– *Slaughter* Schlus Hainkel dead?
– *Suddenly* engulfed in purple light and ‘annihilation’
“Ah, shoot…”
Emilia crumpled the morning newspaper and buried her head in her hands.
Ignoring all the palace’s press guidelines, the media was busy reporting this bombshell in detail.
While Schlus Hainkel was visiting the Lichtenburg Mansion, he disappeared along with the second daughter, engulfed by purple light.
That was the common explanation in all the articles.
But there were also outrageous claims from the media wondering what they were doing in the second daughter’s room or if it was a self-made act.
“He’s not dead. There’s been no corpse.”
Emilia took a deep breath and cupped her hands at her mouth.
She couldn’t accept that Schlus was dead until she saw his lifeless body with her own two eyes.
No, he had once died and come back to life, so she couldn’t acknowledge it even if she saw his body.
Schlus returns alive.
Because he promised.
That he would never die.
“Please…”
Emilia wept, tears streaming down her face as she prayed desperately to the sky.
*
“Your Excellency. The Imperial Knights are rushing to stabilize the chaos.”
“Ugh. Is Sir Cain coming personally?”
“Yes, Your Excellency.”
“Tell him to stay down south. The public sentiment there is more precarious right now…”
Aria glanced at the pile of reports stacked high on her desk and felt her head spinning.
Schlus Hainkel was dead.
To be precise, he had vanished.
It had been less than 24 hours, and chaos was already erupting across the nation.
First, the Pope’s office, which had been groveling at the palace, suddenly straightened up and pulled in four Inquisitors to station in Monarch at the northern border.
It seemed they were planning to forcibly depose the Pope and restore the old papal office.
If Schlus Hainkel had been around, sending him to resolve the situation would have been easy, but without him, it required moving a regiment of the Imperial Army to attempt a solution.
Moreover, the disgruntled officials in the palace began to revolt.
Most of them were those who had been purged by Schlus Hainkel and demoted from their positions, and they even declared a strike, demanding their old positions back.
Additionally, the military’s atmosphere was also troubling.
General Roman, confirmed for promotion to Commander in Chief, faced a rebellion from the generals.
Of course, they had no way to oust Roman, but neither could Roman fully control them.
With the tactical strategies from the southern rebellion under re-evaluation and Schlus Hainkel, who was touted as a genius of grand strategy, now gone, Roman’s command lost support from the generals.
Roman would surely regain his grip on the situation soon, but in the meantime, the chaos was inescapable.
“Schlus Hainkel, you brat. I thought you were just goofing off all the time…”
Aria’s head throbbed as she tried to grasp all the various problems.
It was astounding how much conflict had been suppressed just by Schlus Hainkel’s presence.
Trying to manage it all as a decree from Aria herself was a monumental hassle.
“Your Excellency.”
“What is it?”
Just then, a courtier entered, hesitating.
From the looks of it, it couldn’t be anything too serious.
“Upon searching through legends and folklore, it seems like what happened yesterday is similar to—”
“Tsk. Just shove it down somewhere below.”
“Yes, understood.”
The courtier left, and as Aria tried to look over the reports again, her eyes widened.
She realized the report had just come from the urgent investigation she ordered last night.
In a panic, Aria rummaged through the mountain of papers and finally spotted the paper the courtier had left behind.
She quickly skimmed through the top.
– Not detected by barriers or observation spells: presumed ability not bound by time and space
– Purple light: there are legends stating that the sky was filled with purple light on the day the Majin invaded
– No corpse found: presumed to be forcibly moved somewhere
– Overall, presumed to be similar to the sword Durandal that appears in legends capable of cutting through dimensions
“Haha…”
It was utterly ridiculous.
Just a mismatched report tying yesterday’s incident to the capabilities of a legendary sword that might not even exist.
But no matter how she looked at it, this report described the bizarre event perfectly.
“If this is true, he might be alive.”
If he crossed over to another world through a dimensional gap, it meant he was still alive.
Then, if he found a way to cut through dimensions in that world, Schlus could definitely come back.
Aria held onto that hope.
