Chapter 245

Chapter 245
Chapter 245

—

The Man Named Park Hyunmyeong

“…This really is a godforsaken, trash failure of a game.”

The room was bathed in total darkness.

The man, Park Hyunmyeong, let out a heavy, frustrated breath, his forehead deeply creased.

The ‘Game Over’ text glowing on his computer screen was a sight so familiar it no longer sparked any real irritation.

“That damn Andrew.”

The source of his headache was Priest Andrew.

He was a clergyman at the charity house who performed acts of mercy in the ‘Garden of the City’ within the Balan Kingdom.

Because he provided a massive amount of tasks that boosted one’s Honor, he was a mandatory stop for any player attempting an ‘Honor Farm’!

Most of his requests were repetitive chores involving simple manual labor, but the nature of the tasks shifted once a player surpassed 300 completions.

‘Exactly how much harder is this going to get?’

The difficulty spiked drastically, yet the compensation remained pitifully static.

Consequently, he was infamous as a primary NPC to avoid at all costs once a player hit their target Honor stats.

Many players had tested their luck, convinced a ‘hidden quest’ existed, but they eventually threw in the towel due to the spiraling difficulty and the lack of rewards.

—It’s just a drain on your time and resources. He’s clearly just an NPC designed to troll players. Is he the only one like that in Pangaea?

In this game, a single death meant the permanent deletion of the character.

Since no one could justify wasting time on a dead end, the challenges stopped.

With one exception.

Park Hyunmyeong.

“Ah, hell. This is definitely a chain quest.”

He rubbed his scalp aggressively.

The reason Park Hyunmyeong refused to walk away from Priest Andrew was quite basic.

He possessed knowledge that the rest of the player base lacked.

“He has a secret daughter. I’m trying to save her. So why won’t he just ask for help?”

Andasar, who had transformed into an Eldritch.

He had accidentally discovered the location of Priest Andrew’s concealed child.

She was currently trapped within a blighted territory, and the situation demanded Priest Andrew’s direct involvement to shatter the seal and initiate a purification.

Yet, despite finishing hundreds of mindless tasks, Priest Andrew never once brought up his daughter.

He had experimented with all sorts of bizarre variables, wondering if there was a specific trigger, but the outcome never changed.

“《Eldritch’s Cursed Black Grimoire》… I can’t even start Unique-grade smithing without that.”

It was a crafting component for Unique-grade gear that dropped only by cleansing Andasar.

Priest Andrew was clearly the one holding the keys.

Still, the priest showed no signs of letting him in.

Of course, it was possible the content had been cut or simply hadn’t been patched in yet.

Maybe Priest Andrew didn’t have the key at all.

“…Didn’t you give me these tasks because you view yourself as someone without honor, and you’re waiting for a truly virtuous soul to show up?”

But Park Hyunmyeong’s perspective was different.

A man of the cloth with a daughter who had turned into a Lich.

A man who should have been stripped of his title was still out there healing people at the charity house.

He was more devoted and sincere than anyone else.

He never hesitated to help those in misery.

He was a man who saved everyone but was unable to rescue himself.

The individual who viewed himself as the most dishonorable was Priest Andrew-nim himself.

Could there be a more tragic figure?

……He was truly pathetic in the most heart-wrenching way.

‘I’m going to save you.’

That was his motivation.

He wanted to set Priest Andrew-nim free.

If other players had heard him, they would have laughed, asking what kind of ‘soul’ a mere NPC could possess.

But at some point, Park Hyunmyeong started finding a purpose in Pangaea that transcended a simple video game.

He wanted to save the world of the game itself.

Though he was just an unremarkable Person A in the real world, here in Pangaea, Park Hyunmyeong was the Knight King.

A man who lived for honor, crushed villainy, and rescued the innocent.

“If a thousand tries isn’t enough, I’ll go for ten thousand. If ten thousand fails… well, I’ll worry about that when I get there.”

Eventually, seeing no other path, he chose the most stubborn route possible.

And so, after logging in as Wilhelm and grinding through the repetitive tasks roughly three thousand times, Priest Andrew-nim—who had finally reached his limit—shared his most guarded secrets.

