Chapter 135
When the clock struck midnight, Do-Jin wasn’t the only one diving headfirst into the quest. The moment the notification dropped, it popped up for everyone who was logged in and for anyone who’d log in afterward, too.
[World Boss Raid: Pre-Event Quest]
Within seconds, the entire server exploded. People who’d been sitting around, twitchy with anticipation, hit start the instant the message appeared. A few hours later, the forums looked like a digital apocalypse.
[Title: SHITSHITSHITSHITSHIT!]
[Do these devs even know what difficulty balance means? You’re supposed to make something people can clear! Not drop a fucking dump truck on our heads the second the quest starts!]
└ Why’s this dude keep saying shit every sentence?
└ Bro your translation setting’s literal. Japanese cussing sometimes gets rendered that way lmao.
└ Oh you got one-shotted too?
└ Yeah lol. I also followed some ghost, next thing I know the screen’s shaking, and boom, dead before I even screamed out loud irl.
└ At least the Tower of Trials had some mercy floors. Even lowbies could grind some rewards. This one’s straight up unplayable. Nobody’s lasting more than ten seconds. This one’s an absolute dev fail.
└ Eh, it’s not even the main content, but a prep event. Maybe it’s supposed to be hard and only the top players clear it.
└ I don’t even care at this point. I got two free levels just for showing up and dying. Rewards slap, man.
The LOST community was on fire. Some players were trying to analyze, some were coping, and others were vibing on free EXP. Then, the bomb dropped.
└ YOOOOO! BRAKIN’S DEAD!
└ No fucking way. Who killed him?
└ Tanto, that Japanese streamer guy. The thief main.
└ Wait, THAT Tanto? Dude’s cracked.
└ So Japan got the first kill? Hell no. Korea better get their shit together!
└ Nah, he’s not the first. The Spear Guild just posted their clear too.
The forum feed blew up. Kill confirmations were everywhere.
└ I guess all that crying about the difficulty was just from the scrubs. The real players always pull through.
└ Bro what? I legit thought that thing was unkillable. Who are these monsters?
└ Weird that none of the big guilds are streaming this time though. Spear just posted proof, but they didn’t broadcast it live.
└ Can you really blame them? They got roasted alive last time for being too slow during the Tower of Trials. No one wants that smoke again lol.
One after another, kill screenshots and clips started rolling in. As it turned out, LOST was crawling with freaks of nature who could wrestle against gods and win. And naturally, one name started trending again.
└ What about Do-Jin? Any word from his channel?
The moment it became clear Brakin could be killed, all eyes went to Do-Jin. He’d pulled off miracles before, so the internet buzzed with speculation. However, not everyone was optimistic.
└ Nah, no shot this time. The guy’s good, but he’s still a mage. Brakin’s literally designed to fuck mages over.
└ As a fellow mage, I can confirm. Brakin’s a fucking war crime. You try to cast once and he turns you into floor paste.
└ It’s all Do-Jin’s fault anyway. Mage class has always been dogshit, but he made it look god-tier during the Tower event, so now the devs are nerf-hammering us with anti-caster bosses.
They weren’t wrong. Brakin was tailor-made to slaughter mages. He was undoubtedly fast and aggressive, and he had high resistance to magic. He almost felt like a middle finger to everything spellcasters stood for.
Along with all the speculation came the streamer theatrics.
—If a single mage manages to kill that bastard, I’ll dance in my underwear in Times Square. No joke. It’s not happening. Ever.
—This isn’t just class bias, but borderline racism. Mobius are fucking racists. Mages have rights too! I’m sending a protest truck.
—We all love Do-Jin, huge respect to him. But let’s be real. If anyone kills that unholy freak as a mage, I’ll donate my entire year’s income. After taxes that’s like... 150 million won. Mark my words.
People grew bold when they didn’t know any better, and streamers of all sizes tossed out empty promises one after another. They talked about sprinting naked through the middle of New York in the dead of winter, dancing in public, or pledging donations that climbed to nearly two billion won.
While the outside world was working itself into a frenzy, Do-Jin, who’d already defeated Brakin long ago, was facing the past of the Hero.
***
“The target is this half-dead world and every half-living thing still left in it.”
The sheer scale of it crossed the line by a wide margin, so Do-Jin demanded a proper explanation from the former Hero. Even if everything stood on the brink of death, asking someone to kill an entire world made no sense.
