I Entered an Academy in a Ruined Game

Chapter 320 : The End (2)

Belphegor was a slave.

The most despicable existence.

Worth less than a dog, a horse, a pig, or an expensive meal.

A convenient being to be used and discarded for any purpose.

That was Belphegor's situation.

Born without knowing father or mother, Belphegor.

From the time he could speak, he became a plaything for his young master.

A child's innocence can sometimes be cruel.

Especially a child born as a demon, whose aggressiveness was bound to be different from early on.

Wealthy demon parents would often buy a young slave as a toy to satisfy their children's aggressive tendencies.

Thus chosen, Belphegor's fate was miserable.

Wearing restraints that could tighten around his head and cause pain at any moment.

Belphegor repeatedly got beaten, stabbed, cut, burned, and pushed down from when his young master woke up until he went to sleep.

But he did not die.

Born with exceptional healing abilities and a monstrous durability, Belphegor was a toy that wouldn't break no matter how it was handled.

His master quite liked him.

Purely as a toy.

The master's father also liked the sturdy Belphegor.

Thus, even as hair grew all over his body and his voice changed, Belphegor was able to grow up alongside his master for a long time.

That's where the problem lay.

He grew stronger with each passing day.

He became more intelligent with each passing day.

And incomparably beautiful.

The master's father took a liking to such a Belphegor and began assigning him more tasks.

The master would not tolerate a slave who shone brighter than himself.

The torment only increased.

But Belphegor no longer cried, begged, or feared as he had in his youth.

Without any resistance or any sign of pain.

The sight of Belphegor maintaining his noble gaze even while being defiled and beaten made his master even angrier.

A nobility more noble than the nobleman's son. For a lotus remains a lotus even in mud.

The master, while abusing and torturing him, could see himself being intimidated by him.

And that fact made his rage explode.

On a night when cold rain was falling.

The master called for Belphegor and ordered the household slaves to violate him.

It was the most insulting method he could think of to break Belphegor's nobility, which nothing else could crack.

The master had always been a foolish and hot-tempered man.

But this time, he had found the perfect answer.

And Belphegor no longer endured.

The moment his eyes, will, and attitude of defiance appeared.

As a consequence, the restraint on his neck exploded, blowing away more than half of his head.

Yet he did not die.

Seeing Belphegor charging at him with more than half his head gone, brain matter and blood flowing, the master stepped back, and was torn apart.

After tearing all the shocked slaves to death, Belphegor went to find the master's father.

By then, with his head already 70% recovered, and thus presenting an even more terrifying figure, Belphegor threw the son's head before the father.

A great battle began, and Belphegor's accumulated resentment exploded as he brutally massacred everyone.

Though a slave, Belphegor, born with the qualities of a ruler more than anyone, ravaged his enemies with the most precise judgment, and overwhelmed demons who had shed blood for decades and centuries with just his innate senses and physical abilities.

And finally.

"Spare me."

After killing the master's father who prostrated before him begging for mercy, Belphegor disappeared.

But no pursuers came looking for him, the fugitive.

The incident was surprisingly quickly forgotten.

It wasn't particularly special in a place where massacres and wars occurred almost daily.

With no survivors, there was no one to tell who had done it.

And there was no way anyone would know the name and face of a mere slave like Belphegor.

From that day, Belphegor's endless wandering began.

An innate ruler and powerful being, he became a ferocious yet clever and cunning beast.

He could figure out how to counter an enemy's technique just by seeing it once.

Just by recalling it once, he could understand the essence of that technique.

With magical energy overflowing in his body, a highly regenerative physique, excellent muscles and physical abilities.

The wanderer grew stronger with each passing day.

Countless enemies came after him for trivial reasons.

He killed them all alone and existed in solitude.

Wisdom and strength accumulated in his mind and body, and he raised his power and status at an unprecedented rate.

He had never found struggle enjoyable.

But strangely enough.

Only slaughter brought him pleasure.

Gradually, he gained a reputation that made everyone fear him.

Enemies who met him would bow their heads in terror after being overwhelmingly ravaged.

When he extended his blood-soaked boot to enemies who dared not even raise their heads, they would gratefully grab and lick his feet.

Then he would enjoy that baseness and crush their skulls under his foot.

Each time, he felt an unparalleled fullness.

Soon, he realized it was a waste to kill them outright.

From that day on, Belphegor began to take his time in the process of killing his enemies.

He instilled fear.

He gave brief hope.

Then took that hope away again.

The sight of enemies who realized Belphegor had no intention of sparing them, whether they became angry, pleaded, hated, or despaired, was quite interesting.

Like a scholar studying black magic, he began to explore and enjoy the despair and suffering of the weak.

When did it begin?

Belphegor had taken on the appearance of his former master who had played with him and indulged in pleasure during his childhood.

'...Not bad.'

He did not reject that pleasure.

Guilt for resembling the one he hated?

Even that guilt was sweet to Belphegor.

Even that self-loathing excited him.

Thus, Belphegor enjoyed the world's rule that the strong tramples the weak.

From around that time, Belphegor always cried out in his heart:

'Weak ones who are trampled by me. Please become stronger than me and kill me.'

But no such opponent appeared.

Belphegor only continued to grow stronger.

Occasionally, a powerful being would emerge to challenge him, but that was the extent of it.

The tragedy was that he was a natural-born powerhouse who might appear once in ten thousand years.

Before long, the great archipelago of Nastrond where he was born and raised quickly fell into a land filled only with death.

Only two beings breathed there:

One was Belphegor, and the other was Eligoss, who had been following him since some point, a boy who grew into an absolute powerhouse succeeding him.

But he was not disappointed.

Because there was a wider world beyond the well.

However, no demon in the continent could stand against him either.