They drifted past.

Alongside Isabella, the recollections of various ‘Park Hyunmyeongs.’

Infinite instances of death, rescue, and legends.

The Park Hyunmyeong she witnessed was a man who simply did not understand how to quit.

It was a level of persistence that bordered on insanity.

The saga of Priest Andrew-nim was one of the greatest examples of that.

Park Hyunmyeong had managed to crack open a heart that had remained frozen to everyone else for years.

He reached that goal only after enduring endless trials and dodging death countless times.

Could she have done the same?

‘I couldn’t.’

…It would have been impossible for her.

She was certain that no one else in the world could have managed it.

It was an achievement that only belonged to Park Hyunmyeong.

Without him, Priest Andrew-nim would have lived in self-loathing until his final breath.

‘This is only the beginning.’

What was truly staggering was that this was just one of a mountain of challenges.

New memories began to swirl.

Isabella grabbed hold of one.

‘Isaac.’

Specifically, the chronicle of the ‘Brain-Dead Swindler Isaac.’

The tale of a criminal who had committed a string of atrocities and murders.

“What is this place? Why is the spawn point like this?”

Park Hyunmyeong immediately started complaining.

He had rolled a new character and left the starting location to chance, but he had ended up in a place he never expected.

“Nameless Slave Mine? This place is bigger than I imagined.”

Park Hyunmyeong tilted his head as he examined the map, rotating it to get his bearings.

Dozens of half-clothed NPCs were swinging pickaxes at ore veins.

However, the people overseeing the slaves were all fully equipped professional soldiers.

“Getting out of here won’t be easy…”

Main Quest 1: Survival.

The objective of the Main Quest never changed.

The moment a character was spawned, they were assigned the ‘Survival’ mission, and most were dumped into horrific circumstances.

That was why the actual success rate was rumored to be less than fifty percent.

It was a ridiculous game that forced players to face overwhelming lethality right out of the gate.

However, Park Hyunmyeong was a master of staying alive.

The survival rate for the characters he built for Main Quest 1 was nearly 99%.

Crack. Pop!

He cracked his knuckles and stretched his hands.

He rolled his neck and prepared to tackle the quest in earnest.

He blindsided the soldiers using stones he had sharpened into blades and navigated the mine using the most efficient path he had scouted.

He nearly died three times during the escape, but he survived each moment with mechanical skill that was nothing short of perfection.

Eventually, after stripping a soldier and stealing his uniform, he managed to walk out of the mine undetected.

“It was a hidden ‘Mine City’ that wasn’t marked on any map. No wonder I hadn’t seen it before.”

Only after his escape did he uncover the truth about the facility.

Pangaea contained several of these secret cities.

The ‘Mine City’ was one of them.

From what he could gather, it was a site where people were snatched, jailed, and worked to death.

“…Wow, this place is truly rotten.”

The more he learned about the city’s inner workings, the more disgusted he became.

It was a breeding ground for absolute corruption.

Tainted priests from the Church of the Goddess and high-ranking nobles from multiple kingdoms were all in on it.

In exchange for their silence, they divided the riches pulled from the earth.

While such places weren’t unheard of in Pangaea, this was the worst of the worst he had encountered so far.

“This is getting interesting.”

In a way, this worked in his favor.

He had intended to play this character as a ‘Villain’ anyway.

If the Operator was actually monitoring the game, they would have to intervene if an entire city was wiped off the map.

Especially a city this significant… with so many powerful people involved, surely there would be a server-wide announcement?

The plan started there.

The scheme to erase this massive city of sin by collapsing the mine.

One by one, he hunted the conspirators from the bottom to the top, killing and robbing them until he finally succeeded in burying the Mine City.

As a result, the slaves were freed, but the powerful survivors of the mine’s collapse began hunting for ‘Isaac’ with murderous intent.

He had made far too many enemies.

Unless he could get his hands on a high-tier potion to change his face, he was a walking dead man.

“…Is this really a godforsaken, trash failure of a game?”

Despite the chaos, not a single system notice appeared.

Shaking his head, he logged out in a safe zone.

