Immigrants
By this point, the opening of a dimensional gate was hardly a novelty. Even so, for an urgent report to come in at such an ungodly hour meant this was no ordinary gate.
"The scale?"
"Demonic power output is at Stage 5."
The threat level of any gate was classified by the intensity of the demonic power radiating from it. The higher the stage of output, the higher the rank of entities capable of crossing over—and at Stage 5, the emergence of a High-Rank True Demon was all but guaranteed.
Regrettably, whatever arcane mechanics governed the gates made them strictly one-way passages. Things could come through into this world, but entering them from this side was impossible. Had crossing through been an option, Yeonil would have marched straight through the rift to wage war in the Demon World himself.
"Understood. I'll be there shortly."
Scarcely had he returned home before he found himself preparing to head out once more.
"Something urgent came up. I have to step out for a bit, so go ahead and sleep."
"Yes, sir."
"Please be careful!"
Yeonil lightly patted the heads of the children as they bowed politely, then stepped out into the night.
Treading on empty air, he crossed vast expanses of land in mere heartbeats. The biting wind grew harsher the further north he flew, though the frigid cold made no impression on him. Before long, a towering pillar of light rising from deep within the Northern Demon Territory pierced the horizon.
What demanded immediate concern, however, was the relentless cascade of explosive roars tearing through the night.
Demons were running amok, slaughtering soldiers and laying waste to the field.
'True Demons. And not just one or two, but four.'
According to the lore of the original game, Blue Fantasy, the Creator Mother had brought forth two primordial races: the Divine Race to oversee creation, and the Demonic Race to govern destruction. The demonic beings spoken of in that creation myth were none other than the True Demons. In essence, a True Demon was the conceptual equal and cosmic counterpart of a god.
Naturally, the gulf between a True Demon and a Common Demon was as vast as heaven and earth. Against even a Low-Rank True Demon, ordinary mortals stood zero chance of survival.
Judging purely by outward appearance, telling a True Demon apart from a Common Demon was no simple task. Yet the sheer density of their demonic energy, intertwined with their inherent divinity, ensured that no one sensitive to such power could ever mistake the two. Even now, the suffocating, bloodthirsty pressure radiating from them washed over Yeonil across leagues of distance.
"……"
And yet, what met his eyes differed markedly from the True Demons Yeonil remembered. The ferocious, predatory aura was familiar enough, but their heads and torsos were encased in bizarre, gleaming metallic apparatuses of unknown origin.
"……"
The invaders who had crossed through were two red-skinned men of the Flame Demon Clan and a woman of the Succubus Clan. The Flame Demons commanded the straightforward yet catastrophic powers of combustion and detonation. Their sovereign, the Inferno of Wrath, was the oldest of the Demon Kings. As for the Succubus Clan, this was only the second time Yeonil had seen one in the flesh—and his first time ever encountering a pureblood True Demon of their bloodline, rather than a half-breed.
They were a debuff-oriented race that only appeared in the late-game chapters of Blue Fantasy. While their physical destructive power fell short of the Flame Demons, they had tormented players with a relentless battery of status ailments, confusion, and damage-over-time effects. In the lore, they were True Demons specialized in illusions, curses, and dream magic. Even as regular enemy NPCs rather than bosses, their revealing garments and alluring designs had made them wildly popular among the player base. In reality, however, facing one was an absolute nightmare. While Yeonil was immune, manipulating the minds of ordinary soldiers would be child's play for her.
The hellfire unleashed by the Flame Demons incinerated the surrounding tundra, driving away the bitter northern frost. Each one wielded enough firepower to reduce an entire city to ash in a matter of moments. Indeed, it was precisely demons of their caliber that had wiped the Royal Capital from the map.
The succubus stood quietly in the rear, merely observing. She showed no intent to cast magic; perhaps the human resistance was simply too feeble to warrant her effort, or perhaps she was merely studying them.
The moment he grasped the situation, Yeonil drew and swung Dawn.
A brilliant arc of golden light cleaved the space between the Northern Army and the True Demons.
"This light…!"
"It's the Guardian! The Guardian is here!"
The radiant golden wave Yeonil conjured did not dissipate. Instead, it formed a soaring, impenetrable barrier between the demons and the Northern Army, halting the raging inferno before another soldier could be swallowed alive. Yet more than the barrier itself, it was the sheer fact of Yeonil's arrival that flooded the troops with profound relief.
"My apologies. I'm late," Yeonil said, his boots touching down softly on the frozen earth.
The northern soldiers shook their heads vigorously.
"Not at all, my lord! You arrived far sooner than we dared hope!"
"Do you know what that metal attached to their bodies is?"
"We… have no idea, sir…"
As expected, the troops knew nothing about the demons' bizarre modifications. The mechanical apparatuses bolted onto their flesh were jarringly out of place in the orthodox high fantasy world of Blue Fantasy. They looked like something straight out of a science fiction game—like cyborgs.