When a goal sounded this absurd, failing to understand the full background and chain of events always led to disaster. Mashing the skip button because it felt like a waste of time never solved anything. Since Do-Jin’s demand was reasonable, Matthew answered without resistance.
That was how the old story began.
“The Emperor, who sought to go beyond death and become a god, installed Magic Circles throughout the Empire. He did so to drain the life of his own people and transcend humanity into something else entirely. However, the source of that knowledge was the problem. The being the Emperor traded with was a demon.”
The Demon King of this world had been the Emperor himself. He dreamed of immortality beyond mere undeath, harnessing every vile power available and remaking himself into a Demon King. In the end, he purchased forbidden knowledge from a demon and prepared a ritual that would offer the entire Empire as a sacrifice.
“As the Hero chosen by fate, I fought desperately with my companions to stop the Magic Circles from activating and the ritual from beginning, but we fell short. In the end, that cursed ritual began.”
Even if events had followed the original plan, the ritual would have wiped out most of the population living in the Empire. Unfortunately, the disaster grew far beyond even that scale. The knowledge handed over by the demon hid a fatal trap.
“The Emperor believed, and we believed as well, that the ritual existed to grind down the Empire and amplify his power. However, that was wrong. The Empire itself, that enormous Magic Circle, was nothing more than a trigger for a far more horrifying spell.”
With the largest nation in the world as a sacrifice, the ritual activated a massive spell that exploited every living being and soul spread across the world. Death did not come all at once. Slowly, painfully slowly, the Empire, or rather the Emperor, swallowed the lives and souls of everyone.
“The Emperor became a true monster. Even so, my companions and I managed to bring that monster down. The problem was that we were far too late.”
In short, the world was already suffering from catastrophic blood loss. Even if everything had stopped immediately, the catastrophic collapse could no longer be prevented.
“At that point, I made an incredibly foolish choice.”
The Hero who struck down the monster devouring the world had already become a transcendent being himself by then. To save a world on the brink of death, he claimed the power the Emperor left behind upon his destruction.
“It was a desperate gamble. I figured that if everything was going to fall apart anyway, I might as well try something before it did.”
As a Hero who wielded the sword, he surpassed his limits and cut down an immortal. With even greater power, poured out in a single instant, he believed he might cut down something even greater.
“I cast aside even my own existence and unleashed a single slash that cut through the cursed Magic Circle and severed ‘death’ itself from this world.” Matthew could still recall the demon’s laughter that echoed in that moment. “This is the result.”
Those whose souls shattered beyond repair lost death itself and gradually turned into monsters. Even the Hero’s companions, who possessed strong life forces and souls and should never have suffered that fate, went mad in the collapsing world and attempted suicide.
Each time they tried to kill themselves, they became a little more monstrous, just like everyone else. Their souls broke apart as they repeated death without ever truly dying.
“In the end, I’m the only one left. I don’t even have a body capable of committing suicide anymore, so I’m forced to remain sane. Well, calling it sane might be generous, since I have gone quite mad myself.”
The confession hung in the air like smoke that smelled of old funerals.
After hearing the entire story, Do-Jin and Anemone were left speechless. They couldn’t even bring themselves to ask how long this state had lasted. Just judging by how worn down the city that had once been the Empire’s capital looked, finding ruins of this age in the real world would require digging back to before the Common Era.
Did he endure at least several thousand years, watching a world ruined by his own mistake?
The weight of the story pressed down on Do-Jin. Even offering awkward sympathy required the right timing. In moments like this, the only thing that made sense was to focus on what needed to be done.
“So what do we need to do for you to get what you want? You’re not telling me to go around killing them one by one, right?” he asked, trying to keep his tone steady.
Matthew let out a short laugh. “Of course not. Even after spending more than a thousand years barely holding on by talking to myself, I wouldn’t go that far off the deep end. There’s a method. I studied very hard during all that excess time.”
Matthew extended a hand and pointed toward the imperial capital. “I’ll revive the true culprit behind the world’s destruction and use that cursed Magic Circle to perform a world-scale euthanasia.”
Do-Jin couldn’t help but gawk at his grandiose plan. “How exactly are we supposed to pull off that revival?”
“We need to supply fuel to the Magic Circle. Don’t worry. We only need to visit seven locations. A few of them have some troublesome foes lying in wait... but you took down Brakin, didn’t you?”
Hearing him say it so lightly, a sense of gloom settled over Do-Jin. So that means I’ve got to face at least a few more monsters like that.