*
Her whole body froze.
Her vocal cords didn’t respond, and it felt as if she was stuck to the spot.
A formless something, akin to fear, pressed down on me.
“Th-that person…”
I hurriedly pointed to Julia standing in front of me.
Even so, my gaze was directed at the sky.
A man with a face identical to Schlus Hainkel.
He merely looked down at us with an eerily cold expression.
‘Is he the Schlus of this world?’
No. Perhaps he could be Schlus Hainkel without my embodiment.
Although he showed no malice for now, I swallowed nervously, unsure of what he might do.
Thinking about the incredibly fast magic that had just struck the Untier, launching a surprise attack on him would be a foolish move.
The Schlus Hainkel of this world seemed much stronger than me.
He slowly descended and landed softly on the ground before taking a deep breath.
And his first words were—
“Wow! A person! A living person! How long has it been!”
“…”
He completely broke the tension.
The terrifying majesty that had frozen me just moments ago vanished, and he approached me with open arms, grinning like a village idiot.
“This is interesting! Now that I see it, aren’t you another me? With that attire, I guess you must still be in school?”
“Who are you…?”
“Who am I? I’m you. You are me. Can’t you tell?”
“I’m asking what happened here. This system I knew was not a ruin like this.”
“Oh… So you came from the past, huh? Hmm. Seems that way.”
Is this guy my future self?
I don’t want to be this dazed.
He nodded as if he realized and stepped closer to us.
“Julia…”
“Y-yes.”
“Eisburg? Lichtenburg? Or maybe Waffenberg? Or maybe—”
“It’s Lichtenburg.”
“Lichtenburg. I see. You came from its most glorious era.”
As he reached for Julia’s face, I smacked his hand away.
He snickered and moved back, then plopped down on a large rock.
“Man, it’s too gloomy here.”
“What…?!”
As he casually twirled his fingers, the sun began to rise suddenly.
It hadn’t even been an hour since sunset!
Incredible things just kept happening.
With another gesture, a label-less wine bottle appeared in mid-air.
“Care for a drink?”
“…”
With yet another wave, a wine glass appeared in his other hand.
I silently accepted the glass from him.
He indifferently popped the cork and tilted the bottle to fill my glass.
This Schlus Hainkel from this world filled his glass with blood-red wine and inhaled deeply, savoring the aroma before taking a sip.
“Did I come here because I was struck by Durandal?”
“You know that well.”
“If it’s in that era, there must be a lot of confusion going on.”
“First of all, there’s something I need to ask. Are you me? So I’m—”
“Exactly. I, the embodiment of the writer Kim Jin-woo, have embodied Schlus Hainkel. It seems we are very similar beings from a world split by a trivial divergence in time, or perhaps we are the same person from different timelines.”
Regrettably, I felt the same.
A different outcome twisted out of a trivial thing in my world.
Or perhaps this was the future that lay ahead of me.
That seemed to be this world.
“You look like you need an explanation.”
“Please.”
“Alright. I don’t know how it was in your world, but in our world, there was a time when everything was going smoothly. With nothing but the determination to prevent the world’s end and see the ending, I rose to a prestigious position in the empire and allied the Great Forest and the kingdom in preparing for the war against the Majin. Except for a slight twist concerning the desert elves, everything went really well.”
Chills ran down my spine.
If not for the desert story, it felt strikingly similar to my current situation.
But the persistent gaze from him toward Julia unnerved me, so I stood protectively in front of her, holding her hand tightly.
“Where did it all go wrong? I can no longer remember. Anyway, something started to go awry. The elves invaded with a vast army, the federations disbanded, and rebellions broke out everywhere… At that point, I couldn’t stop it anymore. Emilia was assassinated—she went out to shop and was killed by an assassin. The Flechette Mansion was burned down by the Crows, and Iris was killed. Trie died from a fatal injury while fighting against the treacherous Imperial Great Sword. Just when the elixir’s stock ran out.”
“Wh-what about sister Erica?”
“Erica… No, I don’t want to talk about how everyone died anymore.”
“…”
I wished to dismiss it as a lie.
