After Ten Millennia in Hell

Fujimoto Ryoma extended his hand before him. He was trembling. Starting from the fingertips of his extended hand, his entire body was drying up. This was due to Mana Exhaustion; he had used up all of his mana while summoning and maintaining Susanoo.

He fell toward the ground, but Oh Kang-Woo caught him.

"Hmm…" Kang-Woo murmured as he set Ryoma down on the roof.

Ryoma was approaching death without Kang-Woo even having done anything.

"Cough! A-Aaah! H-Help... Help me..." Ryoma begged desperately with tears flowing down his shriveled cheeks.

He was paying the price of Susanoo dying. Ryoma convulsed like he was having a seizure. His skin began to sag and dry out. He was dying miserably like a vampire without blood. This wasn't something that normal Mana Exhaustion would cause.

"The price of summoning a god must be high," Kang-Woo remarked.

He looked down at Ryoma apathetically.

Then he thought about Susanoo, a deity that existed in another dimension besides Earth or Hell.

'He was strong.'

The battle itself had been short, and Susanoo hadn't shown a level of power that Kang-Woo wasn't capable of dealing with at the moment. However, considering that Susanoo had not been at his full power, he definitely possessed power befitting a god. Kang-Woo wasn't sure if he would've been able to win if Susanoo had been able to go all out.

"Will guys like that appear on Earth as well if the Gaia System keeps getting weaker?"

Kang-Woo frowned.

The natural disasters that ensued would be unimaginable if gods appeared on Earth with their powers fully intact.

"Maybe… the Demon Cult isn't the only problem."

There was a chance that beings more troublesome than the Demon Cult would appear on Earth. The best solution was to repair the Gaia System that he'd damaged… but he still hadn't found any clues on how to do that.

'The only thing I can do now is...'

Kang-Woo opened his status window.

"Demon God, huh?"

He read the phrase, 'The second step to becoming a Demon God'.

He wasn't sure how many steps he had to complete, but it appeared that he would become a being similar to a god once he fulfilled all of them.

'The system hasn't lied until now.'

Kang-Woo wasn't sure how it worked nor how it was possible, but he was sure he could trust the player system.

'It's a bit cringy that I need to become a god to stop gods though.'

Anyway, he couldn't deny that he needed to gain a corresponding amount of power to that of the gods if he wanted to face the unknown beings.

"Tsk," Kang-Woo clicked his tongue.

Nevertheless, the problem was that just like how he didn't know how to restore the Gaia System, he wasn't sure how to attain a Demonic Soul, the second step in becoming a Demonic God.

'As for what I can do right now...'

Kang-Woo walked toward Ryoma's dehydrated corpse. Although Ryoma had become all dried up like a mummy, his left eye was in a perfect state.

Kang-Woo grabbed the left eye. Eye of Susanoo was the name of this Mythic-grade equipment.

"But how did this guy equip this? Did he take out his eye and put it in himself?"

If that was the case, he had to acknowledge Ryoma's willpower. It wasn't easy for a person to do something like take out their eye.

Fshhh.

The eye turned to dust and scattered away as if it were answering his question, leaving behind a blue sphere the size of a ping-pong ball.

"Oh, I should've known."

It seemed like Ryoma hadn't taken out his eye.

Kang-Woo took the blue sphere and put it near his eye.

Riiing.

[This equipment has already been imprinted.]

"I guess I can't use it."

He had expected that to happen.

Kang-Woo put the Eye of Susanoo away.

In any case, what he needed was the Mythic-grade material within the Eye of Susanoo. He could use that to create new equipment using his 'Demonic Art of Creation' Trait.

'But I'll save that for later.'

Kang-Woo turned around. He jumped lightly and flew into the sky.

'Let's go back for now.'

He hadn't seen Echidna and Han Seol-Ah for the past three days because he'd been preparing to screw over Ryoma. It was quite lonely to be apart from the two people whom he had gotten used to seeing daily. It reminded him of the lonely days he'd spent in Hell.

* * *

The group was staying in a three-star business hotel in Tokyo. Considering the wealth that Cha Yeon-Joo, Jang Hyun-Jae, and Baek Hwa-Yeon possessed, it was far too lackluster for them. They'd probably picked a cheap hotel thinking that it would be wrong for them to stay in a luxury hotel while Kang-Woo was in jail.

'I'm not that self-centered though.'

Kang-Woo smiled bitterly and walked into the hotel. His group members, who had been waiting in the lobby, went running toward him.

"Hey! Where have you been?!" Yeon-Joo asked.

"I went to bring things to a close," Kang-Woo answered.

"A close...?"

"Yup. I had to give as much as I got."

Kang-Woo sat down in the lobby and gave a simple explanation, but he wasn't completely honest with them. Just like he'd done with Tian Suyan thought, he explained things on the pretext that Fujimoto Ryoma had been a Demon Cultist.

"So, you knew that Fujimoto Ryoma was a Demon Cultist from the very beginning?"

"No, I only realized it when I went underground. I just took some revenge after seeing how he and Prime Minister Yamada were trying to frame me as a Demon Cultist."

"...Why didn't you tell us?"

"Because there wasn't enough time."

