The Heavenly Demon War

A full week had already passed since the Captain and Lee Do-ha first met.

Which meant the Final War was nearly upon them.

"Where is the battlefield, Captain?"

"Hmm? Did I not tell you?"

"No, sir."

"Hahaha! I must be getting old! The Final War takes place in the Extai Canyon!"

Extai Canyon — better known as the Dragging Canyon Zone.

A place where ferocious gales howled without rest, twenty-four hours a day, three hundred sixty-five days a year. Legend held that wind spirits had settled there thousands of years ago, and ever since, the winds of Extai Canyon had only grown fiercer.

"So… right here, then?"

"Haha! Right here!"

The two of them were already staying in the Extai Canyon Zone. After wandering about for days, the Captain had brought Do-ha here that very morning, simply because Do-ha had been curious what the place was like.

"It starts at noon, so we've got about two hours left!"

"No wonder. I kept thinking this place was unlivable — so why were there so many people?"

At some point, crowds had gathered all around them, each person going about their own business, waiting for something. Do-ha had first guessed they might be hunters waiting for a dungeon, but there were far too many for that. Now he finally understood why.

"Hey! It's the Captain!"

"Yo~ Been ages, Captain~!"

"Hahaha! Good to see you all again!"

After a week of trailing the Captain around, one thing had become crystal clear to Do-ha: the man's history with the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Cheonma-daejeon ran deep. The strange part was this — people said the Captain had been competing in the Cheonma-daejeon for at least fifty years, yet once the event ended, no one ever claimed to have run into him in everyday life.

"Captain, how do you think the Demon Castle will appear this time?"

"Who knows! It changes every year — how would I know? Hahaha!"

"What do you mean, the Demon Castle 'appears'?"

Catching a word that snagged his attention, Do-ha turned to the one-eyed swordsman who had been speaking with the Captain.

"Hmm? First time at the Cheonma-daejeon?"

"Yes."

"The Demon Castle is summoned once the Final War begins. That's why the battlefield changes every time. Sometimes it drops from the sky, sometimes it rises from a summoning circle, sometimes it erupts straight out of the ground."

"…It's an actual castle?"

"With the power of the gods, that much is child's play."

The one-eyed swordsman clapped Do-ha on the shoulder, offered a quick word of encouragement, and returned to his comrades.

"Captain, aren't we supposed to prepare or something?"

"Prepare?! Easy! The only preparation a warrior needs before battle is to steel his heart!"

"…So just charge in, no plan."

"Haha! As any man should!"

"…?"

"Come on! Let's go!"

Do-ha stared at the Captain, certain something was off — but the Captain, utterly oblivious, was already hurrying toward the point where the Demon Castle was expected to appear.

An hour and a half later, the war the world's greatest fighters had waited a decade for finally began.

Crack… crrrrack—!!

Rrrrrrumble—!!!!

A massive tremor shook the entire region. Fissures spiderwebbed across a towering cliff face, and then the rock surface collapsed in a cascade of dust and debris. At first it looked like nothing more than an earthquake bringing down a cliff — but as more of the rock fell away, a shape began to emerge, as if a master sculptor were carving stone. At last, the cliff itself transformed into a colossal castle.

"…That's a way more creative entrance than I imagined."

It was far more inventive than the falling-from-the-sky or rising-from-the-earth methods he had just heard about. Carving a castle out of a cliff face instead of a statue? Any number of mages must have been ground into dust just for that spectacle.

—Waaaaaah!!

—Tear it all down!!

Darkness? Wasn't that just a cliff?

"Haha! The speech is the same every time — just roll with it!"

"You're reading my mind now, too."

—Kwahahaha!! Kill them all!

—Hypocrite Heavenly Church, go home!!

Both camps roared with everything they had, determined not to be outdone. The sound was so thunderous it seemed the Extai Canyon itself might flip over.

"Hahaha! To shake heaven and earth with a mere shout, you'd need hundreds of millions in stats!"

"You're oddly specific about that."

"I've seen it with these very eyes — just once!"

Whether Do-ha and the Captain were chatting or not made no difference. The popes of the Heavenly Church and the Demon Church declared war, and a System-forged dome sealed over the Extai Canyon Zone.

The Cheonma-daejeon divided its war by stat brackets. In a real war, the presence of the strong was essential, and splitting forces by stats would be absurd — but the Cheonma-daejeon was more of a goodwill exhibition match. The brackets existed so that powerhouses with stats in the 900s wouldn't simply massacre the weak.

And that was where the problem arose.

A stat of 200 was, with only mild exaggeration, something even an ordinary person in Brispry could reach with a bit of luck. In other words, Do-ha's combat power in Brispry didn't even place him among the strong. In a war of well over a hundred thousand combatants, he was the sole person with stats in the 200s — and as a result, not a single member of the Demon King's Army had been assigned to the zone opposite his.

"…Can't I just walk right in?"

In the Final War, the Heavenly Church's hero candidates aimed to crush every Demon King's Army soldier in their zone, enter the Demon Castle, and slay the Demon King. The Demon King's Army, for its part, aimed to wipe out those hero candidates and, should heroes from other stat zones try to break through, stop them with their lives.

But the wars in the other stat zones would take at least an hour to finish, and the path ahead of Do-ha was wide open — clearer than a highway express lane. He could stroll into the Demon Castle like he was out for a walk.

"Hell yeah. Jackpot."

