Chapter 113
After meeting the Absolute Beings of Pandemonium, I arrived at the place where the Heavenly Demon resided, together with her.
A mountain valley where a fresh breeze blew through, and standing there was an old-fashioned hanok that did not quite suit the surrounding forest.
This was the place where the Heavenly Demon resided, and also the place where Yoo Sung-woo had spent his childhood in the past.
As I looked at this scenery, memories that were not mine slowly surfaced in my mind.
A strangely nostalgic feeling made my chest tighten.
Traces of a long passage of time remained throughout the hanok.
Small nicks carved into the pillars to check height.
Crude training equipment made for physical conditioning.
A massive rock engraved with fist marks.
I had felt it with Joo Sarang and in the Chamber of Solitude as well, but once again, it was not a very pleasant feeling.
A queasy sensation, as emotions that were not mine churned my insides without permission.
Before I knew it, the Heavenly Demon, who had opened the door of the massive hanok, spoke.
“When do you plan on standing there? Come inside.”
“Yes.”
Following her words, I stepped into the hanok.
The hanok consisted of a total of three buildings.
The main building where the Heavenly Demon resided, and the detached building I had used in the past.
And a storage building filled with various odds and ends.
From there, someone came trotting out.
“Welcome back.”
A small child who might barely reach up to one’s waist.
The child walked straight up to the Heavenly Demon and took her outer robe.
The Heavenly Demon, too, accepted the child’s attendance as if she were used to it.
Soon, the child’s gaze met mine.
The child politely bowed toward me.
“Hello.”
“Ah, hello?”
I turned my head and looked at the Heavenly Demon.
“She is a child I brought in as an attendant after sending you away. She’s quick-witted and good with work.”
Well, there was no way the Heavenly Demon would manage such a wide hanok herself.
At that moment, the Heavenly Demon asked,
“So then, what do you plan to do now? You won’t be able to return to the Academy. Are you thinking of going back to where you originally were?”
By ‘where I originally was,’ did she mean the studio apartment I used to live in?
I shook my head at her question.
“No. I don’t plan on returning there for the time being.”
“Then?”
“For now, I would like to stay here and receive your teachings again, Master.”
As if my words were unexpected, her pupils widened slightly.
To be honest, I hadn’t expected myself to say this out loud either.
Asking for guidance not from just anyone, but from the Heavenly Demon—unpredictable and feared by demons alike.
But as someone who had been expelled from the Academy, I had no other options.
Most of the game information I knew only applied within the Academy.
That was only natural, since the game’s stage was always the Academy.
To begin with, playable characters in Become a Hero were never expelled from school.
It wasn’t that there were no stages outside the Academy, but most of them were only used during special events.
In short, once I left the Academy, the advantages I had as a player were almost nonexistent.
The world would gradually grow harsher, and the enemies I would encounter in the scenario would grow stronger as well.
That meant I had to keep getting stronger, but unlike before, I could no longer rely on shortcuts or Hidden Pieces.
It would be nice if something like another Heart of the Demon happened to drop, but that wasn’t an easy thing.
And so, the one I thought of was the Heavenly Demon.
Putting aside how eccentric and dangerous the Heavenly Demon was, there simply was no better option.
She was one of the Absolute Beings of this world, and the greatest master there was.
More than anything, there was something I had realized through the Berid incident.
No matter how desperately I struggled while remaining at a gamer’s level, the limits of my ability were clear.
I was weak.
At this level, I would never be able to reach the happy ending I desired.
To do that, I needed to become even stronger.
After hearing my words, she fell silent for a moment.
Even so, I was still her disciple—she wouldn’t heartlessly drive me away, right?
Fortunately, she did not chase me out.
“Training will begin tomorrow. When the hour of the Rabbit arrives tomorrow, come to the training grounds.”
After receiving a promise of training from the Heavenly Demon, I arrived at the room that Yoo Sung-woo had used in the past.
A neat room with nothing particularly special about it.
I lay down on the bed and took a moment to catch my breath.
Even though my body wasn’t especially tired, my eyes gradually closed.
