The Script of the World
Around the time the Demon King descended in the past.
Summoned by the Goddess, a Hero made a sudden appearance in this world.
The Hero, Ilexid Graim.
One day, out of nowhere.
Without a single warning sign, he was a bizarre existence who had simply dropped from the sky.
"There are too many people here! Let's lure the demons to the outskirts before we fight them!"
"If we push ourselves just a little harder, wouldn't we minimize the casualties when we deal with these magical beasts?"
"How can we just stand by and watch monsters hunt down innocent people?"
"I'll hold them off, so everyone run!"
No matter how dire the situation, the Hero was always righteous.
He was more selfless than anyone else.
He never hesitated or faltered when it came to self-sacrifice.
There was not a single soul who had ever seen him lose his temper.
Fabius Trevalier, the mage of the Hero's party.
He felt an undeniable sense of incongruity from this Hero.
An absolute good.
Could such a thing truly exist in this world?
While the absolute evil known as the Demon King was baffling enough, the unconditional goodness displayed by the Hero, Ilexid Graim, was also something Fabius believed could not—no, should not—exist in this world.
Although they traveled together to defeat the Demon King, Fabius often felt a deep-seated, inexplicable aversion toward the Hero—a revulsion he couldn't quite put into words as a human being.
"Trev. I know you don't like me."
"Did it show? You've gotten smarter."
"You look at me like that every single time. How could I not know?"
At dusk.
Sitting before the campfire, Graim and Fabius shared a quiet conversation.
During their talk, Fabius candidly revealed his inner thoughts.
"To be honest, I think you might be more dangerous than the Demon King."
"...Do you really hate me that much?"
"It's not about hatred. I simply view you as a hazard."
Because an absolute evil called the Demon King had emerged, this world—through a mediator known as the Goddess—had 'suddenly' manufactured an absolute good called the Hero.
That was the conclusion Fabius had reached.
An existence manufactured by the needs of the world.
That was the Hero, Ilexid Graim.
Naturally, having been created without any narrative or causality, the entity known as Ilexid Graim was destined to vanish the moment the Demon King was gone.
"You said your lifespan is short, right?"
"Yeah. The Goddess told me so. I think I have about three years left."
The strongest swordsman in human history.
A Grand Sword Master.
That was the realm Ilexid Graim had achieved.
In truth, to Fabius's eyes, the Hero seemed to have surpassed even that level. But since there was no established name for anything beyond, he was simply called a Grand Sword Master.
In any case, it defied all common sense that such an absolute superhuman had a mere three years left to live.
"And you have absolutely no memories from before you received the Goddess's revelation?"
"None."
The slightly dim-witted-looking young man before him.
One day, out of nowhere, he had been bestowed the name Ilexid Graim along with a divine mission from the Goddess. Through a sudden awakening, he became humanity's ultimate weapon—the Hero destined to slay the Demon King.
A country bumpkin who had never even held a sword in his life had instantly ascended to the pinnacle of the world as a Grand Sword Master.
It is absurd.
No talent.
No effort.
No suffering.
Not even a single moment of time invested, yet he became an absolute being overnight.
Though Fabius possessed talent so outstanding he was hailed as the greatest magical genius in history, he could not accept this.
To be perfectly honest, Fabius found the simpleton standing before him far more incomprehensible than the horned monster crouching in the distant Demon King's castle, threatening to destroy the world.
"I don't hate you, nor do I like you. I simply do not understand you."
"I'm glad to hear that."
"Glad, my foot. Just go to sleep."
Archmage Fabius Trevalier was a rational man.
Thus, throughout their long journey together, he constantly analyzed and investigated this highly illogical existence.
Nothing ever occurs spontaneously without cause and effect.
If the Goddess truly possessed the power to manufacture an absolute good like the Hero overnight without any cost or condition, then why was this world so rife with suffering?
She could have simply snapped her fingers to mass-produce such Heroes, filling the world with peace.
Yet, that was not the reality.
Therefore, even for a Goddess, there must be a specific condition or price required to create a Hero.
His inquiry into this phenomenon continued to spiral, one question leading to another.
If she could not create Heroes indefinitely, then was the Goddess truly the omnipotent being described in the holy scriptures?
These thoughts were blasphemous and insolent toward the Goddess, but Fabius did not care in the slightest.
To him, the only thing that mattered was relentlessly investigating and deciphering the rules and principles that governed this 'world.'
That was the essence of a mage, and Fabius stood at the absolute pinnacle of them all.
In any case, even after their long journey ended with the Hero slaying the horned Demon King and peace finally returning to the world, Fabius never stopped pondering the 'rules' of the universe.
And in the end, he realized.
This world is fundamentally flawed.
The appearance of the Demon King and the rise of the Hero shared a common thread: both had suddenly come into existence one day without any proper causality.
As if they had 'spontaneously generated' simply because it was time for them to appear, once every thousand years.
Like a script written by someone from the very beginning.
Fabius harbored deep suspicions about this fact and strove to uncover the underlying cause.
Then, at some point, he caught a fleeting glimpse of the ultimate truth.
Thus, he became an existence that transcended the rules of the world.
He was able to view the closed, lidded world—a world akin to a fishbowl—from the perspective of an outside observer.
Without anyone's aid, Fabius awakened solely through his own power, escaping his lower dimension to ascend to the Upper Realm.
