Chapter 254 – Hero Invasion (1)

“In just three days, 27,000 soldiers have been killed.”

The aide reported the damages, his voice deliberately cold.

Each time he stated a number, the air grew so sharp he found himself swallowing dryly.

The aide was in the midst of a conference of Demon Kings.

The Demon Kings of the Eastern Alliance.

The Eastern Alliance was the largest and most powerful faction.

But because of a single Hero who had appeared out of nowhere, they had lost five Demon Kings.

Their alliance now numbered only thirty.

With their rivals, the Western Alliance, boasting twenty-five Demon Kings, the gap had closed in an instant.

Of course, numbers alone did not represent absolute strength.

“We tried to avenge Gamigin to save face, and now look at us. What a joke.”

“Those despicable bastards in the West will be laughing at us. Five Demon Kings, beheaded by a single Hero.”

The Demon Kings’ displeasure was palpable.

Five Demon Kings, twenty legion commanders, and 27,000 elite soldiers killed in action.

The result was staggering.

“Six, to be precise.”

Barbatos, the 8th-ranked Demon King known as the God of War, offered the correction.

His remark made the other Demon Kings’ faces stiffen.

The immortal Gamigin, the 4th-ranked Demon King who had once been part of their alliance, had suffered a crushing defeat at the Hero’s hands and met her end.

Her death had dealt a massive blow to the East’s military strength, preventing them from even attempting to subjugate the West.

“Gamigin, Crocell, Balam, Kimaris, Orias, Sabnock.”

A decrepit old man stroked the beak of a goshawk perched on his shoulder as he listed the names of the dead Demon Kings one by one.

“All of them dead, Agares.”

The old man with the goshawk was the leader of the East, the immortal Agares.

The wrinkled old man, spotted with age, glanced at the provocatively speaking Barbatos.

“It is a regrettable affair, to lose comrades who were to share in our great cause.”

At Agares’s solemn words, all the Demon Kings fell silent.

All but one.

Only Barbatos, the incarnation of war, was grinning as if amused.

Gamigin, ranked 4th, had only achieved her high station because she commanded the undead legion, an army near-infinite in number.

In a one-on-one duel, he was confident he could have toyed with her, utterly overwhelming her.

“Barbatos.”

He was the pride of the Eastern Alliance, its strongest warrior.

Agares addressed him in a low voice.

“What do you think?”

“It’s impossible.”

Barbatos’s reply to Agares’s cryptic question was immediate.

“I watched the battle from afar. There isn’t a single Demon King who can defeat this ultimate Hero.”

“…!”

For Barbatos, a being with a powerful lust for battle who couldn’t stand the existence of anyone stronger than himself, to admit this so readily was a shock.

His words stunned the other Demon Kings.

“Unless it’s one of us.”

Barbatos’s words sent another ripple through the assembly.

“Us” referred to Barbatos himself and the sovereign, Agares.

“Isn’t it exhilarating? That in this vast refuse of dimensions, a worthy opponent has finally appeared.”

Agares, the leader, gazed profoundly into the eyes of the gleefully speaking Barbatos.

“I understand. However, our allies have not yet fully gathered. Only your legion will be able to mobilize.”

“Do we really need every Demon King to move just to catch a single Hero?”

At Barbatos’s words, Agares gave the order.

“Barbatos. Execute the Hero.”

“All of you just huddle here and wait for the good news.”

Barbatos smiled, his face brimming with confidence.

As the incarnation of war, nothing brought him more joy than a battle against a worthy foe.

After the conference of Demon Kings concluded, Barbatos moved quickly to prepare for his campaign.

The thought of enjoying a hunt with his beloved soldiers after so long was simply delightful.

For an absolute being who had lived through eons, a challenge from a powerful adversary was always a form of amusement.

“Barbatos.”

“Ah, the wise Marbas. Surely you haven’t come to worry about me?”

Barbatos grinned playfully at Marbas, who had come to see him.

Marbas, who appeared as a middle-aged man, was the polar opposite of the boyish Barbatos.

One was always cautious, the other always flippant.

“Be careful.”

“You old nag. There you go again. This is me, Barbatos. You know as well as I do that besides Agares, the only one who can stand against me is Vassago from the West, and that’s about it.”

As he said, in matters of war, there was no one who could overwhelm him.

But what Marbas said next was unexpected.

“The one I’m telling you to be wary of is Dantalian.”

“Dantalian? The 71st?”