It seemed that meeting those higher-ups earlier had drained my mental strength more than I thought.
But I couldn’t sleep yet.
Jumping up from my spot, I slapped my cheeks to chase away the drowsiness.
There were still things I needed to take care of.
Lia and Seo Da-hee were probably very worried because I had suddenly disappeared.
For their sake as well, I needed to quickly let them know I was safe.
I was also curious about how the others were doing.
I reached into my pocket and took something out.
It was a fragment of Lia’s heart.
I hadn’t expected that the piece I received after shaving some off to treat Instructor Kang Jae-seok would be this helpful.
I had destroyed my original phone out of concern for being tracked, after all.
Holding Lia’s heart fragment in my hand, I focused my mana.
‘Lia, can you hear me?’
[……Groom? Is that you, Groom? You’re okay, right? What on earth happened that you didn’t answer any calls at all!]
Perhaps because of the distance, there was some static-like noise mixed in, but I could faintly hear Lia’s voice.
‘I’m sorry. My phone broke.’
[Do you think I only tried contacting you through your phone? I contacted you with this fragment too, but you didn’t answer! Do you know how worried I was, thinking something had gone wrong?]
I probably hadn’t received the fragment’s call because I had been with the high-ranking executives of Pandemonium until just recently.
That place had turned into something like a sanctuary due to the demonic energy unconsciously emitted by powerful demons.
There was a faint tremor of moisture in Lia’s voice.
[You’re always making people worry! Da-hee was almost in tears.]
She really must have been worried.
‘I didn’t expect things to turn out like this either. I’m sorry.’
At that moment, Lia’s voice cut off briefly.
[What are you saying, Da-hee? Don’t say something so pointless! You were really worried……!]
It seemed that Seo Da-hee and Lia were exchanging words with each other.
Not long after, Lia’s voice could be heard once again.
[Anyway, everyone is worried. They said Joo Sarang is completely out of it?]
‘I was going to ask about that anyway. How are Park Siwoo and the others doing?’
[Um…….]
Lia dragged out her words as if choosing what to say.
Had they really taken quite a shock after all?
Helena too, and Park Siwoo as well, both had pretty fragile mental states.
In Park Siwoo’s case, when he found out in the past that the security guard was a Demon, he had been dejected for quite a while.
As for Helena, there was no need to even mention it.
She had trauma related to Demons.
She was probably feeling a considerable sense of betrayal toward me right now.
At that moment, Lia spoke again.
[Honestly, I’m not really sure. I was too busy being investigated. Da-hee had basically died once and come back to life, right? I had to explain that.]
‘Ah.’
Yeah, that made sense.
They would have had to start by explaining why I had secretly taken her away, and how I had saved her afterward.
[Yoo Iseo helped a lot. She shared in advance how we should explain things too.]
‘So nothing serious happened?’
[You don’t need to worry that much.]
That was a relief.
It seemed Lia didn’t know the detailed situation of the other kids.
That couldn’t be helped.
To avoid Seo Da-hee’s identity being exposed, I had deliberately kept Lia separated as much as possible from kids like Park Siwoo or Helena.
[Does it bother you?]
I couldn’t answer Lia’s question right away.
It did bother me.
Maybe it was guilt.
I had been so preoccupied with stopping Berid’s scheme that I had drawn in incident after incident, yet hadn’t even given a proper explanation once.
Maybe the reason they hadn’t grown as much as they could have wasn’t entirely their fault.
If I had paid just a little more attention…….
That kind of regret suddenly surfaced, but I shook my head and organized my thoughts.
It’s never too late for regret.
Rather, the more constructive thing was to support them with everything I had so they could grow more from now on.
To do that, I first needed to create an environment where I could control them to a certain extent.
‘Lia, from now on, remember what I say carefully and pass it on to Yoo Iseo.’
I told Lia about the things that had come up in Pandemonium.
[So basically, for three months, we have to put the Groom’s friends who are still at the Academy through special training?]
‘No, not just them. Da-hee senior, Yoo Iseo, Joo Sarang. You too. All of you need to become stronger than you are now.’
