HACKED 123

The serious thoughts he had until moments ago vanished instantly. Absurdity and a hint of patheticness filled their place.

‘He looks like a panda plushie that’s been through a washing machine. Does he think opening his eyes wide like that makes him look tough?’

Yeo Myeong seemed to be trying his best to put strength into his gaze… but with his sleepy, drooping eyes and dark circles, he wasn’t intimidating in the slightest.

Besides, there was a fundamental and most significant error.

‘I am a tiger, not a hippo.’

No, what did being a tiger or a hippo even matter? Seeing how he spat out informal speech right to his face, it was clear that his master was still wandering deep within a dream. Once he woke up, he wouldn’t even remember what he just said.

There was no point in being serious with someone who was half-asleep; it would only make him look ridiculous. <Mountain Hero> decided to exercise his maximum patience.

“Go to sleep. Don’t piss me off.”

Despite the mercy he showed, Yeo Myeong muttered another bizarre remark.

“Even a power-hungry thing like you talks.”

Then, he went a step further. Still keeping his eyes forced wide, he made a gesture as if brushing back his disheveled hair.

“Ha, driving me crazy. Answer.”

What kind of concept was that now? It seemed he wanted to act in a way that was either fatal or overbearing in his own way… but the saying about a day-old puppy not knowing enough to fear a tiger was perfectly applicable here.

It was so absurd that he couldn’t even get angry. <Mountain Hero> sighed and flicked the tip of Yeo Myeong’s nose with his finger.

“Auuugh…”

Even though it was a motion with no strength behind it, Yeo Myeong let out a pained groan with a tearful face. Anyone watching would think <Mountain Hero> had smashed his skull with a fist.

After squirming and moaning for a long while, Yeo Myeong’s expression gradually relaxed. Then, he passed out again and fell back into sleep.

Watching the whole sequence, <Mountain Hero> felt a sense of self-loathing for reasons unknown. It was the feeling people these days call a ‘reality check.’

‘I live my life serving a brat like this as my master…’

Yeo Myeong’s breathing became faint and thin again. As expected, the nonsense he had been babbling must have been sleep-talking. Well, it’s not like he stopped talking nonsense when he was sober, anyway.

<Mountain Hero> watched the sleeping Yeo Myeong. Regardless, he liked the fact that the man was sleeping deeply. The fellow who had been turning into a living corpse every hour of the day due to nightmares and sleep paralysis was now sleeping soundly and peacefully.

He was cute earlier when his white cheeks were flushed red as he cried and pleaded, and he was cute now while sleeping mindlessly. Yeo Myeong seemed to hate being called cute, but cute was cute.

‘I guess making him piss himself was the answer after all. Should I just fuck him until he can’t even walk and let him sleep for three or four days straight?’

He thought with a satisfied heart. Of course, if Yeo Myeong had heard it, he would have been horrified.

The peace of mind that had briefly vanished returned. The furrow between his brows smoothed out before he knew it. His innate fierce features remained, but his impression became slightly less menacing.

His large hand covered Yeo Myeong’s eye area. The eyelashes felt beneath his palm did not move an inch. It was like cupping a dead butterfly in his hands.

Slowly, as if stroking downward, he moved his hand lower bit by bit. Past the nose, the mouth, and the nape of the neck, down to the chest. <Mountain Hero>’s hand stopped exactly over Yeo Myeong’s heart.

Thump, thump, thump…

As he focused his senses, he felt the slow pulsation.

For a flash, suddenly, his fingertips itched. An impulse surged within him to unsheathe the sharp claws of a predator.

At the same time, he wanted to press down on the heart with strength in his palm. With that simple motion, Yeo Myeong’s breath would cease. Just as it had when Yeo Myeong first died at his hands.

Indeed. He had already killed Yeo Myeong once. It was an act no different from completely shattering his already fragmented divinity.

‘How much longer will he be able to live?’

He did not know the answer himself. Not only him; there probably wasn’t a single Incarnation who could answer that question.

The soul could scatter into pieces tomorrow, in half a day, or even an hour from now. Or, he could stay alive until Yeo Myeong lived out his lifespan as a human and died.

However, one thing was certain.

Unlike other Incarnations who branch out from the main stream of a narrative, fulfill their mission as an Incarnation in the present world, and then return as fragments of the narrative… repeating descent and return, this life was the last for <Mountain Hero>.