By the time he decided to destroy the archipelago and invade the continent, he had already surpassed the realm of a quasi-transcendent.

There were only overwhelming victories.

North, West, East, Central, South.

Belphegor reigned as a disaster that swept everything away.

Meanwhile.

The great demon who was strong alone without needing coincidence or miracle became a true transcendent, surpassing the limits of his kind.

After that, Belphegor gradually became enlightened and merciful about everything.

At some point, he often stopped using his own hands and instead made his subordinates fight while he merely watched.

The reason was simple.

It was too trivial when he got involved.

Thus, Belphegor came to know the virtue of waiting for a long time.

It was for this reason that he spared Belred around that time.

'He's too precious to kill now.'

Since it was clear he could become stronger, Belphegor killed everything Belred loved and directed all his hatred solely toward himself.

As a result, Belred wandered for a long time, growing stronger, able to climb to the top of his tower.

But even he could not surpass Eligoss, his apostle.

Because to surpass him, one truly needed to be transcendent.

'What a pity. But you were the most excellent. As a reward, I bestow upon you greater power.'

Belred's will, still dreaming of revenge even after receiving powerful authority from him, pleased Belphegor, but.

No particular impression remained.

Such was the perspective of a transcendent.

A long reign continued.

Belphegor, growing weary of boredom like a disease, came to know of the previous generation's transcendent who had existed before him.

The battle between transcendents was indeed glorious and more desperate than any trial Belphegor had experienced.

This time.

It seemed that a being who could bring death to Belphegor had appeared.

But reality was cruel.

Belphegor, who had lived his entire life as a sharp blade, was stronger than the previous transcendent.

Yet Belphegor, though disappointed, showed mercy by ending the matter by confining him to a distant dimension of space-time.

It was a kind of investment.

An investment in the slim possibility that such a person might think of another way to bring him down.

And Belphegor's mercy was rewarded.

At some point, he learned that the previous transcendent was making desperate attempts to defeat him.

In a completely different universe called Earth, his skill in implementing a world using the strange method of a "game" was truly amazing.

However, among those tens or hundreds of thousands of parallel universes, there was only one being who could break down his stronghold.

Kim Seong-yun.

Among the tens of thousands of gamers who dwelled in Jeong Su-hyeon's body and life, only he made Belphegor feel some hope and expectation.

The previous transcendent, placing his last hope on Kim Seong-yun, made his soul dwell within a human.

Jeong Su-hyeon.

An avatar who repeated hundreds of thousands of challenges and deaths, a darling of the age.

Kim Seong-yun inherited his body and fate.

Therefore, Belphegor watched Su-hyeon's progress for a very long time, very secretly.

Su-hyeon, who entered the academy, overcame numerous crises against Hwang Won-jae and the Sword of Belphegor.

And finally came to achieve 'transcendence' on his own.

Being born human and becoming a transcendent.

It was the only causality that existed among the tens of billions of possibilities that unfolded for Su-hyeon, and like a lie, he seized it.

How joyful it was then.

Belphegor even spoke to Su-hyeon, forgetting his vow not to intervene directly.

"I will definitely kill you."

"This is not a resolution."

"This is an oath."

How admirable and welcome and lovely that oath was.

Jeong Su-hyeon.

Or Kim Seong-yun.

Truly, he was the genuine match that Belphegor had waited for his entire life.

A friend and companion who would release him from the prison of eternal boredom.

But.

Unfortunately, the balance of power that existed between them was beginning to break.

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Time is memory.

Memory creates humans, creates intelligence, and even creates existence.

This was true even for transcendents.

Overwhelmingly long time created overwhelmingly many memories.

And that difference in time was the only thing Su-hyeon lacked compared to Belphegor.

Therefore, as the battle between the two transcendents shifted to a battle of self against self, it began to tilt increasingly in Belphegor's favor.

As time passed.

Su-hyeon had become a fragile human swimming through a torrent of memories that unfolded like a panorama of hundreds of lives that 'ultimately failed.'

When he occasionally struggled to the surface, the reflection in the water was both Jeong Su-hyeon and Kim Seong-yun.

Memory is self.

Therefore, memories that poured in too excessively, beyond what could be handled, were gradually causing the erosion and muddying of the self.

Su-hyeon's existence.

The identity of that existence was gradually beginning to blur.

[What a pity.]

Belphegor's self expressed disappointment.

[In the end, even you could not surpass me.]

[Regrettable, but that is the result.]

[It was enjoyable entertainment.]

It was then that Belphegor was about to declare the end to Su-hyeon.

[Hmm?]

Su-hyeon's fading power was growing stronger again.

[...Not yet?]

Belphegor decided to watch his change for a moment.

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Even as memories became muddled and self blurred.

'I must return.'

What held Su-hyeon's consciousness was none other than a promise.

'Because I promised to return.'

With Lee Yu-jin.

With Hwang Ji-su.

With Kim A-yun.

With Nam Tae-hoon.

With Seo Jun-seong.

And also...

Numerous promises began to bring Su-hyeon's consciousness into the most recent memory among hundreds of lives.

'I cannot end like this.'

Su-hyeon's self thought.

'How did I come this far?'

What could not be achieved with hundreds of lives, he accomplished with a single life without spare.

Of course, his body died more than thousands of times during the transcendence process.

But his self remained immortal.

'But if I fail here, even my self will be extinguished.'

After that, there would be no next time.

'This is the last.'

Su-hyeon thought.

'If I die, everyone dies.'

Lee Yu-jin, Hwang Ji-su, and all the humans he loved would die.

'That cannot happen.'

Su-hyeon thought.

'Yu-jin.'

He called out one person's name in his heart.

'I can no longer bear your deaths.'