1
# The Villain in the Novel
## Chapter 1: My Friend's Novel (1)
The baby knew.
He knew that he had died and been reborn.
There was no room for doubt. His memories of death were far too vivid, and his infant body was far too sensitive.
However, contrary to his sensitive body, his thoughts were sluggish.
It felt as though someone was forcibly putting him to sleep, saying that thinking was still too much for him.
As a result, even after realizing the special fact that he had been reincarnated, he couldn't continue his train of
thought.
Because he couldn't think.
'Uh...'
The baby was no different from an animal.
He simply followed his instincts, repeating the cycle of eating, relieving himself, and sleeping. Occasionally, he tried
to do something called thinking, but his mind couldn't keep up.
Then, one day, the baby suddenly remembered something.
It was probably something a friend had said. A friend who, in particular, possessed a wealth of miscellaneous knowledge
gathered from all sorts of places.
"Even if it's fantasy, it's ridiculous for a reincarnated person who has just been born to clearly recognize their
parents and think about their situation. Well, it might be different if they're another species that doesn't exist in
reality, but biologically, such a thing is impossible for humans."
The moment the baby recalled those words, he fell asleep without even being able to whimper. It was only much later that
he remembered why his friend had become so excited while saying them.
'He read popular reincarnation stories before creating the settings for his own reincarnation novel.'
After that, his friend became the very embodiment of capitalism and took those settings he had hated so much to write a
reincarnation novel. His friend suffered so much stress that he nearly went bald, but in return, he made money.
Quite a lot of money.
Now that he could think somewhat properly, the baby smiled at the memory.
As he grew and his hearing developed, he realized that the language spoken by his parents and the other people around
him was Korean. Thanks to that, he learned that he had been reincarnated in Korea.
Perhaps he might be able to meet his family and friends from his previous life someday.
That thought made him quite happy.
Although they wouldn't recognize him, the very act of meeting them would be meaningful enough.
'So my name is Sangwoo.'
When combined with his surname, it was Park Sangwoo.
He couldn't possibly be unaware of it, considering how often his mother called his name.
He, no. Park Sangwoo grew up receiving an abundance of love from his parents. Unfortunately, he had almost no relatives.
From what he heard, his father had been an orphan who lost his family during a coup, while his mother had also lost her
family after being caught up in the coup and had grown up under her maternal grandfather, who was left alone.
A family where blood relatives were precious.
Thanks to that, Park Sangwoo grew up happily, receiving all the attention and love of his parents and maternal
grandfather.
Reincarnation wasn't so bad after all.
As time passed and his first birthday celebration arrived, many people gathered.
His parents' friends and his maternal grandfather's colleagues. There were only two groups of people, but so many
gathered that even the fairly spacious house felt cramped.
And when Park Sangwoo grasped a banknote amid the attention of so many people, everyone smiled happily.
Even Park Sangwoo, who was still a baby.
However, the happiness that had seemed as though it would last forever ended there.
When his small family gathered for an outing, a group of monsters appeared and attacked them. At the time, his maternal
grandfather fought against the monsters like a superhero from a movie, but protecting everyone alone was impossible.
The many people who had been in the same place scattered, and chaos began.
In the midst of it all, his mother was killed by a monster, and his father followed soon after.
Even while shedding tears of blood, his maternal grandfather fought with his grandson held tightly in his arms.
Then, when another powerful person arrived, his grandfather entrusted his grandson to someone and was transported to a
hospital, where he eventually passed away.
Park Sangwoo became an orphan.
Not long afterward, he was sent to an infant care facility.
It was the result of countless events he wanted to turn away from, unfolding in front of him after he had lost his
entire family and cried until he was exhausted.
'This isn't the Earth I know.'
After becoming an orphan and witnessing the ugliness of humanity up close, Park Sangwoo realized that fact once again.
First, the monsters.
The monsters resembled wolves, but instead of fur, they had dark reddish-black scales and sharp horns on their
foreheads. They moved in packs and were creatures that had never existed on Earth. If monsters capable of breathing fire
had existed, people would undoubtedly have known about them.
The same was true when he considered his maternal grandfather and the powerful people who had rushed over later,
fighting against those monsters.