As I said that, I conveyed to Lia the information I had obtained through my knowledge of the game.
Information I had discovered after pouring tens of thousands of hours into it back when I was a player.
It was a fairly long explanation, but Lia memorized it in an instant with her exceptional intellect.
‘Did you memorize everything?’
[For now. But how do you know all of this?]
‘I got some information from Pandemonium, and from here and there. I’ve never been wrong so far, have I?’
[I trust you. The problem is persuading the others. But can all the other friends really do all of this? There won’t be enough time.]
‘It’s more than possible.’
It was a schedule I had already tested by running characters during my time as a player.
Of course, this wasn’t a game, so it would be mentally and physically exhausting.
Above all, I was going to give them extreme experiences using the Fragment of the Gate.
Time flowed several times faster there than in reality.
It was basically the Become a Hero version of the Room of Spirit and Time.
That was when Lia asked,
[But how are you planning to convey all of this? Park Siwoo is in the student council, so that’s fine, but there’s no way to reach the others.]
‘Why wouldn’t there be a way? We just make them join the student council.’
Since my identity had been exposed, I couldn’t return to the Academy.
However, many incidents were still happening there.
To properly control those incidents, being part of the student council was still the best option.
Yoo Iseo was there, but as enemies grew stronger, just like with the Berid incident, it would be impossible to handle things with her strength alone.
So Lia and Joo Sarang needed to become my substitutes and help Yoo Iseo.
The best way to do that was for those two to join the student council.
That way, they could hear about situations up close and respond accordingly.
[But would the Groom’s friends really try to join the student council?]
‘They probably will.’
They were characters who had taken leading roles in Become a Hero.
People who had to stand at the center of every incident and resolve them.
So they would inevitably be drawn into the student council, the center of all incidents.
‘If they don’t join, then we can leave Dan Chun-woo to the Sword Empress and Helena to Park Siwoo.’
[Got it.]
I promised Lia that I would contact her about once a week, told her to inform me immediately if there were any unusual signs or changes, and then ended the call.
When I looked outside, the sky had already been dyed red, painting the clouds.
What a killer view.
So this was what the Heavenly Demon looked at every day while living here.
The tangled thoughts that had been twisting like knotted thread vanished in an instant.
As I admired the scenery outside, I organized the things I needed to do over the remaining three months.
First and foremost was my own growth.
I needed to cultivate my strength through training with the Heavenly Demon.
At the very least, to the point where I wouldn’t grovel before Demons.
Second was dealing with the directives that would occasionally come down from Pandemonium.
I was a Demon to the extent that I could become a vessel.
There was no way they would just leave me alone after I had left the Academy.
This, too, would need to be handled within appropriate limits.
I didn’t want to do anything that would benefit Pandemonium if possible.
But just like how the Heart of the Demon had been damaged, actively involving myself in such tasks might become an important opportunity to dismantle Pandemonium’s schemes.
And the most important thing of all was, of course, helping the appearance of the third playable character.
Normally, it was something that would happen soon anyway, so I could have just left it alone.
But in this life, almost everything had occurred outside my expectations.
More than anything, in order to save Joo Sarang from Berid, hadn’t I told Lord Biden the location of the testing ground where the third playable character existed?
If the story followed its original course, Lord Biden would end up like a dog chasing a chicken, but I still needed to prepare for any possibility.
As I was organizing my thoughts like that, something I had forgotten suddenly came to mind.
Pandemonium’s treasure, said to be hidden somewhere in Baekdu Mountain.
It was information I had obtained from the target when I received Pandemonium’s second mission through the Heavenly Demon.
Of course, I didn’t know whether what existed in Baekdu Mountain was truly a treasure, but considering it was guarded with heavy security, it was surely something valuable.
Or perhaps a secret item that must never be revealed.
I hadn’t expected to return to Baekdu Mountain this soon, but since things had turned out this way, it would be good to investigate that as well.
With all those thoughts swirling as I organized them, I fell asleep, and at last, the day dawned when my first training with the Heavenly Demon would begin.