Every strike I landed hit nothing but air—or worse, that disgusting, regenerating sludge.
"Damn it..." I hissed through clenched teeth, backpedaling as another shadowy limb slammed into the ground where I’d been a second ago. Snow and dirt exploded upward, raining down in black chunks.
My lungs burned. My mana reserves were slipping, and even dodging was starting to feel like trying to dance through a hurricane.
What should I do?
And then, of all times, my brain decided to remember something completely ridiculous—one of my old community posts.
Yeah. That one.
The one I made back when I still played this game on my couch, cursing at my monitor between midnight snacks.
Maybe... that was the way to kill this demon before.
I could almost see the post in my head:
> [Phase 1: The parasite demon pretends to be the real deal. It mimics a boss that manipulates shadows, copies famous attack patterns, and floods the area with fakes.]
[Conclusion: Crank up the monster sound to max. Don’t trust your eyes—focus on the sound instead.]
"Right..." I muttered under my breath. "So you’re all smoke and echoes, huh?"
The air split with a sharp, slicing noise.
—Shaaaak.
With that unpleasant hiss, the monster charged again—an avalanche of shadow and hatred tearing across the snowfield.
Amelia’s voice cut through the chaos from the rear line. "What are you doing?! Dodge, you idiot!"
She sounded genuinely panicked now. Which meant Velra was safely away and she finally had time to notice I was apparently suicidal.
I smirked, half to calm my nerves, half because I couldn’t resist.
"Your concern," I said, raising my hand lazily, "is unnecessary."
"You crazy—!"
Her words were drowned out as the shadow lunged.
The world seemed to stretch, the air freezing mid-motion. The monster’s enormous arm came down, blotting out the moon.
And then—nothing.
No impact.
The shadow tore straight through me.
For a heartbeat, I stood there—untouched, perfectly still—while the ground behind me shattered like glass.
"...Just as I thought," I murmured, a grin creeping up my face. "You’re not even real."
The massive figure flickered, its edges trembling. Where its arm had struck, the snow and soil remained untouched. Not a mark.
An illusion.
A damned good one—but still, a trick.
Freedman wasn’t attacking me directly. He was making me see myself dying before it even happened. That was his whole gimmick in the original game—overwhelming the player with fake cues until panic made them mess up.
But Freedman didn’t stop, he thought that I wasn’t yet awere of illusion.
How foolish.
Freedman moved again.
—Slurk.
His enormous body lunged forward, but the moment it reached me, it wavered—like smoke hitting a wall—and vanished into thin air.
Crack, crack!
The air filled with the harsh sound of grinding teeth. I darted back a few paces, boots skidding across the frozen ground, the wind biting against my face.
"Ah... baring your teeth at a king? How impolite," I said, exhaling slowly. "Not that they’d reach me anyway."
Freedman’s massive silhouette twisted violently, as if mocking my calm tone. He lunged again—slower this time—and I sidestepped, almost lazily. Another swing came, wide and uncoordinated. I ducked under it and spun away, boots brushing the snow.
After a few more dodges, I felt a flicker of embarrassment. Had I really panicked earlier over this?
I smirked, lowering my stance. My heart was steady now.
Compared to my master’s terrifying precision... or Alice’s blade that could slice the wind itself... this creature’s movements were clumsy, desperate.
"Too slow," I murmured.
Crack...
Freedman froze, his malformed jaw trembling. The sound of his fangs grinding filled the clearing again—frustration made tangible.
But what could I say?
I’d beaten this kind of thing hundreds of times before.
Every twitch, every pattern—it was all too familiar. His tells were the same as they’d been in the game. I knew exactly how long his recovery animation lasted after a missed swing, exactly where to stand to bait his lunge.
In another life, I’d written entire strategy guides about this kind of thing.
Not that anyone read them.
The thought made me chuckle. "Guess all those wasted hours weren’t a total loss."
A random voice flickered in my head—faint, distant, almost like a radio signal breaking through static.
> [Senior, I’ve sent the report material—]
[How PPT (Presentation Preparations Panic) Works—]
I blinked.
The intrusive thought of a college presentation three days away hit me out of nowhere.
’Right... that’s definitely not real. Just a side effect of blood loss and trauma.’
I sighed, shaking my head. "Even dying memories haunt me with deadlines."
The monster hissed again, twitching violently.
"Alright, back to business."
My hand slipped into my coat, fingers brushing against the cold hilt of a familiar weapon.
Inside the butler’s uniform, hidden in a concealed pocket, rested a dagger darker than midnight.
It was light, perfectly balanced, and wickedly sharp—an old friend in a world that wanted me dead.
I twirled it once, feeling the comforting weight settle into my grip.
The faint gleam of obsidian steel caught the moonlight as I whispered, almost fondly—
"Time to start cooking."
The wind shifted.
Freedman’s shadow quivered, uncertain.
And I smiled, my stance lowering, eyes locked on the beast before me.
"Let’s see who’s the real predator now."
***
"What... what is that?"
Amelia’s voice wavered as she stared ahead, her staff trembling slightly in her grip.
In front of her loomed a nightmare.
A shadow—massive, formless, and writhing—towered over the battlefield like a living mountain. Its every movement sent shivers through the ground, snow cascading from the trees as if the world itself recoiled from its presence.
And there, standing alone beneath that colossal form, was him.
Julies.
The figure who refused to yield, even as darkness tried to swallow everything around him.
The sight was unreal—something torn straight out of an ancient myth, the kind bards would embellish for centuries. A single man facing a monster that blotted out the sky.
Except this wasn’t a story of light versus darkness.
Both of them—man and beast—were demons.
"The parasites..." Amelia whispered, her lips barely moving. "They were supposed to be a weaker branch among the demon races, weren’t they?"
Her words carried disbelief more than curiosity.