Resurrection of the Dead—which allowed high demons to revive no matter how many times they were killed by ordinary weapons—making it humanity's strongest armament.
But the Demon King, on the brink of death, wore an unnervingly serene expression.
Just as the holy sword pierced toward his heart, it halted abruptly mere inches away.
"...What?"
"Commendable effort for mortals, but..."
"What is this...?"
"You can never win this battle."
Kwaaaang!
"Reinhardt! Get out of there!"
A horrific bolt of lightning rained down on where Reinhardt stood. It was a spell from one of the demons the party was fighting, seizing an opening.
With over a decade on the front lines, Reinhardt sensed the anomaly and dodged instantly. Without Saintess Eliza's barrier and advice that followed, the fight would have ended right there.
"Hey! Hero! What happened?"
"The holy sword... it won't go through...! I can't get close!"
"Pull yourself together! You call yourself a hero and give up over something like this?!"
Slash!
Knight King Lebron cut down the demons inside the demon castle while steadying the hero's resolve.
"...Damn it."
He snapped out of it, but the Demon King's next words plunged him back into despair.
"Even a hero is powerless before a unique ability."
"...What trick have you pulled?!"
"A special unique ability prepared just for you: Absolute Human Barrier. It denies humans any attack. It cost hundreds of thousands of souls to activate, so its effect is absolute."
"Something that ridiculous can't exist...!"
"Sorry, but it's already reality. Just as you're seeing."
"Urgh..."
Unique Ability. A special power distinct from skills. It could range from raw strengthening to defying the laws of nature.
His confident explanation, as if victory was assured, was no empty bluff.
Not just the hero—the entire party's faces darkened. Hero Reinhardt, Knight King Lebron, Dwarf Master Urgen, Saintess Eliza, Elf Archmage Argel. Veterans who had endured countless near-deaths, yet this situation seemed insurmountable.
"Fuhuhu. Yes, despair more. That's your only worth."
"......"
The deeper their despair, the more the Demon King trembled with delight.
Then, amid the chaotic battle, a hooded man spoke up.
"Just one question."
"Oh? And who might you be? Still sane in this mess..."
"Not you."
"...What?"
The man calmly asked his comrades again.
"What do you all want to do after we take him down?"
The hero's party tilted their heads at the sudden question. It wasn't that out of place—almost like asking for their dying wishes.
"Shak...?"
"Not Shak, Soo-hyeok. You still can't pronounce it till the end."
"...Sorry. Shak."
Ignoring Reinhardt's apology, the comrades began sharing their dreams.
"W-well... I'd return home and govern my fief."
"...I'd set out again to find the legendary ore, mithril."
"I'll... marry Saintess."
"R-Reinhardt!"
"What? No point hiding it now."
"Ugh..."
As they voiced their wishes one by one, Archmage Argel frowned, realizing something.
"You don't mean...?"
"...Sharp as ever."
Soo-hyeok snatched the holy sword from Reinhardt.
Crackle! Zap!
Fierce lightning erupted around the blade in rejection.
"Urk!"
"S-Shak! What are you doing?!"
Reinhardt's eyes widened in shock, but Argel, reading Soo-hyeok's intent, shook her head at him.
"Kuhuhu... damn, that hurts."
The holy sword was powerless in unworthy hands, mere scrap metal. But here, it raged violently.
There was only one type that provoked such a reaction: when gripped by a demon, not a human.
Crackle! Zap!
The fierce backlash, whipping up winds, tore off Soo-hyeok's hood.
Revealed on his forehead: a small single horn, impossible for any human.
Soo-hyeok endured the violent rejection and slowly advanced toward Demon King Gerhart.
The once-leisurely Demon King's brow furrowed deeply.
"You... surely not...?"
"Me? I just wanted a normal life."
"Impossible...! Why is a demon...!"
"Farm a bit, like my dad."
"Why stand with humanity?!"
"Get married when the time's right, start a family."
"...You fiend!"
"Have about three kids. But you know."
Soo-hyeok squeezed his eyes shut, as if recalling horrific memories.
Soo-hyeok wasn't of this world. Twenty years ago, he'd been forcibly summoned here from a place called South Korea, without explanation.
Panicked in the unfamiliar chaos, he got no kind welcome from this world's masters.
After all, it was the demons who had called him.
'W-what is this?! Who are you?!'
'Tch. A failure. A single horn.'
'Ugh. What now?'