A single droplet of water had finally splashed over the edge of the bowl.
Though this caused the water level of the Upper Realm's fishbowl to overflow ever so slightly, Fabius himself was entirely unaware of it—and even if he had known, he wouldn't have cared in the least.
"Do you remember the crack that formed in the dimensional wall a while back?"
"Sigh, of course. The higher-ups had to sweat bullets negotiating with those beasts because of it. Thank goodness they managed to reach an agreement and seal the rift. If things had escalated back then, we would have ended up in another great war with those beasts."
"It was a close call. But did they ever find out what caused the crack?"
"No, not at all. No one knows the reason to this day. The elders simply assumed the seal had loosened slightly over the ages."
Somewhere in the high heavens, far beyond the perception of the mortals below.
Those dwelling beyond the sky were the Suseonza, cultivators who looked down upon the mortal realm. Long ago, they had established a separate domain called the Immortal Realm, living in a world completely severed from the lower realm.
"Anyway, the mortals in the lower realm have been quite rowdy lately. It's worrying. All they do is fight."
"They've always been like that. They're just trying to make do with limited resources down there, so conflict is inevitable."
"Even so, the problem is that the decent ones are killing each other off. This only benefits those damn beasts."
"Well, the elders can't seem to agree on anything, so what can we do? We just have to follow orders."
"Ugh, I hope those factional feuds die down soon. At this rate, I wonder if there's even any point in us going through the trouble of using loopholes to interfere with the lower realm."
The two cultivators grumbled as they stood before their respective massive mirrors, busy manipulating them to switch the displays.
"We have no choice. We need to drag up at least one more decent soul from the lower realm, no matter what. Even if it's a hassle, we must do it."
"Tsk. Still, investing this much time and resources into those talentless fools... What a waste."
And somewhere far beyond the reach of the heavens' surveillance...
A young boy named Ilyang was attempting to forge a new order that had never before existed in this world.
The flow of a circle is intuitive.
Drawing an infinite loop around the heart—the organ with the strongest life force—using centrifugal force. That was a circle, the very foundation of a mage.
But... why is this happening?
Sitting cross-legged, Ilyang grimaced.
He had attempted to draw internal energy from his heart and spin it to form his first circle.
It won't budge.
No matter how much force he applied horizontally, the internal energy resisted violently, as if blocked by an invisible barrier, repeatedly snapping back into his heart.
Cold sweat dripped from Ilyang's forehead as a significant amount of internal energy was lost in the process.
I must succeed on the first try. There is no second chance.
If he failed his first attempt, any subsequent circle he formed would inevitably be smaller, no matter how well he prepared.
This was because the mana circuits in the heart would suffer permanent, indelible scarring.
The size of a circle determined the strength of its centrifugal force.
A larger circle meant greater rotational force, which in turn meant a vastly superior capacity for absorbing energy.
In short, the bigger the circle, the better.
This difference would widen into an overwhelming chasm as the number of circles increased in the later stages.
I went through all the trouble of calculating and gathering the absolute maximum amount of internal energy my heart could handle without collapsing.
Ilyang had taken this unfamiliar energy called internal energy, filtered it repeatedly to refine it into its purest state, and meticulously calculated the maximum threshold his heart could bear before condensing it.
He had established the perfect conditions to form a circle.
And yet, he was failing?
Forced to settle for a smaller circle than intended?
Not a chance.
He had to find a solution in real-time.
He needed to figure out, as quickly as possible, why the internal energy refused to generate the centrifugal force required for the circle.
Pyeong So-byeok had simply gathered his internal energy in his dantian like a brute.
Once more, Ilyang drew a single thread of internal energy from his heart, thin as silk.
He twisted the fine thread into a braided chain.
Then, with great effort, he tried to spin it horizontally around his heart.
Ugh... it's doing it again.
The thread of internal energy resisted the motion, drooping limply downward.
As if declaring that this was forbidden.
A warning that he was violating the rules of this world.
Suddenly, a fleeting thought crossed his mind—he felt as though he had experienced something similar once before.
However, his focus was depleting too rapidly to indulge in reminiscence.
Does this world truly refuse to accept the concept of a circle?
Was that why no one had ever attempted it?
The moment Ilyang's resolve wavered ever so slightly, the movement of the drooping thread of internal energy shifted strangely.
Wait... could it be?
A sudden flash of inspiration struck him.
Ilyang grit his teeth and seized the idea.
He redirected the flow of the internal energy—not horizontally, but vertically.
And then...
Like magic, the internal energy began to flow with incredible, seamless ease.
It works! This is it!
The thread of internal energy drawn from his heart began to circulate vertically around the organ.
The rigid preconception of what a circle had to be shattered in an instant.
Having painstakingly carved out a single narrow pathway, he drew all the remaining internal energy from his heart and poured it into the mana circuit.
He had only one shot. If he failed now, there would be no turning back.
Fortunately...
Ilyang's gamble paid off.
Clack, clack, clack!
With a sound like a thin iron chain locking into place inside his mind, a single, stable circle formed around his heart.
At that exact moment, Ilyang opened his eyes.
A brilliant blue light flashed briefly within his pupils, but it vanished as quickly as it had appeared.
Ilyang blinked, his eyes returning to their usual dark, deep state.