This was pure divine luck. True to the name Demon Castle, the interior had been stocked by both the Heavenly Church and the Demon Church with all manner of treasures for the hero candidates to claim — all in the spirit of the event. Under conditions like these, even a low-stat hero candidate could walk away with loot if fortune smiled.

It might look like the people who signed up for the Demon King's Army were at a disadvantage, but there was a catch: to claim the treasures inside the Demon Castle, every last Demon King's Army soldier in that stat zone had to be defeated. In return, if the Demon King's Army wiped out every hero in their zone, they received rewards scaled to their wartime merit.

Either way, one fact was clear: the biggest winner of this year's Cheonma-daejeon was Lee Do-ha.

"Treasure hunt! Treasure hunt!"

If I upload this to YouTube, it's going viral for sure!

Do-ha wasn't streaming live through the broadcast system, but he was recording everything. The average stats of all participants exceeded 500 — and knowing that, not a single hunter from Earth had entered the Cheonma-daejeon, even though they knew it only opened once a decade. Get yourself gruesomely killed and your own country's netizens would tear you apart for shaming the nation. That much was obvious.

But Do-ha, having realized his cousin was the Creator, had a liver swollen with courage. Hate comments meant nothing to him now. He had become the only person from Earth to enter the Cheonma-daejeon.

"Get-rich-quick, let's gooo~~!!"

Inside a Demon Castle that no one else had yet entered, Do-ha's personal treasure hunt — cameras rolling — began.

One hour into the treasure hunt.

Do-ha had already found any number of remarkable things.

"Whoa~! A treasure chest!"

Crunch—

"…It was a mimic."

There were traps that posed as treasure chests.

"What's this stick? A baton?"

Ziiing—

"What?! A beam saber?! I… I have to take this!!"

There was a laser sword that restored the pure wonder of childhood.

"Gold coins… no, a mountain of gold. Hmm? Is that the same thing?"

Clatter-clatter—

"Hehe! Never thought I'd bathe in gold coins in my life… Okay, that stings a bit? Fine — if ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a bath's out, I'll use my shield as a gold-coin slide! Woohoo~!!"

Behind a massive door lay a chamber so stuffed with gold that he half-expected a dragon from The Lord of the Rings to be sleeping on it.

"Wahahaha!!"

Do-ha was racing around so busily he had completely forgotten about the war raging outside the castle. The Demon Castle had more attractions than the biggest playground in the village of his childhood. No — the Demon Castle was the kind of place that any man who remained serious about fun even into adulthood would go mad if he couldn't stay.

"Hahaha! I am Indiana Jones!"

Wandering the interior of a Demon Castle that had been carved from a cliff only moments ago, yet somehow felt like an ancient ruin, he felt as though he had stepped into one of those old movies about exploring lost temples.

KABOOOM—!!

"W-what was that?!"

In the middle of his thoroughly enjoyable exploration, a tremendous impact sent a quake-like tremor through the Demon Castle.

"Ah. Right."

He had been so lost in his childhood wonderland that he had forgotten — he was currently competing in the Cheonma-daejeon. Whether a winner had been decided in some other stat zone and someone had broken through, or someone had entered specifically to stop an infiltrator like him, one thing was certain: someone had just entered the Demon Castle.

"…Should I hide?"

Honestly, for someone who had entered with almost no expectations, he had already gained a great deal. He had trained under the Captain, been the first of all the hero candidates to breach the Demon Castle, and swept up every treasure in sight. Plenty of treasures remained, of course — but his stats were far too low to safely navigate the traps guarding them.

"Hmm… yeah. Better hide."

Even if he were eliminated right now, he would walk away with nothing but profit — but he still wanted to meet Daysmon, who was playing the Demon King for this Cheonma-daejeon, one more time.

"They won't find me here."

The place he chose was a secret passage he had stumbled upon by pure chance while free to treasure-hunt without interruption. Given the Demon Castle's nature — beings of the Intermediate Realm could not destroy it — the passage had clearly been designed to be inaccessible. But when the castle had been formed through the earthquake, one tile had come loose, and he had found it.

Thud—!!

Booom—!!

Beyond the tile Do-ha had sealed shut again, the sounds of hero candidates clashing with the Demon King's Army filtered through. Destruction was impossible, but the shockwaves still carried. The passage around him shuddered like a railway under a passing train, tormenting his eardrums.

Ah — maybe this!

What Do-ha pulled from his Inventory was a pair of earplugs. But these were no ordinary earplugs — not if they were going to block the vibrations currently torturing his eardrums.

Earplugs that had been sitting inside a treasure chest, no less.

Pop—

........

"Oh."

The moment Do-ha fitted the earplugs into his ears, every last shockwave that had been tormenting him vanished. The performance was so good he couldn't even hear his own voice.

".....Too quiet is kind of unnerving, though."

The passage was already pitch-black with not a single ray of light. Add total silence on top of that, and it felt like a mummy from a horror movie might lunge out at any second.

Whoosh—

"Aaaagh!!"

Someone suddenly appeared right in front of him, and Do-ha swung a fist on pure instinct.

Thok—

"Huh?"

Tap-tap—

Darkness hid the face, but something about the figure felt familiar. The person mouthed something, then tapped Do-ha's ears, gesturing for him to take the earplugs out. Since no one weaker than him was participating in this war, Do-ha followed the instruction and removed them.

"Can you hear me?"

"…Captain?"