The corners of Barbatos’s mouth lifted at Marbas’s words.

For a joke, it was a childish one, especially coming from such a humorless old man.

“Ah, of course. I’ll be careful not to kill one of our own.”

Barbatos laughed, taking Marbas’s words with a different meaning.

“There’s something about Dantalian. Be careful. Be very careful.”

“Wasn’t he the one who came crawling to the East, begging for his life? Why would I need to be careful of him?”

Marbas remained silent at Barbatos’s question.

He had felt something indescribable, something overwhelming.

There was something about that Dantalian.

‘Could it be? No. It’s impossible. Impossible.’

Marbas repeated the thought to himself. There was no way the Baal System would open for a low-ranking Demon King like him.

Not when even the greatest of them, the immortal Agares, had failed to obtain it.

“No, forget it. I’ve held up a man on his way to war with pointless words.”

“If you know, then that’s enough. Don’t worry. As always, I do not lose.”

With those words, Barbatos strode confidently out of the conference hall.

***

Even after the Demon King’s army retreated, an unidentified black hand emerging from the gate continued to stretch out like a tentacle, indiscriminately abducting people.

An evacuation order had been issued, but more than a few people who ignored it and tried to return home were snatched away.

The massive gate, literally floating in the sky, was moving about and capturing people.

Capture—that was the right word for it.

It felt as though they were being hunted.

People trembled in fear.

They never knew when or where a tentacle might grab them.

Because of this, everyone was glued to the real-time news coverage of the disaster.

Variety shows were either taken off the air or canceled altogether.

The same went for music programs.

With an unprecedented disaster unfolding and a doomsday countdown underway, the atmosphere felt apocalyptic.

Yet even in this situation thick with despair, one person’s name was on everyone’s lips every day.

The Deliveryman, Lee Hyunbin.

Everyone was watching his exploits as if they were tuned into a live stream.

People were ecstatic over his heroic deeds.

A man who ventured alone into the perilous demon world to save humanity.

-Are there no heroes to support our hero?-

-The time to attack is now!-

-Why aren’t we deploying troops?-

Picket signs went up, and news reports flooded the airwaves.

Now, everyone was connected to the System, and the countdown to destruction had begun.

Amidst it all, the prophetic dreams were focused on the Korea Monster.

As the public watched the doomsday counter decrease slightly with each of his successes, their voices grew louder.

They argued that to overcome this unprecedented crisis, they had to support the Asian hunter.

“Thank you all for being here. I am Danny McGuire, head of the International Hunter Federation.”

So began Danny McGuire, the world’s former Rank 2, who had taken over the position at the Union.

In the conference room with him sat people of various ethnicities.

From the current world Rank 1, Russia’s Brown Bear, Ivan Sergey, to France’s Yan Michael and Britain’s Emily.

Regardless of skin color, regardless of national borders.

The representative hunters and leaders of each nation had gathered in one place.

It was a meeting of unprecedented scale.

The reason was simple.

“Let us begin the tactical proposals for the assault on the Demon World Gate.”

The European Union, which had a connection to Hyunbin and had received his aid, had begun to make its move.

***

-My lord….-

A low, chilling echo.

The unpleasant, repulsive voice could be heard even with ears covered and eyes shut.

*Shnk!*

The strongest man in humanity was fighting, and fighting again, against countless enemies, all alone.

To protect humanity, and to escape his own trauma.

I see his childhood.

From a young age, he held a sword instead of a pen, striving to become stronger for the sake of strangers in a foreign land.

To protect someone.

I understand. For I was once the same.

But in his wake, countless deaths stained the ground.

Among them were ordinary demonkin.

They are no different from humans.

Bound only by the System, they are simply trying to live their lives.

Only their appearance differs from humans.

But the strongest of humanity, the Hero, attacks anything that shows him hostility.

In his wake, only death remained.

-Our throne….-

-Save us….-

-O Demon King of salvation….-

Im Jae-joon opened his eyes.

The whispers of vanished lives, of departed souls, swirled endlessly around him.

-The Crown of Sins has been summoned.-

Im Jae-joon read the message that appeared as soon as he opened his eyes.

A cold crack formed on his lips.

“Do you appeal to me only now?”

The demonkin cast out from the demon world lived as a species alongside humans.

Discriminated against and oppressed simply for their different appearance, the demonkin—a species, not monsters.

To begin the prelude to that war, Im Jae-joon was chosen by many systems as the 71st Demon King, Dantalian.

