Epiphany (4)
It was after I'd finished lunch with Cheon Seo-hui.
Wanting even a little more time with her, I only made ready to leave once the cleanup was done. Part of me wanted to stay planted right up until the last possible second — but unfortunately, I had no decent excuse for it.
"I'll be heading out. Get some rest."
"Yes."
Still, she walked me out as far as where I'd parked, so I got to see her face a little longer. She never quite managed a thank-you for what I'd done today, but I could feel the gratitude all the same.
Really can't be honest, can she.
Well. Keep pushing long enough and she'll open up eventually. Kim Yubin had been the same way. Choi Yeonjeong, too.
"Make sure you pull out the side dishes and eat properly tonight. And don't forget to take a picture and send it."
"…Got it."
"Good. See you Monday."
Leaving the regret behind, I started the car and eased out of the narrow alley. Then, as I glanced at the side mirror to turn around —
Far off, at the end of the alley, I caught a glimpse of her standing there, still as a post. She stayed until the moment I disappeared from the alley entirely.
The day after my date with Nakyeong.
"Wow…. Broke in again."
"…Mmm…."
Thanks to Nakyeong, who'd somehow snuck into my bed, I woke earlier than usual. Quietly extricating my captured arms and legs, I slipped out of bed.
"…Nn…."
She started fumbling around the spot where I'd been lying, mumbling in her sleep. Looking for me even half-asleep — that had to mean something.
A grown daughter acting spoiled wasn't entirely unwelcome, but it worried me a little, too.
When she's asleep, she's a total angel.
Of course, she was pretty much an angel when she was awake, too.
I should make some coffee.
Stretching as I stepped into the living room, I brewed a cup and idly checked my phone.
"…?"
For some reason, a message from Choi Yeonjeong was waiting.
No explanation — just a demand to call her right away. That usually meant something important. Still, it didn't seem urgent enough that she'd have woken me up for it.
What is it?
Curiosity piqued, I carried my mug to the sofa and dialed her number.
"Hey. You said to call."
And a moment later —
"…Are you serious?"
The matter was far more serious than I'd expected. My face hardened without thinking.
"Yeah. Okay. Got it. I'll get ready as fast as I can and head over. Yeah. Yeah."
I set the phone down, raked a hand through my hair, and let out a heavy sigh. Yeonjeong's voice from the other end of the line still echoed in my ears.
"I think I found information on the Demon King."
The Demon King.
"Yeonjeong!"
I threw on clothes in a rush, bolted out of the house, and drove straight to her place. She met me at the front door, eyes round with genuine shock.
"How hard did you floor it?"
That wasn't what mattered right now.
"You said you found something?"
"Come inside first and we'll talk. Oh — you haven't eaten breakfast, have you? I'm making sandwiches. Want one?"
Somehow, Yeonjeong was as leisurely as ever — a complete one-eighty from the grave tone of our call.
"Are you seriously thinking about food right now?"
Baffled by her behavior, I pushed to get to the point.
"The Demon King?"
But she remained perfectly unhurried.
"Calm down. Taking your time won't make you late."
"What…?"
"If you're curious, go look at the laptop in the living room. Everything's on there."
"…The laptop?"
I crossed the long hallway into the living room. Leaving Yeonjeong headed for the kitchen, I approached the laptop open on the coffee table.
What the hell is this about?
I jiggled the mouse to wake the screen. A password prompt appeared. Having used her laptop plenty of times before, I unlocked it without a second thought.
chlduswjd0101.
The password was her name typed in English letters combined with the day we'd been dragged into the other world.
Is this it?
On the unlocked desktop, I scanned for any unusual documents or folders, then clicked the browser already open in the taskbar.
And then —
"……?"
I finally understood why Yeonjeong was so relaxed. The page she'd left open was none other than —
DemonKing.com
A blog with a thoroughly unwholesome name.
"What is this…?"
Decorated with a rather crude design, DemonKing.com was — true to its name — an information-sharing blog dedicated to researching the Demon King. The kind of place run by people who seemed to genuinely believe a Demon King existed.
Don't tell me she saw this and started talking about the Demon King?
The sheer tackiness left me speechless. Convinced I'd been played, I scrolled down and skimmed the site.
…And yet.
"…?"
Something was off. For a site supposedly full of delusional rambling, the content was far too thorough. The first post had gone up a full twenty years ago. Updates had stopped after the last post a year prior, but there were clear signs of continuous management and regular uploads across nearly two decades.
What the hell is this?
Curiosity stirred, I opened a post that caught my eye.
Even the greatest of monarchs cannot command every soldier alone.
It was about the Demon King's subordinates — specifically, those commonly called the Four Heavenly Kings.
Most of the post seemed filled with passages quoted from some kind of literature.
Allow me to introduce the generals who led the Demon King's army — the Four Heavenly Kings.
Then it launched into detailed information on each of them.
This is…
The problem was that the content felt strangely familiar.
Race Traitor. Dark Elf.
