Demon Lord Gallery

There was a saying like this.

Kill one person, you’re a murderer. Kill ten thousand, you’re a hero.

In the distant past, now barely remembered, when I was young. Seeing this childish statement floating around the internet, I had only one question.

‘If someone who kills ten thousand is a hero, what would you call someone who kills a hundred thousand, a million, ten million, or a hundred million?’

It was a question born from my immature fantasies and pure ignorance, but surprisingly many people answered it.

[Wouldn’t they be a mass murderer?]
ㄴ[You don’t have to look far, just look at Hitler]
ㄴ[Mein Führer…]
ㄴ[What’s with this guy’s ideology?]

[The extinction of humanity is humanity’s salvation…!]
ㄴ[You’re crazy]
ㄴ[Shh shh]

[But realistically, is it possible for one person to kill that many people in modern times? Honestly, in our advanced modern society, for someone to…]
ㄴ[True]

Mass murderer, pioneer, Hitler, savior, and so on.

I received all sorts of responses, from normal answers to those tinged with madness. I found them interesting and thought that one or all of these answers might be correct.

But now it was different.
I could assert with certainty that none of the answers I saw back then were correct.
The reason was simple.

It was because the word melted into a single sentence floating before my eyes, certainly not an illusion or a mirage, was telling me the answer.

The correct answer to ‘What do you call someone who has killed a hundred million people’ was none other than Demon Lord.

Where did it go wrong?

This was the question that came to mind as I wandered through a sea of ashes made up of collapsed and burned building debris.

Where did it go wrong? Where did I take the wrong path? Which choice was the wrong one?

The day the Gate opened?

Was that day the problem?

In a way, you could say so. After all, the root of all problems was the Gate and the magical beasts, collectively known as monsters, that sprang out of it.

If I had to summarize that day in one word, it would be like a common fusion fantasy novel.

Gates open, monsters rampage, people with supernatural abilities appear to subdue the gates and monsters, and a protagonist-like figure becomes overpowered and saves the world – that kind of novel.
But damn it, reality wasn’t a novel.

There were no overpowered protagonists. Unlike the common perception in novels, the Gates didn’t disappear after subjugation, but kept trying to multiply like cancer cells.

Useful ability users only appeared 5 years after the first Gate opened, and that 5-year period was enough time for humanity to be reduced to a quarter of its original population.

Of course, I was lucky enough to be among that surviving quarter.

If I had to say, it was nothing short of a miracle.

Surviving for 5 years in a city reminiscent of a post-apocalyptic wasteland, avoiding monsters that could have jumped out of a cheap horror movie and cannibalistic bandits – if this wasn’t a miracle, what was?

“Hah…..”

The more I thought about it, the more I couldn’t help but laugh bitterly.

What miracle? It would have been much easier if I had died then.

If I had died there at that time, I surely wouldn’t have had to experience this sorry state I’m in now.

There’s a reason why people sometimes say it would have been better to die.

If I had known the future back then, if I had known I would awaken as an ability user, maybe I would have chosen suicide.

The day I awakened as an ability user is a day I remember vividly even after all these years have passed.

That day I awakened as an ability user.

Come to think of it, that day was also one of the causes that led me to my current situation.

If I had been given an ordinary ability, or better yet, if I hadn’t been given any ability at all, I would have lived a much more normal life than now.

Of course, there’s a high chance I might have died a violent death somewhere before that.

Anyway, from the day I awakened, one modifier followed my name.

Gate Closer.

I was the only ability user on Earth, no, among all of humanity, who could close Gates.

What happened after that, well, everyone can probably guess.

I traveled around the world with other ability users. We closed Gates, saved people, and spent days like heroes from a cartoon.

To be honest, up until then, I had no regrets. Far from regrets, I was full of hope and confidence.
Because I believed the path I was on was the right one. Because I believed I could save the world.
But all of that was a misjudgment and arrogance.

Boom─!

As I immediately turned my gaze to check the source of the noise, I saw a scene that had now become a ruin.

“Another dud-”
What snapped me out of my contemplation was an unexploded ordnance.

These damn duds.

The missiles and shells the whole world had poured into this place were more than the total used in World War I and World War II combined, so encountering duds was natural, if anything.

The problem was that due to their annoyingly good performance, even after more than a decade, a couple of them were still exploding somewhere every day.

Sighing, I slowly expanded the realm of my qi sense.