Their very existence would have been worthy of headlines.
If people who could send monsters slightly smaller than compact cars flying with ordinary punches actually existed, then
the Olympics themselves would be meaningless.
Every record would belong to them.
Furthermore, death was far too easy.
The people who had seized the inheritance he should have received spoke of death far too casually. If the lawyer who had
been his father's friend hadn't taken responsibility for his welfare, he would have ended up as a corpse buried in the
ground instead of being sent to an infant care facility.
Regardless of those external circumstances, Park Sangwoo continued to grow older as time passed.
He had fully learned to speak, but there was nothing he could do.
The people who had stolen his inheritance had probably grown stronger, while there was truly nothing in the hands of an
orphan from an infant care facility.
In fact, simply surviving without being killed and sent to the facility had been fortunate.
'The monsters, and the way they talk about murder so easily...'
This was definitely not a place as safe as the Korea he had lived in during his previous life.
As time passed, he outgrew the age for the infant care facility and was transferred to an orphanage.
It was the beginning of another misfortune.
"That fucking bastard..."
The director of the orphanage was someone whose mere memory caused him stress.
Park Sangwoo survived under that director by begging for money on the streets.
The reason he specifically called it surviving was because the director's abuse came with an additional burden: violence
from some of the children who had grown up watching the director.
His weak and small body reacted sensitively to violence. A single punch or kick could cause cracks in his bones and
leave bruises. There was even a time when the director kicked him, causing him to hit his head against the stairs and
hover between life and death.
Naturally, hospitalization was out of the question.
When he lost consciousness back then and eventually opened his eyes again, his wound had merely been disinfected, and
the injured area was wrapped in a towel.
Not a bandage, but a towel.
One that someone else had used.
It was a situation in which it was almost miraculous that he had survived and opened his eyes.
He truly survived one day at a time.
He had no choice.
A child's body was a burden. He couldn't do anything, and even making it through a single day safely was difficult.
Even meeting the daily quota set by the director was hard. When he somehow managed to fill it, there were other children
waiting to take the money away from him. He had to endure somehow, but even the food he ate was far from proper.
The reason he was able to survive in such circumstances was thanks to someone's care.
The only good fortune he found while living at Blue Orphanage.
A female resident who was free from sexual exploitation thanks to her unattractive appearance, with her face always
scrunched up in a frown, and her obese body saved him.
In truth, it wasn't anything extraordinary enough to be called care.
The clever girl had deliberately gained weight. Since that was impossible at Blue Orphanage, where food wasn't provided
properly, she brought leftover school meals from school. She forced herself to eat and simply gave Sangwoo some of what
remained.
That alone was enough.
It allowed him to survive despite being constantly hungry, to the point that it wouldn't have been strange if he had
died at any moment.
And then...
'A mana aptitude test?'
There was a test that the government required every child to undergo in the year they turned ten. Since it was
mandatory, the children at Blue Orphanage were naturally also subject to it. Before the test, the children prayed
desperately.
Please, let me have an aptitude for mana.
At first, he couldn't understand why they were so desperate.
Not even until the test conducted in the year that marked his third year at Blue Orphanage, when he received a positive
result.
If he had to make an excuse for that, it was because life had been too difficult.
A life without hope was exhausting.
It wasn't merely a matter of making a living, such as finding employment. In a situation where life and death depended
on the director's whims, dreaming of a hopeful future was impossible.
If he had to dream of anything, it would have been tearing apart and killing those who had abused him.
Even that was miserable.
How could he imagine hope while watching disabled children leave the orphanage as though being chased away when they
reached the age to leave, and female residents suddenly disappearing, whether they had run away or gone missing?
So he stopped thinking.
Because it hurt.
Then he saw a child who had desperately prayed before leaving to take the test return with adults he had never seen
before, pack his belongings, and leave the orphanage.
The child who had always been intimidated and pushed around looked incredibly happy.
Park Sangwoo had never seen such extreme happiness since coming to the orphanage, and he asked:
"Where is that older brother going?"
"He has an aptitude for mana, so he's going to a Basic School."
"A Basic School?"