'What else? Dispose of it.'
Remade as a demon upon arrival, Soo-hyeok was discarded into the demon realm's abyss-like trash pit.
But he survived tenaciously, escaping hell.
Yet no sanctuary awaited. Abandoned by demons, to humans he was just another demon.
A thoroughly isolated, rootless existence. Until he joined the hero's party—for revenge against those who dragged him to hell.
"Because of you bastards, I can't even grow a single lettuce leaf."
"What...?"
Demons' physiology rejected ordinary plants outright. Even grass rotted at his touch, reeking horribly.
"...Soo-hyeok."
Archmage Argel softly called from behind. The epitome of an uptight elf, they'd clashed often. But now, she bowed her head in respect to his noble sacrifice—not as a demon, but as a comrade.
"...Futile struggling from a worm!"
Gerhart paled and lashed countless tentacles at Soo-hyeok.
Gerhart was the Demon King, lord and pinnacle of all demons. Startled, perhaps—but cowed by one man? No.
Or so it should have been.
Bang!
Soo-hyeok swung the holy sword, parrying the onslaught with natural, concise strokes—as if it had always been his.
The Demon King's face darkened with each block.
"How can a mere single-horn...!"
Among demons, horn count signified strength. The Demon King's five horns towered. A single-horn was cannon fodder, lowest of the low.
But Soo-hyeok's wasn't weak—it was malformed from forced summoning, mixing bloodlines.
Now, after countless hells, he matched the Demon King blow for blow.
And even if he couldn't block...
Stab!
"Gahk!"
"Kuhuhu! As expected. How dare a single-horn...!"
"......"
A gaping hole in his gut, yet Soo-hyeok pressed on steadfastly.
No regrets left in this life. Just finish the revenge.
"You bastard...!"
"......"
Sizzle!
The holy sword sliced through the Absolute Human Barrier like tofu.
Crafted from hundreds of thousands of souls, yet it couldn't stop a fellow demon's strike.
... Stab!
The blade reached Gerhart's heart.
"Gr... uk...!"
Power source severed, the Demon King's body erupted in a massive blast.
At its epicenter, Soo-hyeok smiled faintly at his comrades.
"Take care, everyone."
Kwaaaang!
[.]
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Tutorial completed.
Tutorial name - code.abyss
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[……]
Teleportation complete!
A brilliant light filtered through his closed eyelids. Keeping them shut, he slowly pieced together his memories.
Demon King Gerhart was definitely dead. The sensation of piercing his heart lingered vividly in his hand.
His comrades were safe too. High demons' power source was the Demon King himself. With him gone, the demon dukes battering the gates outside would have perished.
Even he had lost all his mana the instant the Demon King died, swept away by the explosion's aftermath.
Yes. He was surely dead.
For a fleeting moment, he wondered if he should open his eyes. But confirmation was needed.
"......"
Chirp chirp.
A sound he hadn't heard in ages. A sparrow's cry.
He'd heard plenty of pigeons—near Shegena Forest when recruiting Argel. But sparrows?
This one circled fearlessly around his prone form, chirping away.
"Where...?"
Damp earth scent, warm sunlight, a field of weeds neither overgrown nor barren.
A landscape he'd dreamed of constantly since being dragged to that other world, aching in his bones.
One he'd only seen in dreams, now spread before him.
His childhood home yard, unmistakably, before the summoning.
Unconsciously, he yanked up a handful of nearby weeds. Bitter grass scent, sticky sap on his hands.
Ordinary to most, but not to him. Since becoming a single-horn demon, all plants rotted at his touch, stinking horribly.
He reflexively touched his forehead. Smooth skin—no accursed single horn.
"Haa."
Inhaling the sweet grass deeply, he thought:
Is this heaven?
It differed from his imagined heaven, but it sufficed. Or did it? Was he really dead?
Heaven should have gods or something, right? Could a demon even enter?
The vivid senses felt too real, clashing with the dreamlike homecoming.
His parents' post-retirement countryside home, built by hand. Not some ancient-tiled roof from dramas—more like a pension.
A tidy wooden house with a triangular roof, white paint gleaming.
But something was off. More worn than in his twenty-year-old memories.
As thoughts spiraled, the door creaked open.
"...A person?"
Definitely human. Eerily familiar. A blend of his late parents' faces.
Or perhaps the spitting image of his little sister, left behind...
"...Oppa?"
...It was the moment he reunited with his sister after twenty years.