And Park Hyunmyeong never had a reason to log back in as Isaac.

Until they crossed paths in the Yokai City of Kramdel, there had been no reason for them to meet.

It was a truly bizarre realization.

The memories of Park Hyunmyeong controlling Isaac.

Isaac, who was suffering from Divine Possession, had no memory of the time Park Hyunmyeong was in control.

Later, when he regained his autonomy, he found himself a wanted man and eventually wandered into Kramdel.

‘If he hadn’t been possessed…’

He would have definitely perished.

Isaac would be dead.

In that nightmare of a mine.

Was that all?

That hellish operation would still be running to this day.

‘It wasn’t just Isaac.’

……That wasn’t the only anomaly.

Those who went through Divine Possession.

The individuals Park Hyunmyeong had steered.

Their starting points were all uniformly catastrophic.

They began in places where there was no visible escape, in moments where death was a mathematical certainty.

Scenarios where ‘Survival’ was the only thing that mattered.

But wasn’t Divine Possession just a stroke of terrible luck?

Or was it triggered by specific criteria?

For instance, being a person standing on the brink of death.

However, it was also too convenient that only people at the exact moment of their demise suffered from Divine Possession.

‘…People who are certain they are about to die.’

People who already knew the end was coming.

People in impossible situations, where no light could be seen, were the ones who were possessed.

‘Then, does that mean I…’

If that was the rule, then she must have been in a hopeless situation herself.

Isabella’s face went pale and rigid.

‘I can’t remember it.’

……Because the memories of the period when she was possessed were still missing.

The Dercian family.

She was certain she had been possessed there before ending up in the desert city of Faisalmer.

But why would she, the daughter of a powerful imperial house, have been facing death?

Did that even make sense?

“Ah…”

A sudden throb of pain hit her.

It felt as though a needle was being driven into her brain.

And then, a different memory surfaced.

This wasn’t a memory belonging to Park Hyunmyeong.

It was the suppressed memory of Isabella von Dercian.

It is a place where you cannot breathe.

This house, the Dercian family.

She had felt it from the moment she was old enough to understand the world.

“Mary. When am I going to die?”

Isabella had asked Mary, the maid who raised her, one afternoon.

Mary, who had been adjusting Isabella’s clothes, froze in shock.

“Young Lady. What are you saying? Why would you say such a thing?”

“I know the truth. I know I’m the ninth clone.”

“…No, that’s not true. You aren’t going to die, Isabella-nim.”

“Yes, I am. I’ll be destroyed before the year ends. Or I’ll be sold off to ‘Faisalmer’ like the others.”

“……”

“So you knew all along, didn’t you, Mary?”

“Isabella-nim…!”

Mary’s eyes were filled with terror.

Isabella had learned something she was never supposed to find out.

If the family found out she knew, her disposal would be immediate.

“My sisters are in Faisalmer, aren’t they? Sold to the Desert Queen. Because there’s a tiny chance we might be able to wake ‘Jormungandr’…”

“Quiet! Please, don’t say another word. I’ll pretend I never heard this.”

Mary, her face white as a sheet, rushed out of the room.

Isabella never saw her again after that.

She didn’t care.

Everyone in this household knew the truth anyway.

That she was just a copy of someone else.

Since she was considered a failure, she was destined to be erased or dumped in the desert.

Isabella watched the birds outside her window and whispered.

“When will it happen?”

She just wanted to be prepared.

If death was coming, she wanted to know the date.

Right then.

A small bluebird diverted its flight and landed on her windowsill.

It was a strange sight, but Isabella asked it without much hope.

“Do you know?”

“Do you have a desire to live?”

“What…?”

For a second, she thought she was imagining things.

The bird had spoken.

But it wasn’t a delusion.

The bird chirped again.

“If there was a chance to grant a single wish, even if it meant losing every memory and everything you own, would you take the risk?”

“What… are you? How can a bird talk?”

“I am the Operator of this world. Regardless of what happens, you won’t remember this encounter once it’s over. So, choose. Will you accept your death as it stands, or will you throw yourself into the fire like a moth to chase a dream?”