It was information unknown to the seven-year-old, who had given up on himself under the weight of violence, frustration,
and despair that oppressed his entire life.
The twelve-year-old girl couldn't hide her envy, forgetting even that she was supposed to keep her face scrunched up.
"It's called Hero Basic School. It's a place that gathers children with an aptitude for mana and provides them with
basic training."
"...If there's a Basic School, is there a higher stage above it?"
"There is. It's called Hero Military Academy."
"Hero Military Academy...?"
An unfamiliar yet familiar name.
But it was a name that shouldn't exist in reality.
The girl, Lee Saebom, continued speaking while watching the back of the child leaving the orphanage, unaware that Park
Sangwoo had gone pale.
"It's the cradle that raises great heroes who protect humanity from monsters using the power called mana."
"Heroes..."
Something had appeared that he absolutely needed to know.
Just because he had stopped thinking out of despair didn't mean he had become stupid.
Starting the next day, when Park Sangwoo went to the subway station to beg for money, he began picking up discarded
newspapers and reading them during his free time. He wanted to properly understand the information about society that he
had deliberately ignored since becoming a resident of the orphanage.
Fortunately, he didn't need to learn the writing system separately.
The Hangul he had learned in his previous life was still used here. As he absorbed countless pieces of information
through the newspapers, he realized the reason.
"Ha, this is fucking ridiculous."
This was the world inside a novel known as modern fantasy.
No, to be more precise, it would be better to say that this was a place where the setting of a novel had become reality.
A novel in which tremendous upheaval occurred throughout the world after the Korean War, transforming the entire world
into a fantasy setting.
It was too intricately constructed, from society to the way its members functioned, to simply regard it as a novel. In
fact, perhaps because he had suffered so much, the present felt more real than his previous life.
Regardless, there were several reasons why he had come to that conclusion.
The names of powerful heroes who frequently appeared in the newspaper's social section, along with the names of the
organizations they belonged to, were familiar. If it had been just one matching name, he might have considered it a
coincidence, but the names appeared repeatedly, making it impossible to dismiss.
There was even a Korean-born Saint Hero who had greatly influenced world history after the Korean War. That left no room
for doubt.
There was a valid reason why Park Sangwoo still remembered the setting of this novel.
The novel had been written by his friend.
Thanks to that, he had heard about the settings from the planning stage of the novel. He had even learned back then that
the Korean-born Saint Hero was actually a regressor. Whenever his friend scrapped the story because he wasn't satisfied
and rewrote it, Park Sangwoo read everything from the beginning again.
Moreover, when his friend serialized the novel as a paid work, he used the gold his friend had charged for him to read
it and even corrected typos.
Perhaps because of that experience, even after so much time had passed, the plot of the novel still came back to him
quite clearly.
'Then that reincarnated protagonist bastard should be here too, right?'
The date printed in the newspaper was February 19, 2007.
Unlike him, an ordinary Korean whose previous life had ended with the rank of army sergeant, the protagonist had come
from a fantasy world where people used swords and magic.
Immediately after being born, the protagonist realized the existence of mana and learned to cultivate the Life Energy he
had used in his previous life. That Life Energy was clearly a superior supernatural ability to the Qi techniques that
existed in this world.
And that was the setting that established why the protagonist could become stronger than anyone else.
'Right, the setting...'
He laughed.
He was sick of his own stupidity.
It had been a setting when he read his friend's novel in his previous life, but now it was reality.
A clear reality.
Of course, he still couldn't be certain that the reincarnated protagonist was truly alive and breathing in this world.
Perhaps this was another world similar to the novel his friend had written.
But since he couldn't guarantee anything, if he assumed that the protagonist existed...
'His name here is Bae Jonghyuk, and he's seven years old, the same age as me.'
His friend, who had been the author, had decided that the protagonist was born in 2001. It was a device that made it
easy to identify the years in which events occurred and the protagonist's age as time passed.
Now that reality had become the setting, it was no longer merely a device. He was simply the most special human being
among the countless people born in 2001.
In any case, that special human being would surely be refining mana through Life Energy and growing stronger.
'I'm jealous...'
Jealousy surged within him.