"……"
"……"
In the midst of the standoff, the surgically altered True Demons seemed to perceive Yeonil as an existential threat. Though stripped of their faculties, the barrier of light obstructing them grated on their instincts—or rather, terrified them to their core. Driven by mindless reflex to obliterate it, they unleashed their power in full. A colossal tidal wave of fire crashed against the golden wall. The cataclysmic fury looked capable of swallowing everything in its path, turning the soldiers' faces pale with dread, yet the wall held without so much as a tremor. The instant the demonic flames made contact with the divine light, they vanished like a fading mirage.
"…?"
Before the demons could even process the incomprehensible dispersion of their flames, the succubus in the rear finally prepared to make her move. But Yeonil had no intention of standing by. Phasing clean through his golden barrier, he blurred past the Flame Demons. A heartbeat later, two severed heads thudded heavily into the snow. Deprived of life, the headless torsos collapsed and dissolved into vapor, vanishing entirely from reality.
It was a brutally anticlimactic end.
True Demons possessed power rivaling gods, and in truth, the entire northern garrison had barely managed to buy time against them—a feat achieved only because the monsters were not in their right minds. Yet before Yeonil, all were equal under a single stroke.
'Monsters that took our entire army just to hold back… felled so effortlessly…'
'He truly belongs to a completely different realm.'
'I still can't believe the Guardian is human like the rest of us.'
The sheer absurdity of the spectacle drew hollow chuckles from several soldiers, though for veterans who had fought beside him before, the sight was all too familiar.
"…?"
Yeonil had deliberately spared the female succubus. Severing the tendons in her limbs with surgical precision, he drove a pulse of his golden energy into her chest, locking down her demonic power. He left her alive because, tricky though they were, succubi were relatively easy to contain and control provided one had the proper tools.
"Would you object if I took this one to the Central Temple?"
"Of course not, sir. We don't have the personnel here equipped to study such a specimen anyway."
"Thank you."
"Please, there is no need for thanks. If not for you, Guardian, we wouldn't have even dreamed of surviving an encounter with True Demons, let alone defeating them."
The northern commander knew the reality all too well. Humanity currently clung to survival solely by leaning on the shoulders of this one man. It meant Yeonil was pushing himself past reasonable limits, and that the fate of the entire world hinged on his solitary resolve. Yet Yeonil himself felt only bitter disappointment at his own limitations.
"What are the casualties?"
"Two hundred and eighty-seven dead, six hundred and ninety-three wounded."
Hearing the commander's casualty report, Yeonil felt his chest tighten once more. So many lives lost yet again.
"Thank you, Guardian. Because of you, countless more were spared."
"…You men bear the true hardship, far more than someone like me."
Yeonil shook his head at the commander's praise. His heart remained heavy all throughout his journey back.
'I cannot protect everyone alone.'
He was the strongest being in this world, yet as long as he remained a single individual, clear limits bound him. To make matters worse, enemies with bizarre traits unseen in the original game were now surfacing. As far as Yeonil knew, none of the Demon Kings or their factions possessed such cybernetic motifs, making the situation all the more dire. It was simply impossible for him to rush across the continent putting out every fire forever.
This land desperately needed more powerhouses. He had to personally cultivate those who possessed talent or resolve, forging them into champions capable of standing on their own. In Yeonil's mind, that was the only way to truly save this world. It was precisely for such a contingency that he had deliberately left most of the original game's hidden pieces untouched.
"Then… I shall take my leave."
Concluding there was nothing more for him to do here, Yeonil took the subdued succubus in hand and soared into the sky, departing just as swiftly as he had arrived. Streaking through the darkness like a golden shooting star, his flight drew gasps of awe from the soldiers below.
"What would we have done without Lord Guardian?"
"He truly is the Sun God reincarnate."
By all accounts, it was a blasphemous remark. Considering the kingdom's state religion, the Solar Church, was a monotheistic faith that strictly forbade idol worship, their whispered praise bordered on outright sacrilege. Yet how could they help it? Humanity was standing on the precipice of extinction, and Yeonil's transcendent might shone as their sole beacon of hope. What he had accomplished since his sudden emergence was far beyond the purview of any mortal. To witness a transcendent being who casually severed godlike True Demons and flew faster than the eye could follow, and to view him as a mere fellow human, defied common sense. His very history read like an epic myth.
Even before the original protagonist had properly stepped onto the world stage, the people had already hailed Yeonil as the legendary hero and savior. Though Yeonil found such reverence deeply suffocating, in a world like this, hope was the only thing keeping them alive.
"Well now… this is entirely unexpected."
Far above, beyond the clouds and within the silent expanse of the stratosphere, an entity looked down, watching the spectacle unfold.