That was how hard it was to believe the future.
But what reason did he have to lie to me?
At least in this world, it seemed to be confirmed real events.
“In the end, I was the only one who survived… I felt like I was persistently searching and fighting, but when I collected my wits, everyone by my side was already dead. It all happened so abruptly that I can’t pinpoint where I made the mistake.”
“What about that power you gained?”
“Oh, this?”
Having drunk five or six glasses by now, he summoned a new wine bottle from thin air and uncorked it.
It didn’t just appear as a wine bottle and glass.
To my eyes, it seemed like a power that could be deemed omnipotent.
“It’s the power of the Majin.”
“The power of the Majin?”
“Yep. Having lost all my friends and loved ones, I had no choice but to flee. By then, the entire continent was overrun by the Asylum. Moreover, with the Majin joining in to exterminate my forces… Many people who aided my escape ended up dead. Duke Cain, General Roman, and even Professor Relic… Ugh. But let’s skip that. In any case, I evaded the Asylum’s watch and sharpened my blade for revenge. But as I thought more, I realized there was only one way to strike back.”
“To steal the Majin’s powers?”
“Exactly. Seems we think alike.”
“…”
It felt similar.
Just hearing that made my irritation rise.
“I targeted a Madman among the Majin. He doesn’t know how to stop once his eyes turn wild. So I prepared thoroughly and executed a surprise attack, eventually beheading him. With a human body!”
Schlus Hainkel said proudly, slapping his chest.
“Then I crushed his heart and absorbed his powers. There were some complex spells binding him, but who cares? As you know, once you use the ability, you can unravel everything. So I fully absorbed his authority and became a Majin. An ageless Majin with destructive power. Since then, I’ve wiped out every other Majin who dared to come at me.”
“So you became the only Majin?”
“Yeah. I became the last remaining Majin and gathered all powers into one place. That’s what this ability is. There’s no absolute limit, but it’s powerful enough to be seen as omnipotent by humans.”
“Did you destroy this world?”
“Right. Once I became the only Majin, people suddenly began to idolize me. They called me the god destined to rule humanity in a new world. But they didn’t realize that all my loved ones had been killed. I wiped them all out. Not one was spared. And yet, the ending didn’t trigger. It seems that destroying the continent doesn’t count as an ending. Looking back now, it was a foolish act. I should have left something behind. If not a single person remains, Julia can’t be reincarnated… Then I stayed alone for about 100,000 years? During that long time, I was entirely alone.”
“…”
This was madness.
Thinking about the Schlus Hainkel of this world made me reevaluate everything.
After all, living alone for 100,000 years and still having sanity would be the real anomaly.
Sure, he didn’t seem to harbor any malice, but there was an unmistakable air of danger about him.
Almost like a ticking time bomb that could explode with just a nudge.
“Anyway, it’s so good to finally see a person. I’m practically a god here, you know? So if there’s something you want, I can create just about anything for you. Except for people. Hahaha!”
“We don’t need that. Can’t you send us back to our original world?”
“Hah… I knew you’d say that. I had hoped you’d stay a bit longer.”
“Is there a way?”
“There is. Let’s make a deal, splendid version of myself.”
I thought he’d try to hold us back, but he surprisingly gave up more easily than expected.
Looking back, Julia seemed to breathe a sigh of relief, looking slightly pleased.
“Though Durandal is already shattered, if I use about 90% of my power, I can open a rift in dimensions once. You can go through it.”
“Then you can come too—”
“I can’t. I need to maintain the rift from outside with a remnant of Durandal.”
“Are you sure that’s alright? Using 90% means most of your power will vanish.”
“I’ll be fine. As long as the game isn’t too easy, it isn’t fun. I felt like trying a hard mode for a change.”
“Thanks for sending us off, giving up on omnipotence.”
“Our us?”
Suddenly, his expression twisted.
In that moment, my heart dropped like a rock.
A sensation similar to the fear I felt upon first seeing him pressed down on me.
“You’re going alone.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I said it’s a deal. Leave Julia with me, splendid version of myself.”
“…”
Things went awry.
And seriously so.