They were both reincarnated people, yet one of them had learned a superior supernatural ability that didn't exist in
this world and was growing stronger in real time, while the other had to hide and run around just to prevent other
residents from stealing the money he earned selling gum.
One of them was an orphan without a single relative, while the other was growing up well in a warm and happy family.
His insides twisted.
Not that it would change anything.
Park Sangwoo let out a deep sigh and tried to shake off his ugly feelings.
That wasn't what mattered in his current situation.
What truly mattered was how the settings he had heard about while drinking with his friend, the author of this novel,
had been applied.
And soon, he fell into despair.
'Ah, damn it...'
Before worrying about anything else, he should have remembered that this world had something like a mana aptitude test.
Didn't that mean that if he lacked the aptitude, he wouldn't be able to use mana?
'The problem was that the bastard had to be someone obsessed with talent.'
Here, being obsessed with talent didn't mean having an abundance of talent. It meant being someone who liked the setting
where nothing was useful unless you possessed the necessary talent.
His friend was like that.
His friend liked writing stories that combined different worlds into a single universe. And a characteristic of that
universe was the existence of powers that couldn't be used without the appropriate talent.
Mana was the same.
Even if someone trained for hundreds of years, they wouldn't be able to use mana if they lacked talent.
Of course, the talent could be common or rare depending on the dimension serving as the setting, but the world of The
Black Sage clearly had a rare talent.
That was why talent, such a simple word, was a symbol of unfairness.
In truth, that was the same even if the setting wasn't fantasy.
Park Sangwoo grew anxious.
'If I don't have the talent to use mana, then I'm finished.'
Without that talent, he would have to continue living the same life of exploitation and abuse he was enduring now.
He remembered the plot of his friend's novel, which meant it was almost like knowing the future.
That was undoubtedly an incredible advantage.
The protagonists of countless regression stories had proven it. Even though the contents of each novel were fictional,
they effectively portrayed the benefits of gaining information ahead of time. The benefits that could be obtained from
knowing the future were limitless.
But he was different.
What could an orphan without a family, still only seven years old, do with a body exhausted from abuse and a life of
suffering?
Nothing.
There was truly nothing he could do.
To make money using information about the future, he needed starting capital.
Money makes money.
It was a basic principle of capitalism, and it was impossible for an orphan living in an orphanage to fulfill that basic
requirement.
That was why he was anxious and afraid.
If he lacked the talent to use mana, he might have to live the same life as now, crawling along the bottom of society
for the rest of his life, unable to die and merely existing.
The seven-year-old child fell ill under the weight of fear and helplessness.
Of course, he wasn't given treatment, nor was he allowed to rest. He went out begging for money with his sick body, and
perhaps because he looked pitiful, he sold far more gum than usual. One person even bought him a large amount of food
from a convenience store inside the subway station.
Of course, after that person left, the food was returned, and the money was pocketed instead.
Park Sangwoo filled his quota in only half the time it usually took him. He then gathered the discarded newspapers again
and shut himself inside the restroom.
Once commuting hours had passed and the cleaners had left, the place became quiet.
He accumulated a great deal of information by reading newspapers this way, but he still had no answer. He felt lost. All
he could truly understand was how severe the penalty of living as an orphan without a guardian was.
Then he discovered it.
An interview with the hero Hwang Seongjae, which had been quite famous in the introduction of his friend's novel, The
Black Sage.
The novel itself properly began after the protagonist entered Hero Military Academy, so Hwang Seongjae probably wouldn't
be quite that famous yet.
The same applied to his abilities.
Regardless, since this was content he had never seen before, he read it with full concentration.
Reporter: I heard that Hero Hwang Seongjae was able to use mana even before taking the aptitude test. How is that
possible?
Hwang Seongjae: In truth, I'm not the only one. When I took the mana aptitude test as a child, I learned that there were
many people who could use mana. In fact, if you visit a Basic School, you'll find quite a few children who possess
internal energy because they learned excellent Qi techniques that aren't even taught at Basic School before entering.
Reporter: Isn't your situation different from theirs? They were born into good families or had heroes among their
relatives, so they received mana aptitude tests and education in advance. But Hero Hwang Seongjae learned to use mana
without receiving such instruction.