"But still!"

Bam!

Yeon-Joo slammed the table angrily.

Kang-Woo smiled and said, "Calm down."

"How can I calm down?! You could've been framed as a Demon Cultist!"

"But everything worked out in the end, didn't it?"

"That's not the point…"

Seol-Ah placed her hand on Yeon-Joo's shoulder and urged, "Please calm down, Yeon-Joo. Just like Kang-Woo said, everything worked out in the end."

"But still..."

"Kang-Woo must have followed them willingly because he had a plan."

Yeon-Joo relaxed after hearing Seol-Ah's calm explanation. Then she aggressively put her feet on the table with one leg over the other.

“Kang-Woo," Seol-Ah said. She sat next to him and placed her hand on his thigh while making a sad expression. "I'm sorry that... I wasn't able to be of help to you again."

"I didn't need help," Kang-Woo replied.

"Still…" Seol-Ah smiled bitterly. "Will I... be of help to you someday?"

"…"

Judging by Seol-Ah's faint voice, she seemed heartbroken. She might break if Kang-Woo handled her the wrong way.

Kang-Woo looked into Seol-Ah's eyes.

'Wasn't of help, huh...?'

He couldn't deny that.

Seol-Ah certainly wasn't as helpful as Kim Si-Hun, Yeon-Joo, Suyan, or Echidna in terms of power, but…

"Is being helpful absolutely necessary?" Kang-Woo asked.

"...What?"

"I, at the very least, don't weigh the pros and cons of living with you."

Kang-Woo was, by nature, a calculative person. He wouldn't do something he couldn't benefit from. However, he was different when it came to Seol-Ah. He didn't think of her as a cook who prepared delicious meals for him, nor did he think of her as a tool to satisfy his desires. If he had thought of her like that, he wouldn't have asked her to move in with him when he got the apartment near Seoul Station.

Seol-Ah was like family to him. He didn't spend time with her to gain something; the time that he spent with her was already precious enough.

'I can't say that to her though.'

It was the first time in his life that he had someone whom he wanted to call 'family'. That was something he hadn't felt for the last ten millennia. No, he'd never experienced something like that even before falling to Hell. It was an awkward and odd situation for him, so he had trouble expressing himself.

'People would explode from frustration if they knew this.'

Nevertheless, there was nothing Kang-Woo could do about it. He wasn't a god. He wasn't perfect, and he wasn't good at everything.

"M-Me neither!" Seol-Ah shouted in quite a loud voice.

She blushed and lowered her head, hiding the rising corners of her lips.

"Can you leave the romance drama scene for when you two are alone?" Yeon-Joo voiced in a sharp voice.

She shook her legs in annoyance as if she didn't like what she was seeing.

"Hey, you said you wanted to go get sushi earlier, right?" Yeon-Joo said.

"I did," Kang-Woo answered.

"Follow me. I know somewhere good."

Yeon-Joo stood up and looked at everyone just staring at her blankly.

"What are you all waiting for?" she asked.

"Hahaha. It's my first time seeing you act like this, Yeon-Joo," Hwa-Yeon replied.

"Shut up!" Yeon-Joo shouted at her before turning around and walking away.

Kang-Woo smiled bitterly and stood up.

"Oh, right. What happened to Kurosaki Yurie after that?" he asked.

"She went home after talking with the reporters for a while, but I'm glad she was there. If Kurosaki didn't have memories about what happened at that time, this incident wouldn't have been resolved so easily."

"Oh... Yeah, you're right."

Kang-Woo narrowed his eyes. He still didn't understand why Kurosaki Yurie had helped him.

'Does she have a personal grudge against Fujimoto?'

There was no way for Kang-Woo to know that though.

He followed Yeon-Joo out of the hotel.

* * *

Inside a traditional Japanese house, a woman was sitting in a simple room where there weren't many things except for some fundamental pieces of furniture. She was Kurosaki Yurie, the emperor's granddaughter and a woman with the title of Miko of the Heavens.

Yurie was looking at the mirror placed on top of her floor table.

"Haaa," she sighed deeply.

At that moment, her reflection opened her mouth.

- Are you satisfied now?

"No, of course not."

Yurie was talking to her reflection in the mirror. If someone saw her right now, they'd think she'd gone crazy.

"Aahh, to think I can only gaze at him from afar even while having met him at last. It breaks my heart."

Yurie stroked her cheek while lamenting her situation.

- What are you going to do from now on?

"Fufu. Of course, I'll make preparations so that I can be of use to that person."

She giggled while looking in the mirror.

At that moment, incredibly sexual energy poured out from the usually pure-looking Yurie. It was leagues above that of Tian Suyan. Any man who got a taste of that energy would instantly become Yurie's slave.

Yurie's black hair defied gravity and rose, twisting and moving as if they were tentacles.

- If you're so loyal to him, why aren't you going to him? the Yurie inside the mirror asked.

"My, my."

Yurie frowned as if asking what her reflection was talking about.

She placed her hands on her cheeks and shook her head, not even wanting to imagine doing what her reflection suggested.

"How could I go to that person with such an ugly face?"

- …

The Yurie inside the mirror remained silent.