At the time, it was possible because there was no other leader to guide the demonkin besides him, and his renown was overwhelming.

They had told him to become a Demon King for the sake of salvation. They had promised him power.

But the System played a cruel trick. It summoned a being called the “Hero” to stand in the way of his path to supremacy.

In the end, Im Jae-joon was defeated by that overwhelming talent.

He thought he would be erased.

He foresaw that the Hero would inherit his great cause.

But as if his work was not yet finished, he was reincarnated in the modern era.

And he met the Hero again.

This time, they were not enemies. As true partners, the two decided to share the same dream.

Then, the Hero left their dimension to reclaim his holy sword. No, to save the people of another world who were in crisis.

After he left to fight Gamigin, Im Jae-joon had worried.

Could the Hero truly defeat Gamigin in battle?

Gamigin was one of the highest-ranking Demon Kings. And the Hero had left for that world alone, without a single soldier of his own.

He didn’t want to lose the comrade he had finally found. A comrade. Yes. The Hero was his comrade now—closer to him than a high-ranking Demon King like Gamigin.

Above all, the ideal the Hero held was one he shared.

Im Jae-joon went to the Saintess. He asked her to send him to the other world.

Upon returning to his old home, Im Jae-joon was shocked.

It was all in ruins.

It had been ravaged during the war between the Seven Kingdoms and his own demon army, but that was nothing compared to this.

It had now turned into a desolate wasteland where no one could live.

The world Demon King Gamigin desired was a world of the dead.

He felt a sense of revulsion at her attempt to negate all living things.

Im Jae-joon made his move.

He did not want to see this world fall to ruin. He would help the Hero.

Before he was a Demon King, Im Jae-joon was a man with an ideal, and this was not the world he envisioned.

In other words, his deliberation was over.

But the war had already begun.

Surveying the battlefield from a vantage point overlooking the capital, Im Jae-joon saw the Hero breaking through the Demon King’s army all by himself.

‘This is too much, even for him.’

Im Jae-joon prepared to use his power as a Demon King to intervene in the Hero’s war. But in that moment, he saw them.

The Salvation Knights. One hundred knights.

The knights who had spent their entire lives on the battlefield alongside the Hero defied death and stood on this ground once more.

Thanks to their efforts, the Hero reached Gamigin and took her head.

Witnessing the scene, Im Jae-joon felt a shiver run down his spine.

The Hero’s overwhelming martial prowess, his synchronization rate undiminished. And the people he had saved were cheering, chanting the Hero’s name as they escaped from despair.

His role was unnecessary. The Hero was already a perfect being.

After the war ended, Im Jae-joon entered the City of the Goddess.

With the city’s divine protection now gone, it was not difficult to enter.

Im Jae-joon looked down at the spot where Gamigin had died.

He could see the minuscule fragments of data that remained. They flowed and moved according to a set algorithm.

‘If only I had more power.’

A terrifying power that could make the impossible possible.

If he had more power, perhaps things could have been different.

Im Jae-joon picked up a fragment of Gamigin’s data.

The pieces, which would have soon burned away into nothing, entered his mouth.

As the morsel of dried, blood-caked flesh went down his throat, he could feel Gamigin’s will.

Im Jae-joon absorbed a portion of her power.

He returned to the modern world first. Not long after, the Hero returned as well.

Nothing had changed between them.

Each had done their part in their respective places.

But then, another incident occurred.

Im Jae-joon joined forces with the regressor.

The regressor was desperate, and Im Jae-joon did not want to lose the comrade he had worked so hard to gain.

No, he was a friend. Someone who could stand shoulder to shoulder with him.

The Hero, charging toward certain death.

Agares, the ruler of the East, was the strongest Demon King in existence.

True to his title of “immortal,” he was a figure of living history who had existed since the beginning of time.

‘This time, you’re in real danger, Hero.’

Even without the power of foresight, Im Jae-joon could sense the Hero’s impending death.

The doomsday clock generated by the Order System signified the Hero’s death.

The death of the Goddess’s child—the sole successor to the one god—would cause the dimension to collapse.

Whether the Hero himself was aware of it, he did not know.

“I will not be swayed by the likes of you.”

Im Jae-joon sneered coldly at the Order System displaying the message before him.

He would refuse the ‘choice’ they were forcing upon him.

“Olivier.”

Im Jae-joon contacted his aide.

“Summon all members of the Hanul Guild.”