NOVEL NEXT Chapter 7
Chapter 7: That Damn Customer (2)
The man was dressed in medieval-style clothing.
He was wearing a polished white suit of armor, as if he were a knight, and held a massive greatsword in one hand.
The words "H Zone" were embedded in the building pillar.
The man and I faced each other in a dimly lit, shadowy corridor.
I didn’t think of him as just a cosplayer.
I considered him the key to overcoming this situation.
Someone who could provide some information about the unidentified phenomenon my sister and I were experiencing.
The man spoke in a voice full of complaints.
“This place is the Demon Realm... Demons really have terrible taste. It’s so unpleasant that I feel like leaving right away.”
“?”
What the hell is this guy?
Did he have a few drinks before coming here?
With his dark circles and unkempt hair, the man spewing nonsense looked like an alcoholic.
“A being without a Mana Heart can’t be called human. You look human, but you’re probably a demon wearing a human shell.”
“?”
“That trick might work on other magicians, but not on me. My eyes are special.”
There were two reasons why my sister and I were so bewildered.
One was because the man was spouting lines that only someone obsessed with anime would say, like a certain brave woman from Taiwan who said, ‘If it were Hero Himmel, he would have done the same.’
The second reason was that, even though the man spoke in a bizarre language that didn’t exist in this world, my sister and I could understand its meaning.
“Phantom Species...?”
Some Phantom Species take on human forms.
Like H-O-13, which resembles a slasher killer, or D-I-05, which can transform into a human.
But I denied the possibility that my sister, Naram, was one of them.
“He’s not a Phantom Species.”
Since I can devour Phantom Species and absorb their abilities, I always smell a sweet scent when standing in front of their isolation rooms.
An unbearable hunger takes over me.
However, I didn’t feel anything from this man.
The man was human.
Furthermore, he wasn’t influenced by Phantom Species.
Humans who have been affected by Phantom Species also carry a faint scent of them.
“If you had just stayed hidden in hell, you wouldn’t have ended up as prey for this Sword Hero. Today, I shall personally end your life. You may consider it an honor.”
“Don’t speak informally to me.”
I ignored my sister’s flustered “Seo-ho?”
The thing I hate most in this world is when someone I meet for the first time speaks down to me.
If it’s meant to pick a fight, I don’t care if they’re an 80-year-old grandma—I’ve decided I won’t forgive them.
I, Woo Seo-ho, have vowed to treat everyone equally, regardless of gender or age, except for my sister, Naram.
“Sis, hold on a sec.”
I cut off communication with Veritas.
Now, I’m going to show him what it truly means to be a believer in equality.
“Hey, you dumb bastard. When you meet someone for the first time, you should at least say hello. Talking about demons, the Demon Realm, and being a Sword Hero—do you think that’s an appropriate thing to say to someone you just met? You stupid fuck. Can’t you see? This isn’t the Demon Realm, it’s a research facility, and you… you should be locked up in a mental hospital—”
I kindly shared some warm words with the man.
At that, he rubbed his chin with a somewhat bewildered expression.
After I finished my one-minute-long letter of curses, the man finally spoke.
“With that foul mouth of yours, you must be a demon.”
The man gripped his greatsword with both hands and took a stance.
“Speaking in an incomprehensible language, yet I can understand your meaning... A demon’s trickery is truly fascinating. Still, whether you’re just a demon with a big mouth or a truly strong one, I’ll find out soon enough. Of course, you’re weaker than me.”
The corners of the man’s mouth curled into a crescent moon shape.
He bent his knees and sprang forward like a coiled spring.
His explosive muscle movement was visible to the naked eye.
A researcher would have gone crazy witnessing this defiance of physical laws, but I was neither a researcher nor oblivious.
The man’s speed was inhuman.
I could only compare it to a feline predator sprinting across the African savanna.
I barely managed to dodge, but I was thrown to the ground and rolled.
As I scrambled to my feet, a sharp sting spread near my neck.
Blood trickled down from a clean, straight wound.
“You don’t have a Mana Heart, so you can’t use magic. You couldn’t even deploy a basic force field. With such an ordinary level of physical toughness, killing you won’t be difficult.”