There would be no returning to the main current of the narrative, nor would he be reborn with his memories reset to serve another master with a different appearance and name. To him, life was right now, this one and only moment. Yeo Myeong would be his everything—the first and the last.

‘It’s almost… like being human, isn’t it?’

Even though he knew it was sophistry, <Mountain Hero> quite liked the conclusion he had reached.

He chuckled, tilting his head to lean his cheek against the back of his hand. Then he closed his eyes. Before long, the sound of peaceful breathing in deep sleep doubled to two pairs.

The 5-star Incarnation <Mountain Hero>, or the one with the name Un… decided to willingly serve the Fate that would irreversibly ruin him.

˙✧˖°🎮 ⋆｡˚

Between the time I woke up after having my energy drained until I was on the verge of death by San Gun and then passing out, <Valkyrie Leading to Death> also regained consciousness.

They say the Valkyrie had been in front of the entrance to what used to be her Pantheon ever since she woke up. Clinging to the corpse of her former master—which had long since gone cold and finished with rigor mortis—she hadn’t moved a single step from that spot.

Whether it was the ‘Library District’ or the ‘Neural Network Transplant Research Wing’ which I hadn’t visited yet, my authority as a Compiler was needed to go to the dimensions that had been merged into our Pantheon through the merger. So, for the Valkyrie, camping out at the entrance must have been her best option.

Therefore, as soon as I got up, I visited the place that used to be the Pantheon of <DriedAnchovyLowerEnds>, now… well. Let’s decide to call it the ‘Kowloon Walled City District.’ I stopped by this Kowloon Walled City District first, both to renew my authority and to pick up the Valkyrie.

The Kowloon Walled City District overall had an atmosphere like a slum of a mega-city combined with cyberpunk.

Among the buildings that had been haphazardly expanded like rags, steel frames, square timbers, and lumps of cement were messily strewn about. Stained and torn tents, tilted signs. Sparks occasionally flew with a zap from cables where the insulation had worn off or snapped. In between all that, neon signs and power units of vivid colors were sparkling disparately.

‘<IsItPresbyopiaCrap> was like that, and now <DriedAnchovyLowerEnds> is also a huge concept-freak. Are Compilers originally all this serious about decorating their Pantheons? Am I the weird one?’

The characters written on the neon signs and billboards were something like Hanja. The reason I said ‘something like Hanja’ instead of just ‘Hanja’ was because they were similar to the Hanja I knew but strangely different.

In a way, they looked like correct Hanja. There were actually a few characters I could read. However, more than half were unfamiliar characters that merely took the form of Hanja. They looked exactly like images clumsily created by a generative AI.

“Chirpy. Do you know those characters?”

“I do not know…”

Chirpy, who was fluttering around looking at the neighborhood, drooped his wings gloomily.

“I’m someone who ‘came from the past’ by this world’s standards, so let’s say it’s fine if I don’t know. But shouldn’t you know?”

“It is because I am the helper fairy assigned to Mr. Myeong. All settings, including text and voice, are tailored to Mr. Myeong. My characters are set to use ‘Hangul’ and my language is set to ‘Korean.’ It is only natural that I do not know!”

“If you’re going to do that, you should have made your names Korean-style too. Why make them in weird foreign languages and make them hard to memorize?”

“Even though you’ve never once memorized my name… and you just call me whatever you want every time…”

Chirpy grumbled while looking at me resentfully. From the side, San Gun suddenly poked his head in.

“Scrap Paper. Was your name a foreign language? I don’t think it was.”

“Uh, ye-yes? Mister Mountain Hero?”

Chirpy has a lot to say to me, but he freezes up whenever he sees San Gun. Was he really that scared when San Gun chased him around last time asking if his wings would regenerate if he tore them off?

“Ruined Family? I think it was something like that.”

“No. Of all the words, why that one specifically…”

“Farewell My Concubine?”

“It is not that either.”

“Bribery and Corruption?”

“Now you aren’t even making an effort to get the first syllable right.”

“Anyway. I know well enough that you’re from the Pae clan. Isn’t it enough if I just call you roughly by your surname? You, Pae-ga fellow.”

“…”

“Happy?”

“A Pae-ga fellow? I would rather you call me Scrap Paper. That would be bet—no, just do as you please…”

Tears welled up in Chirpy’s eyes, and his chin bunched up like a walnut. He puckered his mouth a few times before flying off somewhere with weak wingbeats. I watched him go and muttered:

“Now who’s going to do the announcements?”