An invisible domain that others couldn’t feel or see suddenly expanded and enveloped the area where the dud had exploded, and soon the continuously expanding domain crossed the horizon.

The time it took for the invisible domain to cover the entire Earth was about 2 minutes.

As soon as the domain enveloped the whole Earth, I could derive one piece of information, one conclusion.

It was the same information and conclusion as yesterday, the day before, a month ago, a year ago, and 10 years ago.

[Intelligent life forms within domain: 1]

I was the only intelligent life form existing on this Earth.

What’s the point of saying more? This was the cause and reason for my regret and contemplation.

Living alone on Earth. It’s just ridiculously funny.

Ah, of course, it’s not an apocalypse where humanity has gone extinct except for me. They’ve just fled somewhere in that shining night sky to live.

If you had to classify it, it would be SF or space opera, I suppose.

As I lifted my head to look at the night sky, unusually bright stars caught my eye.

Not just one or two, but dozens of star clusters.

Those stars drawing thin lines across the night sky were the very proof of humanity’s survival.

The inventions of humanity who fled Earth, and sleepless watchers solely for me.

Collectively known as the tactical surveillance satellite Argos.

Thanks to those 101 satellites in geostationary orbit, I was being observed 24 hours a day by someone somewhere in that space without any privacy, but it was natural, if anything.

After all, I was the murderer and traitor who killed half of humanity and banished them to that space.

Betrayer of humanity, mass murderer, madman, dictator.

Hope of humanity, Gate Closer, hero, savior.

I was the protagonist of all these incompatible modifiers.

The reason for these modifiers was simple.

I was a savior because I saved humanity from the terror of the Gates, and a mass murderer because I killed half of humanity.

I saved humanity because I believed it was right, and I killed half of humanity because I believed it was necessary.

It wasn’t a massacre without reason.

There was a reason, it was an unavoidable choice, and even if I were to go back and stand at that crossroads of choice again, I would kill half of humanity without hesitation.

That’s how compelling the reason was.

That doesn’t mean I’m trying to justify myself with ugly rationalizations like being a necessary evil or sacrificing myself.
At least the fact that I killed them with my own hands remains unchanged.

However, I couldn’t stop the regret and lamentation.

19 years, 364 days.

It had been exactly 19 years and 364 days since humanity, except for me, disappeared from Earth.

I certainly thought I had discarded emotions long ago, and I thought the same when I killed people, but it was a mistake to underestimate the wear of time.

Before I knew it, emotions of regret and sadness had slowly crept into me, and now even the feeling of loneliness was seeping in.

Sometimes I even felt lonely enough to want to die.

I was merely human and still a naive child.
I was not a sage, nor a superman.

“….Weak bastard”

Death was not an option for me.
Having chosen this path, I had to endure for at least 30 more years.

‘Was there no other solution?’

It’s a question I keep asking myself hundreds and thousands of times, even though I know there wasn’t.

After a long while of foolishly asking myself this question over and over again.

Beep beep beep beep─!

A small mechanical alarm sound was heard.

Turning my gaze from the night sky I had been staring at blankly, I looked at my wrist to see an old, worn-out military watch.

A model from 70 years ago, produced in 2050.

This watch, almost a relic, was telling me one thing.
The number 19 years/364 days had changed to 20 years.

“20 years…..”

I didn’t think about the years that had passed. Only worries about the 30 years ahead rushed in like a flood.

“Ha-”

30 years. Could I endure it? Time felt particularly heavy today.
In the midst of lamenting the weight of time, it happened.

-Qualification confirmed and met
-Awakening conditions met

Suddenly, two sentences appeared in mid-air, naturally drawing my attention.

‘What is this?’

A mental attack? A new enemy? A hologram? An illusion?

The sentences floating in the air looked like the status windows that appear in novels, but to me, they were just unfamiliar things.
After all, there were no such things as status windows in this trash world.

Therefore, these sentences floating in the air now meant either I was seeing things, or there was some kind of external intervention.

[ approval request……Qualification confirmed…….Approval complete]
[Information restriction level 1 granted]

The air continued to spit out sentences, regardless of my reaction.

‘Manmajeon? What’s with this approval request and approval?’

As I watched the increasing sentences, my bewilderment only grew, far from understanding the situation.

I had no way of knowing what on earth it was talking about.

And what put an end to my bewilderment was the last sentence that popped up, and a word mixed in it.

[Welcome to the Demon Lord Gallery]

“…..Demon Lord?”

Demon Lord? What nonsense is this?