This man wasn’t some mentally ill patient.
With that last strike, I realized the truth. Even if you gathered the 100 strongest men on Earth, they wouldn’t be able to take him down with bare fists.
He was an anomaly beyond common sense.
More like a beast in human skin than a human.
That’s why, when my sister showed me his eyes in the video earlier, I immediately knew they weren’t normal.
Eyes devoid of any joy in killing, frozen cold.
He had the same eyes as me.
All distractions disappeared.
The instinct for survival carved itself into my heart once more.
It wasn’t out of fear of death.
This man—if he stayed alive, he would surely harm my sister, Naram.
I gripped the handgun in my hand.
“A mysterious tool in an unfamiliar shape. I still can’t sense any mana, though. What do you intend to do with such a trinket?”
The man’s tone was flippant, but his eyes were filled with caution.
I pulled the trigger.
Bang! Bang!
The muzzle spat fire, roaring like thunder.
As a novice shooter, I aimed for the body.
Propelled at high velocity by gunpowder and spinning due to rifling, the bullet had terrifying penetration power.
His armor was pierced effortlessly, and my shots hit the man, but they didn’t inflict any meaningful damage.
The man only grimaced slightly, showing no signs of the pain one would expect from being shot.
However, the stopping power was undeniable.
After confirming his momentary hesitation, I switched the fire selector to full-auto and pulled the trigger again.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
“Gah!?”
Practicing my shooting had paid off. More than half of my shots landed.
“Are you fucking kidding me…?”
Unfortunately, despite emptying two whole magazines, the man remained standing with ease.
Guns were useless.
Beyond his pierced armor, no wounds were visible.
I grabbed the shotgun slung across my back with both hands.
The man before me was performing miracles that only a Phantom Species should be capable of.
Rationality, ingrained in me as a human, told me he wasn’t human.
But my instincts as a predator insisted he was.
Unlike my confusion, the man seemed rather impressed.
“Truly astonishing. This weapon has the power to easily kill a nameless magician. To possess such lethality and speed without mana—it’s truly a demon’s tool. But, unlucky for you, my mana-blessed force field cannot be pierced by any form of dark magic.”
Correction.
This bastard isn’t a beast.
He’s a mysterious monster, like a Phantom Species.
I lunged at him and fired my shotgun repeatedly.
Each time I pulled the trigger, a rain of bullets slammed into him, forcing his body backward—but he showed no signs of falling.
When the last shell in my drum magazine was spent and my trigger pull no longer caused any recoil—
“Return to hell.”
The man’s blade delivered me death.
* * *
“Fucking hell.”
I woke up in the hallway.
The man I thought was the key to gaining information turned out to be a crazed zealot, one who identified innocent people as demons and tried to judge them.
If he were just an ordinary zealot, I could’ve silenced him with a single bullet.
But he was a monster—immune to bullets and absurdly strong, like a beast.
Seriously, fucking hell.
I checked Veritas and saw countless messages from my sister, Naram.
I opened the most recent one.
0_1_100 Kang Naram ▶ "Seo-ho, are you okay?? Are you dead??"
0_1_100 Kang Naram ▶ "I hear someone walking outside… What do I do??"
0_1_100 Kang Naram ▶ "See?! I told you we should’ve just hidden! Why did you have to go out and make things worse?! You’re really stressing me out right now, Seo-ho—"
It looked like I needed to calm her down.
0_4_138 Woo Seo-ho ▶ "I’m fine, I’m fine."
0_4_138 Woo Seo-ho ▶ "I won."
0_1_100 Kang Naram ▶ "Do you want to die??"
0_1_100 Kang Naram ▶ "The moment I step outside, you are so fucking dead."
...It seemed the only way to truly calm her down was to deal with that man.
I analyzed the situation.
The man didn’t know I had resurrected. I had the advantage of the first strike.
He was a monster that not even a hundred world champion fighters could defeat. Guns didn’t work on him.
I had no choice.
To kill a monster, I had to become one.
I had hoped to avoid this, but life isn’t about doing only what you like.
Sometimes, you have to force yourself to do what you hate.
I stared at the hologram—visible only to me, Woo Seo-ho.