The Silent Assassin. Born of the elven race, she judged her people had no future, and…
The dark elf who had betrayed her kind and tried to burn the World Tree.
Succubus Queen.
Said to be the most powerful among all demonkind save the Demon King himself. A succubus, she…
The Succubus Queen who had manipulated a human king into sparking the Second Continental War.
The Last Swordmaster.
Humanity's strongest, who abandoned his own kind. To call him one-against-a-hundred would be an understatement — one-against-ten-thousand would not be enough…
The sword demon who had obsessed over strength until he forsook being human — once called the strongest in the world.
Undead Knight.
Death itself, transcending death. Born from death, he…
Even the dark knight who had been a far more troublesome enemy than the Demon King — the one who had killed Kim Yubin.
How?
Amazingly, every last detail was information from the other world I'd been dragged into.
"See it?"
I spun toward Yeonjeong, who had just arrived with sandwiches, and jabbed a finger at the laptop.
"Hey…. What is this?"
She sat on the sofa with her legs crossed, idly flexing a smooth bare foot as she spoke.
"I found it by accident. The site doesn't even show up on search engines."
After hearing about the Demon King from me, Yeonjeong had immediately started her own investigation. Reasoning that if the Demon King's forces were building power in the modern world, they'd have to use the internet — and this was what she'd turned up.
"It was a blog run by a university professor down in Busan."
The true identity of DemonKing.com was a personal site belonging to some college professor.
"A professor?"
"Dungeon archaeology major."
Dungeon archaeology — the academic field dedicated to studying the other world beyond the dungeons. Since parts of the world I'd lived in had already been dungeonized, finding information on that side wasn't particularly strange. But knowing the kind of detailed inner workings written on this site was an entirely different matter.
"Where is this person now?"
I wanted to meet the professor as soon as possible. Anyone who knew the deeds of the Four Heavenly Kings I'd defeated in the other world clearly wasn't ordinary.
"He's dead."
"…What?"
But he was already gone from this world.
"H-he's dead?"
"About a year ago?"
"No…. Why?"
"His health was bad to begin with. He had some kind of illness."
Before death, no human is a match. Speechless, I stared quietly at the laptop screen, then glanced back at Yeonjeong. She was chewing her sandwich, watching me with a look that said, Aren't you going to ask anything else?
"…What's the plan?"
"I've got one."
Of course she hadn't called me over just to show me a website.
"The dead professor has a daughter."
"A daughter?"
"Yeah. Looks like she's the one keeping the site running."
An internet site needs a server to stay online. The idea was that the professor's daughter was operating DemonKing.com in her father's place.
"Then…. We should start by finding the daughter?"
"Already looking into it separately. There's not much information, so it might take a while, but…."
"Man…. What would I even do without you?"
A master of information warfare and psychological tactics, Yeonjeong had always guided us with cool-headed judgment as our strategist. …Sometimes she was so cold it made me flinch a little. Without her, I probably wouldn't even be here right now.
"If you're grateful, try being nicer on a regular basis."
"Want a kiss?"
"Stop just talking about it every time and at least pretend to follow through."
"Heh heh."
I picked up the sandwich Yeonjeong had made by hand and glanced at the laptop screen.
DemonKing.com….
There, a brief account of the final fate of the Demon King's Army Rank 2 — the Undead Knight — was written out.
The Undead Knight, who fought valiantly to the end, was ultimately slain by the human side's Hero — the Black Knight.
The Black Knight who had killed the Undead Knight.
That was unmistakably me.
The thoroughly eventful weekend was finally over.
Having spent the entire weekend digging through DemonKing.com, I started the new week exhausted.
Barely slept at all.
Part of me wanted to wrap up work early and rest quietly in Nakyeong's arms. But I still had something important to do.
Only three days remained until Cheon Seo-hui had to decide whether to drop out of school.
Maybe I should sound her out a little.
As usual, I called her to the training grounds after class. Before starting the lesson, I carefully broached the subject.
"Seo-hui."
"?"
"Your reflection period ends Wednesday, right?"
"……Ah."
"Don't tell me you forgot."
"…No."
She had clearly forgotten it completely.
This kid….
It wasn't a negative sign. If anything, it was a positive one. It meant she was so absorbed in the present that dropping out hadn't even crossed her mind.
"So. Have you decided what you're going to do?"
I asked lightly, the way you might ask about lunch plans.
"……."
She stared at me for a long moment without answering, then sidestepped with a vague reply.
"…I'm still thinking about it."
Whether she was genuinely considering it or just hedging, I couldn't tell.
The way she keeps showing up for every session, she's pretty much already come around….
I needed a little more certainty. I racked my brain for a way to seize her heart for good.
And then —
No choice, then.
I told her she still had three days, so she should take her time thinking it over, and suggested we just get on with the lesson.
"You know I have class tomorrow morning, right?"
"Yes."
"When the time comes, spar with Lee Sin-a. No one else."
"…?"
"Time for some proper payback."
"!"
It was time to play my trump card.